Portrayal of Muslims in Medieval India in History Textbooks

Muslim as the ‘Other’

The nature of medieval Hindu-Muslim relations is an issue of great relevance in
contemporary India. Prior to the two hundred years of colonial subjection to the British
that ended in 1947, large portions of the Indian subcontinent came under Muslim
influence. An upsurge of Hindu nationalism over the past two decades has generated the
demand that the state rectify past wrongs on behalf of India’s majority religion. 1 In the
Hindu nationalist view, Hindu beliefs were continuously suppressed and its institutions
repeatedly violated during the many centuries of Muslim rule from C. E. 1200.
Today, Indian Hindus and Muslims see themselves as distinct religious communities. 2
Hindu nationalist historians have projected this vision of separateness into the past,
stating that Indian Muslims of the Middle Ages were a community totally different from
and implacably opposed to the Hindu majority on religious grounds. 3 Moreover, Indian
Muslims in this view are conceived as a social group that is not indigenous, but foreign to
the subcontinent. This implies that Muslims do not belong in India and have no real rights
there. Secular Indian historians have decried this interpretation as misrepresentation, a
reading of the past that modern communal biases distort.4
The dominant scholarly trend of the past 15 years has emphasized colonialism’s impact
on identity formation. Since large-scale conflicts between Hindus and Muslims began
during the period of colonial rule, the emergence of broadly based community identities
during the nineteenth century has been closely investigated. 5 Communal violence was
itself a British construct in some analyses because many other kinds of social strife were
1
On Hindu nationalism, see Daniel Gold, “Organized Hinduisms: From Vedic Truth to Hindu Nation”, in
Fundamentalisms Observed, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (ed.), (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991), 531-93; Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994).
2
Cynthia Talbot, “Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India”
in Hindu-Muslim Identities in India, Society for Comparative Study of Society and History (1995).
3
For an older example of Hindu nationalist historiography, see R. C. Majumdar, “Hindu-Muslim
Relations”, in The Struggle for Empire, vol. 5 of The History and Culture of the Indian People (Bombay:
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1957), 498.
4
Romila Thapar, Harbans Mukhia and Bipan Chandra, Communalism and the Writing of Indian History
(Delhi: People’s Publishing, 1969); Harbans Mukhia, “Communalism and the Writing of Medieval Indian
history: A Reprisal”, in Perspectives on Medieval History (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1993), 33-45.
5
Sandria Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and Emergence of Communalism in
North India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

1
labeled as religious due to the Orientalist assumption that religion was the fundamental
unit of division in Indian society. 6 There is general consensus that it is questionable
whether a Hindu or Muslim identity existed prior to the nineteenth century in any
meaningful sense.7 Paradoxically, given the current criticism of the colonial sociology of
knowledge and its emphasis on caste, most scholars of the colonial period feel that pre-
colonial society was too fragmented by sub-caste and local loyalties to have allowed
larger allegiances to emerge.8
Understanding earlier forms of Hindu-Muslim identities may help us grasp the impulse
leading to modern communal conflict. It even offers us the dim hope of diffusing present-
day tensions by demonstrating that the communities of the past were not identical to
those of the present. As Sheldon Pollock states in reference to the present Indian
situation, “the symbolic meaning system of a political culture is constructed, and perhaps
knowing the process of construction is a way to control it”.9 Particularly critical is the
recognition that Hindu and Muslim identities were not formed in isolation. The reflexive
impact of the Other’s presence molded the self-definition of both groups – the label
Hindu was coined by Muslims to describe the people and culture of the Indian
subcontinent.10 Only after prolonged contact with Muslims did the earlier inhabitants of
what is now called India adopt the term. Although, it may not be possible to reconstruct a
detailed picture of Hindu-Muslim interactions in medieval India in terms of actual
practice and behavior, we can recover the history of their mutual and self-perceptions.
From approximately 1000 C. E. onward, major centers of power in north-western India
came under intermittent attacks by armies of Turkish Muslims who were based in what is
now Afghanistan. These raids into Indian territory culminated in the seizure of the Delhi
region circa 1200 C. E. and in the establishment of a series of Islamic dynasties,
collectively known as the Delhi Sultanate, which survived into the early sixteenth
century. Much of North India came under the hegemony of the Delhi Sultanate in the

6
Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1990).
7
C. A. Bayly, “The Pre-History of ‘Communalism’? Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860”, in Modern
Asian Studies, 19:2 (1985), 202.
8
Pandey, Construction of Colonialism, 199.
9
Sheldon Pollock, “Ramayana and Political Imagination in India”, in Journal of Asian Studies, 52:1,
(1993), 264.
10
Cynthia Talbot, op. cit.

2
early thirteenth century, while Sultanate expeditions began penetrating South India at the
very end of the thirteenth century. The momentous era of contact between Islamic and
earlier peoples of the Indian subcontinent occurred between the eleventh and fourteenth
century.
The threat felt by Hindu society in the face of superior Muslim force during these initial
centuries of interaction led to the political valorization of the ancient Ramayana epic,
according to Sheldon Pollock’s recent argument. 11 Although the story of the hero-God
Rama’s conflict with demonic king Ravana of distant Lanka had circulated widely
throughout the subcontinent and beyond in the previous millennium, there are few signs
of a temple cult of Rama worship prior to the eleventh century. Nor was Rama imagery
often employed in the literature produced at royal courts. After approximately 1000 C. E.,
the situation changed dramatically with the spread of Rama temples and frequent
appropriation of Rama as a model for royal behavior. Pollock believes that this is because
Rama’s legendary battle against (and victory over) the forces of evil represented by
Ravana’s demon hordes provided a profound symbol for Indian kings beleaguered by
Central Asian Muslim warriors entering the subcontinent in growing numbers. Unlike
earlier conquerors or immigrants who had been gradually absorbed into Indian
civilization, Indo-Muslims retained the distinctive linguistic and religious practices
derived from the high culture of Islamic civilization. Because they were ‘largely un-
assimilating’, Muslims were the ‘Other’ par excellence, and their presence heightened
Indian society’s sense of self.12
In the Sanskrit literature of ancient and medieval India, foreigners were frequently
described as mleccha. The best English translation of mleccha is barbarian, for the word
clearly connotes a lack of culture and civilization. By the end of the first millennium B.
C. E., mleccha was applied not only to aliens but also to indigenous tribes – communities
who were not part of the agrarian caste society of Indic civilization. 13 As Romila Thapar
has pointed out, mleccha was hence primarily “a signal of social and cultural

11
Sheldon Pollock, op. cit.
12
Cynthia Talbot, op. cit.
13
Aloka Parasher, Mlecchas in Early India; a Study in Attitudes towards Foreigners (New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1991), 121-4 and 240-3; Romila Thapar, “The Image of the Barbarian in Early
India”, Comparative Studies in Societies and History, 13:4 (1971), 420-1.

3
difference”.14 It was a generic category into which all social groups lacking an adherence
to Brahmanical norms were thrust. Among the early barbarians of foreign origin (often
mentioned in the puranas) were the Yavanas and the Sakas. Yavana, derived from Ionian,
originally referred to the Hellenistic dynasties that controlled large areas of north-western
India and Afghanistan in the second century B. C. E. These Indo-Greeks or Yavanas were
displaced by another invading group, the Sakas of Central Asia, in the first century B. C.
E.
The names Yavana and Saka were revived in medieval India to designate Muslims, along
with the characterization of barbarian. 15 As with earlier Others, whether foreign invaders
or indigenous tribal people, those following the Brahmanical tradition were not
concerned with the specifics of Islamic belief. What was significant was their common
failure to uphold the hierarchical order of caste or, in short, Brahmanical privilege. This is
why Muslims could be called by the same name as barbarian peoples of the ancient
period, such as the Yavanas and the Sakas. In another transposition, the Muslim barbarian
could be equated with all beings hostile to the Brahmanical order. And, thus, Muslims
were demonized, that is, represented as being like the demons of ancient myth who
engaged in endless battle against the forces of good. Assimilating Muslims to the
mythological category of demons and substituting the names of various other foreign
groups for them erased the distinctiveness of Muslims.16 All that matters in this
perspective is the Otherness. The very fact that Muslims could be incorporated into a
generic category of barbarians presupposes an existing sense of identity (at least among
the Brahmin composers of Sanskrit literary texts and inscriptions).
Although the emergence of a sense of Hindu unity can not be attributed solely to the
stimulus of an opposing Muslim community, it is widely recognized that prolonged
confrontation between different groups intensifies self-identities. While the Brahmanical
tradition had a degree of self awareness before the presence of Muslims, it seems that a

14
Romila Thapar, “Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu
Identity”, Modern Asian Studies, 23:2 (1989), 224.
15
North Indian uses of these terms are frequent as well, see Ram Shankar Avasty and A. Ghosh,
“References to Muhammadans in Sanskrit Inscriptions in Northern India – AD 730 to 1320”, Journal of
Indian History, 16 (1936), 24-26 and 17 (1937), 161-184; Pushpa Prasad, Sanskrit Inscriptions of the Delhi
Sultanate (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).
16
Cynthia Talbot, op. cit.

4
broader, more inclusive, Indian identity began to develop after the Muslim polities were
founded in South Asia.17
The word Hindu was originally the Persian name for the river Indus, but the Arabs first
included the entire Indian subcontinent under the rubric, “the land of the Hind” (al-Hind).
By the eleventh century, Hindu had come to mean “the inhabitants of India” in Persian. 18
When the early Vijayanagara kings of the mid-fourteenth-century invented the title
“Sultan among Hindu kings”, they were borrowing both a phrase and a conception of
being Indian that had originated in Muslim society.19
The fact that some non-Muslims called themselves Hindu in the fourteenth century does
not imply that a unified religious consciousness developed in this period, contrary to the
current Hindu nationalist view. Even among Muslims, the term Hindu initially meant a
resident of India rather than a person holding certain non-Islamic religious beliefs. Thus,
to the ‘Indian’ kings of that period, Hindu meant Indic as opposed to Turkish, not “of the
Hindu religion” as opposed to “of the Islamic religion”. In this interpretation, the
definition of the self as Hindu can be seen as a sign of an incipient Indic ethnicity –
incorporating territorial associations, language, a common past and customs, as well as
religious affiliation – for ethnicity is composed of numerous elements, unlike linguistic or
religious identities.20 The Turkish intruders were certainly considered to be a people other
than the earlier inhabitants, but the sense of difference was not grounded primarily on a
religious base.21
Thus, by focusing too exclusively on religion as a source of difference, scholars have
overlooked the significance of other attributes differentiating the medieval communities
of India, and, by failing to contextualize the development of Hindu and Muslim identities
within the historical processes of migration and a moving frontier. A static and simplistic
view of identity formation in South Asia has prevailed for too long.
17
Ibid.
18
Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1992), 22-23.
19
Andre Wink, Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, vol. 1, pp. 190 and 5, of Al-Hind: The
Making of the Indo-Islamic World (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).
20
Cynthia Talbot, op. cit.
21
In this early period, the majority of Muslims in India most probably were either foreign immigrants or
their descendents. They were thus marked with many distinctive non-Indian features in areas such as dress
and food, in addition to their separate languages and religious beliefs. As the number of converts to Islam
increased, the initial sense of ethnic separateness must have faded, explaining why ethnic referents were
largely discarded in favor of the religious label ‘Musalman’.

5
Whether we are speaking of medieval India or modern India, the sense of community
evolved through a twofold process – the distancing of the group from others whose alien-
ness is highlighted, on the one hand, and the elaboration of a set of common social
attributes, on the other. In the development of an ethnicity, earlier myths and images were
often appropriated to provide an all important illusion of continuity with ancient times. 22
By representing themselves as extending far back in time, communities could claim to be
natural entities, inherent to the social world; in other words, the imagining of the past was
an ongoing creative process.

The Projection in NCERT Textbooks

After gaining Independence in 1947, the genre of history writing underwent a distinct
change in 50s and 60s, which till then was a throwback of the biased colonial
interpretations about India. New themes came under the purview of historical
investigation. Systems of knowledge came to be examined in terms of their influence on
society and their function rather than restricting their history to merely repeating the
obvious that these were great advances in knowledge. The formation and definition of a
range of Indian cultures came to include the formulations of culture from communities
other than elite groups and this widened the base of social history. It also influenced the
extensive study of new religious movements, their beliefs and rituals and their audiences.
This intellectual efflorescence was suddenly sought to be arrested. This blight culminated
in an enforced attempt to clamp down on the process of exploring ideas. It reached the
point where the attempt was to denigrate the independent intellectual and to undermine a
historical understanding of our society and its past. It took a variety of forms. Sometimes
it took the form of political militancy, later it resorted to intervening in and closing
institutions connected to academic research, and most recently it had taken to censoring
books and textbooks. Each action orchestrates a single aim. The claim that the past can be
annulled is actually a crass attempt to redefine people, their culture and their history. The
effort was and is to create a nation molded not by all-inclusive national aspirations as of
the earlier anti-colonial kind, but instead by a narrow nationalism identified with a

22
Cynthia Talbot, op. cit.

6
particular version of a single religion. This makes it easier to impose an ideology of the
sort that facilitates political mobilisation and access to power.
There is a link between theories of knowledge and the lens of ideas through which the
authors of these theories view knowledge. This has an application to scientific advances
as well as the formulations of the social sciences. However, such links between
knowledge and ideology do not justify the passing off of political agendas of a kind not
based on the understanding of history current among historians. Far from advancing
knowledge, this ‘new history’ on the contrary, is being used for forging an identity that
can be exploited to support political mobilization. Some of the organizations, since their
inception, have used education to forge this identity. It is ironic that these organizations
took education as the means of ideological indoctrination far more seriously than those
who were committed to the values of an independent, modern society.
The aim to establish democracy, secularism and social justice became the ambition of the
independent state of India in 1947. A secular society implied that there would be no
discrimination on the basis of religion and to that extent the state would distance itself
from it. Secularism assumes the right to follow the religion of one’s own choice. The
undermining of democracy today lies in insisting that Indian society is constituted of
communities identified only by religion. It is said that Hindus being the majority
community in terms of numbers, should determine public decisions. This makes a
mockery of democracy, since a democratic majority is not a pre-determined majority and
decisions can and do cut across identities of religion and other identities. It is also a
refusal to concede that actually Indian society in the past had multiple identities and
religion was only one amongst those.
The ability of textbooks to change the perceptions of their readers, by virtue of both
inclusions and silences, is very strong. In countries where schools have centrally designed
curricula and textbooks, they are often used to construct a nationalist narrative: one that
justifies the creation of the nation and the belief in its historical inevitability. This
pedagogical approach to the social studies curriculum is anathema to the process of
enquiry and deduction.23 In context of India, the overreaching narrative constructed from
1947, was one of pride in India’s multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious heritage,

23
Praful Bidwai, “Caught in historical clichés”, in Frontline, 21:19, (Sep. 24, 2004).

7
of the Nehruvian commitment to ‘unity in diversity’. The development of this identity in
the post-Partition era, in a country that had witnessed brutal communal violence, was an
arduous task. Constructing a history of harmonious co-existence and cultural synthesis of
religious communities assumed great importance. The textbooks attempted to construct a
narrative that portrayed India’s ‘secular nationalism’ as a culmination of centuries of
harmonious co-existence and cultural synthesis of and by these religious groups. These
books had some serious pedagogical problems as they chose to present their subject
matter as the ‘grand historical march’ to the nation that is India.
It is precisely this style of a nationalist historical narrative, first put forth under the aegis
of Nehruvian socialism that has now been appropriated by the RSS (Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangha), to put forth their ideas of Hindu cultural nationalism. 24 An
understanding of the controversy surrounding history textbooks requires an analysis of
the core of RSS ideology. Hindutva based nationalism needs to be understood if one
wants to understand the ideology that seems to hold the new syllabus, as also the portions
that were censored from the older books. This would also help us understand the seeming
contradiction between the support for the sentiments of one minority and the constant
portrayal of the brutal nature of another.
The two thinkers whose ideas have largely framed the ideology of the RSS are V. D.
Savarkar and M. S. Golwalkar. Savarkar’s work is representative of the mechanics of the
process of building a Hindu identity. 25 His main argument is that the Aryans, who settled
in India, already formed a new nation embodied in the Hindus. Their Hindutva rested on
three pillars: geographical unity, racial features and a common culture. 26 There is also a
significant attempt at the ideology of inclusivism, to incorporate within the Hindu fold all
possible streams. The ‘common culture’ rests on the crucial importance of rituals, social
rules and language in Hinduism. Christians and Muslims were not a part of the nation
because of their cultural differences. Consequently, other religious communities (like
Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism) fulfilled the criterion of Hindutva (as their ‘holy-land’
and ‘motherland’ were the same), and could be subsumed within it. It is this significant

24
But we are not told whose culture is being made the national one out of the many hundreds of distinctive
cultural communities that constitute India.
25
V. D. Savarkar, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, (Nagpur, 1923). This book is the basic text for nationalist
‘Hinduness’ (Hindutva).
26
Ibid., 94.

8
difference between these religious communities that defines the way in which the RSS
perceives them. The strategy always was that of stigmatisation of the ‘Other’, as
represented by the Muslims and Christians who were seen as foreigners in the territory of
India.
Golwalkar claims that “Hindus came into this land from nowhere, but are indigenous
children of the soil always, from time immemorial”. 27 The ‘nationalist ethic’ reasoning
was applied to the Muslim minority, since he thought that it posed a threat not only
because it enjoyed backing from a whole series of Islamic states but also because it was a
‘foreign’ body lodged into Hindu society, which it thus undermined. Religious minorities
were required to owe allegiance to Hindu symbols of identity because these were the
embodiment of Indian nation. RSS used the word ‘Hindu’ less often than ‘rashtriya’
(national) or ‘Bharatiya’ (Indian). The concept implies assimilation of religious minorities
in the Bharatiya nation through a removal of external signs by which their adherence to a
particular religious community is designated. And religious minorities like the Sikhs and
the Jainas were seen as easily incorporated into the ‘national’ fold since they were all
members of indigenous faiths, unlike the Muslims and the Christians. This provides us
the key to understanding the contradictory stands taken by new writers towards different
religious groups in the NCERT history textbooks. It explains why the medieval period is
shown as one of contradiction between the Hindus and the Muslims. A sweeping
statement at the beginning of the new Medieval India textbook incorporates both
Buddhism and Jainism within the fold of Hinduism, in the medieval period: “This was
also a period of interaction between Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. Buddhism and
Jainism for all practical purposes had been absorbed into Hinduism and virtually ceased
to lead an independent existence in the country”.28
This broad inclusivism goes towards creating the image of Islam as the ‘Other’, seen in
juxtaposition with the broad ‘Hindu identity’ given to religions in existence in the Indian
subcontinent prior to the Turkish invasions. A study of the textbooks brings us closer to
an understanding of the particular nature of nationalism that they wish to construct. The
demographic composition of India, which reflects the coming together of various ethnic,
racial and linguistic groups over two millennia, raises the question of who is the
27
M. S. Golwalkar, We, Our Nation Defined, Nagpar, 1939, 23.
28
Meenakshi Jain et al., Medieval India: A Textbook for Class XI, (New Delhi: NCERT, 2002), 3.

9
‘outsider’ in Indian society. Most communities in India have mixed ancestry and it is now
impossible to identify their roots. Indian society is essentially a social and cultural
amalgam with many of its constituent elements losing their identity. The Hindu
communal view of history strives to negate this historical process by making a distinction
between the original inhabitants of the land and those who settled later. It is this stress on
the indigenous origins of the Hindus (juxtaposed to the ‘foreign-ness’ of the Muslims and
Christians) that makes historical debate regarding the ‘Aryan invasion’ so central. It
becomes extremely important in the scheme of Hindutva-inspired history to prove that
the Aryans were indigenous to the subcontinent. If the Aryans had migrated to India, then
the assumption that the non-Hindu is the only outsider becomes untenable and the
historical rationale for the Hindu nation becomes suspect.
Thus, it becomes clear that it is the political vision of Hindutva that these books are
trying to represent. In these books, we see a reinterpretation of the past and an attempt to
create a new social consciousness. The soul of this process of historical re-appropriation
is not a distortion of facts but a religious interpretation of the past, which establishes the
Hindu’s right to the nation. The history taught in the new history textbooks depicts the
medieval period as a record of continuous strife between religious communities. In this
interpretation, all communities other than Hindus are identified as foreigners and enemies
of the nation. The communities not regarded as foreigners are incorporated within the
fold of Hinduism. The portrayal of religious communities – far from promoting social
harmony, as their rhetoric may claim – successfully creates the image of an antagonistic
relationship between the Muslim and the Hindu community. This Hindu community
incorporates within it all the faiths that have their ‘holy-lands’ within India, and sets them
up in opposition to the Muslims, who are the brutal outsiders.
The politics of the history textbooks in India today promote communal strife by creating
a historical consciousness that gives a pride of place to religion and proposes a narrative
that traces back community identities and antagonisms and hence, legitimizes their
existence. According to the historian Bipan Chandra, “A communal interpretation of
history is the basis of RSS’ ideology. Communalism – minority as well as majority – is all
about creating fear of domination by the other. How does RSS go about creating fear in
eighty percent of the population? The easiest way is to create the bogey of Muslim

10
domination. So, whatever good happened in history was during the ancient period and the
Muslim period was one in which all this greatness was undermined, this is what they
want taught in schools. It is a sinister effort to communalise young minds”.29
Thus, theories being expounded in the Hindutva version of Indian history are a step
backwards to 19th century colonial history. The colonial interpretation periodised Indian
history into three periods – Hindu civilization, Muslim civilization and the British period.
In the Hindutva version, this periodisation remains, only the colors have changed: the
Hindu period is the ‘golden age’ and the Muslim period is projected as the “black and
dark age of tyranny and oppression”.30 Further, the colonial theory projected Hindus and
Muslims as two uniform, monolithic communities permanently hostile to each other
because of religious differences. It is argued that Hindu civilization suffered because of
Muslim rulers who oppressed the Hindus. Another aspect of the relations between Hindus
and Muslims in the ideology of Hindutva focuses on the Muslim destruction of temples in
the past. This is not denied by historians but attempts are made to try and place such
actions in historical perspective. This was not the only activity of Muslim rulers and
temple destruction etc. has to be juxtaposed with other undertakings that were not
destructive. This is also related to the question of what we chose to recall from the past
and reiterate, and what we chose to forget.31
Destroying a temple was a demonstration of power on the part of invaders, irrespective of
whether they were Muslims or Hindus.32 We chose to forget that there were Hindu kings
who destroyed temples, either willfully, as did Harshadeva of Kashmir to acquire the
wealth of the temples,33 or as part of a campaign, as in the case of the victorious Paramara
King destroying temples built by the defeated Chaulukyas. 34 Thus, temple destruction
was not merely an act of religious hostility. Temples were certainly ritual spaces and had
a religious identity. But royal temples were also statements of power and were surrogate
political institutions representing royalty. They were depositories of wealth and centers of
29
Anjali Mody, “History as told by Non-historians”, in Communalisation of Education: The Assault on
History, (New Delhi: SAHMAT, 2002).
30
V. D. Savarkar., Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, (Nagpur, 1923).
31
See Richard Eaton, Temple Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India, (New Delhi: Hope India
Publications, 2004).
32
Ibid.
33
Vishwa Mohan Jha, “A New Brand of History – I”, in Plagiarised and Communalised, (New Delhi:
SAHMAT, 2003).
34
Ibid.

11
finance, they maintained social demarcations through allowing some castes to enter the
temple but excluding others, and they were the cultural nucleus of at least the elite groups
of a region. Temple destruction and its aftermath, therefore calls for historical
explanations of a wide-ranging kind. It cannot be made the justification for destroying or
threatening to destroy, mosques and churches in the present day.
The sources of medieval history were also characterized as the ‘Muslim epics of conquest
in Persian’ while those in Hindi were said to be ‘Hindu epics of resistance in Hindi’.
These are the concepts now used in the new textbooks. There was conquest and there was
some resistance but there was much else besides that should be discussed. The conquest
and the resistance were more frequently over territory, political power and status.
Religion was not the dominating factor.35 The fading away of religious boundaries was
particularly evident in the non-elite sections of society – the majority of the people.

A Comparison of Old and New Textbooks on Medieval India

The deletions from the old NCERT history textbooks and the release of new books have
been accompanied with the oft-repeated rhetoric of “promoting communal harmony”. 36
However, looking at the nature of the portrayal of the Muslim community, it looks as an
endeavor to mask a larger communal agenda. The umbrella of the protection of the
“sentiments of religious communities”37 should logically be extended to the Muslims as
well; however, pre – eminent in the discourse of Hindutva is the image of Muslims as
‘foreigners’, ‘destructive barbarians’ and ‘immoral degenerates’.38 How the new books
deal with medieval Indian history, would reflect the ideology the books wish to portray.
While the earlier textbooks made numerous attempts to reflect the ‘composite culture’ of
medieval times, these words are not to be found even once in the new books. The older
books were accused of ‘white-washing’ the misdeeds of Muslim rulers 39, but the new
books do far more than just ‘correct’ this. The emphasis laid on the destruction by the
Islamic rulers is quite tremendous. Far from trying to present the Islamic minority in a
35
Romila Thapar, “The Past as Political Instrument”, in Communalisation of Education: The Assault on
History, (New Delhi: SAHMAT, 2002).
36
J. S. Rajput, “Why Revising History Textbooks is a Write Move for NCERT”, in The Times of India,
(New Delhi, May 25, 2001).
37
Ibid.
38
M. S. Golwalkar, We, Our Nation Defined, (Nagpar, 1939).
39
Organiser, LIII:27, (Jan. 20, 2002), 9.

12
positive light, they focus excessively upon the devastation caused by Muslim rulers. The
section devoted to Mahmud Ghazni is two pages long of which about two-thirds is
devoted to discussing the ‘vandalism’ he committed. Also worth noting is the graphic
language used to describe the destruction, especially that of temples: “Kanauj, long
revered as the sacred capital of North India was the next to suffer Mahmud’s onslaught…
the defenseless residents fled to the temple for refuge. The city was taken in just one day,
its temples destroyed and denuded of their treasures and great numbers of fleeing
inhabitants slain”.40
This is followed by a half page description of his attack on the temple of Somnath. It is
said that the fall of Somnath “was publicized by the contemporary and later authors as the
greatest victory of Islam over idolatry. It instantly elevated Mahmud to the rank of a
hero”.41 The implicit assumption is that the temple was destroyed for religious reasons
rather than economic gain. An attempt to contextualize the nature of Mahmud’s raids
shows that he was motivated by a desire for the loot and a consequent consolidation of
power in Central Asia. While using the rhetoric of jihad, his career reflected the politico-
economic impulses of the times and therefore tells us nothing about the nature of Islam.
The new textbooks, however, seem to imply the reverse. The student reading the textbook
is likely to draw immediate linkages between Islam and brutal destruction.
In popular accounts of history, there are certain rulers whose brutalities, barbarism and
persecution of the Hindus are constantly emphasized; these usually include Mahmud
Ghazni, Alauddin Khilji and Aurangzeb. The new textbook actually goes much further
and does not refrain from labeling several rulers as religious zealots. Jalaluddin Khilji is
also presented as a religious bigot, a man who “regretted his inability to enforce the full
gamut of Islamic laws and regulations in the country”.42 This is backed up by an account
of the desecration and demolitions by him or under his supervision by Alauddin Khilji.
The author writes that Jalaluddin gave permission in 1292 for Alauddin to lead a raiding
party to Allahabad, via Chanderi and Bhilsa. The author then goes to quote a ‘modern
historian’ that the “idols were inevitably trampled under the zealot’s feet”.43

40
Meenakshi Jain et al, Medieval India: A Textbook for Class IX (New Delhi: NCERT, 2002), 27.
41
Ibid., 28.
42
Jain, op. cit., 72.
43
Ibid., 73.

13
How do we explain these detailed descriptions of ‘temple destruction’ presented to
sixteen-year olds? The books clearly exceed their mandate of correcting the supposed
‘white-washing’ of the erstwhile textbooks. A look at the account of Mahmud Ghazni
presented in the earlier book, makes clear that the new texts are carefully delineating an
image of Muslims as brutal, destructive and intolerant. The old books presented a
balanced account of destruction, in its politico-economic context: “The subsequent raids
of Mahmud into India were aimed at plundering rich temples and cities of northern India
in order to continue his struggle against his enemies in Central Asia… [his] most daring
raids, however, were against Kanauj in 1018, and against Somnath in Gujarat in 1025…
he sacked and plundered both Mathura and Kanauj. He was able to do this with impunity
due to the fact that no strong state existed in North India at the time. No attempt was
made by Mahmud to annex any of these states”.44
A simultaneous examination of both the accounts of Mahmud’s incursions into the Indian
subcontinent shows how the same information can be crafted in two completely different
ways and hence, convey two remarkably different impressions to their readers. While the
old textbook attempts to place Mahmud’s plundering raids into a larger picture, the new
book lays before the students a picture of religious conflict and strife, initiated and
perpetuated by the Islamic community.
What we witness is a constant juxtaposition of the ‘Hindu’ and the ‘Muslim’ identities.
There is a constant attempt to underline the indigenous nature of the Hindu community,
and the alien and foreign nature of the Muslims. There is an assertion that the term
‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ is not inappropriate for understanding identity formation in this
period (as was the position of the older textbook).
The Hindu community, as representing ‘Indian’ interests is present from the first
discussion of the entry of Muslim rulers in the 12 th century. The conclusion left for the
student to reach is of the Islamic rulers as foreigners and the Rajputs as glorious and
patriotic defenders of ‘India’. Muhammad Ghuri is shown as having been confronted by
“… Rajput powers determined to stall his advance into India” 45. That the concept of India
in the 12th century is remarkably anachronistic is clearly something that the author does
not indicate to her readers. The ‘Hindu’ and the ‘homeland’ are inextricably linked from
44
Satish Chandra, Medieval India: A Textbook for Class XI, (New Delhi: NCERT, 2000), 37.
45
Chandra, op. cit., 29.

14
the beginning of the narrative of medieval Indian history. The textbook presents Muslims
as foreigners whom the patriotic Hindus tried to prevent from entering their ‘nation’.
One of the most apparent means by which the old textbooks sought to remove bigotry
and communal prejudice was to present a picture of an enriched, assimilative culture –
one that incorporated elements of Islamic and pre-existing beliefs and practices. The
watchwords of the older textbooks were ‘composite culture’ and ‘cultural syntheses’. In
an endeavor to counter the assimilative attempts by the earlier textbooks, the new
textbook emphasizes the intrusive nature of Islam in all societies in which it was
propagated. Islam is seen as wiping out all traces of pre-Islamic civilization in all the
regions where it spread. The author writes, “Pyramids, wonders of the ancient world…
ceased to evoke pride in Egyptian converts, who even forgot their Pharaohs”.46
Imposition, rather than assimilation, is seen as the mainstay of Islamic culture.
The devotional cults of the Sufis and the Bhakti movement were virtually the ‘mascots’ of
the older books, which repeatedly drew on their traditions to put forth a case for cultural
assimilation. Satish Chandra devoted much space in the textbook to a discussion of the
Bhakti movement and Sufism. There is a complete reversal of this trend in the new
textbook. Kabir, one of the most significant Bhakti poets of the medieval period gets two
sentences devoted to him. This is in stark contrast to the earlier textbook where the
discussion on him took up three-quarters of a page. Kabir appears only briefly in this
book and in a sub-chapter on Saguna Bhakti: “The Nirguna school was best represented
by Kabir considered the spiritual preceptor of all subsequent North Indian panths.
Complete silence is thus maintained over his lowly profession (weaver) and Muslim
origin, his rejection of both Hinduism and Islam, his denunciation of the caste disabilities
and rituals, and his popular, vibrant verses. Ravidas, the great Dalit saint, and Sain, the
barber – both disciples of Kabir, and expressing similar ideas, are totally ignored.
The omission of such a vital aspect of our common cultural heritage is clearly a design to
exclude all integrative or critical elements from our history. The earlier focus derived
from the emphasis on his devotion to the concept of one God and Hindu-Muslim unity.
The new section on Sufism explicitly denies its links with and inspiration from Hinduism.
The non-assimilative aspect of Sufism is further underscored in the questions at the end

46
Ibid., 121.

15
of the chapter, which ask the students to explain the Islamic roots of the movement. 47 It is
made clear that in the Indian context, the Sufis had resolved there differences with the
ulema and emphasized the need to follow shariya. The student is nowhere told that
Sufism lays emphasis on love of God, holds forth no expectation of reward in afterlife,
and aims at a complete absorption in God and with the annihilation (fana) of self. This
definition would explain why Sufism is distinct from orthodox or theological Islam,
where there is a strong stress on earning religious merit for reward in afterlife. Without
such an explanation the student would have no notion of what kind of thought is being
talked about. The author (Meenakshi Jain) is at pains to present Islamic society in
Medieval India as a monolithic whole. Another example with regard to the Bhakti
movement shows that the author thinks this theme is the only one from the religious
sphere that needs to be described. She thus ignores the interaction of religious thought at
higher levels which is such a feature of the cultural developments of the Mughal period.
It is seen not only at the Mughal court (under the patronage of Akbar and Dara Shukoh),
but also outside. The Dabistani-i-Mazahib, a book on religions written in 1655 by a
member of the Sipasi sect of Parsis, is an unbiased account of the major religions, unique
in the world during its time. Surely this needed a mention, if not an adequate description.
If we turn to the ‘Introduction’ of this book, we find that Meenakshi Jain’s preoccupation
with the ‘foreigner’ (Muslim) is reflected in the selection of her ‘facts’. The import
appears to be that India was strong enough to check the advance of the ‘foreigners’. The
counterpart of the armed power of Indians (Hindus) was their spiritual power. “Buddhism
was for all practical purposes absorbed into Hinduism and virtually ceased to lead an
independent existence in the country”.48 “The great Sankaracharya renewed Vedanta
philosophy and incorporated several doctrinal and organizational features of Buddhism
and Jainism into Hinduism. Theistic Hinduism, as exemplified in Vaisnavism, Saivism
and the worship of the Mother Goddess, came into its own in this period”. 49 “At the same
time, a powerful Bhakti movement, developed by the Alvar and Nayanar saints, began in
the Tamil region around the sixth century and consequently spread through Karnataka
and Maharashtra to North India and Bengal. Thus, though politically divided, India was

47
Ibid., 128.
48
Meenakshi Jain et al, Medieval India: A Textbook for Class IX, (New Delhi: NCERT, 2002), 5.
49
Jain, op. cit., 66.

16
being culturally united through Brahmanical Hinduism and Vaishnava Bhakti”.50 Into this
happy India intruded the foreigners (Arabs, Turks, Afghans and Mughals), bringing with
them an alien culture. In her view, the two cultures never really blended.
In the entire portrayal of Islam in India, there is a constant refrain of conflict between
Islam and previously existing socio-cultural life. There is also a persistent denial of any
forms of assimilation between Islam and Hinduism. The Muslim ‘Other’ is clearly
alienated by the nature of the textbook’s portrayal. The nature of Islam that the textbooks
portray can often be seen in the polarity between the treatments of the ecumenical,
syncretistic Mughal emperor Akbar and his orthodox grandson Aurangzeb. Emperor
Akbar, in the older NCERT textbooks, is portrayed as a just and truly ‘Indian’ ruler.
Indian textbooks represent him as the first truly ‘Indian’ ruler, who along with Emperor
Asoka before him in second century B. C. E., personified liberal, pan-Indian leadership.
Akbar and his ideology are essentially the personification of all the values these books
wanted the students to imbibe. What is underlined is his ‘friendship’ with the Rajputs, the
multi-religious nature of his close advisors and his non-affiliation with Islam. However,
the new books were ready to exclude the sections of Akbar’s life if they did not fit into
the picture of him that they chose to create.
The battle of Mewar, whereby Akbar managed to gain control of the Rajput kingdom of
Chittor after six months of siege, was probably one of the toughest battles fought by the
Mughal rulers. After gaining control of the fort, Akbar issued a fatahnama (victory
proclamation) hailing the success of the holy war against the infidels. This presents a very
interesting example of the ideological conflict between the nature of events and the
narrative of Akbar’s reign that is sought to be created. Because the earlier textbooks
glorified the tolerant nature of Akbar’s religious policy, the fatahnama, with its clearly
religious character was omitted as an aberration. The new book not only mentions the
fatahnama but also goes on to give graphic details of the violence perpetuated by Akbar
on the Rajputs who had engaged in months of “heroic struggle”.51 This is a part of larger
narrative in which the book seeks to undermine the ‘secular’ image of Akbar created by
the earlier books; this incident and the details of the violence involved, helps in placing
Akbar within the ‘Islamic image’ the books have created.
50
Ibid., 67.
51
Ibid., 142.

17
What is significantly visible in the new book is the differing emphases on the nature of
Akbar’s religious policy. While the earlier books would steadfastly refer to those aspects
of Akbar’s actions that fall into the image of Hindu-Muslim unity (or multi-religious
unity) they wished to construct, the narrative of the new books wants to tell a different
story. Carrying with it a contrary ideological agenda, the book chooses to discuss the
Islamic nature of Akbar’s actions. In a section devoted to the period Akbar spent in
Fatehpur Sikri, the author tells us of how Shaikh Salim Chisti was Akbar’s spiritual
guide, how the king used to take keen interest in the affairs of the mosque, at times even
sweeping its floor and how he sponsored pilgrimages to Mecca. 52 And while none of
these facts are untrue, there inclusion is to dent the well established image of Akbar as the
‘secular’ king, an image that was built by the older NCERT textbook.
In the context of this religious polarization, the portrayal of Aurangzeb as a zealot and
bigot is not surprising. What one needs to understand is that the centrality given to the
religious policy of Mughal rulers is not a falsification but a misinterpretation, or a
deliberate reading of the sources at their face value. Written within an Islamic framework
and constantly seeking religious legitimacy, the official accounts need to be
contextualised before being used as evidence. Religious terminology is often used to
justify and legitimize politically motivated actions. In the case of Aurangzeb, it is very
easy to pass off most of his deeds and actions as those of a religious bigot; this however,
is not a nuanced perspective. While one cannot deny his strong religious beliefs, and their
impact, there is a need to see the political and economic context of his policies. It is
precisely this, which the new textbook refuses to do. In the three pages devoted to his
‘political ideology’, there is a detailed discussion of how Aurangzeb sought to “cast his
regime in a strictly Islamic mould”.53
The final sentence of the section on his ‘political ideology’ tells us that “Aurangzeb’s
religious intervention provoked widespread revolts in the empire”. 54 While the next
section on the revolts in the period of Aurangzeb, states that “some modern scholars
have… suggested that economic considerations played a motivating role in these
revolts”,55 there is a clear indication that this is not what the author thinks. What this
52
Ibid., 143-144.
53
Ibid., 172-174.
54
Ibid., 175.
55
This is the line of argument that the previous textbook by Satish Chandra puts forward (235-238).

18
section successfully does is to present the alternative view, but completely undermines its
legitimacy. By rhetorically asking its readers whether the fact that these were all non-
Islamic communities ‘naturally’ seems to indicate that these can be described as ‘Hindu
resistance’ movements, it successfully portrays religion as the mainstay of Aurangzeb’s
reign and source of all grievances of the populace.
Where do the Sikhs figure in this world? Guru Nanak was founder of the spiritual
tradition known today as Sikhism. Now, like Kabir, he believes that devotion to one God
could lead to salvation regardless of caste, creed or sect. However, he advocates ‘a
middle path’ in which spiritual life is combined with the duties of the householder. Jain
does like to say that Guru Nanak discarded renunciation and asceticism (which were
important features of the Indian spiritual traditions). Instead the new textbook proposes:
“Guru Tegh Bahadur decided after a deep reflection to court martyrdom to uphold the
beliefs of Kashmiri Brahmins who were being persecuted”.56 The implication is clear that
the Guru sacrificed his life to defend Brahmanical faith. It carries the further implication
that the Brahmanical tradition was more valuable than the Sikh tradition even in the eyes
of Guru Tegh Bahadur. “Guru Gobind Singh dispatched five Sikhs to Benaras where they
stayed for seven years and returned as adepts in Classical Indian Philosophy. They
developed the institution of Nirmalas. Before instituting the Khalsa, the Guru had written
Chandi Di Var, depicting the legendary clash between gods and demons as portrayed in
the Markandeya Purana. His composition also shows that he was influenced by the lore
of Rama and Krishna, particularly their recourse to battle to ensure the triumph of good
over evil. All this carries the message that the spiritual tradition known as Sikhism is a
valuable version of Hindu thought and philosophy”.57 She might protest that she has not
said it in so many words, but the message stays. Jain’s errors of fact and perception in the
political history of the Sikhs are far easier to see. Banda Bahadur is mentioned as
proclaiming himself a sovereign even though in the same sentence we are told that he
struck coins in the names of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh. What is the evidence
then that he proclaimed his own sovereignty? We are told that he issued orders
(hukamnamas) ‘on his own seal’. But the inscription on the seal, as we know, refers to the
Gurus as the source of power.
56
Ibid., 178.
57
Ibid., 179-180.

19
The above analysis gives us an idea about the biases in the new history textbook on
Medieval India. Its author Meenakshi Jain has in a very subtle way tried to forward some
ideologies which could never be justified as rational in the normal course. The patronage
of the then government allowed these hidden agendas to come out in the open. It stirred
the conscience of academicians and historians alike. The next section contains the details
about the index of errors (in the new textbooks) which some eminent historians prepared
to unmask this new brand of history.

Indian History Congress’ Index of Errors58

When the NCERT published its policy statement on school education in 2000 (National
Curriculum Framework of School Education (NCFSE), 2000), the Indian History
Congress (IHC) responded at once at its session in Kolkata in January 2001. A detailed
resolution was passed expressing concern at the way history was being treated in the
school curriculum. In the following year at its Amritsar session, the IHC Executive
Committee set up a committee to scrutinize the history textbooks that had been published
by the NCERT in 2002. The committee, comprising Professor Irfan Habib (Aligarh),
Professor Suvira Jaiswal (Hyderabad) and Professor Aditya Mukherjee (New Delhi),
produced a report along with an Index of Errors, which was released as a publication of
the IHC in June 2003. Four textbooks published in 2002 were reviewed. These were:
Makkhan Lal et al., India and World – for Class VI; Hari Om et al., Contemporary India –
for Class IX; Makkhan Lal, Ancient India – for Class XI; and Meenakshi Jain, Medieval
India – for Class XI.
Of these, there were 127 mistakes listed in Meenakshi Jain's Medieval India for Class XI.
A quick categorization of the errors listed in the Index in Meenakshi Jain's Medieval
India, shows their range and incidence. A few errors find place under more than one
category:
(1). Errors of commission – Careless and inexcusable errors of historical fact:
These account for the largest number in all the books. In Medieval India, 79 such errors
out of 127 are listed. Examples: On page 194, the author says that Aurangazeb died at

58
Irfan Habib, Suvira Jaiswal, and Aditya Mukherjee, History in the New NCERT Textbooks: A Report and
an Index of Errors, (Kolkata: Indian History Congress, 2003).

20
Aurangabad (he died at Ahmadnagar). On page 132, the author says that Rana Sanga died
in the Battle of Khanua (in fact, he was not killed in battle at all; he fled from the
battlefield).
(2). Errors of omission – Important facts left out of the narrative, conveying thereby an
incomplete understanding of the particular topic:
Twenty-three of the errors listed in the Index in Medieval India come under this category.
Examples: In the description of Shivaji's administration (page 190-91), the author does
not mention Shivaji's levy of Chauth (one-fourth of revenue) and Sardeshmukhi (an
additional one-tenth), which he exacted from areas not under his control with the threat of
sacking those regions that did not pay up. In levying these exactions and in the
punishment for non-payment, he did not differentiate between Hindus and Muslims. Or,
the author's total omission of Akbar's views and actions on social matters, like his
prohibition of slave trade, disapproval of Sati and prohibition of involuntary Sati. Or,
when the author lists the appalling record of the number of Bahmani kings murdered,
deposed, and blinded, she fails to mention that other ruling dynasties of that period had
blood on their hands too. For example, the practice amongst the Rajputs and the
Vijaynagara ruling classes of killing hundreds of wives, concubines and slave girls of a
ruler when he died. The logic of exclusion suggests that the author would like to associate
violence and cruelty with Muslims rather than with the conventions and practices that
were common to all medieval ruling classes.
(3). Errors deriving from communal bias:
There are 14 such examples of communally biased assertions of historical fact. These
also include attempts to Sanskritise names or terminology in a wholly inappropriate
fashion. Examples: On page 10, the author has separately classified modern historians of
Medieval India by their religions, that is, as Muslim or Hindu. On page 92, she states that
Bukka-I of the Vijaynagara period “freed practically the whole of the South from foreign
domination”. From this the reader must surmise that Muslims are equated with
foreigners. The heading for Chapter 2 is ‘Struggle for Chakravartitva’; an inappropriate
phrase used obviously to make a point of Sanskritising what could have simply been
titled ‘Political Supremacy’.

21
According to the report, all four books reveal a shocking lack of awareness of basic
historical facts. Secondly, the language is riddled with grammatical errors, spelling
mistakes and inappropriate expressions. Finally, they all present History with a strong
chauvinist and communal bias.
A ‘neutral or even admiring stance’, according to the authors of the report, accompanies
the accounts of Sati and Jauhar. The Medieval India textbook is imbued with anti-
Muslim prejudice. Muslims, or ‘foreigners’, brought nothing to India but bloodshed,
violence and the practice of temple destruction. The substantial evidence of the rise of a
composite culture in this period is firmly stamped out. Thus, there is barely a sentence on
Kabir and his teachings.
Historians are confronted with the challenge of balancing objectivity and truth in history
on the one hand and the process of nation building on the other. History writing is
inclined to focus on the ‘truth’. The report tells us that NCERT texts are marred by
extraordinary glorification of the ‘Hindu past’ without any objective basis. The Hindu
religion is held superior and the Upanishads are proclaimed the ‘most profound works of
philosophy in any religion’. Also, all substantial scientific discoveries are attributed to the
Vedic civilization. Aryans are projected to be indigenous, which is factually incorrect
since this argument is not supported by linguistic and more recently genetic data.
Interestingly, the Indus Civilization has been conflated with Vedic civilization and
renamed ‘Indus-Saraswati Civilization’.
The NCERT books project that dark spots in history are attributed to Muslims and the rise
of a composite culture is ignored. NCERT attempted to construct a history inspired by
myth. What was earlier considered part of historical criticism is now built into history
itself. The serial errors reveal how, by selectively distorting the facts and changing the
meanings they have tried to Saffronise history.
Furthermore, there are numerous conscious historical, geographical and linguistic
fabrications. Meenakshi Jain’s ‘Medieval India – a textbook for Class IX’ has a basic
purpose of highlighting the ‘barbarity of the Muslims’. She tends to reaffirm the
Medieval Age as the “dark age”59 and that Muslims brought extreme radicalism,
exploitation and intolerance. She goes to the extent of suggesting “there is nothing to

59
Meenakshi Jain et al, Medieval India: A Textbook for Class IX (New Delhi: NCERT, 2002), 7.

22
show that Islam mitigated social discrimination against low-caste Hindu converts.
Certainly they did not regard the converts as social equals”.60
Apart from the above ‘errors’ in the new textbooks, another controversy arose much
before these books came into existence. In fact, it could be considered the trigger for the
process of re-writing textbooks. There were objections raised over the portrayal of some
religious figures of certain communities. The Sikhs, Jainas and Jats in particular took
exception to some passages in Satish Chandra’s old NCERT textbook on Medieval India.
Ideally, the NCERT could have deleted the controversial lines with the historian’s
consent, but the government saw it as an opportunity to sideline these books and their
authors, who certainly did not fit into their line of thinking.

The Debate on Deletions

When much hue and cry was raised about the religious sentiments of some communities,
the NCERT opted for massive preemptive action. It ordained a purge of sections of the
contents of history texts used in secondary schools. The immediate provocation for the
NCERT's extraordinary step was a storm that was raised in the Delhi State Assembly by
Congress legislator Arvinder Singh about the supposed denigration of Guru Tegh
Bahadur, revered by Sikhs as a guru of the faith. In an elaborate display of deference
towards religious sensibilities, the Assembly adopted a resolution demanding the excision
of one sentence from the NCERT textbook on Medieval India authored by the historian
Satish Chandra.
The matter was debated in Parliament, the then Minister of State for Human Resource
Development, Rita Verma, informed the Upper House of Parliament that four history
textbooks were found to contain “factual errors, biases and coloration” and steps were
being taken to correct them. According to the minister, these books were guilty of hurting
the sentiments of religious minorities and cultural communities.
The NCERT responded with alacrity. It removed not merely the controversial sentence
but the entire section on Sikhism in the later Medieval period from the text. Consequently
there was a gaping hole in the historical understanding, since much of the treatment in the
book by Satish Chandra is by way of factual narration. The NCERT, taking its cue from a

60
Jain, op. cit., 8.

23
very narrowly phrased resolution by the Delhi Assembly, opted for complete excision. As
its circular to the CBSE makes clear, “these sections are not to be taught or discussed in
the classrooms and no questions are to be set in any examination or test to evaluate
students understanding of the content of these portions”.61 In its concern for religious
sensibilities, the NCERT has decreed a yawning vacuum in the students' understanding of
a vital part of later Medieval Indian history. As Arjun Dev, former Professor in the
NCERT's Humanities Department puts it, “it is as if from 1658 onwards, Sikhs have no
existence in Medieval India”.62
The problem with these passages was that they attacked a sanctified image of Hinduism.
A pro-Hindu government led by the BJP and guided by aggressive Hindu organizations
like the RSS could not tolerate such remarks. Passages referring to the Sikh guru
plundering and raping were highly objectionable to Sikh community. The key questions
to ask in this context are two. Firstly, if these references have stayed in textbooks for four
decades, then how did they become suddenly objectionable? So objectionable that they
demand immediate deletion? Secondly, if these references truly offend the sentiments of
communities, then why should anyone come in the way of their removal? We might ask a
third question. Does historical evidence warrant the removal of these references?
NCERT is under a contractual obligation to obtain prior permission from the author
before deleting portions from his/her textbook. None of the historians were consulted on
this occasion. The then Director of NCERT, Prof. J. S. Rajput clearly stated that he did
not find it necessary to consult these four historians as they are “not the only historians in
India”.63 Further, the deletions were not made after consultation with or on the basis of
recommendations of any recognized committee of historians. The NCERT did not name a
single well-known, nationally and internationally recognized historian who is associated
with the changes sought to be made in the syllabus. It was done secretly and the Director
of NCERT publicly refused to give the names of the historians involved in the revision or
the writing of the proposed new books on the flimsy ground that if those names are given
the authors will be ‘disturbed’.

61
Sandhya Jain, “The denial of History”, in The Hindustan Times, (Jul. 22, 2003).
62
Arjun Dev, “Mind Games, NCERT Style”, in Saffronised and Substandard, (New Delhi: SAHMAT,
2002).
63
J. S. Rajput, “Why Revising History Textbooks is a Write Move for NCERT”, in The Times of India,
(New Delhi, May 25, 2001).

24
The claim that the deletions were made to protect the tender minds of children from
controversial subject is equally spurious. Most of the deletions have been made from
books prescribed for class XI and XII. These are books read by children between age 16
and 18 years. To say that children at an age where they have acquired voting rights or are
at the verge of acquiring them are unfit to handle multiplicity of opinions and
controversial data is to cast them in the mould of unthinking automatons.
Given that these books have been around for at least two (and sometimes three) decades,
it is very remarkable that all of a sudden they have hurt so many sentiments. The NCERT
Director claimed that he “had received 50,000 letters”64 and then changed this to
“hundreds and thousands of letters of protest”.65 Arjun Dev, who retired from the NCERT
in February 2001, asserts that in his entire career of about 30 years, not more than 100
letters would have been received. 66 And even if one was to concede that religious
sentiments have been hurt, the NCERT could have done what it has always done on the
few occasions when complaints have been received in the past – send the complaints to
the authors, get their response, and try to arrive at a solution which upholds the essence of
what the author is saying while altering some phrases or words which have caused
misgivings. This had worked fairly well and there is no reason to believe it would have
not worked now. Therefore, the suspicion that the motive is not the redressal of
grievances, but the opposite, that is, the manipulation of religious sentiments for narrow
political ends at the expense of school children. The HRD minister defended the deletions
from their books and called for a “war for the country’s cultural freedom”.67
Different versions of same facts: In 1998, a law case was filed against NCERT by
members of the Sikh community offended by the textbook narratives describing the death
of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru, who was arrested, imprisoned, and beheaded
by the orders of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. Certain representatives of the Sikh
community intervened in the Supreme Court case under discussion, on behalf of the
NCERT, supporting their decision to delete certain paragraphs from the Class XI history
textbook. It was felt that the textbook was misrepresenting Guru Tegh Bahadur. The

64
Indian Express, (New Delhi, Nov. 26, 2001).
65
Statement made during TV show ‘The Big Fight’ on December 1, 2001.
66
Arjun Dev, “Mind Games, NCERT Style”, in Saffronised and Substandard, (New Delhi: SAHMAT,
2002).
67
Hindustan Times, (New Delhi, Dec. 8, 2001).

25
remarks against the Guru are seen as “objectionable, insulting and against the established
historical facts”.68 The self-proclaimed leaders of the Sikh community stated that the
retention of the objectionable remarks in the school history textbook would have violated
the principles of secularism and fraternity as contained in the Preamble and Articles 25
and 29 of the Constitution of India. While their intervention in the Supreme Court states
several times that the paragraph is a distortion of history, it gives no evidence to support
this. The dominant argument supporting the deletion seems to be that the passage should
not remain in the textbook, since it “hurts the feelings of the Sikhs”.69
The Sikhs opposing the passage essentially seem to be protesting against the fact that the
textbook’s version of the events is not identical with that of the Sikh tradition, because
the book actually mentions the historical problem of varying evidence from primary
sources. The following is a short extract from the deleted portion: “There was no conflict
between the Guru and Aurangzeb till 1675… when Guru Tegh Bahadur was arrested with
five of his followers, brought to Delhi and executed. According to the official
explanation, the Guru had joined hands with one Hafiz Adam… resorted to plunder and
rapine, laying waste the whole of the province of Punjab. According to Sikh tradition, the
execution was done, by the intrigues of some members of his family who disputed his
succession, and others who had joined them. But we are also told that Aurangzeb was
annoyed because the Guru had converted a few Muslims to Sikhism and raised a protest
against religious persecution in Kashmir by the local governor… It is not easy to sift the
truths from these conflicting accounts. For Aurangzeb, the execution of the Guru was
only a law and order question, for the Sikhs the Guru gave up his life in defense of his
cherished principles”.70 And it then asserts that irrespective of its true motivations, the
action by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was “unjustified from any point of view and
betrayed a narrow approach”. This is a value-laden historical judgment over which there
has been little discord, for reasons which are not too far to seek. In fact, far from being
biased against the Sikh community, the textbook presents a fairly balanced account of the
available sources and opinions.

68
Gurtej Singh, “Rewriting of History: Saffron Agenda”, in Nishaan, III, (2001).
69
Matter of Guru Nanak Universal Brotherhood Society versus Union of India and Others, Writ Petition
(C) No. 2771 of 1998, in the High Court of Punjab
70
Satish Chandra, Medieval India: A Textbook for Class XI, (New Delhi: NCERT, 1995), 237-238.

26
The section on Sikhs then proceeds to a summary description of subsequent events,
including the founding of a ‘military brotherhood’, or Khalsa, in 1699 by Guru Gobind
Singh. It records a phase of military conflict with the central authority of the Mughal
Empire, and suggests that the history of Sikhism shows how an egalitarian religious
movement could, under certain circumstances, turn into a political and militaristic
movement, and subtly move towards regional independence.
The balanced nature of this account is underlined when seen in juxtaposition with the
narrative put forward by the RSS in defense of the deletion from the book: “Guru Tegh
Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru, has also been unnecessarily denigrated. Although it is a
fact that he was beheaded by Aurangzeb in Chandni Chowk at Delhi for his attempts to
save the Hindu society from being forcibly converted to Islam, and for this act he has
been glorified by the Sikhs and Hindus alike. But he has been projected by these Marxists
as an anti-social element, who became the victim of family feuds. For these worthy
historians his sacrifice has no meaning at all”.71
The conflict of Guru Tegh Bahadur was not a purely religious conflict, though in the Sikh
tradition it would be seem to be so. Does this mean that textbooks for school children
have to see it exactly in that fashion? Does its presentation in the aforementioned fashion
in the RSS journal arise from the need to respect Sikh tradition or is there a possible
wider agenda since the portrayal is of unnecessary oppression by Aurangzeb, an Islamic
ruler?
The Debate: The opponents (of the old book) called the use of Persian sources, which
gave a ‘distorted’ account of the guru, ‘an act of sacrilege’. According to them, Satish
Chandra referred to Persian sources as the official account, completely ignoring religious
sources. The passage that has been found objectionable in the textbook reads: “… Guru
Tegh Bahadur was arrested with five of his followers, brought to Delhi and executed. The
official explanation for this as given in some later Persian sources is that after his return
from Assam, the guru, in association with one Hafiz Adam, a follower of Shaikh Ahmad
Sirhindi, had resorted to plunder and rapine…” Satish Chandra clarified that he called the
Persian source an ‘official account’, or the ‘official justification’, because “for a historian,
official accounts are generally full of evasion and distortion to justify official action”.72
71
Organiser, LIII:28, (Jan. 27, 2002), 31.
72
Satish Chandra, “No Hidden Agenda Here”, in Asian Age, (Oct. 5, 2002).

27
In the process, the debate on the use of sources in presenting historical facts has been
silenced. Objections to the depiction of Guru Tegh Bahadur are not new and are a part of
the debate on the use of Persian sources in the study of Sikh and Mughal history. The
Persian source referred to by Satish Chandra is Siyar-ul-Mutakharin, written in 1783 by
Ghulam Husain Taba-Tabai. Historians who have discouraged the use of the text have
pointed out that it was written more than a century after Guru Tegh Bahadur's death. And
Ghulam Husain lived far away from Punjab. Also, the Guru's association with Hafiz
Adam is anachronistic. Hafiz Adam died in Medina in C. E. 1643, twenty one years
before Guru Tegh Bahadur attained the status of guru. Further, they point out that
according to Ghulam Husain, Guru Tegh Bahadur was confined in Gwalior, where, under
imperial orders, his body was ‘cut into four quarters’ and hung at the four gates of the
fortress. Critics say that Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed in Delhi where the Sisganj
Gurudwara is situated at present.
There is another translation of the same text, which is more precise and less derisive of
Guru Tegh Bahadur. This has been used by noted Sikh historian Ganda Singh in his
works. It reads: “Guru Tegh Bahadur, gathering many disciples, became powerful, and
thousands of people accompanied him. A contemporary of his, Hafiz Adam, who was a
fakir belonging to the order of Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi, had gathered about him a great
multitude of followers. Both of these took to the practice of levying forcible exactions
and moved about in the land of the Punjab. Guru Tegh Bahadur took money from Hindus
and Hafiz Adam from Muslims. The royal news writers wrote to the Emperor that the two
fakirs, one Hindu and the other Muslim, had taken to the practice. It would not be strange
if, with the increase of their influence, they created trouble”. 73 This translation which
makes no mention of ‘subsisting by plunder’ has been accepted as more accurate by
historians.
The second point of controversy refers to the following passage in the textbook:
“According to Sikh tradition, the execution was due to intrigues of some members of his
family who disputed his succession, and by others who had joined them”. 74 But we are
also told that Aurangzeb was annoyed because the Guru had converted a few Muslims to
Sikhism. There is also the tradition that the Guru was punished because he had raised a
73
Ganda Singh, “Some Official Sources of Medieval India”, in Nishaan, II, (2002).
74
Satish Chandra, Medieval India: A Textbook for Class XI, (New Delhi: NCERT, 1995), 237-238.

28
protest against the religious persecution of the Hindus in Kashmir by the local governor.
However, the persecution of the Hindus is not mentioned in any of the histories of
Kashmir, including the one written by Narayan Kaul in 1710. Saif Khan, the Mughal
governor of Kashmir, is famous as a builder of bridges. He was a humane and broad-
minded person who had appointed a Hindu to advise him in administrative matters. His
successor after 1671, Iftekhar Khan, was anti-Shia, but there are no references to his
persecuting the Hindus.
The opponents objected to the negation of the Guru as the protector of Kashmiri Pandits.
However Satish Chandra says: “I have treated this issue in a slightly different manner.
My focus was to render a constructive interpretation of tradition. Hence, I have
concluded that the Guru was giving expression to the discontent and disaffection of the
Hindus of the region over Aurangzeb's decision to break some long-standing temples”. 75
He has used Sohan Lal Suri's Umdat-ut-Tawarikh to come to this conclusion. Satish
Chandra has however concluded in the textbook: “Whatever the reasons, Aurangzeb's
action was unjustified from any point of view and betrayed a narrow approach”, and that
“the Guru gave up his life for cherished principles”.76
These controversies have cropped up because the details regarding Guru Tegh Bahadur's
execution are shrouded in mystery. Historians use hagiographic accounts in the
contemporary and near-contemporary sources to buttress their accounts. As a result, there
are competing Muslim and Sikh claims about Guru Tegh Bahadur's activities and capture.
The Persian sources maintain that the guru was a ‘bandit’ and was ‘justly executed’ for
his rebel activity. The Sikh narratives hold that Guru Tegh Bahadur died during an
attempt to secure the rights of all the people, particularly, the Brahmins of Kashmir, to
practice their religion and don their religious symbols in good conscience. Satish Chandra
says: “There is no occasion for creating and nursing the feeling that in the textbook the
Guru has been maligned or that an attempt has been made to hurt Sikh sentiments. On the
other hand, the book places Guru Tegh Bahadur on a very high pedestal”. 77 For other
historians, honoring or dishonoring historical figures is not so much the point as
understanding them in their social and political contexts.

75
Satish Chandra, op. cit., in Asian Age.
76
Satish Chandra, Medieval India: A Textbook for Class XI, (New Delhi: NCERT, 1995), 239.
77
Satish Chandra, op. cit., in Asian Age.

29
Though it is not really possible to internalize what someone of another religious
persuasion may feel if they perceive a subtle bias against their community in a textbook,
we need to understand that sentiments of ‘hurt’ and ‘resentment’ are subjective and vary
from individual to individual. However, the cognitive content of feelings of ‘hurt’ and
‘resentment’ must be assessed by procedures of sound and valid arguments and broadly
acceptable standards among historians, by which good interpretations of available
historical evidence can be distinguished from bad. What is included in or jettisoned from
history textbooks must be decided by or should be consistent with the judgments of
professional historians. If the moral legitimacy of sentiments depends (as far as is
reasonably possible) on the best available interpretation of evidence, the validity of
arguments and the plausibility of historical accounts, then the judgment of historians is
relevant to whether or not feelings of hurt and resentment are justified. Can one remove
portions of historical analysis (even if they are true) if they offend the self-esteem of a
certain religious community? Is critical analysis of the history and practices of different
religions disrespectful to the communities that practice that faith? Clearly not; respect for
a religion and the community of its believers is consistent with criticism and analysis of
the same. What criticism is inconsistent with is unquestioning subordination and
submission to tradition. The secular fabric of the textbooks could be questioned if the
entire way of life of any religious community was condemned. As this survey has shown,
the portions that were selected for deletion do not condemn the way of life of any
community and, hence they do not show disrespect to any community, or violate the
principles of fraternity and secularism. What they do is to discourage an unquestioningly
deferential attitude towards present day religious beliefs – and this objective is as
admirable (and necessary in a multicultural society like India) as the desire to remove
‘irrational prejudices and bigotry, parochialism and communalism’.
However, things did change once there was a change of power in 2004. It is perhaps a sad
commentary that books had to be re-looked at in the first instance after the change in
2004 but not many alternatives were left by the previous regime. The NCERT Director J.
S. Rajput was shown the door and a new team was cobbled together, whose immediate
concern was to get a panel of reputed historians to recommend the sort of changes which
were needed in these books. The NCERT also issued an advisory to the schools on how to

30
deal with the ‘incorrect’ textbooks. The older textbooks were not that fortunate in 2002.
They were unceremoniously removed. The next section deals with the justifications given
by the then regime (in 2002) and the basic premise of the so called ‘right-wing history’.

Viewpoint of the Right-Wing

The following is a general critique of Satish Chandra’s textbook on Medieval India: The
conflict over the right to write history from the perspective of the nation's ‘core
community’ has raised the hackles of Leftist academics. 78 The principal charges against
Marxists include “a mean-spirited denial of the glories of pre-Islamic India; a dishonest
obliteration of the bloody chapters of India's encounter with Islam and the continuing
element of iconoclastic fury in that faith”.79 “Nation-building, however, is a pitiless affair;
those engaged in the struggle to recover the soul of India and restore her foundational
ethos in national life cannot shy from articulating unpleasant truths”. 80 This involves
exposing the Marxist schools' “strenuous attempts to deny or downplay the sustained
native resistance to Islam from its very advent in the sub-continent. Marxists have
unjustly obfuscated Islam's intolerance of temples and image-worship, and its sustained
assault on both. Far more unforgivable is the fact that they have tried to equate the
iconoclasm of Muslim rulers with isolated instances of intra-Hindu conflict, and to
pretend that concessions made by Muslim rulers to Hindu temples or holy men during
times of their own political need are synonymous with the eternal catholicity of the
Sanatan Dharma”.81
The Marxist offensive is triggered by their “loss of control over State-sponsored
institutions through which they imposed their one-dimensional version of history”.82 As a
part of the attempt to ‘downplay India's glorious past’, “several major kingdoms rising
between the death of Harsha (647 C. E.) and the founding of the Delhi Sultanate (1206 C.
E.), have been erased from the narrative. These five hundred odd years saw an
unparalleled efflorescence with the building of gigantic temples, and the writing of great

78
Conference on ’The Re-writing of History Textbooks’, Speakers: Meenakshi Jain, Kumkum Roy, Chair:
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, H. P. Ray , at IIC Conference Room – 1.
79
Sandhya Jain, “A ‘right’ turn in History”, in The Pioneer, (Jan. 13, 2004).
80
Ibid.
81
Ibid.
82
Ibid.

31
literary and philosophical works, which left an indelible imprint on subsequent Indian
culture. It seems inexcusable that the youth who are the nation's future should be denied
knowledge, and legitimate pride, in such a defining period of national history”.83
“Dynasties thus withheld from students’ memory include the illustrious Gahadavalas,
who played a sterling role against the Turkish invasions. Their dynasty is credited with
the construction of the Rama temple found below the Babri structure at Ayodhya, and
they probably owe their historical eclipse to their association with that infamous city”.84
“Others who got short shrift include the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, who fought Mahmud
of Ghazni and built the grand Khajuraho temples; the Paramaras of Malwa who fought
the Turks and set up a Sanskrit college in the Bhojashala at Dhar; the celebrated Chauhan
kings who vanquished the Turks; the Kalachuris of Tripuri; the Karkotas of Kashmir;
famous Gujarat rulers and eminent Sena kings of Bengal; and renowned Orissa dynasties
like the Shailodbhava, Kara, Kesari, Eastern Ganga and Later Eastern Ganga – to list
only some of the most obvious”.85
“The intense social dynamism of Indian society in the centuries before Islam, with tribal
groups transiting from forest and pastoral settings to settled agriculture and contributing
to state formation, the integration of tribal-local gods in regional and pan-India traditions,
the economic integration of the country through itinerant merchants, are all totally
ignored. The multiple roles of Hindu peasants as farmers and warriors are deliberately
negated, in order to portray Hindu society as rigidly opposed to mobility.86
“There is deliberate suppression of the flourishing economy and growth of urban centers
in the Pratihara, Paramara, Chahamana and other kingdoms, in order to sustain R. S.
Sharma's hypothesis that Indian trade and economy fell into doldrums for three centuries
after Harsha's death. This falsification is linked to another blatant lie – economic revival
came with the advent of Islam”.87
Regarding Muslim rule, the old NCERT book “ignores the Arab invasion of Sind and the
four centuries of stiff resistance by the Hindu rulers of Sind, Kabul and Zabul. The blood-

83
Meenakshi Jain, Flawed Narratives: History in the old NCERT Textbooks – A random survey of Satish
Chandra’s ‘Medieval India’, (Report).
84
Sandhya Jain, op. cit.
85
Meenakshi Jain, op. cit.
86
Ibid.
87
Ibid.

32
curdling numbers in which Hindus fell prey to Islamic invaders – 50,000 defenders died
in just one attack by Mahmud of Ghazni on Somnath – is never acknowledged”. 88
“Akbar's massacre of 30,000 peasants seeking refuge in the Chittor Fort is, of course,
unmentionable. The awesome numbers in which peasants and warriors were sold as part
of a burgeoning slave trade throughout Muslim rule in India has simply failed to register.
The unilateral aggression of Mughal emperors from Jahangir to Aurangzeb against the
Sikh Gurus is also downplayed”.89
Having gone through the above points regarding old Class XI NCERT textbook, we can
now have a look at the basic points of conflict which the ‘right’ have with the ‘left’
regarding Medieval India period in general: “The year 800 C. E. cannot rightly be
regarded as marking the beginning of the Medieval period in Indian history. The ancient
civilization of the land continued to flourish as before at this time and underwent no
dramatic discontinuity or change to warrant the closure of one era and the heralding of
another. The Indian creative genius scaled new heights in the period between the 8th and
12th centuries”.90
A number of discerning scholars abroad have questioned the application of the western
concept of Feudalism to the Indian society of this period. In particular, they have refuted
the Marxist contention that there was a paucity of money and coins in the post-Gupta
period and that this triggered off feudal conditions in India. On the contrary, they say,
India had a thriving money economy and the evidence in the shape of the abundant
coinage found has been deliberately overlooked by Indian Marxists in order to fit Indian
history in the Leftist mould91 –
(1). Since all the processes that India was under going in this period in the realms
specially of religion, language and literature were internally generated and internally
rooted,92 it is difficult to comprehend the connection between this period (8 th to 12th
centuries C. E.) and the ensuing one (13 th to 18th centuries C. E.), which clearly marked
the ascendancy of external forces and culture.93 Clearly the forced clubbing together of
88
Ibid.
89
Sandhya Jain, op. cit.
90
Ibid.
91
“Getting the spin right on history”, Falk Pingel interviewed by Shiraz Sidhva in UNESCO Courier.
92
Meenakshi Jain, Flawed Narratives: History in the old NCERT Textbooks – A random survey of Satish
Chandra’s ‘Medieval India’, (Report).
93
Ibid.

33
highly disparate eras has been motivated solely by the desire to downplay the cataclysmic
nature of the Muslim advent in India.94 In the circumstances, the second era in Indian
history should properly begin with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate in 1206 C. E.
instead of focusing on the Hindu states of the 8th to the 12th centuries, which were in any
case anathema to the Muslims.95
(2). Since the Islamic advent was the real story of Medieval India,96 “it is wrong to
forcibly bring the Cholas into the picture. The Cholas belonged neither to the Feudal nor
the Dark Age, nor did they share any features with Islamic states. There is also a
deliberate attempt to interpolate caste tensions into Hindu society as is evident in the off-
hand references to Sudras. In reality, the so-called Sudras were dominant castes in many
areas, they controlled large amounts of land and were a force to reckon with.
Ethnographic studies have also recorded the pride they took in their Sudra status till as
late as the 19th century when caste underwent a series of changes as a result of Colonial
intervention. In the discussion on religion, there is little attempt to highlight the fact that
the reformist impulse came from within Hindu society and that many of its proponents
were Brahmins”97.
(3). “Misrepresentations about Indian society abound as there are the standard stereotype
references to the caste system with absolutely no appreciation of the elasticity that was its
essential feature. In the context of the period under discussion, this elasticity is most
vividly illustrated in the elevation of several nomad-pastoral communities into agnikula
Rajputs, created by the Brahmins to specially defend the land against the invading
mlechhas. The inclusion of Mahmud of Ghazni alongside the Rajputs in the discussion on
the kingdoms of North India is surprising unless, of course, the intention is to blur the
distinction between the two”.98
There are again the motivated statements99 on land grants to Brahmins, the intention
obviously being to reinforce the negative stereotypes of the latter.100

94
Ibid.
95
Ibid.
96
Ibid.
97
Ibid.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid.

34
“The section on religion creates the impression that it was only with the advent of the
Bhakti movement that the lower castes were brought into the Hindu spiritual ambit. This
is incorrect. From the outset, only Vedic literature was outside the purview of the
common people but the philosophical truths contained in it were popularized and made
easily comprehensible through the wide dissemination of the Agamas, Ramayana and
Mahabharata101.
(4). “The momentous fact that for the first time in Indian history, the religion of the rulers
was different from that of the ruled is not mentioned. Nor the fact that from thence on, the
economic exploitation of the peasantry was systematized as never before, courtesy, the
system of measurement of land and record of actual production. The extremely closed
nature of the governing class, with entry being restricted to immigrant Muslims, is also
glossed over. There is no reference to Balban’s well-advertised repugnance for even
Hindu converts to Islam. References to Hindu participation in the system are misleading.
The so-called Hindu involvement was restricted to the clerical level102.
The word Jiziyah does not occur even once in the discussion on the entire Sultanate
period. Ferozeshah is described as interested in the ancient culture of India “when the fact
is that it was during his region that Jiziyah was levied on Brahmins for the first time”.103
“The pan-Islamic dimension of the political philosophy of the Sultanate has not even
been alluded to. All the Sultans, without exception, looked to the Caliph as the source of
their legitimacy”.104 Even after the Caliph was murdered and the Caliphate abolished
(1258 C. E.), his name continued to appear on the coins of the Sultans of India.
“The attempt to sanitize the activities of every Muslim ruler is particularly glaring in the
case of Muhammad bin Tughlaq. The intensity of Hindu resistance is ignored, the
savagery involved in the conversion of Kashmir is not even hinted at. Similarly, the
religious dimension of the Vijaynagara-Bahmani dispute is totally missing”.105
(5). “Despite the misleading assertions, there is simply no concrete evidence of Hindu-
Muslim rapprochement in the Sultanate period. It is grossly improper to include Hindu
princes, landholders and priests as constituents of the new aristocracy that arose at this

101
Ibid.
102
Ibid.
103
Ibid.
104
Ibid.
105
Ibid.

35
time. Leaving aside the ruling houses of Rajputana, Rajput resistance even in the
neighbouring Katiher region remained intense even throughout Mughal rule”.106
“Similarly, the participation of landholders in the ruling class remained restricted even
under the Mughals. To assert that the involvement of such groups was intense in the
Sultanate period is a blatant form of dishonesty.
It is also grotesque to talk of the respect of the Delhi Sultans for Brahmins and to suggest
that both Brahmins and the Ulema were equally permitted to spread their faiths in the
subcontinent. Nor is there any mention of the infamous pilgrimage tax”107.
“Aside from the reference to Mahmud of Ghazni, there is no mention of temple
destruction in this period. Also, the talk of inter-marriage between the Turks, Afghans and
Hindus who had been converted ignores the deep racialism of the rulers and the contempt
they had for Indian Muslims. It is not mentioned that the non-Muslim partner of the
marriage always had to convert to Islam”108.
“In the discussion on the Sufis, there is no evidence to suggest that the Sufis advised
Hindus to be better Hindus. Indeed, in the popular Indian folklore, Sufis are viewed as
pioneer Muslims who ventured out to claim fresh territory for their faith. ‘Warrior Sufis’
were active participants in frontier warfare. Moreover, Sufis did not challenge any of the
precepts of Islam and always remained within the Islamic tradition”109.
“Contrary to the impression given, Muslims had no role in the development of the
regional languages. Also, the architectural style remained distinctly Islamic and did not
deviate from Islamic forms in the slightest, despite the addition of a few Hindu frills”.110
(6). “There is no hint at the complex processes that went into the shaping of Akbar’s
policies, nor the fact that he started his reign as a conservative Sunni Muslim monarch.
He, after all, re-christened Hindu holy cities, imposed the Jiziyah and pilgrimage tax, and
even indulged in forcible conversions in the early part of his reign. Though he ultimately
did seek a more neutral legitimization, at least by way of supplement, the state under him
remained unmistakably Muslim. 70% of his nobility consisted of foreigner Muslims. The

106
Ibid.
107
Ibid.
108
Ibid.
109
Ibid.
110
Ibid.

36
Hindu representation was confined to the Rajputs, there being just four other Hindus in
the upper echelons of the nobility”111.
“An alien tongue remained the court language and the language of administration. The
translation of Hindu epics into Persian was intended to wean away the Hindu
administrative elite from their own languages, and thrust Persian on them. Akbar’s so
called patronage of Hindu writers also needs to be examined afresh, in view of the fact
that the greatest Hindu writer of the age, Tulsidas, certainly received no state funding.
The view on Din-i-Ilahi smacks of total intellectual dishonesty. In the western world, it is
by now generally accepted that the Ilahi was not influenced by, nor a concession, to
Hinduism. In fact, nine of the ten virtues it enjoined were derived directly from the
Quran, while the tenth was a commonplace basis of all Sufi thought. Also, the omission
of Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, the leading revivalist thinker of the time, is also indicative of
the political agenda of the writers”112.
(7). “There is almost total silence on the growing powers of orthodoxy in the reigns of
Jahangir and Shah Jahan. The intention is to present them in as favorable a light as
possible. Thus, Jahangir’s revolt against his father, and his suspected involvement in the
murder of Abul Fazl, who was a relatively liberal Muslim, find no mention in the text.
The lengthy treatment given to the mythical ‘chain of justice’ at Jahangir’s palace further
confirms the deliberately biased treatment of the subject. The cursory discussion on
Aurangzeb is not only a masterly exercise in evasion, but also incomprehensible on its
own terms. After reading the text, it still remains unclear why the Sikhs, Marathas and
Jats revolted against the Mughal domain”113.
(8). The most important characteristic of the post-Aurangzeb period was that the
successor states continued to uphold and propagate the Mughal system and its Muslim
values, and made no attempt to link with the indigenous ethos.
Thus, the analysis shows how a liberal point of view on history is avoided to give it a
communal and biased color. It might be true that all the above given points are correct,
but it is not necessary that all these have to be mentioned to the children in as many

111
Ibid.
112
Ibid.
113
Ibid.

37
words. A rational interpretation, if it protects the secular fabric of India, and does not
show inclination to only one community, should not be harmful to anyone.
An opposition was also raised to the IHC’s Index of Errors which did not show
Meenakshi Jain’s book in very good light: “NCERT’s new book on Medieval India has
given its critics a rude shock. Although the author has relied solely upon the published
works of renowned historians in India and abroad, the straightforward narrative has upset
the stalwarts of the Indian History Congress, who protest that ‘the dark corners of the
medieval era have been brought into the light of day’. In all objectivity, this should not be
surprising as the period had few redeeming features114.
“A few telling examples will suffice to elucidate how far intellectual integrity has been
sacrificed at the altar of political ideology. For instance, the IHC Index of Errors sharply
rebukes the author for claiming that Indian peasants suffered ‘unparalleled exploitation’
under the Delhi Sultanate. Yet it is Irfan Habib who states: “To begin with, the new
conquerors and rulers were of a different faith (Islam) from that of their predecessors,
their principal achievements lay in a great systematization of agrarian exploitation and an
immense concentration of the resources so obtained”115 in his one of the publications”116.
“The IHC refutes the statement that Sultan Iltutmish settled two thousand Turkish
soldiers in the Doab to fortify his political and financial position. Yet M. Habib and K. A.
Nizami asserted that: “Iltutmish was the first to realize the economic potentialities of the
Doab. By setting two thousand Turkish soldiers there, he secured for the Turkish state the
financial and administrative control of one of the most prosperous regions of northern
India (A Comprehensive History of India, eds. M. Habib and K. A. Nizami, 1970, pp.
227)”.117
“Meenakshi Jain’s critique of Balban as a weak ruler has been strongly disparaged. Here
again, Habib and Nizami assert: “Balban, his officers and his army, proved themselves
extraordinarily inefficient and clumsy, and it took Balban six years or more to crush the
rebellion of Tughril and a riffraff of two hundred thousand had to be enlisted at Awadh to
strengthen the regular army. Balban did not challenge any of the great Hindu raids, his

114
Sandhya Jain, “A ‘right’ turn in History”, in The Pioneer, (Jan. 13, 2004).
115
R. S. Sharma and V. Jha (eds.), The Social Distribution of Landed Property in Pre-British India, (New
Delhi: Indian Society – Historical Probings, 1974), 287.
116
Sandhya Jain, op. cit.
117
Ibid.

38
officers failed against the raids of frontier Mongol officers. Both in the civil and military
field, Balban and his governing class had been tried and found wanting (A
Comprehensive History of India, eds. M. Habib and K. A. Nizami, 1970, pp. 303)”.118
“The IHC’s contention that there is no proof that Sher Shah extracted Jiziya is absurd.
This has been stated even in Satish Chandra’s NCERT textbook (p. 150): Jizyah
continued to be collected from the Hindus, while his nobility was drawn almost
exclusively from the Afghans”.119
“The low annual growth rate of the Indian population between the years 1600-1800,
pegged at 0.14%, has been denied by the IHC. It is Irfan Habib himself who declaims:
“the population during the Mughal period did not remain stable though the compound
rate of growth, 0.14% per annum, was hardly spectacular and was much lower than the
rate attained during the nineteenth century (The Cambridge Economic History of India,
vol. I, (eds.) Tapan Raychaudhari and Irfan Habib, 1982, pp. 167)”.120
“The medieval slave trade in India rivals the early Arab and later European trade from
Africa, and deserves equal documentation. It would be extremely unjust to negate this
atrocity from the annals of World History, as Indian historians have tended to do. The
IHC claims this flourishing market in human beings declined under the Mughals. But the
noted historian Dirk Kolff is fairly emphatic: “There is irrefutable evidence for the
enslavement and deportation of thousands and thousands of peasants by the Mughal
aristocracy. Many of these were sold to countries to the west of India. The trade had
flourished before 1400, when Multan was a considerable slave market, but it was
continued after that, with Kabul as the main entreport. In these deportations, Jahangir also
had a share. He concludes: Anyway, it is clear that, in the 1660s, Indian supply of and
Persian demand for slaves was still considerable (Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The
Ethnohistory of a Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850, Cambridge
University Press, 1990, p. 10-11)”.121
“One could similarly refute each and every objection in the Index of Errors. It denies that
the Mughals settled Afghans in areas of insurgence. But Kolff shows that: “Forced
migrations were part of a deliberate policy in this area… whereas Rajputs in western
118
Ibid.
119
Ibid.
120
Ibid.
121
Ibid.

39
Hindustan were exterminated and deported as slaves beyond the Indus, Afghans were
deported towards the East and settled in areas notorious for Rajput turbulence (pp.
13)”.122
The author of the new Medieval India textbook, Meenakshi Jain, herself came out with a
thorough critique of old book by Satish Chandra. The next section shows her review cum
critique of the methodology and theme of the book and what according to her should
have been included as content but was ‘deliberately overlooked’.
“With hindsight, it must be conceded that the NCERT’s decision to discontinue textbooks
authored by stalwarts of the Marxist school of historiography has triggered a veritable
shift in the country’s intellectual template. And it was probably apprehending precisely
such a fall-out that leftist scholars had mounted a campaign of unprecedented ferocity to
stall the new textbooks, even going to the extent of having sympathizers file a case in the
Supreme Court against NCERT’s proposed curriculum revision. Strangely, no one
bothered to ask why scholars of hitherto unquestionable eminence were so perturbed at
being dislodged from schoolrooms, when their status, expertise and dominance remained
unchallenged at the university level, where they were also more likely to encounter
students who could appreciate the finer points of their scholarship. Perhaps since these
scholars were, above all, purveyors of an ideology, the indoctrination of young minds
from a primary stage itself was crucial to their agenda. That is why they had in the first
instance prepared history primers, which were for decades rammed down the throats of
helpless school children”.123
“The medieval era of Indian history was the special focus of Marxist interest. Their
contribution to the study and proper appreciation of this period was not entirely a
negative development. To the extent that Marxist methodology lays special stress on the
role of material forces in the shaping of history, they were able to make a significant
contribution in highlighting the exploitative nature of the state under Sultanate and
Mughal rulers, who appropriated the bulk of the agrarian produce, leaving the peasants in
abject poverty. But, Marxist methodology in India is not recognized for its emphasis on
economic determinism alone. It is associated with an active hostility to India’s native
civilization and its achievements. It is noted for its blatant bias towards the Islamic
122
Ibid.
123
Meenakshi Jain, “As their tactics backfire, they backtrack”, in Hindustan Times, (Jan. 25, 2004).

40
advent that commenced in this period. Non-partisan scholars describe the Islamic thrust
into the sub-continent as one of the most prolonged instances of cultural encounter in
world history, and accept that notwithstanding the peaceful entry of Arab traders, a
substantial part of Muslim settlement was achieved by conquest”.124
Further, “they have sought to underplay the Islamic abhorrence of idolatry and
polytheism and its assault on the sacred spaces of this land. Though the numerical
superiority of Hindus compelled the invaders to grant them the status of dhimmis, the
issue was too complex to be so resolved, and continued to exercise the Muslim mind
throughout these centuries”.125
Effacing the harshness of Islamic rule in India has been the primary objective of Indian
Marxist historians. Even rulers of the notoriety such as Mahmud of Ghazni and
Aurangzeb have been recipients of their kind benevolence. The Turkish invasions are
glorified for effecting the political unification of India, and ending its alleged isolation,
while Mughal rule is presented as the country’s second Classical Age”.126
“Notwithstanding lofty declarations about free debate, Indian Marxists have relied
heavily on state patronage and control of state-sponsored institutions to disseminate their
version of history”.127
Thus, it shows that with the change of regime, the old textbooks just did not have any
chance to survive the onslaught. When the hunt was on for the authors for new textbooks,
Jain’s above critique came in handy and she got an offer to write the textbook on
Medieval India. The new textbook was backed all the way by everybody concerned – the
NCERT, the government and the supporters. The justifications given by all were on the
same lines, that is, ‘bias by the enemies of Indian culture and society’. According to J. S.
Rajput, “Several facts are regularly brought to the notice of the NCERT by those really
concerned with the children, the future of the Indian society, the need for social cohesion
and the criticality of learning to live together with the due respect to pluralities, and
multiplicities of various kinds which in an unique fashion are the corner stones of the
Indian nation”.128 He further adds, “Strangely enough, those who mixed mythology and
history are now accusing NCERT of having discarded ‘eminent historians’ and
124
Meenakshi Jain, op. cit.
125
Ibid.
126
Ibid.
127
Ibid.

41
proclaiming NCERT guilty of planning to merge history and mythology. The issue is –
should biased history be allowed to continue at the cost of national interests?”129
“It is not a question of revivalism”, said Rajput, in an interview published by the
Washington Post. “Every country should write its history from its own point of view. Our
history books have been written from a Euro-centric view because we were a colony for
so long. History books should instill a sense of pride in the young minds and should be
rooted in our culture”.130
According to historian Dr. N. S. Rajaram, “The current history books need to be rewritten
because they are both obsolete and have material that is inappropriate for school
children”. About the NCERT controversy and negative portrayals, he adds, “It is an
extension of the same mindset – placing self-preservation above scholarship and
education. Note that NCERT is concerned about school curriculum and not college or
research issues. So we should take into consideration that we are dealing with young
minds that are sensitive and impressionable. We should be careful to balance the good
with the bad, but at the same time avoid issues that are controversial or unnecessary”.131

Conclusion
Updating of knowledge is necessary to the advancement of knowledge. This involves a
constant assessment and rewriting of studies that advance knowledge. Indian history has
been rewritten with each advance in knowledge. The most striking aspect of this
rewriting was that the changes of interpretation grew out of intense debates and
discussions as well as critical inquiries into the historical data and the generalizations
derived from it.
The so called ‘new’ history being propagated has been introduced in entirely different
ways: through mangling existing school textbooks by insisting on absurd deletions and
through surreptitiously introducing new textbooks without going through the normal
procedures of having them vetted by educationists and historians. This change is not the

128
J. S. Rajput, “Why Revising History Textbooks is a Write Move for NCERT”, in The Times of India,
(New Delhi, May 25, 2001).
129
Ibid.
130
Faisal Kutty, “Safronisation of Indian History Elicits Deafening Silence”, in the Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs, (Dec. 12, 2003).
131
Navaratna S. Rajaram, “Tortured souls create twisted History”.

42
result of investigating new theories of history but the imposition of propaganda. 132 The
project is an assault on the pluralist-secular conception of India. The incendiary mixing of
politics with the doctoring of textbooks should itself expose the malafide nature of the
Hindutva education project. Its content and process are both repugnant. No worthy
democracy can countenance such censorship by fiat, which makes a mockery over long
deliberations over syllabi, author selection, expert consultation and legal contracts
forbidding editorial changes, through which textbooks are produced.133
Hindutvs’s saffron agenda in education has another angle too. This is to erase one central
truth about Indian culture and civilization for 2000 years – namely, its plural, multi-
ethnic, multi-religious character. As Nobel laureate Amartya Sen puts it: “It is futile to try
to understand Indian art, literature, music, food or politics without seeing the extensive
interactions across barriers of religious communities. These include Hindus and Muslims,
Buddhists, Jainas, Sikhs, Parsees, Christians, Jews… and even atheists and agnostics”. 134
Hindutva ideology cannot stomach this. Their mortal fear of facts is rooted in ignorance,
hatred of the ‘Other’ and a deep inferiority complex about Indian-ness itself. This
complex demands that everything in India’s past must be depicted as uniquely great.
India’s past was a sort of ‘Golden Age’ interrupted only by ‘external aggression’. This
dogma runs counter to facts.
There are many worthy things about second to tenth century India, but there were very
ugly things too: casteism, entrenched social inequalities and power hierarchies, religious
factionalism, rampant superstition, extreme gender discrimination, low levels of
productivity and widespread deprivation and disease. India’s interaction with the world
was important. For instance, in the Middle Ages, India received a great deal from the
Arab world in administrative systems, land and revenue management, music,
architecture, chemistry, medicine and even couture. Similarly, it gave a great deal to the
rest of Asia and Europe. Understanding all this, and grappling with the reality of Sati,
widespread illiteracy, or tyrannical village life, requires confronting, not censoring, the
132
Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee, “Communalisation of Education – the History Textbook
Controversy: An Overview”, in Mainstream, 22, (Dec. 2001).
133
K. N. Panikkar, “History Retold – Fascist Future of the Past”, in Frontline, 20:11, (May 24-June 06,
2003).
134
Amartya Sen, “History and the Enterprise of Knowledge”, address delivered to the Indian History
Congress, January 2001, Calcutta.

43
past. Such understanding is absolutely indispensable if we are to have a future or even
relate to our present. Hindutva makes this impossible. It suppresses all complexity. Since
Hindutva nationalism suppresses the negative or egregious aspects of the past, it cannot
reform what the present inherits from it. Its glorification agenda ends up rationalizing and
perpetuating past horrors.
It is this politics of Hindutva that these books represent. In these books we see a
reinterpretation of the past and an attempt to create a new social consciousness. The soul
of this process of historical re-appropriation is not a distortion of facts but a religious
interpretation of the past, which establishes the Hindu’s right to the nation. Reminiscent
of the Colonial view of the past, the history taught in these new textbooks depicts Indian
history as a record of continuous strife between religious communities. In this
interpretation all communities other than Hindus (especially Muslims) are identified as
foreigners and enemies of the nation. What is implied therefore is that the Hindus alone
have a right to the nation. The communities not regarded as foreigners are incorporated
within the fold of Hinduism.
The portrayal of religious communities – far from promoting social harmony, as their
rhetoric might claim – successfully creates the image of an antagonistic relationship
between the Muslim and the Hindu community. This Hindu community incorporates
within it all the faiths that have their ‘holy-lands’ within India, and sets them up in
opposition to the Muslims, who are the brutal outsiders. The politics of the history
textbooks in India promote communal strife by creating a historical consciousness that
gives a place of pride to religion and puts forward a narrative that traces back community
identities and antagonisms and hence, legitimizes their existence. Hence, instead of
pluralism and diversity, the children reading the books will learn of a single, monolithic
cultural tradition that is maintained throughout history.
In reality, the real contest is not between the Right and the Left, between two extreme and
intolerant positions, but between an obsessively nationalistic, narrowly chauvinistic view
of Indian culture and society, on the one hand, and on the other, a set of many plural,
liberal, tolerant, often conflicting, premises which recognizes the ordinariness of all
cultures and the contributions to Indian society from multiple sources all over the world.
The first orientation links history writing to kindling ‘national pride’ and defending the

44
honor of India's ‘timeless civilization’, and obsessively attacks the “Marx-Macaulay-
Muslim mafia”.135 The second does not have such agendas.
The ‘ideological rivalry’ imported into our education has had a generally corrosive effect,
especially through a link being forcibly established between history or one's view of
history and one's political identity. As one writer puts it: “Your secularism is judged by
your views on Medieval India… [T]here is literally no ground for anyone to stand on
without being accused of something. If you admire some aspects of Hinduism, you are a
closet Hindu nationalist; if you criticize Hinduism, you become a closet Marxist. If you
admire the contributions of Islam, you might be a traitor; if you criticize Islam, you
become a communalist”.136
If this is not a bit of a caricature of the present debate and whether such analysis would
not lead to a kind of relativism in respect of the core values of history as a discipline,
which robs history-writing of any worth. Are intellectual allegiances among Indian
scholars really so rigid that they cannot be separated from ascriptions of identities?
The aim of education is to promote open-mindedness and rational thinking. Since the
textbooks are devised by the state, the latter must act in a manner consistent with the
secular goals of the constitution and in a manner that is without arbitrariness and
discrimination. In Aruna Roy’s case137, dealing with the National Curriculum, the
Supreme Court of India laid down that “the state can teach moral values drawn from
India’s past to students”, but accepted a broad distinction arising from Article 28 of the
Constitution between ‘teaching about religion and teaching religion itself’. Thus, learning
or teaching Indian history, science or sociology is desirable but not a version of it which
espouses looking at such things through the lens of one particular religion or faith or
some of its adherents. A distinction, thus, has been made between imparting ‘religious
instruction’ that is, teaching of rituals, observances, customs and traditions and other non-
essential observances or modes of worship in religions and teaching of philosophies of
religions with more emphasis on study of essential moral and spiritual thoughts contained
in various religions. There is a very thin dividing line between imparting of ‘religious
instruction’ and ‘study of religions’. Special care has to be taken of avoiding the

135
Navaratna S. Rajaram, “Tortured souls create twisted History”.
136
Ram Swarup, “Historians versus History”, in Indian Express, (Jan. 15, 1989).
137
(2003 – supra)

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possibility of imparting ‘religious instruction’ in the name of ‘religious education’ or
‘study of religions’. Thus, there is a difference between state institutions imparting
education about religion and teaching or propagating a religious point of view.
Niharika Sankrityayan.

46