Daily Times

The recent removal of chapters discussing the Mughal Empire from textbooks has incensed academics in India because they think it’s an attempt to belittle the significant role Muslims have played in Indian history.

New history and political textbooks, particularly for grade 12 students or those between the ages of 17 and 18, were released in the nation in early April as a result of the National Council of Educational Research and Training of India’s decision last year to reduce the workload for students in the more than 20,000 public and private schools it oversees throughout the nation.

The Mughal empire, which dominated the subcontinent from the 16th through the 19th century and symbolised the global renaissance of Islamic culture, has had its content removed as a result of the modifications.

They also avoid mentioning Gandhi’s murder and connections between Hindu extremism and the Gujarat riots of 2002, which occurred when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in charge of the state and left hundreds of Muslims dead.

The Indian History Congress, the largest organisation of historians in South Asia with more than 35,000 members, blasted the modifications earlier this week, saying they had led to a “plainly prejudiced and irrational perception” of India’s past.

As the congress secretary Prof. Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi stated to Arab News, “It is an attempt to tailor the history as per wishes of the Hindu majoritarian agenda.”

A campaign to rename streets and cities having Mughal roots has been underway in India since Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won office in 2014.