NO MORE IMPORTANT! The Taj Mahal may continue to exist in all its splendour but we will not find any mention of it in school textbooks published by the NCERT.

By Rajan Narayan

The BJP and the RSS are trying to saffronise history. All chapters on the Mughal dynasty which ruled over North India for almost 400 years are now to be dropped from the NCERT school textbooks. Will the monuments built by various Mughal badshah like the world-famous Taj Mahal, Lal Killa and other innumerable Mughal historic monuments also be the next target?

WITH immediate effect Mughal history will no longer exist in NCERT 12th standard textbooks. There was no Mughal Babur and there will be no Babri Masjid either presumably. The fact that the Bharatiya Janata party demolished the Babri Masjid is an acknowledgement that Babar was very much part of Indian history.
Indeed, Mughal history starts with Babar and legend would have it that when his son Humayun fell ill he pleaded with Allah for mercy and to cure his son. Babar’s son Humayun lived and he was the father of the Akbar the Great, the tallest Mughal of the Mughal empire in history. Contrary to the religious fanaticism of the BJP, Emperor Akbar was a very secular king who employed several senior Sikh officers and Hindus in his Mughal court. It was Akbar who arranged for the translation of the Bhagvad Gita. He even formulated a new religion called Din-i-Ilahi. (Quoting from Wikipedia, “The Din-i-Ilahi (Persian, religion of God) known during its time as Tawhid-i-Illahi (Divine Monotheism, oneness of God) or Divine Faith was a new syncretic religion or spiritual leadership program propounded by the Mughal emperor Akbar in 1583. According to Iqtidar Alam Khan, it was based on the Timurid concept of Yasa-i-Changazei (Code of Genghis Khan), to consider all sects as one. The elements were drawn from different religions.)
The Mughal empire, unlike earlier invaders like Mohammad of Ghazni and Mohammad of Ghori, did not loot and plunder and disappear, but it settled and grew roots in Delhi, the Mughal badshah adopted India as their homeland. So much so the Mughal Empire ruled the whole of North India from the 15th century through almost the 19th century when Britain’s East Indian Company history begins…more or less simultaneously, the Portuguese ruled Goa from the 15th century when Vasco da Gama defeated Sultan Adil Shah, a minor chieftain of the Delhi Sultanate.

TO REMOVE IS EASY!
IT should be easy enough to remove all the Mughal chapters from the NCERT books. But what will the BJP do with the outstanding symbols and monuments of Mughal architecture, art and literature, starting with the Taj Mahal, the fabulous mausoleum Emperor Shah Jahan built in memory of his Begum Mumtaz Mahal? Or the magnificent Humayun’s Tomb which some say is as magnificent as the Taj Mahal? Or the Qutub Minar or the Lal Killa and innumerable other Mughal architectural tourist attractions? Is the BJP’s plan not only to remove Mughal history from the NCERT books but also to demolish Mughal era monuments as well?
There is a difference between mythology and history. The BJP and the RSS would like us to believe that mythology is history. In things like the “pushpak vimana” of Lord Ravan or the “brahmastra” of Lord Brahma, this weapon we are told is rated by the BJP as on par with a powerful nuclear weapon in its destruction powers. There are also absurd claims that many Hindu myths like the transplantation of Lord Ganesh’s head which is perceived as proof that ancient India knew the science of neurosurgery and transplanting bodily parts.
Unlike mythology, history is based on fact. It is of course possible that history can be distorted by whichever government is in power. Indeed, if the BJP forms the government in 2014, Indian history was dominated by the left. It was notably historians like Romila Thapar who created the basis for the writing of Indian history. There was during the interim period when British historians had their own version of Indian history.
Indians see the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as the first war for freedom from British colonial rule in India. The princely rulers of the north India including Rana Pratap Singh and Rani Laxmibai and several others fought the British from taking over their kingdoms. In the Jallianwala Bagh incident it was a British revenge in which Major General Dyer gave orders for thousands of innocent citizens who had gathered for a celebration to be shot down in cold blood.

GOAN HISTORY
HOW history can be written and interpreted differently is dramatized by the difference between the Indian and Portuguese versions of colonial rule in Goa. Goan history books have no material on the Indian freedom movement. The Portuguese-time publications focussed on the achievements of other dictators like Tito, Hitler, etc. Salazar, being a fascist dictator in Portugal, got textbooks to focus on Europe and Indian history of the times almost completely ignored or whitewashed.
Perhaps the best way of interpreting history is through economics. This school of history is called materialistic interpretation. For example, when the Industrial Revolution took place in England the British royalty got a blow. Industrialisation marked the beginning of a democratic form of government with the Labour party even securing the prime minister post. It was Prime Minister Clement Attlee, the Labour party prime minister who granted freedom to India.
In more recent times the digitalisation of the world and social media have brought about another transformation. It is now become even more easy to influence and brainwash people and we have to be careful about shifting truth from lies for there is a political washing machine now laundering fiction and non-fiction.