- Most people on Earth have a history that goes back thousands of years.
Countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden are much older nations than, for instance, India and our civilizations are also thousands of years old (although the Vikings didn’t develop a literature of their own until the era called THE ‘Viking age’, roughly 750-1000 AD), but how could this allow us to forget about neither Nazism or Pol Pot.
According to the logic of your post, it’s okay if people in Greece, Italy and India forget about Stalin and Hitler while Americans, on the other hand, ought to become experts in this field.
I want to clarify that it was not my opinion earlier, but a reason for the negligence of Nazi/Communist history.
Another reason would be the easier load on teachers to be able to teach old history, things too far out into the past, than to teach the complex dynamics that lead to WWI and WW2 and the Cold War, etc. I would think this isn’t just unique to India, but the rest of the world, on the whole... Teachers Unions, perhaps?
I'd wager that looking at things like trade, science and military exchanges, the events happening in the Roman Empire, and India, had more profound effects, more consistently, than most of the rest of the world, for much of history, until perhaps, the late 19th century. The habitable parts of the New World was discovered greatly owing to this fact(I am aware of Viking landings in the N. American coasts, but not much changed there, as a consequence). As a result, the histories of these regions are much less monotonous than the ones you cited, and through that, comes the bulk.
I agree with you on the point about emphasising modern history over the past. It is extremely important for people to know communism/socialism, and its ills, than about empires of yore.