Mumbai: Actress Aishwarya Lekshmi, together with actors Vikram and Karthi, who starred within the interval movie ‘Ponniyin Selvan: 2’ that was launched in theatres on Friday, share the idea that our schooling system has been unfair to the indigenous empires or dynasties of India. They really feel that these empires or dynasties haven’t been given their due recognition in our instructional curriculum.

Recently, the removing of references to the Mughal dynasty from coursebooks in Uttar Pradesh sparked controversy and debate round what ought to be included in educational historical past.

Compared to the dynasties that arrived in India as a part of conquest, the indigenous empires of India have little or no point out in school-level historical past books.

During an interview, Aishwarya Lekshmi mentioned, “From what I know, there has been some level of unfairness towards the indigenous empires of India. It would take a lot of research to obtain even a little bit of information about them in that direction. Kalki’s novel ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ (on which the Mani Ratnam magnum opus is based) is actually a window to the 10th century of southern India, how progressive we were at that time, and how much chasing westernisation led us to go back in time.”

Actor Vikram agreed with Aishwarya, as he feels that Indian society was fairly progressive again then for its time. He mentioned, “At that time, America wasn’t even discovered, and we had thriving societies under different empires.”

Karthi, who performs Vallavaraiyan within the movie, mentioned, “Only when the British arrived did they begin to do extensive research and document history. I’m sure a history student would know a lot more about each dynasty as per their specialization. However, for school-level history, a proper panel of intellectuals should sit and decide what should be included in the course material to give a holistic view.”
(With IANS inputs)