The Indian government heavily overhauled secondary school curricula, removing significant parts of the country’s Mughal and Muslim history, which spanned around six centuries. A reform decried by historians.
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The Indian Council for Education says it wants to lighten school books, in order to facilitate the educational recovery after the Covid-19. But the cut seems selective: violent acts committed by Hindus affiliated with the ruling party, such as the assassination of Gandhi in the 1940s, or the anti-Muslim pogroms of 2002, are watered down. Above all, a whole part of Mughal and Muslim history, which spans several centuries, is erased.
For historians, this is obscurantism, because the medieval period of the Mughals is considered the cultural Renaissance of India, during which architectural marvels like the Taj Mahal were built, and the syncretism specific to India was established, to form this religious broth which makes up the country of today.
This is not the first time that the government has attacked the Mughals
Hindu nationalists have always viscerally rejected this Muslim heritage: in recent years, they have changed the names of a dozen cities and regions with Muslim names, then destroyed a mosque built by the Mughals to build a Hindu temple there. For them, India is a Hindu land, and the reign of these Muslim emperors represents a period of “slavery” to be erased, to use the words of the Prime Minister.
This overhaul of textbooks is therefore part of a broader political project of Hinduization of Indian society, and the growing marginalization of all that is Muslim, in the past but also in the present, by the destruction of their homes, businesses or their mosques. Hindus now openly call for the genocide of Muslims, without any arrests or convictions from the ruling party.
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