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NCERT Book Controversy: In a new controversy related to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) school textbook, Twitter users are condemning the text claiming that Mughal rulers had helped build and maintain temples. An RTI was filed seeking evidence for the claim made in the textbook in which it has asked the source of the claim published in the textbook. As per the widely shared RTI response circulated in Twitter, NCERT said it has no evidence to prove that Mughal emperors had rebuilt temples destroyed in wars, even when it claims the same in its history textbook.
One of the Tweets said, “This is the biggest fraud with our country unearthed.” However, users are not sure about who to hold responsible, with some believing that NCERT is to be hold responsible. Some netizens are pointing at political parties – both the UPA and the NDA.
On the other hand, historian Audrey Truschke has recently conceded to this claim adding fuel to the controversy. “Aurangzeb protected more Hindu temples than he destroyed. He employed more Hindus in his imperial administration than any prior Mughal ruler by a fair margin,” said the author in an Indian Express interview.
Take a look at the tweets flooding the microblogging sites:
“Can’t expect better from a historian whose primary source is Wikipedia. Don’t throw Western terminological concoctions like ancient, medieval, pre-modern, modern, post-modern which have no relevance to the Orient. Issue is not Aurangzeb’s temporality but his genocidal bigotry,” tweeted former IPS officer M Nageswara Rao. Most users followed up with the NCERT RTI response to back up their comments.
Meanwhile deposing before a Parliamentary Standing Committee earlier this week, the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas (SSUN) flagged “distortions” in NCERT’s school textbooks, which included a chapter on late artist MF Husain in the Class 11 Hindi textbook and references to Mughal rulers giving grants to support the building and maintenance of places of worship in a Class 12 History textbook, as per Indian Express report.
The committee is expected to meet again in a week to hear further depositions. “The committee had sought feedback on the topic on social media. It was through this exercise that some organizations requested to be heard in person,” said a source on the invitation extended to SSUN and BSM.
