NCERT’s textbook rationalisation: Is it academic or political?

KAKALI DAS

The Mughal Period is done away with in Amrit Kaal – Emperor Akbar must be upset with the news of getting tossed out of the syllabus.

NCERT, recently, removed a chapter, in Class 12, titled Kings and Chronicles – The Mughal Courts, from the book, Themes In Indian History part II. Another chapter, The Central Islamic Lands is removed from the book, Themes In World History.

Furthermore, chapters on The Industrial Revolution and Confrontation Of Cultures are also removed from a book. Why is the need to study industrial revolution now when there is Adani-ji omnipresent everywhere, in every industry?

Besides, politically motivated confrontation of cultures is apparent in general life, then why to read it in textbooks!? A simple lesson to learn here is that the majority is always right – why is the need to study otherwise?

Also, we may not be able to delete caste system or untouchability from the society, but we have removed hereditary nature of varnas (castes) from textbooks. Isn’t it a masterstroke?

Most talked about is the deletion of Mughal history from the Indian textbooks. People want to know the reason for the removal.

Undoubtedly, history is being researched to bring about a new perspective. Glorification of a dynasty must stop, and overlooked dynasty must be revisited. But, is it right to delete specific portions?

Will our upcoming generation read a new history for new India? Is the new history authentic?

NCERT wanted to reduce load for students after the Covid-19 pandemic – the solution was to cut down on syllabus, to adopt a rationalisation exercise in the year 2022.

Chapter on Mughal history was removed. Moreover, without notification or discussion, some deletions and modifications were first made aware of after the print. What is the entire issue with it? And, what are the questions associated with it – let’s learn about it.

NCERT’s textbook rationalisation: Is it academic or political?

Big questions:

Is Mughal history entirely deleted from textbooks?
Why is there so much controversy over this rationalisation exercise?
Were we taught wrong history until today?
What is the correct history then?

Three rationalisation exercises happened since 2017 – 1^st rationalisation were performed in 2017 where a total of 1334 changes were made in 182 textbooks, 2^nd rationalisation happened under Prakash Javadekar in 2019, and 3^rd rationalisation completed in 2022.

Let us take a look at the changes that were made in these three exercises!

Controversial Changes:

Chapter on Gujarat riots removed – and we know why! (eyes roll)
Emergency by Indira Gandhi removed – if the students don’t learn about emergency, then they won’t know what it looks like. What a solid move!
Removal of protests and social movements – what is the need for innocent children to know about protests and social movements, isn’t it? (slow claps)
Key elements of Democratic Govt., Democracy and Diversity chapter too removed – why to study democracywhen we are anyway the largest democracy in the world!?
Chapters on sedition related to sedition law removed – if the students learn about this colonial era law, how will our politicians effortlessly use this to silence any questioning voice in the future?

These were just a few examples, there are more. The latest revelation related to historical edit was made by Ritika Chopra of The Indian Express – article decorating the front page. The Indian Express may be inviting trouble post this, it seems!

The strikethrough is, actually, a sentence that was removed by NCERT expert committee – “Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists… RSS was banned for some time.”

Some of our politicians don’t even consider Gandhi’s assassin a killer. And, now, Godse may also demand respect in the textbook, because a related paragraph has been edited as a future indication to that.

While the original content is –

“At his daily prayer meeting on the evening of 30 January, Gandhiji was shot dead by a young man. The assassin surrendered afterwards, was a Brahmin from Pune named Nathuram Godse, the editor of an extremist Hindu newspaper who had denounced Gandhiji as ‘an appeaser of Muslims’.

The rationalised/changed version of it is –

“At his daily prayer meeting on the evening of 30 January, Gandhiji was shot dead by a young man. The assassin who surrendered afterwards, was Nathuram.”

After may be three more revisions, the textbook will perhaps be like – ‘Nathuram Godse was, and will always be a devoted patriot.’ You won’t forgive me for this, but we may learn patriotism from Nathuram Godse in the coming years through the textbooks.

Changes to textbooks happen – but what is this kind of revisions without notification in the textbook? When asked about changes, the NCERT director replied: “Possible oversight, but won’t restore changes.” (slow claps)

What a thought for easing load on students – important chapters related to Dalit section removed as part of the rationalisation exercises.

Maybe, because Govt. thinks injustices against Dalit have stopped in Amrit Kaal. No Hathras, No Unnao, No Dalit groom beaten, No Baduan woman gangraped, No Dalit labourer tied to a rope, stripped and beaten up – all is well!?

Perhaps, this is why, movement of Dalit Panthers, Varna system and Untouchability are all deleted from the NCERT textbooks.

But, the biggest masterstroke was played on Mughals.

“Our history has not been presented properly – who is stopping us from writing history in a glorious manner?” – Amit Shah said. Speaking of correct history – the education minister of Rajasthan said that Maharana Pratap defeated Akbar. But the fact is that there was no result of the fight.

Maharana Pratap was a great warrior but this battle with Mughals had no victor. Yet, according to the ex-education minister of BJP govt. in Rajasthan, we were taught wrongly. Does he even know the correct history of India?

The following statement greatly outweighs others – “in new Uttar Pradesh, there is no place for symbols that represent mindset of slavery,” as said by Yogi Adityanath. Meaning, whatever we have been reading through our history textbooks all these years is proven wrong. (please kill me)

The intention was to rewrite history, as per Amit Shah, but NCERT did not pay attention perhaps and straightway deleted. (eyes roll)

Let us understand the remaining alleged distorted history!

Were the Mughals hero or villain or neither? – because, often we forget that history is not black or white, but full of shades of grey.

Firstly, the war was not a battle on religious grounds, the way it’s trying to portray now. At that time, the cause of war was expansionism, geo-strategic locations, to benefit by it, spoils of war, etc. – it was not a religious crusade.

Akbar was looking to secure lines of communication of Delhi and North India with the coastal areas of Gujarat for the purpose of trade. This was the reason of conflict between Mewar and Mughal.

Moreover, the conflict was not religious, as forces of Akbar was led by Raja Man Singh, and those of Maharana Pratap led by Afghan Hakim Khan Sur. The Afghan commander laid down his life for Maharana Pratap – those who want to fact check can visit the grave of Hakim Khan Sur in Rajasthan or at least Google it.

Anyway, history has to be Googled from now on, as it won’t be found in the textbooks. If there are no Mughals in the history as per the changed textbooks, then who did Maharana Pratap fight with?

And who did Hakim Khan die for? Who was attacked by Man Singh? These questions will be anti-national from now, and would even be jailed if asked.

Akbar is the most talked about Mughal ruler as it is considered a Golden period for the Mughals. This was the time when the average income or the per capita GDP in India was higher than in Europe.

Emperor Akbar was the 4^th richest of all time, as per research. At that time, India’s share of economic output was 25% of the world – without offshore companies and mysterious foreign investors.

Moving on from economy to religion – the one area, on the basis of which Mughal period is judged.

On one hand is Akbar, and then Aurangzeb on the other. There are shades of grey in these religious spheres too. Akbar is considered secular. Out of 9 Navaratnas in emperor Akbar’s court, 4 were Hindu Rajputs – there were representations from every religious background in his court.

There were other Mughal rulers, too, who kept marital relations with the families of Rajput rulers. Akbar’s queen Jodha bai was daughter of Kachhwaha Rajput Raja Bharmal. Besides, Akbar abolished the Jizya Tax, introduced by Muhammad ibn Qasim – tax levied on non-Muslims for protection. Women, children, elderly and Brahmins were earlier exempted – later they were also taxed – it was a discriminatory practice based on religion.

Akbar abolished this tax completely in his time. His example is of a progressive one.

Whereas, Aurangzeb is known as a cruel, extremist Mughal ruler. Aurangzeb revived the Jizya tax that was abolished by Akbar. The relation with Hindu public and especially Rajput worsened after Akbar, and because of extremist approach by Aurangzeb the relation ended – Aurangzeb lost the Rajput state.

Also, Aurangzeb was the one who killed his brother Dara Shikoh to sit on the throne.

So, we are used to reading both the deeds of Akbar as well as of Aurangzeb in history books. How Aurangzeb was a conservative – music was banned and temples were destructed. At the same time, historians have chronicled the life and times of other Mughals too, and that is how we studied them.

There were a few Mughal emperors who were also involved in freedom fighting movement, one being the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. He was the leader of 1857 freedom struggle – in fact, the father of Hindutva ideology, Veer Savarkar praised Bahadur Shah Zafar in his book. In the textbooks, on the one hand, Mughal history is being removed, and on the other, Savarkar is passing with flying colours. How shamelessly ironic!

Conclusion

In the past few years, BJP leaders have repeatedly mentioned distorted history and renamed their legacy calling it slavery.

And now, NCERT is deleting the chapters on Mughal.

Is it a coincidence or experiment or opportunity?

Easing students off the load may just be a jumla. Whatever it is – we cannot call out an extremist and discuss context from now on.

But, what if instead of removing, we added more to history – like good works done by the Cholas – wouldn’t it be beneficial?

If all Mughals were bad, shouldn’t we at least read up on that? Students in Germany still read of Hitler’s cruelty. They study Hitler’s life so that same mistakes cannot be repeated. Then, why can’t we read Mughal history?

Is it because our food, language, clothing and architecture – all have Mughal influence?

For Us vs Them to thrive, this influence has to be done away with – so, is this the intention of the Govt. behind scrapping off the Mughal chapters from the books?

If this real history is inauthentic, what is the real history then? Is it necessary to write off one part of history to study another?

Surely new perspectives and aspects need to be added and discussed – but what will come out of hiding or changing Mughal history?

After reading a fair bit of history myself – I can say, it’s not possible to hide history for long.

[Images from different sources]

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