Indian History Congress expresses concern over revised NCERT books

Aligarh: The Indian History Congress (IHC) has expressed its deep concern over the recent move of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to bring changes in history textbooks and syllabus.

In a statement issued on Monday, IHC president Kesavan Veluthat and secretary professor Nadeem Ali Rezavi said that all those scholars who value "rational scientific knowledge" have found this approach as flawed and unacceptable.

The decision to completely omit the narrative of the Mughal dynasty would deprive the modern generation of knowledge of an era which gave India political unity, it said.

It would also deprive this generation of understanding the significance of emperor Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and the cultural and intellectual developments which helped give birth to ideas of modern Indian society, the IHC statement said.

It said that it was a pointer to the prevailing policy that "even the narrative pertaining to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi has been trifled with".

The statement comes in the wake of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) dropping certain portions from the syllabus including lessons on Mughal courts from its class 12 textbooks, citing "overlapping" and "irrelevant" as reasons.

The IHC said that such a narrow communalistic approach to history was antithetical to the idea of any modern progressive society of this age.