'Leftist historians are trying to distort history'
Press Trust of India
Kolkata, November 26
Former NCERT Chairman, JS Rajput, on Friday charged Leftist historians with trying to distort Indian history by deleting the glorious past of the country from school history books.
"It is the historians with Marxist leanings, who are distorting history and trying to delink the youths of the country from their heroes," Rajput said at a seminar on "We want Indo-centric, not Marxian Education".
Refuting the allegations by the leftists that NCERT in past few years has been communalising the country's history, the former NCERT Chairman said, "Inaccuracies in the history books were corrected. The NCERT books were criticised and misinterpreted with ulterior motive," he said.
He alleged that while the Marxist historians have questioned the existence of Ram or Krishna, citing lack of archaeological evidence, they have admitted the existence of leaders of "other religions without any such evidence."
He said education is not merely board examination, but values and respect for other culture and religion.
Meenaksi Jain, professor at Delhi University, said, "Decades of Congress rule led to distortion of history, which tried to portray Islamic rule in a friendly light with an eye to minority votes."
SK Sarkar, professor at Kalyani University, said the Indian Marxists have a "colonial hangover" and based their historical knowledge on books by British authors.
He said the Gupta age, termed as the 'golden era' of Indian civilisation, has "almost vanished from the newly revised history books, but Communism and Russian revolution have found prominent place."
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