However, in an interview with NDTV, the top advisory body for Centre and state on school education, clarified that omitting ‘Kings and Chronicles’ and the ‘The Mughal Courts’ from Class-12 History textbook were done to help students. 

The NCERT stated that the movie included no ulterior political motive whatsoever. 

Dinesh Prasad Saklani, Director of NCERT, told NDTV, that students went through learning loss during the Covid pandemic. He further stated that in order for students to cope with the stress and trauma, and as a ‘responsibility to the society and nation’, NCERT felt ‘that the content load in textbooks should be reduced’. 

This comes as BJP leader Kapil Mishra lauded the move, alleging that ‘thieves’ were being referred to as the Mughal rulers, he said that the initiative will shine light on the ‘truth’.

Retweeting a video on the revised textbooks, he wrote, “It is a great decision to remove false history of Mughals from NCERT. Thieves, pickpockets and two-penny road raiders were called the Mughal Sultanate and the emperor of India. Akbar, Babar, Shahjahan, Aurangzeb are not in the history books, they are in the dustbin.”

On the other hand CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury was among those who criticised the move, calling it communal.

“Communal rewriting of history intensifies. NCERT revises Class XII history book removing chapters on Mughal empire. The lands of India have always been the churning crucible of civilisational advances through cultural confluences,” he tweeted.

The edited textbooks will be part of the state board and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) school syllabus in Uttar Pradesh from the current academic year, according to a PTI report quoting Additional Chief Secretary (basic and secondary education) Deepak Kumar. 

As part of its “syllabus rationalisation” exercise last year, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant” as reasons, dropped certain portions from the syllabus including lessons on Mughal courts from its class 12 textbooks.

Listing the changes, the NCERT, in a note, had said, “The content of the textbooks has been rationalised for various reasons, including overlapping with similar content in other subject areas in the same class, similar content included in the lower or higher classes on the same subject.

The erased chapters are related to ‘Kings and Chronicles; the Mughal Courts (C. 16th and 17th centuries)’ from the book ‘Themes of Indian History-Part II’.