When historians are not consulted in the content of history textbooks, one can only expect distortion, fiction and truncated.

When Dr Ranjit Singh Malhi and Ng How Kuen made a statement a few days ago on how history textbooks are biased and littered with errors, the politicians immediately asked for these two people to be investigated. There must be a mistake; shouldn’t it be asking for the issue to be investigated?

Penang Gerakan is strongly against the investigation of Dr Ranjit Singh Malhi and Ng How Kuen for voicing their concern. The Government should instead investigate the issue of history being distorted and corrective measure be taken immediately to pacify the public. Concern citizens should be penalised for voicing their concern. The Government must be able to accept criticism to function well and improve its performance.

Afterall, is that not what Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Mohamad has been promoting in “Rakyat Didahulukan”.

There is a saying “valuable lessons are learnt from history”. So rightly or wrongly, whether we like it or not, whether we were the conqueror or the conquered, history must never be distorted for the sake the present and future generations.

History is proven facts. Error and biasness are totally unacceptable. Don’t let education and in particular history be a tool for political propaganda.

We must learn history holistically. Human civilisation, World history, Asia history, Islamic history are all equally important and the Ministry of Education should ensure that the accurate history is imparted to our students.

Afterall, globalisation is at our door step. Don’t make Malaysian a laughing stock of the World.