The political abuse of history in India and Pakistan is fostering entire generations that are conditioned to regard each other as the enemy.
India´s Evil Designs Against Pakistan." This is not a slogan raised by the Jamaat-i-Islami but the title of a history textbook chapter for fifth class students in Pakistan. Eight-year-old children can rattle off India´s wrong-doings against Pakistan at a moment´s notice, and, in all innocence, they can also enlighten an already shocked Indian visitor about how "unclean" and "inferior" Hindus are!
Neither are India´s young far behind. For the children of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-sponsored Saraswati Shishu Mandirs in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, India´s history is a long tale of foreign invasions, especially by the "barbarians among Arabs", and of "Hindu" resistance.
To say that legacies of history divide India and Pakistan is not merely a cliche: it is a living reality for the younger generation, thanks to partisan history being taught on both sides of the border. Ruling regimes in India and Pakistan have tried often to re-write the past of their respective countries to suit their political ideologies. In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its earlier incarnation, the Jana Sangh, have long sought to tailor history to suit their Hindu nationalism. When it was part of the janata Dal government in 1977, the Jana Sangh was able to persuade Prime Minister Morarji Desai "to correct distortions in the presentation of history".