New Maharashtra Textbooks Axe Mughal History to Focus on Shivaji

Not just Akbar or the Mughals, the new textbook finds little to no mention of other Muslim rulers.

A posthumous portrait of Mughal Emperor Akbar.

(Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)

The Maharashtra education board, in its revised textbooks for classes VII and IX, seems to have done away with all traces of Mughal rule in India and instead chooses to focus on Shivaji's Maratha empire.

The textbook, according to a Mumbai Mirror report, describes Akbar's rule as one trying to "bring India under a central authority”. It adds that Akbar's endeavors were challenged by Maharana Pratap.

Not just Akbar, the new textbook finds little to no mention of other Muslim rulers. Razia Sultana – the first woman to rule Delhi – remains conspicuously absent, as do Sher Shah Suri, Muhammad bin Tughlaq and others.

While the history textbooks make no mention of 'rupiya', the currency first introduced into the subcontinent by the Afghans, it doesn't fail to mention the Bofors scam and the Emergency, reports Mumbai Mirror.

The syllabus was reportedly revised after a meeting at Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini – an RSS-endorsed think-tank – led by Maharashtra education minister Vinod Tawde.

Sadanand More, chairman of the history subject committee of the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research, justified the move as one in favour of the students.

We have looked at history from a Maharashtra-centric point of view. Even if it is the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughal rule and the medieval history of India, we have kept Maharashtra at the centre. It is a natural course as we are from Maharashtra. What’s wrong in that? In fact the central board books have very little about our state.

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