Contested Approaches to the Past and Its Significance in Twenty-First-Century India

Abstract

The recent attempt to exclude large portions of India’s past, including figures like Akbar and Abul Kalam Azad from the History syllabus without following any due process of wide academic consultation is unacceptable. The historians they invoke, such as R.C. Majumdar, show by their own writing that they would have never countenanced such misrepresentation of Indian history. The omission of Akbar and his policy of tolerance (ṣulḥ-i kul) from the syllabus, deprives Indian students of learning about the position that India occupied in the world at the time.