The chapter dedicated to the Muslim dynasty that ruled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries was removed, after also changing some episodes related to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The Gujarat riots of 2002 have also disappeared. According to experts, the changes for the year 2023-24 are the most radical implemented so far.
New Delhi () – Once again, the Indian government is accused of rewriting school textbooks to make history adhere to the ideological vision of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party from which the first Minister Narendra Modi. In recent days, references to the Mughal Empire, the most important Muslim dynasty that ruled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries, have been suppressed. As justification, it is stated that what is sought is to streamline the study plans and “rationalize the curriculum” after the Covid-19 pandemic. Kapil Mishra, leader of the BJP, praised the suppression of an entire chapter of history: “Thieves, pickpockets and shoddy marauders were called Mughal sultan and emperor of India. Akbar, Babar, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb are not in history books, they’re in the dustbin.”
Some events surrounding the assassination of Gandhi, the leader who led the country to independence through the policy of non-violence, preaching Hindu-Muslim unity, also ended up in the dustbin. In the textbooks for political science and history (for the course attended by students aged 17-18), the phrases referring to the multiple assassination attempts by Hindu extremists have disappeared. Also removed were those claiming that the paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), ideologically aligned with the BJP, had been temporarily banned after the Mahatma’s assassination. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 by the Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse, who had been part of the RSS, but -according to the organization itself- left the group and acted individually. Prime Minister Modi himself was a member of the RSS in his youth.
The changes to the textbooks were made by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, an autonomous government body, which was criticized for failing to publicly release the revisions. was the newspaper indian express, when reviewing the textbooks of the students, who discovered that even the account of the Gujarat riots in 2002 – when Modi was chief minister of the western Indian state – had been suppressed in all textbooks aimed at students. students from 11 to 18 years old. This is a thorny issue for the current prime minister: on repeated occasions, Modi was criticized and blamed for the outbreak of violence in which more than 1,000 people, the majority Muslims, died.
In connection with this issue, the Indian financial police opened an investigation against the BBC after the network released a two-part documentary on the 2002 riots in January that also investigated Modi’s role. A few months ago the broadcast of the documentary was banned and the offices of the British channel in Bombay and Delhi were raided.
It is the third time that school textbooks have been reviewed since the BJP came to power in 2014. Teachers and experts stress that these are selective changes aimed at erasing uncomfortable incidents for the Indian extreme right from public memory, but they also added that the The modifications of the 2023-24 cycle are the most radical that have been applied so far. At the same time, references to and praise for Hindu nationalist figures such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who is described as “the most celebrated freedom fighter” and a “great patriot”, have increased. Savarkar is the one who in 1923 gave birth to the Hindutva ideology, which preaches the hegemony of Hinduism (especially over Islam) and was adopted first by the RSS and then by the BJP.
“They can change the truth on the books, but you can’t change the history of the country,” said Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the main opposition party, Congress. According to Aditya Mukherjee, a professor of contemporary Indian history at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, the changes to the textbooks are not only an attempt to “erase” history, but also to “weaponize” it: “Every time we’ve seen a community wipe out at one point in our history, usually followed by a community genocide,” Mukherjee said.
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