The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has removed the chapters on the 2002 Gujarat riots and popular movements of the Mughals from the history book of class XII.
It was reported in Times of India that the chapters relating to the Kings and rulers of the Mughal Courts was removed from the Class XII history textbook of ‘Themes of Indian History’ – Part 2, this chapter mentions about the Shahjahannama, the Akbarnama, the Mughal paintings, etc. of the Mughal Kingdom. It also spoke about how the Mughal empire was developed and how the documents were authorized by the Mughal emperors which acted as the backbone/supportive source for understanding the Mughal empire and their court.
The poetry about the Dalit movement, chapters on the Cold War and a few chapters titled as Gujarat riots from ‘Recent Developments in Indian Politics’ in the political science textbook have also been excluded.
The NCERT syllabus was effectively justified and it is said that, the students of Class 7 can study some of the history of Mughals and a vague history in Class 8, none from Class 9 to 11, and a tiny version in Class 12.
The remarks mentioned in the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) reported by Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee on the 2002 violence and the “Raj Dharma” was dropped from the reference book. It was said that Class 11 book will not include Chapters titled ‘Clash of Cultures’, ‘Central Islamic Lands’ and ‘Industrial Revolution’ in their history handbook.
The chapters titled ‘Popular Struggles and Movements’, ‘Democracy and Diversity’ and ‘Challenges of Democracy’ has been removed from the Democratic Politics II textbook of Class X.
The Class 7 students can read about Mughal history in the social science textbook with a chapter titled ‘Our Pasts – II’. The chapter ‘Delhi – 12th to 15th century’ which speaks about the early 12th-century Turkish rulers, Tomars, Chauhans, Jalaluddin Khilji or the Khilji dynasty, Qutubuddin Aibak, Shamsuddin Iltutmish, Tughlaq dynasty and the Lodi Dynasty that came before the Mughals and survived till 1526.
The history of Mughals military campaigns were spoken in the chapter ‘The Mughals (16th to 17th century)’ in which it described about the traditions and their relations with other rulers in the dynasty.
It has been revealed that the NCERT has done a detailed scrutinization on all the books published regarding the history of Mughals empires and few chapters were deleted from Classes 7-12 textbooks because they were being frequently repeated in several academic years.
The references to Mughals was not just removed in NCERT but was also excluded from the undergraduate courses (BA in History) in the Delhi University.
It is also reported that NCERT is prepared to eliminate paragraphs and poems associated with Mughals from the Hindi textbooks and all these changes will be considered in the notebooks of the upcoming academic session of 2023-24.
