228776e

INDIA
The sample
The sample is based on five textbooks published between 1995 and 2006. Three of these
are designed for world history (T1), Indian history (T2) or Indian and world history (T4), the
other two for social studies in India (T5) and in India and the world (T3). The books devoted
to India accord no special status to the Holocaust and mention it only in passing in relation
to the Second World War or not at all; history books treat the Holocaust within sections
dealing with the Second World War, focusing mainly on historical processes, actors, the
rise of Nazism and Hitler, and consequences of Nazism and the war. The curriculum does
not prescribe teaching about the Holocaust.
Scale
Maps showing locations of concentration camps and photographs of cities and buildings
clearly locate the events in Europe in T1 and T3. T4 also locates the events in Europe in its
text. Further reference to exiled Jewish scientists in the United States (T4) and to Gandhi’s
letters to Hitler appealing for an end to the violence indirectly highlight the global dimension
of the Holocaust. The thematic contexts of the chapters in T1, T3 and T4 place the Holocaust
in a global context, with reference to nationalism only in general terms. While three of
the five textbooks (T1, T3, T4) focus clearly on 1941 as the moment at which the violence
became extreme, T1 also dates the ‘machinery of terror’ (incorrectly) from 1934, while only
T3 provides details of discrimination from 1933 onwards, the effects of the Nuremberg laws
of 1935 and the creation of ghettos. T3’s mention of the influence of Spencer and Darwin on
racial ideology effectively extends the roots of the Holocaust back to the nineteenth century.
The same textbook documents commemorations of the Holocaust in the present day, in
diaries, memoirs, museums, diaries and literature.
Protagonists
A broad spectrum of perpetrators and victims is named. Priority is given to groups of
protagonists, named as ‘Nazis’ or fascists, but also to ‘armed volunteers’ and ‘brownshirts’
(T1 and T4), to the ‘Hitler Youth’, gestapo, SS, SD and SA. ‘Germany’ is named as the
perpetrator of the genocide (T3). Victims are named as Jews (T2), and as communists,
social democrats, innocent civilians, Jews, disabled people, ‘Gypsies’, blacks, communists,
trade union leaders and social democrats (T3) . Three of the books state that six million
Jews were murdered, while T3 adds 200,000 ‘Gypsies’, 1 million Polish civilians, 70,000
disabled and old people and political opponents of Nazism. T1 also mentions victims of
slave labour, (inaccurately, two million) prisoners of war and slave labour. Nazi stereotypes
are discussed in T1 and T3. Other types of involvement mentioned include the passive
role of bystanders (T3), allied resistance (T1), and German and Italian resistance (T4).
The depiction of the relations between perpetrators and victims is confined to violence
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