The Indian authorities has been accused of rewriting historical past to suit its Hindu nationalist agenda after faculty textbooks had been edited to take away references to Mahatma Gandhi’s opposition to Hindu nationalism, in addition to point out of a controversial non secular riot through which the prime minister, Narendra Modi, was implicated.

Textbooks had been additionally revised to take away chapters on the historical past of the Mughals, the Muslim rulers who managed a lot of India between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata celebration (BJP), which has pursued a Hindu nationalist agenda that has moved India away from its secular foundations, has been open about its need to rewrite the nation’s historical past and break free from what it describes because the “slave mentality” of colonial oppressors. “It is our responsibility to write our history,” mentioned the house affairs minister, Amit Shah, in a 2019 speech.

Since the BJP got here to energy in 2014, there have been a number of amendments to textbooks, with critics alleging a “saffronisation” of the curriculum in colleges and universities, a reference to the color favoured by Hindu nationalists.

In current years, references to the Mughals, whom Hindu nationalists think about to be Muslim oppressors, have been repeatedly eliminated or amended, whereas references to the hardline Hindu nationalist ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as a “most celebrated freedom fighter” and a “great patriot” have been added.

The new editions of political science and historical past textbooks printed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) drew controversy over the amendments, a few of which had been launched quietly and with out the same old public notifications.

Among the adjustments to the political science textbook for 17- and 18-year-olds was the removing of a reference to the detest Hindu nationalists had for Gandhi, India’s famed freedom fighter, and the way they made a number of makes an attempt to assassinate him.

Gandhi was killed by a Hindu nationalist, Nathuram Godse, in 1948. Gandhi continues to be reviled by some Hindu nationalists for his views on Hindu-Muslim unity, and for the reason that BJP got here to energy, there was a growing reverence among hardliners for Gandhi’s killer.

The amended textbooks softened point out of Godse and in addition eliminated reference to the ban confronted by the militant Hindu organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) after Gandhi’s assassination.

The BJP is seen because the political wing of the RSS and so they stay ideologically aligned. Several BJP leaders, together with Modi, had been members of the RSS.

According to scrutiny of the textbooks by the Indian Express newspaper, which revealed the amendments, a number of references to the Gujarat riots have additionally been purged from textbooks by NCERT.

The Gujarat riots, which happened in 2002, are a very delicate subject for Modi, who was chief minister of Gujarat on the time and was accused of being complicit within the violence, which concerned brutal assaults on Muslim households and the deaths of greater than 1,000 folks, principally Muslims. A BBC documentary exploring Modi’s position within the riots was not too long ago banned by the federal government.

After the current revisions, references to the riots have now gone from all social science textbooks for these aged between 11 and 18.

NCERT has additionally eliminated chapters referring to the Mughal courts from historical past books for 17- and 18-year-olds, below measures to “streamline” the curriculum and scale back the workload of scholars after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Historians and opposition politicians extensively condemned the textbook revisions. “You can change the truth in books but you cannot change the history of the country,” mentioned Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the opposition Congress celebration.

Aditya Mukherjee, a professor of latest Indian historical past at Jawaharlal Nehru University, mentioned the removing of Mughal historical past from the textbook was an try to “weaponise” and “erase” historical past to go well with the federal government’s political agenda. “Whenever we have witnessed erasure of a particular community from our history, it is usually followed by a genocide of the community,” Mukherjee instructed the information channel NDTV.

The NCERT chief, Dinesh Saklani, mentioned the adjustments shouldn’t be “blown out of proportion” and that every one adjustments had been made by an “expert panel”.

The BJP’s nationwide spokesperson, Gopal Krishna Agarwal, mentioned it was “not rewriting history” however as a substitute a option to rebalance the “biased approach” of some historians. The ministry of schooling didn’t reply to a request for remark.