Maharashtra Education Board removes 'Mughal empire' from textbooks, adds Shivaji, Maharana Pratap instead

The Maharashtra Education Board has almost removed all the traces of Mughal emperors from the history textbooks. This step has been taken after seeing Rajasthan University's history department move in June, wherein they mentioned in their book that emperor Akbar was defeated by Maharana Pratap.

In a way to revise the history textbooks of classes VIII and IX, the board has removed almost everything related to the Mughal rule and reduced their reign to just three lines, according to a Mumbai Mirror report. They have replaced the syllabus with that of the Maratha empire, which was founded by Shivaji.

From this year, the textbooks will teach the students that emperor Akbar tried to bring India under a central authority. Earlier, they were taught that he was liberal and tolerant administrator.

On the contrary, Shivaji will now be termed as an ideal ruler, who was earlier regarded as the people's king. Now, there will be a detailed history of Shivaji, his family, the Maratha generals and his role in the medieval history.

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Besides this, the class VII history book will not be having mention of Muslim rulers that ruled even before the Mughal era in India. Such leaders include Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Razia Sultana. Not only this, in the class IX textbook, the Bofors scam and the Emergency of 1975-1977 have replaced the history of 'rupaya', which was introduced by the Afghan invaders.

The counting doesn't end here. The period of Sher Shah Suri has also been omitted from the revised textbooks.

The need to revise the syllabus was felt in order to update history with modern events, Bapusaheb Shinde said, who is a member of the history subject committees for old and revised textbooks. Last year Shinde had said, “Mughal history has been reduced. Modern history needs to be incorporated," claimed Mumbai Mirror.

Condemning the move, a Pune-based independent researcher kishore Darak said “This is factually incorrect and reeks of political agenda.” On the other hand, Sadanand More, who is the chairman of the history subject committee of the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research praised the move. “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,” he said.

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