During a recent quiz conducted in the City for school children, the participants identified freedom fighter Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan from a photograph as Amitabh Bachchan!

The children probably didn’t recognise him since he hasn’t yet been portrayed by any Bollywood movie. This isn't an isolated incident. GenX and GenY seem largely unaware of the country's history and its heritage and culture.

Metrolife looked into instances in City schools that have shown that knowledge of our country's history may be soon be lost, if steps aren't taken to revive it.

History through Bollywood

Namma India @60, a movement that hopes to create knowledge about our history recently did some findings in schools. They found that on an average most kids knew a maximum of 10 freedom fighters.

And 75 per cent of the kids had ‘learnt’ of these freedom fighters from movies! So Chandrashekhar Azad, Ram Prasad Bismil, Rajguru have been popularised, thanks to the actors in Rang De Basanti. Similarly for Mangal Pandey and Bhagat Singh.

Says Alaesheebam V Srinivas, the creative head of Namma India @60, "Media plays a very influential role in the lives of children. And yes, to an extent, patriotic movies have given children some knowledge about freedom fighters.

But movies must be commercially viable, so they have a lot of glitz. Look at Lagaan...it may have elements of patriotism but would anyone have watched it as a documentary? But then, it's not about this generation, even Mother India did well because of Nargis' status and performance. I think the question we need to be asking is, when we say Bhagat Singh do we want our children to think of Ajay Devgan?"

The problem may in fact lie with adults for not guiding children. A dipstick survey in some schools in Bangalore showed that approximately nine out every 10 schools don’t sing the national anthem everyday. Many children therefore, do not know the anthem or know it wrongly. And it’s no surprise that AR Rehman's version of the Vande Mataram is more well known than the original!

As Srinivas points out, it’s not just schools..."How do we celebrate Independence Day? Most families sit at home, watch TV and treat it as any other holiday. We spoke to a lot of children for our programme and found that children are inherently proud of their nation but many said they would be embarrassed to express it. We need to change that."

Namma India @60, as part of its programmes made sure that the children learn Abdul Kalam's pledge and the children actually learnt it fast. "It only shows that children are very eager to learn. Our programme has changed things a lot, but if people can take our work further, we will have made a diffference."

Removing misconceptions

Speaking of children and patriotism, Srinivas speaks of a misconception in society — "Most people feel that children in Muslim minority schools or Muslim students aren't patriotic. Nothing could be a bigger misconception than this. Muslim children are as keen as anyone else to learn about the country's history and independence. They strongly feel they are part of India just like anyone else."

Another contest held recently showed that not only is it history, but culture also that is losing out. The contest required children to be multi-lingual and orate one paragraph per language. The organisers stressed that they were not concerned with content but the objective behind it was to motivate children to learn different Indian languages. The contest received a lukewarm response and even the winners had spoken in only five-six languages, inclusive of English.

These incidents are the warning signs of what is to come, because as another survey recently found, children not only don't have information about India’s independence struggle, but they are also unware of the more recent Indo-Pak and Indo-China wars.

Organisations like Namma India @60 are doing their bit, but it will take much more for things to change. A freedom run and a ‘unity thoran’ at 11 am at Ulsoor Lake are part of the organisation’s programmes for August 15.