The History and Politics of Rewriting History

The Law and Society Committee (LawSoc) in collaboration with Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative organised an online discussion with leading historians on “The History and Politics of Rewriting History” in the backdrop of the recent removal of chapters on Mughal history from the Class 12 history syllabus.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), an autonomous organization set up by the Government of India; responsible for designing school curricula and textbooks, is again at the centre of a new controversy. The NCERT has recently introduced a new textbook for History with ‘rationalised content’ for higher secondary students. They have dropped the chapters on the Mughals for Class XII and various other cuts, with the logic of "reducing the content load on students, in view of COVID-19". The move of erasing Mughal history from the syllabus attracted severe criticism from various factions of the academic and political arena. During the session, some of India’s leading historians will discuss the impact of rewriting history and how historians react to such changes.

About the Speakers: -

1. Prof. Aditya Mukherjee was formerly a Professor of Contemporary Indian History at the Centre for Historical Studies and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He was educated at St. Stephen’s College and JNU. He is the editor of the ‘Sage Series in Modern Indian History’ published by SAGE publications, (fifteen monographs already published) and was editor of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (2009-11). He specializes in Economic History, particularly business history and the political economy of post-colonial India. While he has conducted seminars and delivered lectures around the world, he has also published extensively on the Indian Independence Movement.

2. Prof. Mridula Mukherjee is an Indian historian known for her work on the role of peasants in the Indian independence movement. She was the ex-chairperson of the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and former director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She has published widely in the areas of agrarian history, peasant movements, social movements and the Indian national movement. Her publications include India’s Struggle for Independence (1999) and India After Independence 1947–2000 (2000), both co-authored.

3. Dr. Pankaj K. Jha has taught history at a number of colleges, including RLA College, Ramjas College and St. Stephen's College. Jha is among a handful of scholars in the world who work with Sanskrit and vernacular sources as well as Persian texts to study medieval South Asian history. He has an abiding interest in researching the literary cultures of the long fifteenth century in north India. Other areas of his interest include Relations of Servility in South Asia, Medieval Sufi Beliefs and Practices, Philosophies of History, and Hindi Cinema of the post-independence period. He is presently working as an Associate Professor in the Department of History at LSR College for Women, University of Delhi. His publications include A Political History of Literature: Vidyapati and the Fifteenth Century (2019).

4. Sohail Hashmi is a social activist, heritage conservationist, historian, founder of the ‘Delhi Heritage Walks’ and author of the book 'Sanchi: Where Tigers Fly and Lions Have Horns' which forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of India Series.