History is not mere descriptions of the events that happened in the past. History is a different kind of evolution in a non-scientific domain that binds the present with the past in such a way that even if you snap one link, you break the continuation. – Angus Calder, ‘Speak for Yourself: A Mass-observation Anthology’
Recently, NCERT textbooks for Class 12 students in CBSE schools saw a shift in content after text related to Hindu-Muslim solidarity, the Mughal empire, and Mahatma Gandhi was omitted from the textbooks.
The continuation has already been broken by removing Mughal history and diluting the gravity of M K Gandhi's assassination. Mughals and Muslims are well-known anathemas to the current political dispensation. Now the million-dollar question arises: Is there any need to study such a truncated and lopsided history in the first place? But before that, it's imperative to know why we study history. History is not a mere story or His-Story. History, as Calder observed in the beginning, is a chronicler of evolution and human civilization. We study history to keep ourselves abreast of our past and also to remain rooted. So, when portions of history are dropped at will, we feel deracinated and become ignorant of what happened in the past. In other words, we lose direction and go haywire. Because of this very nature of seamless continuity and chronicality, history is very important. It is a treasure that we need to keep and protect. The stories of the past have moulded us to become what we are today, especially our culture, beliefs, and ideologies, among others. That is why we are required to learn about history. This is for us to clearly understand the ‘present’.
You may detest a particular community, religion or group of people, but that doesn't mean what's unpalatable to you should also be unpalatable to others. Subjectivity and personal biases have no place in the objective study of history. History cannot be colourised as Hindu, Muslim or Jewish history. History remains history and what happened cannot be expunged or airbrushed. Just the way Holocaust or Auschwitz cannot be repudiated and denied, Gujarat riots in 2002 or Gandhi's assassination by a radicalised Hindu 'Brahmin' shall also remain as obvious as daylight. However hard you may deny, the role of Congress in India's freedom struggle cannot be dwarfed. That you're deleting these very facts means you're hiding the truth and feeling uncomfortable. A false narrative is being written and spread to obfuscate the past. Mark my words, that day's not far when Nathuram Godse and his accomplice Narayan Dattatreya Apte will be publicly honoured as 'martyrs'. They're already being projected as shaheed by the neo-Hindus of New India, who're unaware of India's rich and chequered past! Remember, revamping history is invariably tinged with a malafide intention and an unrealistic sense of nationalism. In other words, it's the palpably prevalent spirit of over-nationalism that's often behind the sweeping changes in history.
Mughals ruled here for more than 300 years. Mind you, this is not a brief period. Even before that Muslims came, ruled, left and got assimilated into the milieu of the subcontinent. Were all Muslims invaders? I'm not talking about Bakhtiyar Khilji (who vandalised Nalanda University in the 1200 AD), Muhammad Ghori, Mahmud Ghaznavi, Nadirshah or Ahmad Shah Abdali. They were known plunderers and were castigated even by Muslim historians like Muhammad Mujeeb and Mohammad Habib. I'm talking about Mughals in general whose contributions cannot be denied. Had the Mughals been a band of bandicoots, they wouldn't have been able to rule for more than three centuries. There's no condescension in the British historian Donald Adamson's observation that, “Despite their excesses on the people of the sub-continent, Mughals and English also contributed immensely to the growth, development and integration in the sub-continent. Both can be called a Curate's Egg. Five hundred (300 hundred years of Mughals and 200 hundred years of the English) years of foreign rule cannot be wiped out from the consciousness of a country and its people.”
Can we ever deny Taj Mahal despite that clown P N Oak and his acolytes claiming that it was a Hindu temple? Who built it? Who built the Red Fort and many other monuments during the Mughal era? Can these axiomatic historical facts be doubted or denied? Alas, at this juncture of modern Indian history, we're out to blacken the glorious pages of Mughal history. Whether architecture, literature or language, didn't we imbibe a lot many things from the Mughals and English? The great Maharashtrian historian and scholar of Persian, Setu Madhav Pagadi wrote in 1970 that, “Marathi language must be thankful to its modern form as it borrowed numerous Persian words and assimilated them into its linguistic corpus. Marathi had a very limited vocabulary before the Mughals came to Deccan in 1636 AD. The enrichment of Marathi from a dialect to a language took place between 1636-1724, thanks to Persian.” Can this be denied? But I'm sure, soon our next generation will lose their historical moorings and anchorage and they'll be studying 'modern' WhatsApp history which eulogises anything Sanatani and despises everything that has a trace of Islam and Muslims. This Ostrich Syndrome doesn't portend well for the country. But who cares?
Let me wind up with Aldous Huxley's famous quote, “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” So trenchantly true!
Sumit Paul is a regular contributor to the world’s premier publications and portals in several languages
