Secular and Democratic Education this system. So is the recent attack on the Christians as they run a fairly large number of educational institutions. The books used in schools run by some Muslim organisations project an equally communal view of history and society. The textbooks published by Harkazi Haktaba Islami of Delhi and prescribed in schools in U.P. are examples. Like the books produced by Parivar these books also take a religious view of society and explain historical developments only from a religious view point. These books, the NCERT committee observes, "present an extremely narrow view of the subjects they deal with. In the name of developing an Islamic viewpoint and religiosity, these textbooks foster all kinds of irrational and obscurantist and narrow sectarian ideas and, in many ways, a communal outlook." There is remarkable similarity in the approach and methods of communalists, be they Hindus or Muslims. The Sangh Parivars educational agenda is more than mere instruction through schools. They have well formulated schemes in different areas to transform communalised knowledge into social knowledge. Apart from the large scale pamphleteering during the last many years which has sought to replace the secular commonsense with a communal commonsense, they have devised all India schemes to make their knowledge easily accessible to people. The district histories reportedly being written by an organisation sponsored by the RSS is a part of this endeavour. Once these communally tailored local histories are made available the real history of the people is likely to be marginalised. In the light of the advance made by communal forces in the field of education and the ongoing efforts of the BJP governments, the need for secular initiatives to preserve and advance the secular-democratic education assumes certain immediacy. An urgent necessary step is to intensify the struggle for democratisation, which would take into account both the impact of communalisation and globalisation in the field of education. The steps recently taken in Kerala to defend secular education is a good beginning which could be expanded into an all India movement in order to set up secular education committees in all institutions to act as monitoring cells. The initiative in this direction rests with progressive teachers and students organisations.