Mughal history whitewashed in textbooks, educationists tell House panel
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Not enough space for Vedic history, they say.
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Not enough space for Vedic history, they say.
At its meeting on textbook reforms on Wednesday, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education heard presentations from right-wing organisations and educationists, including the man at the centre of a debate on the “saffronisation” of textbooks under the Vajpayee government. They argued that Mughal history is being whitewashed in Indian textbooks, and crowding out space for history from the Vedic era.
The panel’s agenda for the meeting was to remove “references to un-historical facts and distortions about our national heroes”, to ensure “equal or proportionate references to all periods of Indian history” and to highlight the role of great women in Indian history.
Parliamentary panel spars over history textbooks
January 13, 2021
Opposition objects to RSS-backed outfit suggesting changes in textbooks A meeting of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education on Wednesday witnessed heated debate between the Opposition and the ruling coalition members over the agenda of “removing references to unhistorical facts and distortions about national heroes from text books”. The argument started over the presence of members from Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal (BSM), an RSS-affiliated organisation of teachers, in the meeting.
The representatives of the BSM made a presentation before the panel that history should be taught as a continuum and the divisions like ancient, medieval and modern are not sustainable parameters. “They started by supporting inclusiveness and its importance in education. They wanted mythological texts to be considered as history, which we opposed. We questioned their presence and their