'Decolonising the history curriculum' continued

 What does it mean to decolonise the history curriculum? Is it to teach students iconoclasm: to destroy the statues of racists? To do so is (in a rather unfortunate turn of phrase) to attempt to 'whitewash' history, in a way that has a moral equivalence to the Taliban blowing up ancient statues of Buddha.

Oliver Cromwell, that flawed public figure, apocryphally ordered his painter to paint him 'warts and all'. If we paint British colonialism as a golden age of enlightenment for example, it is hypocritical to paint Islamic civilisation as purely barbaric. 

Tom Holland, a popular historian, questions whether it is the responsibility of historians to sit in judgement on empires.(http://tinyurl.com/3lmjr7qa, accessed 17.2.21)He appeals to Herodotus, the Ancient Greek father of history, for whom 'history' meant 'enquiry'. Whilst I agree that we are to teach students of history to be enquiring and inquisitive, I don't think history teachers should stop there. 

If we as teachers are to uphold 'British values' such as democracy, we must democratise history. So when we teach the British Empire for example, we must not do so simply from the perspective of the minority rulers, but also from the perspective of the majority ruled. 

For me, the decolonisation of the history curriculum is almost synonymous with the democratisation of the history curriculum. After all, if one people was to have a referendum, would they chose to be self governing, or to be ruled by another people? Scotland of course seems to disprove my point, but the union of Scotland and England is not purely about colonialism. 

I am not claiming some kind of binary choice between empire being bad and democracy being good. As Churchill is famously attributed as saying (and I paraphrase), democracy is 'the best of a bad bunch, in terms of forms of government'. What I am arguing is that we shouldn't 'airbrush out' unsavoury aspects of history, or fail to listen to the voices of the underrepresented masses.