Mughals to lose place in revised Maharashtra history textbooks
The new textbooks would omit many topics of historical significance. Photo courtesy: Indian Express
(Web Desk) - Mughals may have been some of ancient India’s most well-known rulers but it seems that the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra is determined to wipe them out from school history textbooks.
According to the Indian Express, the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education and the state’s History Subject Committee have decided that the history of Mughals as well as that of Western countries is ‘useless’ for Class VII and IX students, and hence, it is acceptable to remove or shorten these topics from school textbooks.
The omitted topics in the textbooks will be replaced with chapters that focus more on the Maratha Empire and warrior king Shivaji as well as Indian politics post 1960. While the revised textbooks would still give mention of the Mughals, the reign of India’s most famous Muslim rulers would now be covered in paragraphs instead of chapters.
The nature of the Mughals rule has also been changed in the new textbooks. For example, according to a report in the Mumbai Mirror, till last year Emperor Akbar was introduced in a Class VII textbook on medieval India as a “liberal and tolerant administrator who was a patron of learning and art”.However, the revised textbook is far less generous and describes Akbar’s reign as one in which the emperor forcefully tried to bring India under a central authority and faced opposition from heroic Indian leaders such as “Maharana Pratap, Chand Bibi, and Rani Durgavati“
A typical scene from a Mughal court. Photo courtesy: The Wire
These are not the only omissions from the new textbooks. The revised books have neglected the mention of many notable figures from India’s history, such as Razia Sultana, the first woman to rule Delhi, and have made the warrior king Shivaji the main point of medieval Indian past.
The response to the revision of the textbooks had been mixed. Sadanand More, head of the History Subject Committee that was involved in revising the textbooks, stated that there was nothing wrong in making the syllabus more Maharashtra-centric as “we are from Maharashtra, we need to learn more about the history of this region.”
He also implied that it was unfair that nobody complained about how books following the ICSE curriculum had hardly a page on Maharashtra history.
However, Neeta Vaz, a long time history teacher from St. Anne s School in Malad, said that numerous topics had been omitted from the new books and implied that this was wrong as “students need to know about these things,“.
