By Sushil Kutty
Two stories hit the news cycle on July 16. Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya’s execution in Yemen, scheduled for July 16, has been postponed. And the newly released NCERT history book for Class 8 has nothing good to say about the ‘Delhi Sultanate’ and the ‘Mughal’. Both have a Muslim connection. But while one has a positive ring, the other casts a shadow with the caveat that today’s Muslims aren’t the same sort.
That said, Class 8 henceforth will be different from all previous Class 8. Trust the rightwing to do the “meddling” with a vengeance. Whether the earlier writing of history was the authentic version as opposed to the current rendition will not be resolved till another rendition is cobbled up.
The two sets of people charged with the two writings will fight tooth and nail. Two variant histories of the same people. Both with distinct and pronounced biases which betray themselves in the book.
For one group, the Muslim rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal were a mixed bunch of benevolent rulers and harsh and cruel monarchs. For the rightwing historians, the Sultanate and Mughal were all rulers who were ultimate rogues and killers.
The Class 8 NCERT ‘book-writing’ is the handiwork of the rightwing ecosystem, a byproduct of the coming of Modi, the outcome of 11 years of Modi rule backed by a strong foundation of nationalistic fervour and all of this coloured by a saffron brush that to some have left a taint and a stain on history.
Where does that put the Grand Mufti of India Sheikh Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliyar, but for whom Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya would have by now met her maker. The Grand Mufti’s intervention and Nimisha Priya has got another shot at surviving, even if a slim, slender and thin strand of chance.
The Grand Mufti of India doesn’t know Nimisha Priya’s family but he was told the fix she was in and he contacted fellow experts on Sharia in Yemen and convinced them to intervene, postpone the gallows for a while to work things out with the Yemen victim’s family. “There is a way in Muslim jurisprudence, another way, a humanitarian one,” he said later.
It worked, too. Very few Indians of other faiths had an inkling but Islam should not always be paired with inhumanity, as intolerance, harsh. and cruel. Only a fool will search Islam for a speck of mercy unless one knows Islamic jurisprudence. The Grand Mufti of India has more than an understanding.
Contrast this with what’s written in the NCERT’s new Class 8 history book and it’s the first social science book of the NCERT to introduce students to the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. The revised Class 8 history book is replete with instances of “religious intolerance”.
Exploring Society: Indian and Beyond’ describes Babur as a “brutal and ruthless conqueror, slaughtering entire populations of cities”. And Akbar’s reign as a “blend of brutality and tolerance”. As for Aurangzeb, he “destroyed temples and gurudwaras.”
And just so that some people didn’t object, NCERT put a disclaimer, under a para “Note on Some Darker Periods in History” that “no one should be held responsible today for events of the past”.
The book will be taught to Class 8 students from this new academic session in all schools where the NCERT curriculum is taught. This will be the first set of Class 8 students who will not be taught how great Babur and Akbar were and how much of a saint a Delhi Sultanate ruler used to be. The period between the 13th and the 18th century is already there in the Class 7 history book, but from this year on Class 8 students will learn about the Delhi Sultanate, Mughals, and the Marathas in one package deal.
The book talks of rise and fall of the Delhi Sultanate with the resistance to them, the Vijayanagara Empire, the Mughals and resistance to them, and the rise of the Sikhs.
The Sultanate period is described as one of political instability and military campaigns. When villages and cities were plundered and temples and “places of learning” were destroyed.
There are plenty of mentions of “attacks” on temples and the “brutality” of the rulers, the same rulers who were given clean chits in earlier Class 8 history books. “The events…(and many more) did happen and left their mark on Indian history; the rationale for including them has been explained in the ‘Note on Some Darker Periods in History’. The historical account given, while it does not sanitise history, is balanced and entirely evidence-based,” the book says at the end of one chapter.
But history has a way of leading to friction and more friction, especially at this time of Hindu-Muslim differences to the fore, there is something to cheer in the manner in which Grand Mufti Sheikh Kanthapuram AP Aboobacker Musliyar intervened and postponed the execution of Nimisha Priya in Yemen. The Grand Mufti has urged Yemeni authorities to hold discussions with the victim’s family to secure pardon for Nimisha Priya, saying “Islam has another law” and that he decided to “intervene with the conviction that it is a national responsibility to seek a humane resolution when an Indian citizen awaits execution in a foreign country.” (IPA Service)
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