Latest news with #Baburnama
The Hindu
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
Michel Danino: Mughal period saw violence, Britain not recognised suffering inflicted on colonies
In an interview with The Hindu, Michel Danino, Professor at IIT Gandhinagar (Archaeological Sciences) and Head of Curricular Area Group for Social Science textbooks, which works in collaboration with National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) sheds light on the process of designing new textbooks for Class 6, 7 and 8, comments on controversy around Mughals being portrayed as 'brutal,' and addresses the issue of India's 'wealth drain,' during the colonial era. Mr. Danino says, 'Several surveys have pointed to the fact that social science at one hand and mathematics and another for different reasons, obviously have been among the most disliked disciplines.' He adds, 'We wanted to try to break that jinx… so we have been juggling with the syllabus quite a lot. And we are fairly satisfied that we have managed to reduce the information load without sacrificing the essentials of what we would like students to remember.' On the point of highlighting 'brutality,' of the Mughals, Mr. Danino said that the textbooks speak of 'brutality,' and 'tolerance.' 'It is a fact that this is a period which sees a lot of violence. We have been very moderate because if you look at the entire literature, I am talking about primary sources now, especially Muslim texts, whether it is Baburnama or Akbarnama there is absolutely no doubt that these conquests were very violent.' 'Especially in the initial stages, by the way, this violence was not limited to India. If you see how the Turkic, Mughal, the Afghan powers, warred against each other, in the Indian subcontinent as well as in Central Asia, sometimes in Persia, sometimes in other places beyond. The same violence is a kind of recurring motive. So what we are saying is simply that this has to be acknowledged as a fact of history.' On the disclaimer inserted before the History section in the textbook titled 'A note on history's darker periods,' Mr. Danino said, 'It was more of a preparatory note for the student who suddenly would be exposed to unpleasant events of the past.' Mr. Danino further said while commenting on 'drain of wealth,' from India during colonial era rule said, 'I feel that Britain has not recognised sufficiently the tremendous amount of suffering that it inflicted, not only in India in in most of its colonies. I will not discuss the question of reparation, which is a separate question, but at least an honest admission of guilt.'
Indian Express
7 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Amid debate over syllabus change, DU's History dept head quits, cites medical reasons
Amid debates over syllabus changes in Delhi University's (DU) History Department, its head, Professor Shalini Shah, has resigned citing medical reasons. This comes days before the new academic session is set to begin at DU and before the university steps into its fourth-year for the first time under the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. The university on Tuesday announced that the Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences, Professor Sanjoy Roy, will take over the History department's charge for two months starting July 22. Speaking to The Indian Express on Wednesday, Shah said, 'I am unwell. I resigned on medical grounds.' The History Department has been navigating contentious syllabus negotiations as well as allegations of procedural violations in PhD admissions over the past few months. The friction over syllabus changes has deepened in the wake of DU's shift to the FYUP (Four-Year Undergraduate Programme) under NEP. History faculty members have alleged that the syllabus reforms required for the new structure were met with resistance at higher levels, and that courses approved at the departmental level were frequently delayed, altered, or blocked when they reached academic and executive councils. In March, The Indian Express had reported that Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh was opposed to the inclusion of Manusmriti and Tuzuk-i-Baburi (Baburnama) in the revised History (Honours) syllabus (undergraduate). Manusmriti was dropped from the syllabus. A senior faculty member in the department said, 'It has become difficult to clear courses and modifications. Many long-standing papers, taught by the faculty for decades, were either modified or not cleared at all for teaching. Often, there was no meaningful discussion about these in the statutory bodies.' Shah, however, said her concerns were personal. 'I was advised to get some tests done even before this whole thing started. As HOD, I had no time, so I had no choice but to resign to take care of myself,' she said. Concern over the resignation has been compounded by DU's decision to assign charge of the department to the Dean (Social Sciences), rather than the next senior-most professor in the History department. 'They should have given the responsibility, even if temporarily, to the next seniormost faculty member within the department,' said a professor. 'This is a rare case… It sends a message that the administration is not willing to trust or empower the department's own leadership.' V-C Yogesh Singh, however, said the resignation was not related to the syllabus revamp. 'There was no issue or any pressure… or anything related to the syllabus revamp. We, in fact, tried to convince Professor Shah to stay on until October so that she could take a call in a more stabilised environment once the new session began. But she cited health reasons and requested that she be allowed to step down.' On why the department's charge was given to the Dean (Social Sciences), Singh acknowledged that the move was 'unusual'. He, however, added, 'There was a paucity of time. Since the head resigned immediately, we needed some time to figure out who to appoint. Giving the charge to the dean seemed like the best move. If it had been given to a faculty member on a temporary basis, it could have hurt the member's emotions if he or she is not chosen as the permanent head later. Since it is easier to transfer the charge from the dean to another faculty member, I had suggested that the Dean of Social Sciences take over for the time being.' 'An effort will definitely be made to appoint a permanent HOD in the next two months,' Dean Sanjoy Roy said.
Time of India
17-07-2025
- General
- Time of India
NCERT calls Babur brutal: What history's shifting lens reveals about the Mughal emperor
NCERT describes Babur as 'brutal' If history had a Twitter bio, Babur's might read: Brutal conqueror. Poet. Exile. Book hoarder. Empire starter. Occasional librarian. In a move that has sparked more than just academic curiosity, the NCERT's new Class 8 Social Science textbook Exploring Society: India and Beyond introduces young minds to Babur not as a romanticised founder of an empire, but as a 'brutal and ruthless conqueror, slaughtering entire populations of cities.' His successors don't escape the editorial scalpel either: Akbar is presented as 'a blend of brutality and tolerance,' while Aurangzeb is noted for destroying temples and gurdwaras. For all the clamour around revisionism, the real story lies in how Babur has been portrayed over time—sometimes with awe, sometimes with apology, and often with discomfort. From the candour of Baburnama to the cold calculations of colonial chroniclers, and from nationalist historians to modern reinterpreters, Babur's historical image has been as mercurial as a Timurid prince wandering between exile and empire. Let's take a closer look at how history has handled Babur—warts, wisdom and war crimes included—and what this evolving portrayal means for the students now reading him in their first brush with Indian history. Baburnama: The brutally honest autobiography To understand Babur, one must begin with Baburnama (or Tuzuk-i-Baburi ), the emperor's own diary, written in Chaghatai Turkish and later translated into English by Annette Susannah Beveridge in 1922. It's often celebrated as one of the most brutally honest autobiographies in global literature—part military log, part poetry anthology, part confessional. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Sore Knees? These Foods Could Be Your Natural Solution Undo In his account of the 1519 Bajaur massacre, Babur wrote: 'As the Bajauris were rebels and at enmity with the people of Islam… they were put to general massacre… At a guess more than 3,000 men went to their death.' He didn't just stop there. The bodies were used to construct macabre monuments: 'On the walls, in houses, streets and alleys, the dead lay… We ordered that a tower of heads should be set up on the rising-ground.' But Baburnama also reveals an aesthete who loved gardens, books, and libraries, often raiding enemy libraries after conquests. The paradox is potent: a man who beheaded enemies by day and rearranged bookshelves by night. Colonial historians: Brutality as backdrop for British civility British historians like Lane-Poole and Smith emphasized Babur's role as a foundational figure while highlighting his brutal ancestry, often to justify British rule. The Imperial Filter: Stanley Lane-Poole's Dual Lens In Rulers of India: Babar and History of India, From the Reign of Akbar the Great to the Fall of the Moghul Empire , Stanley Lane-Poole (1854–1931) offered Babur a reluctant salute. He called him 'a soldier of fortune and not an architect of empire,' subtly denying him the title of empire-builder while grudgingly admitting he 'laid the first stone of the splendid fabric that his grandson Akbar achieved.' Lane-Poole, ever the Orientalist diplomat, cast Babur not as a destroyer but as a bridge—a connector of worlds. 'Babar serves as a crucial link between Central Asia and India, predatory hordes and imperial government, and Tamerlane and Akbar,' he wrote. Babur, in this version, is less a brute and more a hinge in history, though one still slightly untrustworthy. Vincent Arthur Smith: Lineage, Liquor, and the Lurid Legacy If Lane-Poole offered reluctant praise, Vincent Arthur Smith (1848–1920) came wielding a colonial cold shower. In Akbar the Great Mogul, 1542–1605 , he scoured Babur's bloodline and found only vice. 'Akbar's ancestors like Babar and Humayun were barbarous and vicious... Intemperance was the besetting sin of the Timuroid royal family... Babur (was) an elegant toper... Humayun, the son of Babar, was even more degenerate and cruel than his father.' If you can smell both the Victorian disapproval of alcohol and a fascination with dynastic decay, you're not wrong. Smith painted Babur less as a visionary ruler and more as a functional alcoholic in an inherited spiral of savagery—a sort of imperial soap opera with swords. For Smith, Babur's worth was best understood through the blood-soaked mirror of Timur and Genghis Khan. The sword may have been sharp, but so was the ancestral hangover. William Erskine: The historian as humaniser Enter William Erskine (1773–1852), a man who read Babur more closely than perhaps Babur read his own fate. In A History of India under the two first sovereigns of the house of Taimur, Báber and Humáyun (1854), Erskine built a more nuanced portrait. Having translated Babur's Tuzuk-i-Baburi into English as early as 1826, Erskine's Babur is less beast and more bard. He focused on Babur the Timurid prince—strategist, memoirist, nature lover. Here was a man who recorded the scent of melons and the feel of battlefields with equal literary grace. Erskine's approach was methodical, empathetic, and archival. He dug deep into Persian manuscripts and resisted the impulse to reduce Babur to a stereotype. In an era when brutality sold books, Erskine chose balance—a historian before his time. Elliot and Dowson: The imperial comparison set No imperial historical survey is complete without a bit of moral contrast. Henry Miers Elliot and John Dowson provided exactly that in their colossal eight-volume The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period (1867–1877). Their project was ambitious but not innocent. The explicit aim? To demonstrate 'the immense advantages accruing to [Indians] under the mildness and equity of [British] rule' as opposed to the so-called tyranny of earlier Muslim rulers. The duo collated Persian chronicles and battle records, often allowing the documentation of Babur's violence to speak for itself. Early Indian historians: A calculated distance Indian historians like Sarkar and Majumdar focused more on military strategy and administrative capability. Jadunath Sarkar: The military strategist Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958), knighted for his historical contributions and often lauded as 'the greatest Indian historian of his time,' was less interested in moral judgments and more in the mechanics of conquest. In works like History of Aurangzib and Military History of India , Sarkar treated Babur's campaigns with the cool detachment of a war strategist reviewing a chessboard. To Sarkar, Babur wasn't simply a conqueror—he was a tactician who outmanoeuvred larger Indian armies with superior artillery, mobility, and battlefield positioning. It wasn't just blood that secured the throne—it was brains, and lots of logistical foresight. R.C. Majumdar: The balanced chronicler If Sarkar was the tactician, R.C. Majumdar was the careful referee of historical contradictions. Majumdar's accounts resist simplistic binaries. His Babur was not just a warrior but also a man occasionally capable of restraint—though only when it didn't get in the way of empire-building. Majumdar doesn't erase Babur's violent streak—far from it. He acknowledges the blood spilled, the heads piled, and the strategy often wrapped in slaughter. But he also refuses to flatten Babur into a caricature of cruelty. Violence, Majumdar suggests, was not impulse—it was often calculus. Contemporary historians: Modern reassessments Modern historians show remarkable diversity—from Dalrymple's cultural humanist approach to Maldahiyar's harsh revisionist critique. William Dalrymple : The Cultural Humanist In his 2020 introduction to The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur , William Dalrymple doesn't so much chronicle Babur as he curates his contradictions. Dalrymple's Babur is the thinking man's warrior—the literary sovereign who composed verses even as he conquered cities. Describing The Baburnama as 'one of the greatest memoirs in any language and of any age,' Dalrymple reframes the text not merely as royal autobiography but as an archive of shared humanity—'a testament to humanity in which the personal becomes universal. ' This Babur was a connoisseur of beauty, addicted to books, and, amusingly enough, something of a bibliophilic bandit. 'His first act after a conquest,' writes Dalrymple, 'was to go to the library of his opponent and raid its shelves.' Imagine Alexander with a Kindle. Dalrymple's tone is reverent, but it also invites modern readers to ask: Can a man write immortal prose and still stain his legacy with imperial ambition? According to Dalrymple, yes—and that's precisely the point. Stephen Frederic Dale: The psychological biographer In Babur: Timurid Prince and Mughal Emperor, 1483–1530 (2018), Stephen Frederic Dale doesn't just look at Babur—he peers into him. This is less history than biography with a pulse. Dale's Babur is not an icon but a haunted émigré—a man carting the trauma of displacement across continents. He paints a poignant psychological portrait: Babur 'suffered the regretful anguish of an exile who felt himself to be a stranger in a strange land.' This is no conqueror reveling in plunder, but an uprooted soul trying to transplant a Central Asian dream into Indian soil. Abraham Eraly: The political realist Then comes Abraham Eraly with his sharp political scalpel, slicing through the romantic haze. In The Mughal World: Life in India's Last Golden Age , Eraly does not flinch. Babur, he argues, was not merely a tactician or a poet-in-armour—he was a man possessed by what Eraly calls 'ruthless machinations and brutal lust for power.' This is an empire as a crime scene. Eraly's Babur is neither nostalgic nor noble; he's hungry, strategic, and stunningly effective at dismembering opposition. Aabhas Maldahiyar: The revisionist critic If Eraly is blunt, Aabhas Maldahiyar is positively unfiltered. In Babur: The Chessboard King (2024), Maldahiyar doesn't bother with psychological nuance or poetic redemption. He opens with fire—and never lets up. To Maldahiyar, Babur is not just flawed; he is catastrophically unfit. 'A savage, weakened ruler,' he calls him. 'A dreadful administrator, an unwise economist, and a disastrous military commander.' There is no room for ambiguity here—Babur is not just history's anti-hero, but a cautionary tale. Between the textbook and the truth So where does that leave us—and our Class 8 students? NCERT's move to describe Babur as 'brutal and ruthless' isn't unfounded. But neither is the portrayal complete. Historical figures, especially those who built empires on bones and verses, deserve neither hagiography nor cancellation. They require context—nuance, if you will. Babur was a conqueror who wrote like a monk, a killer who composed couplets. Whether students are ready for that complexity is not just a curricular question, but a philosophical one. Perhaps the best way to teach Babur is to let students read his Baburnama , and decide for themselves whether he was a poet in armour—or a warlord with a bookshelf. Because in the end, the question isn't whether Babur was brutal. It's whether we're brave enough to teach the truth in full. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
The Hindu
15-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Not demonising Mughal rulers in textbooks: NCERT social science panel head
The history section of the newly introduced Class 8 social science textbook by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for students in the current 2025-26 academic year portrays Mughal rulers, especially Babur, Akbar, and Aurangzeb, as 'intellectuals' who also 'plundered' the Indian population. The second chapter of the textbook, titled 'Reshaping India's Political Map in Theme B - Tapestry of the Past' includes references from the Baburnama, Babur's autobiography, and describes him as cultured, intellectually curious, and having a keen appreciation of architecture, poetry, flora, and fauna. The textbook also goes on to say that Babur was a ruthless conqueror, slaughtering populations, enslaving women and children, and taking pride in erecting 'towers of skulls' in plundered cities. Akbar's reign is described as a blend of 'brutality and tolerance', and that during the seizure of the Chittor fort, Akbar, then 25 years old, ordered the massacre of 30,000 civilians, and the enslavement of women and children, the new textbook states. Akbar's message is also quote in the textbook: 'We have succeeded in occupying a number of forts and towns belonging to infidels and have established Islam there. With the help of our bloodthirsty sword, we have erased signs of infidelity from their minds and have destroyed temples in those places and also all over Hindustan.' The textbook says Akbar leaned towards peace in the later years of his reign. The new textbook also states that Aurangzeb issued farmans or edicts to demolish schools and temples. 'Temples at Banaras, Mathura, Somnath among many others were destroyed, as well as Jain temples and Sikh gurdwaras,' the new textbook says. It also speaks of the persecution of Sufis and Zoroastrians at the hands of the Mughals. Babur, Akbar, and Aurangzeb have not been described in such detail in the older NCERT textbook's chapter on the Mughals, which appeared in the Class 7 History book ('Our Pasts II'). 'Indian history cannot be cannot sanitised and presented as a smooth, happy development throughout. There were bright periods but also dark periods where people suffered, so we have given note on the darker chapters of history, and also given a disclaimer that no one today should be regarded as responsible for whatever happened in the past,' Michel Danino, Head, NCERT's Curricular Area Group for Social Science, told The Hindu. 'You cannot understand them (the Mughal emperors) unless you go into the complexities of their personalities. Akbar himself admits he was brutal in his younger days. We are not demonising Akbar or Aurangzeb, but we have to show these rulers had their limitations and committed cruel deeds,' Mr. Danino said. Because Part One of the earlier released new Class 7 Social Science textbook in April culminated in the pre-Delhi Sultanate era of the 6th century, there was an element of uncertainty on how the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal era would find their place in the newly revamped textbooks. While earlier a Class 7 student would have learnt about the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal history, these sections have now been shifted to the first part of the newly released Class 8 textbooks, available in bookstores mid-July onward. The first part of the new Class 8 Social Science textbook, which has combined History, Geography, Civics, and Economics into one title, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, will serve as a resource for the first six months of the academic year for Class 8, NCERT officials clarified. 'Part Two textbooks for both Classes 7 and 8 for Social Science will be released in October later this year. Part Two textbooks are currently under development,' officials said. The new Class 8 textbook also has a section on heroic resistance to the Mughals, including on the Jat peasants who managed to kill a Mughal officer; the Bhil, Gond, Santhal and Koch tribal communities, who fought to protect their territories; and Rani Durgavati of one of the Gond kingdoms, who fought against Akbar's army. Sections have also been added on the escape of Mewar's ruler Maharana Pratap, and the resistance of the Ahoms to Aurangzeb's army in northeastern India.
Time of India
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
HC Sambhal order a historic step: MLA
Lucknow: Welcoming Allahabad high court 's decision allowing the ASI survey of the Jama Masjid in Sambhal, BJP's Sarojininagar MLA Rajeshwar Singh called it a historic step towards restoring India's cultural identity and Sanatan values. "This is not merely a survey—it is the reawakening of our faith and identity," he said. Singh emphasised that Sambhal is a sacred land deeply rooted in Sanatan Dharma, with references in scriptures like the Skanda Purana as the future birthplace of Lord Kalki. He highlighted Sambhal's glorious past, from the reign of the Panchal kings and Emperor Ashoka to its political significance under Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan and Mughal rule. He said the 1529 demolition of the Harihar Mandir, reportedly replaced by a mosque on Babur's orders, is documented in the Baburnama and Ain-i-Akbari. Singh also recalled the 1978 communal violence that led to over 180 Hindu deaths and a sharp demographic shift. The recent reopening of an ancient Shiva temple after 46 years, he said, marks the symbolic return of Sanatan spirit. Singh hailed the high court's stand as bold and truthful, stating that it has reaffirmed the nation's spiritual and cultural consciousness.
