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https://theprint.in/india/historians-demand-deletions-in-ncert-textbooks-be-withdrawn-ask-why-they-were-not-consulted/1505755/
I'm keen to know is who from the NLU/Jindal community (alumni/ or profs) have signed the letter. I'm certain there must be quite a few among the 250! Also, will this have any impact on first year courses in law schools? Will BCI give a similar revision? Or will there be demands by others?
Meanwhile, it's become very divisive. On India Today Rajdeep Sardesai and Gaurav Sawant had a fight (below). Sawant says Mughal history must be included, but only to highlight atrocities by Islamic rulers against Hindus and Sikhs. Sardesai says highlight Din-I-Illahi also.
https://twitter.com/IndiaToday/status/1644332578269286402
Full list: http://www.sacw.net/article15166.html
There is a Jindal prof in the list (an American) though he is a non-law professor from their liberal arts school https://jgu.edu.in/jsll/prof-dr-denys-p-leighton/
It's very unfortunate that NLUs are missing from this. Out of fear?
On modern India, I think too much emphasis is given to Gandhi and Nehru, at the expense of Netaji, Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Khudiram Bose etc. The impression is that India won freedom only through pacifism and hunger strikes. This is not true. In fact, Netaji thrashed the Nehru-Gandhi candidate at the Congress election and had huge popular support, much more than Nehru.
Honestly, what is wrong with what the government is doing? The historians who are protesting have all been openly aligned with the Congress and Left.
You don’t understand what the government is doing wrong because you don’t know history.
Did the Mughals commit atrocities ? Yes. Were they motivated by religion? More often than not - no. They were motivated by power and empire building. They had just as many instances where they had happy alliances with Hindu kings as wars with Hindu kings. They had just as many instances of building temples and punishing soldiers who rampaged villages as they did instance of destroying temples. History is complicated. The Mughals built an empire not just through conquest but also - treaty and friendships.
Should we be teaching the history of the southern / eastern India more ? Yeah likely. But adding that does not need to mean reducing the Mughal history.
The reason Gandhi and Nehru are taught far more than Bose or whoever - is because Gandhi and Nehru were simply more popular than any one else. It’s incontestable. Subhash chandra Bose wouldn’t have been able to win elections in india for decades after independence. Most people in large parts pof the country felt no affinity for him. Maybe many people didn’t feel affinity for Nehru or Gandhi either. But Nehru and Gandhi made political friends and allies with regional leaders, something Bose didn’t. Big things like independence are achieved through collaboration between many kinds of actors. Besides it’s probably just as true that England couldn’t afford the colonies as big as India in the aftermath of world war 2. And if you teach Bose you have to teach the Nazi stuff.
The school history curriculum isn’t great - it has been cannibalised over the years to accommodate political interests. Our students don’t learn how to think historically or understand historical information meaningfully. This latest attempt to skew it even more is a difference in kind not in degree.