Extracts from Textbooks in Gujarat/Maharashtra

I

In a chapter titled "Problems of the Country and Their Solutions', the Social Studies, Standard IX text of the Gujarat Board has a section with a sub-heading, Minority Community" ... It reads; "But apart from the Muslims, even the Christians, Parsees and other foreigners are also recognised as the minority communities. In most of the States the Hindus are in minority and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs are in majority in these respective states".

"The priests of the Catholic church had accumulated plenty of wealth through unjust taxes, illegal fees, ownership of large tracts of land, selling miracles and indulgences. They spent this money on worldly pleasures and immoral behaviour (SS. Std. IX).

"The Christian Church was a part and parcel of this integrated feudal system. Almost half of the land and other property belonged to the bishops or the heads of parishes. The Pope who was the head of the Roman Catholic Church was himself a big landlord. The Church received sumptuous gifts of land from the kings as well as the lords.

Thus the Church had amassed great wealth. The Pope, archbishop, bishops and other priests lost their heads, forgot their duties and lived a life of luxury and sensual pleasures" (SS, Std. X).

II

A recommended third year B.A. textbook for the students of history in Maharashtra. The chapter on Mahmud of Ghaznavi ... reads:

"The advent of Islam might have been a boon to the Arabs who got united under its banner, and were enthused by it to carry on conquests in Asia, Africa and Europe but it has been a curse for the people outside Arab world because wherever the Islamic hordes went, they not only conquered the countries, but killed millions of people plundered their homes and places of worship and destroyed their homes, places of worship and above all their artworks ..

The general Islamic belief that political power can be claimed by anyone who can wield power goes not only against the legality of inheritance to throne but encourages intrigues, plots rebellions and assassinations of father by his son, brother by his brother, ruler by his military commander or minister and above all master by his servant, nay, even by his slave.

There might have been some killings of such a type among the people of other religious faiths like the Hindus or Christians but those were exceptions while in the Islamic people these have occurred as a rule, not as exceptions". .

"The king of the Ghaznavides, Subuktagin, who started raids on India in the last decades of 10m century AD was a slave of Alptagin, who himself was a slave of Samanid ruler of Khorasan. So it is the slave of the slave who set in process, the Islamic invasion from 10t century AD." ...

"Why these atrocities? Because Islam teaches only atrocities. Have not Islamic invaders done so wherever they had gone, be that India or Africa or Europe? Mahmud returned to Ghazni with a large booty' The question, however, is how did such a text pass muster and how does it continue to be one of the recommended texts at the graduation level in Maharashtra. (Source: The Indian Currents, 8-14 September, 1999)

On Saffronisation of History

. The fear of growing national movement made the British rulers distort Indian history for school students. Not only dividing the history of India into Hindu, Muslim and British periods, British historians presented Indian society as based on two mutually opposed and irreconcilable entities, Hindus and Mushims. They also  stressed on the atrocities of Muslim rulers on Hindus and their destruction of Hindu temples and forcible conversion and marriage of Hindu women. The intention was to vindicate how tyrannical Muslim rulers were and how the Hindus got back the freedom to pursue their religious beliefs in the British rule. If the deliberate design of saffron brigade in falsifying history is allowed to continue; the integrity of the Indian nation would be in jeopardy once again. (Panchanan Saha's Letter in the Statesman, 3 December, 1999)