The History We Learn

We tell kids to listen to their teachers in school.

In school, I remember being taught that the partition of India (into India and Pakistan) was done to stop everyone from fighting each other. That a "few people chose to move to the right side of the line." But that we British knew best and fixed it.

Anyone who watched this week's Doctor Who saw a different version of that history.

I remember as a kid seeing right through it. I knew, after all, that Hindus and Muslims don't tend to like each other that much. That you took steps not to mistake one for the other if you, well, wanted to avoid being yelled at at best.

The "few people" who "chose" to move were 14 million displaced people. The estimate the Doctor gives for casualties of 1.4 million may be either too high or too low - some figures go as high as 2 million.

And while it's true that there were people on both side who were very much in favor of partition. They didn't get on, and often still don't.

The worst violence did, indeed, occur in the Punjab.

Right now, we have kids in America being taught that the Native Americans chose to leave the east. That Japanese Americans in World War II had the "job of staying out of the way."

Just as I was taught that partition resulted in only "a few people moving," and my teachers never mentioned the thousands of deaths.

Maybe kids don't need to always listen to their teachers about history.