Around the autumn of 2016, news-reports had come in that the then Right Wing government in Rajasthan plans to remove the particular chapter on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, from the school text books. Also, news reports had come in that students in Rajasthan were to be taught incorrect and twisted versions of historical facts: Maharana Pratap defeated the army of Mughal Emperor Akbar in the Battle of Haldighati some 450 years ago. This is incorrect as historical evidence shows that Maharana Pratap, ruler of the Mewar region, had fled the battlefield, although in the later years he continued his guerilla war against the Mughals… Also, the then BJP-led government in Rajasthan had even renamed the Ajmer Fort — from Akbar Ka Qila to ‘Ajmer ka Qila and Sangrahalaya’.
No expert committee of historians and academics was involved in the decision. Just by the order of the then Rajasthan education minister, Vasudev Devnani, the name of this historical fort was changed. Mind you, this fort built by Akbar in 1570 was left untouched even during the rule of the Rathors, Marathas and the British. The original name of the Ajmer Fort was legally sanctioned by a Gazette notification in December, 1968. It was named as ‘Akbar ka Qila’ or ‘Daulat Khana’ and this name continued till, of course, Right-Wing came centre stage. In fact, the very apparent dislike for the Mughals of the then Right-Wing government in Rajasthan, can be judged from the fact that not just the very title ‘Great’ was removed from Mughal Emperor Akbar’s name, but the relevant focus on him was also removed from the text books taught in the state of Rajasthan.
Also, the Maharashtra government under the earlier BJP rule had almost near-defaced the names of Muslim rulers from its history text books. There were plans to omit from the text books, vital details to the Delhi Sultanate and the Suri Empire in India, without realizing that without those, the very history of India would be incomplete. Perhaps half-history if nothing else!
And the RSS’s intrusion into the education sphere was more than apparent, when the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, headed by Dina Nath Batra, had sent a list of recommendations to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) demanding a host of changes in its textbooks. Batra asked the NCERT to remove English, Urdu, and Arabic words, a poem by the revolutionary poet Pash and a couplet by Mirza Ghalib, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore, extracts from painter MF Husain’s autobiography.