Integration, not history, welds Malaysia

TO respond to Tan Sri Mohd Sheriff Mohd Kassim’s letter, “Welding 1Malaysia via history” (The Star, Oct 10), where he expressed unhappiness that our history books had “political aims” and that “factuality” is supposedly ignored, and called for an “inclusive” history, I say there is only one approach to the discipline of history – objectivity and factuality.

There cannot be other approaches, such as “inclusiveness” or “welding” a country, or even to “cultivate patriotism”, precisely because history cannot be an instrument of the government to achieve political aims. History is simply a discipline of knowledge.