Historian and Writer William Dalrymple has acknowledged that the Left-academicians and Nehruvian historians in the country had indeed hijacked History textbooks and turned it into propaganda soon after India attained its independence.
Speaking at the ‘Express Adda’ – a talk show organised by Indian Express in Delhi last week, writer Dalrymple said that it was true that the early Nehruvian textbooks were written by Romila Thapar and other ‘Marxists’. He also said that the Marxists presented a ” rose-tinted vision” of Hindu-Muslim unity running through the whole of the Delhi Sultanate right through the Mughals, which left room for the right-wing to state those books were not history.
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The host had asked Dalrymple about the eternal ‘right-wing’ grouse that post-independence academia was hijacked by the Left and that the academic part of managing India was ‘given’ to the Left-wing.
William Dalrymple further said that the history textbooks written especially in the 1950s left sufficient room for questioning their authenticity. He, however, claimed that it was a reality that all those Nehruvian historians were great historians which the right-wing successors were not.
When the host asked Dalrymple whether he means that the right-wing was justified in their grouse, Dalrymple said that history books written by Marxists did present a rose-tinted version of Hindu Muslim unity thereby leaving room for complaint by the right-wing.
William Dalrymple’s statements come at a time when there is a larger debate across the country regarding the credibility and integrity of these Marxist historians, who used ‘textbooks’ as their propaganda tool to indoctrinate their ideology among masses. It is now widely believed that Indian history we read is fabricated.
These history ‘textbooks’ have also been considered to be a handiwork of Nehruvian academicians and Marxist scholars who fear the revival of Hinduism in a largely Hindu country. However, lately, a movement has been gaining traction across the country seeking revisions of India’s history books.