*Gauri*

Shivasundar

When shadows thickened

and the world seemed smothered in night,

she caught fire—

burning through the dark

until she became light itself.

When the heat of the street

melted the cold within,

she rose,

shaped by compassion

that refused to be contained.

Storms battered her from outside,

whirlwinds tore at her within,

yet she stood,

a small unwavering flame

that would not go out.

She did not trim truth

to fit convenience.

She walked with the street,

stood among the people,

and became their lamp.

She guarded the hushed voices

of conscience,

listened to the secret murmur

of the self,

and in knowing herself,

she helped us know who we are.

She saw red inside blue,

blue inside red,

embers glowing in black,

an open sky shining through white.

She wove these colors together

and became the rainbow.

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Remembering Gauri Lankesh, Renewing A Pledge

The post Storms battered her from outside, but she stood, an unwavering flame: Gauri Lankesh appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Talha Mannan (TM), a PhD student in the MANUU (Hyderabad) and the National Secretary of the Students Islamic Organization (SIO, established in 1982; an affiliate of the Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind-JIH, established in 1941 by Abul Ala Maududi) has come out with a critique in his piece published by a “Muslim” portal, maktoobmedia, dated August 26, 2025, “How (not) to talk about Aligarh Muslim University”. This was a week after the “second stage” of the hunger strike protest (hunger strike till death) was finally withdrawn in the pre-dawn moments of August 19, 2025.  The “first” was claimed to have been clinched by some girl students a few days earlier than August 19, 2025. Whereas the “third” stage came to an end with another glass of fruit juice offered by some girls (dukhtaraan-e-millat), subsequent to August 19, 2025.

While expressing his discomfiture with Yanis Iqbal’s and with Bhavuk Sharma’s pieces, (besides some of the write-ups of Prof Mohammad Sajjad), Talha Mannan (TM) has made what is termed as Strawman’s arguments. TM is manufacturing contentions out of nowhere and attributing these to the three authors.

For instance TM seems to suggest that a Leftist slogan, lal salam and laal-laal lehrayega) is equivalent to his Islamist slogan “Islam Ki Dawat”. First of all, no such Leftist slogan was raised in the AMU student protests of August 2025. Thus, he creates an illusion for himself that he has triumphantly refuted the arguments of the authors he purports to rebut. Also, how did he arrive at a conclusion that Bhavuk (and his PhD supervisor) are Marxists/Leftists, is also quite unclear? Of course, Yanis Iqbal does claim to be a Marxist, in his Facebook profile. TM’s motives become evident when he criticises the authors on account of failing to oppose the UP government’s ban on Namaz on roads.

As far as I have been able to follow from their publicly iterated positions, around the August 2025 protests of AMU students, they have raised the issue that JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) have not raised — their explicit and candid objection to the UP government’s pre-existing order (March 2025) banning roadside namaz. The JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) have maintained a silence on the said government order and he chose to take on the AMU Proctor who was trying to ensure that the UP government’s specific order doesn’t get violated. Such a shift of the student protest from being against the Proctor to making it against the Yogi government’s police, gave a pretext to the Yogi-led government’s police to launch a crackdown against the students who had already undergone the stun-grenade horror on December 15, 2019. [The immediate prelude of this horror itself awaits an expose]. That is how JSTM itself got the AMU students’ protest menacingly policed. Rather than accepting his own fault he is shifting the blames on the said three authors. This is sheer mischief.

Let it be noted that the AMU students began their protests on or before August 4, 2025, against the procedurally flawed fee-hike. Talha Mannan (TM) jumped into it five days later, on Friday August 8, 2025. The JIH-SIO-Talha Mannan (JSTM) remained silent on all the days of protests, preceding Friday August 8, 2025. Till August 8, no written statement, press communiqué of the JSTM has been found on the issue of fee-hike. Let it also be noted that in September 2024, the MANUU administration cancelled the students’ union elections scheduled for September 23, 2024. Talha Mannan (TM), contesting the MANUU Students’ Union elections, didn’t intensify his agitation there in Hyderabad, the way he suddenly jumped into the AMU protest on August 8, 2025 to make more vociferous demands for the right to roadside namaz and less for every other issue such as the procedurally flawed fee-hike and demand that elections for the AMU Students’ Union (AMUSU) be held. The JSTM was nowhere to be seen when the AMU girl students were protesting against power-cuts and the agitated girl students were maltreated by Proctorial professors in April 2025

Is it a case then that the JIH rarely exposes the ills within “Muslim managed or Muslim dominated” institutions, unless there is an intra-Muslim, sectarian disputes (for instance, a few months ago, there was a social and Urdu media outrage by JIH against the Darul Uloom, Deoband)? If the answer is in the affirmative, then this pathology that affects Muslim politics needs a deeper scrutiny. AMU has got many systemic flaws, such as a problematic localism, inbreeding (not only in enrolments, recruitments but also in the composition of the Executive Council (EC), in empanelling VCs and in recruiting higher officers and teacher-administrators, highly damaging the quality of academia. The long continuation of a handful of academically laggard teachers within AMU governance (who also extract lots of illegal benefits), and highly disproportionate preponderance of western UP + Azamgarh, financial and other corruption and irregularities, occupation of hostels by non-bonafide ex-students and hoodlums, massive corruption in contracts for supplies and civil constructions, patronage of AMU administration to certain dubious persons doubling as suppliers-contractors, and (also) a massive inflow of AMU teachers into majoritarian saffron outfits to curry favours (such as appointments to VCs!!). Why must posts of ad hoc Controller, ad hoc Finance Officer, ad hoc Registrar, too many Directors & OSDs must continue endlessly? Why must only a particular OSD get driver and security?

These serious, festering issues that plague AMU have, so far not  found any comprehensive expose’ from ‘Muslim bodies’ and their ‘leaderships.’

Besides Talha Mannan (TM)’s duplicity and cunningness, he is also self-contradicting himself and appears confused. At one place he calls Bhavuk’s position (“Why Protests at AMU take a Rightward Shift?”, LinkedIn, August 14, 2025) as being governed by his “Hindu, upper-caste” upbringing, while on the other he speculates Bhavuk’s write-up to be doing with his flawed “Left-Liberal” framework.

Historically speaking, within AMU, students’ protests often acquire a strand of demonizing the Left (the surkha) and then mobilizing [Muslim] students by raising the bogey of “Islam in Danger”..

TM has tried to misrepresent Bhavuk’s position as if he wrote against Namaz per se, which is absolutely false. I haven’t come across any of his writing stating that. The only point, if I haven’t missed something, Bhavuk was trying to make was the refusal to engage with and oppose the UP government’s order (March 2025) banning Namaz by the SIO or the protesters. According to Bhavuk, what Talha instead chose to do was holding the Proctor responsible for not letting Namaz be performed at the protest site as if the Proctor, and not the UP government, that had imposed the ban. [The JSTM seems to be unaware of the fact that the University Road of AMU from the Bab-e Syed to the Centenary Gate isn’t owned by the AMU; it is only used by the AMU; its ownership lies with the Aligarh Nagar Nigam].

What Bahvuk insisted on was that the JSTM has almost side-tracked the central issue of fee-hike which concerns all religious communities and atheists of AMU, and has (TM included) turned it into a Muslim identitarian issue. The AMU alumni too jumped into it only after August 8, insisting to speak only on the namaz issue (an audio conversation between an ex-student leader, Amir Mintoe and the Proctor, Prof. Wasim Ali had been circulated).  Such a twist and turn given by the JSTM weakened overall student solidarity. Also, the battle against the AMU administration was turned into battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Tactically this was a dangerous shift. The student protesters (vulnerable in the face of the BJP’s Neo-Hindutva regime) were made to confront the state and BJP, and less the AMU administration. This was exactly what was needed to weaken student’s mobilization and protest, while strengthening the AMU administration. This was also how and when (August 8, 2025) the JSTM gave a cause to the police to meddle into the affairs of AMU, the protests. Who then is responsible for involving the police in student protests? It is Talha Mannan, the JSTM; not the three writers Talha is trying to shift blame on.

The JSTM collusion with the functionaries of the Muslim managed institutions and JSTM’s prejudices in favour of privileged elite-powerful segments of Muslims (in this case, the AMU administrators) have become sharp and evident during and after the protest of August 2025.

TM does not talk about the timing of the Students’ Union elections previously agreed on in December 2025, after the semester examinations. JSTM has no questions on the refusal of the AMU administration to convene the Students’Union elections in August-September 2025.

It is quite well known that in December 2025, after the end-semester exams, most of the distant provinces’ hostellers leave for their respective homes in Bihar, Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Kashmir. Those left are the ones living closer to Aligarh i.e. the western UP students. Would not this leave the field open for the western UP lobby (aligning with the Azamgarh lobby) to gain control of the Students’ Union? AMU has already been quite infamous for its regionalism and factional politics and this chaotic-chauvinistic power play and such non participative elections will heighten this trend.

Faultline with the JIH’s Worldview 

Why is it that the tone and tenor of the speech by TM makes us believe that Muslim majority campuses are being conceived and portrayed as Muslim exclusive spaces where the Hindu minority is not to be taken along? Constitutionalism’s selective use and the disdainful attitude of the JIH and RSS towards the Constitution is no secret. That the JIH had allied with the saffron forces in 1975 is too well known a fact to be repeated here especially after the publication of Anderson’s and Jaffrelot’s works on the Emergency. Pan-Islamism finds endorsement from TM in the politics of Muslim victimhood where Islamic solidarity is concealed. The Indian saga of the Islamisation of Knowledge (IOK) project is not a problem for the left, liberal or Hindu Right Wing government. Chosen Muslims associated with it do not face problems in any of these regimes in fact all such characters find reward with some position of power. While Saffronisation is critiqued, Islamisation is spared. This double standard is not going to help in the fight against Hindutva. In fact such an attitude has helped in Hindutva attaining power.

Tragically, Muslim reactionary are even today strong enough to send a clear message to the non-Muslim students of AMU that even in today’s era of Hindutva hegemony, writing against the all-powerful Indian Home Minister is easy but a Hindu minority of AMU cannot write against the Muslim Right Wing. All AMU insiders know too well that the JIH wields a significant influence within the structures of AMU. It was these fundamentalist forces which ensured that Prof. Irfan Habib wasput under suspension in 1981. When Abrar Kashif came to a Mushaira in Kennedy auditorium last year (2024), the applause of the students on his “Pan-Islamic” nazm exhorting Mujahids (soldiers) from Afghanistan and Khurasan, had put the University to shame, drawing widespread criticisms on the social-media. Why it is so was easily forgotten that, Pan-Islamism had created a Hindu consolidation post-Khilafat Movement, which eventually became one of the factors in the Partition of India? Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) had worked in collaboration with the Khilafat Movement. But soon after, he realised the dangers of Pan-Islamism and turned into a critic of anyone invoking this phenomenon. Among the Muslim intellectuals, only Intezar Hussain has had the moral courage to admit this in his biography of Hakim Ajmal Khan, Ajmal-e Azam (1999).

The JIH’s stated aim is creation of a theocratic state and for achieving this purpose they need to enhance the numbers of the Muslim population even by conversion (Dawat). JIH’s love for Muslim majoritarianism is no secret. Hence, their slogan, Islam ki Dawat, provides justification for the Hindutva project of Shudhi, Ghar Waapsi. Just see the resemblance between JIH’s Hukumat e Ilahi (Divine Governance) and Non Biological, Parmatma appointed PM!

No wonder then that the saffron outfits insisted for performing “Hanuman Chalisa” inside the AMU campus, a t funded residential university of the Indian state. It was after the call for “Islam ki Dawat” came from JSTM on August 8, 2025, that the call for Hanuman Chalisa inside AMU was echoed by saffron outfits as a “package deal”. The announcement was made by Hindu Raksha Dal’s state convener, Gaurav Sisodia, who was later placed under house arrest in Ghaziabad to prevent him from reaching Aligarh (The New Indian Express)!

This guilt is confessed by the JSTM kind of forces with the fact that the officially uploaded video-clip of TM’s speech (of August 8, 2025 at the Bab-e-Syed of AMU) has edited out the TM’s slogan of “Islam ki Dawat”.

It also needs to be stated that the AMU has a few dozen mosques (pesh-Imams, paryer leaders paid salaries by the University Grants Commission-UGC!), and not a single temple! This, by the way is an issue with Hindus students, even beyond those inclined towards majoritarian Hindutva. This policy is even at variance with the Holy Quran itself since the Quran says La IkraHa Fil Deen meaning there is no compulsion in the matter of religion (it appears in Surah-al Baqrah verse 256 also) and Lakum Deenukum Waliya Deen meaning for you is your religion and for me is mine. JSTM’s Dawat is in sharp contradiction with this verse of Quran. JIH’s Dawat would/should be seen as ominous by Liberal-Left and a tool for the Neo-Hindutva state power to repress the Muslims and reinforcing the stereotype of Muslims as radicalised bigots!

Thus the JSTM in this agitation stands as a culprit of putting India’s Muslims in great danger of repressive Hindutva state.

Sir Syed was against Pan-Islamism and he was a rational interpreter of the Quran. Maududi in his book Tanqeehat, attacks Sir Syed for borrowing “western thought” and inculcating western values into them. It is an irony that the very students benefiting from the fruits of Sir Syed’s enterprise are in solidarity and sometimes even having intimate collusion with such organisations opposed to Sir Syed’s vision. JIH’s duplicitous politics of Muslim majoritarianism in Islamic countries and minoritarianism in India stands thoroughly exposed, by now. Talha cannot play both ways. TM’s play of Victimhood Syndrome, while ground realities of victimisation of disenfranchised and poor Muslims are addressed more by the Liberal-Left. Not so unreasonably, a distinguished Aligarhian, K M Ashraf (1903-1962) clubbed JIH with CIA in his slim book (in Urdu) on Hindustani Muslim Siasat.

These Muslim communal organisations who play the victimhood card, reflect a form of minoritarianism while, on the other hand, rubbishing all secular-democratic forces. They attack Hindu majoritarianism in the rest of India while promoting Muslim majoritarianism within a Muslim majority campus. AMU cannot be expected to exist as a Vatican. Only Liberal-Secular Constitutionalism can guarantee minority rights. Islamist Minority Right Wing (and Pan Islamic politics) can only enable Hindutva.

Muslim reactionary forces such as JSTM must realise that it is not they who provide Rs 1200 crores to a modern university called Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). This fund comes from the Indian state because of its Liberal-Secular Constitution, which JSTM disdains. The bid, even now made, of minority communalists of converting Hindus to Islam in order to establish a Hukumat-e-Ilahiya, is a dangerous game. It needs to be unequivocally shunned. We have seen enough destructions of humans and values by the Salafi regime in Saudi Arabia and by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

(The author is a former student who has requested anonymity, he graduated in Sunni Theology from the AMU after studying at the Nadwat-ul-Ulema-Editors)

Related:

The Solipsism of Faith: A Response to Talha Mannan

Reluctant Democrats

Political History of India’s Two Muslim Universities since 1947

The post Is AMU, a Vatican of India’s reactionary Muslim elite? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Maninagar, I have been told, was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initial political karmabhoomi during his formative years. While covering Sachivalaya for the Times of India (1997-2012), a senior bureaucrat told me that during the Emergency days (1975–77), Modi would hide in the house of an RSS pracharak to avoid arrest. This babu, who retired a few years ago and lived in Maninagar, told me he personally knew this RSS pracharak, “a simple soul, always ready to help.”

A known Hindutva bastion, Modi represented the Maninagar constituency in the state legislative assembly thrice — 2002, 2007, and 2012. Expectedly, following the stabbing incident, in which the accused happens to be a Muslim and the victim a Hindu, there was strong protest led by the saffron brigade over the alleged failure of the administration, led by a Christian principal, to keep outlaws in the school under control.

Following the ghastly incident, I happened to interact with the principal of another school. Fear was writ large on his face: what if such an incident happened in his school? Wouldn’t he be beaten up like the Seventh Day School principal was? What if a similar crowd entered his school premises? He had no clue how to control it, nor any idea how to deal with what he called “increasing incidents of violence among schoolchildren, which we are witnessing in front of our own eyes.”

Even as I was speaking with this principal, I came to know that the Ahmedabad district education office (DEO) had called a meeting of school principals where discussions were held on how to prevent incidents like the one in the Maninagar school. I asked this principal what had happened in the meeting. While I wasn’t apprised of the details, he told me he had taken “a few precautionary measures.”

And what were these? “We have started checking the school bags of all the children studying in secondary classes, and we confiscated whatever sharp objects were found,” the principal revealed, adding, “While scissors were found in many children’s bags and we took them all, telling them they were in our lock and key and would be returned when they had crafts period, three children had knives in their bags.”

The principal claimed — and this struck me like a bolt from the blue — “All three were Muslims. One of them carried a rather long knife, which the child told me was used for slaughtering goats. We called the child’s father, whose immediate reaction was that his son was being targeted because he was a Muslim. I told him, we don’t discriminate on religious lines; otherwise, we wouldn’t be admitting Muslims in our school.”

The principal, who headed a private school, further claimed that he had “observed” violent incidents happening “mostly among students admitted under the 25 percent quota for socially and economically backward children under the Right to Education Act. They study for free, for which the government compensates us. We cannot fail them till they reach the eighth standard. They have to be compulsorily promoted. They can’t be rusticated either. So, they become careless. In my school, 50 percent of these children are Muslim.”

A teacher with whom I later interacted told me that in his school — one of the better ones providing “quality” education — following the school authorities’ directions, “we search the children’s bags of one classroom every day. It’s such a headache. Many children — especially those admitted under RTE — are found to keep some sharp object in their bags. Some remove the screw from the pencil sharpener and keep the blades in their bags. Do we teach children or do this security check?”

I mentioned all this to someone close to me. This person, who did not want to be named, said that while he couldn’t comment on the Seventh Day School incident per se, in the late 1990s and 2000s, when he studied at a top Ahmedabad school, he personally witnessed how Muslim children were targeted. “One of the very decent boys, a brilliant one, would be called ‘Oy Miya,’ used as an insult; he was rarely addressed by name. He wouldn’t react, but surely this is the type of atmosphere that prevails in many schools. One must understand the psychology of such children.”

I was reminded of what a well-known cultural personality told me when we met around the time I joined the Times of India in 1993 as part of my acquaintance drive. He told me about a top school, preferred by Gujarati parents for their children. Telling me his daughter studied there, he said, “A day ahead of the 15th August function, the teacher told the children they must compulsorily attend flag hoisting, underlining, ‘those who don’t attend are Miyabhai.’ My daughter asked what is this Miyabhai… I was at a loss to tell her the teacher was spreading communal hatred through such a statement.”

Courtesy: CounterView

The post Knives in schoolbags, hatred in classrooms: The dark lessons of Ahmedabad’s Maninagar appeared first on SabrangIndia.

[Note: Before proceeding, I should situate myself: I studied Literature at AMU between 2015–2018 and lived in one of its hostels. This is not to claim privileged insight, but to underline that my reflections come from lived proximity rather than distant observation.]

The recently aborted student protest at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU)—ostensibly about reviving the Students’ Union (AMUSU) rather than resisting the fee hike—offers a troubling yet instructive window into the nature of campus politics at AMU.

A Legitimate Beginning

At the outset, it must be remembered that the agitation began on a legitimate plank: the arbitrary and unjustified fee hike. For many students from modest backgrounds, AMU’s subsidized education is their only ladder to upward mobility. Their resistance was therefore natural and justified. The protest was marked by determination and—crucially—visible leadership from female students who camped at Bab-e-Syed. Their resilience forced the administration to roll back the hike to 20%.

But soon, the focus shifted.

The Twist

Before engaging with this shift, a brief background is essential. AMUSU—short for Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union—was, in principle, meant to bridge the administration and the student community by offering effective representation. In practice, however, its history paints a sorry picture.

Supporters romanticise AMUSU as a “nursery for leadership,” pointing to names like Azam Khan and Arif Mohammad Khan. Yet, since 2017, when the University suspended it on the flimsy pretext of law and order, AMU has remained without an elected student body. The suspension was arbitrary and undemocratic, contradicting the very spirit of a university as a space for debate, dissent, and contrarian thought.

Reality, however, diverges sharply from the romanticism. Over the past decade, AMUSU has drifted far from its founding purpose. Most office-bearers—barring rare exceptions—have been academic underperformers or regional strongmen who treated the Union as a launchpad for failed political careers or as a network for contracts, patronage, and admissions. Regionalism thrived through collusion with faculty members from their own provinces, while the welfare of the broader student body remained a mere veneer. Unsurprisingly, AMUSU enjoys little respect among ordinary students.

Against this backdrop, the fee hike protest had nothing to do with AMUSU elections. Yet, seeing a readymade platform for mobilization, the AMUSU lobby opportunistically inserted itself. For a few days, they kept the rollback of fees as the visible agenda and AMUSU revival as a secondary one. But when their chances dimmed, anxiety set in. Their desperation

was rooted in past failures—one prominent activist had even approached the Supreme Court with a contempt petition citing the Lyngdoh Committee, only to have it dismissed in July 2025, a fact he concealed from fellow students. With the fee protest gaining momentum, the lobby saw its golden chance: a mass movement they could never build on their own was suddenly available to hijack.

How AMUSU Aspirants Hijacked the Fee-Hike Protest

Sections of students who had long lobbied for AMUSU elections—despite lacking credibility among peers—seized the protest as a platform to advance their agenda. History shows that AMUSU has ceased to represent students in any meaningful sense. Much like Ambedkar’s critique of Indian villages as “sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow mindedness, caste and communalism,” AMUSU has degenerated into a den of factionalism, patronage, and regressiveness.

Rather than critiquing, confronting and exposing systemic issues—declining academic standards, nepotistic faculty and administrative recruitments, inbreeding in admissions, or entrenched elites’ dominance—the AMUSU camp staged hunger strikes and moral dramas, allegedly under the blessings of a Law professor and the Eastern UP faction. These theatrics were less about student welfare and more about arm-twisting the administration.

Gender Insensitivity and Hypocrisy

Equally glaring is the hypocrisy. The same AMUSU hopefuls who now cloak themselves in the language of student rights were absent when female students were mishandled by the Proctorial team during protests over electricity shortages. Their selective silence exposes a deep gender insensitivity. Worse, when the fee hike protesters—mostly girls—refused to be co-opted, they were abused, branded “dalals,” and smeared on social media.

A movement that cannot respect women within its own ranks stands discredited- and rightly so.

The Deal with the Administration: Regional Politics at Play

Perhaps the most disturbing development was the timing of the administration’s assurance to the hunger striker: elections in December, after semester exams. This timing was no coincidence. By then, most outstation students—from Bihar, Bengal, the Kerala, and Kashmir

—would have left, leaving the electoral field to Western UP students and their Azamgarh allies.

Why not hold elections in August–September, when all students are present? Neither the administration nor the hunger striker offered a convincing answer. Their silence reeks of sub- regional opportunism.

What Went Off the Agenda?

Equally telling is what disappeared from the protesters led by hunger striker’s list of demands:

1. School fee hikes—despite RTE 2009 and the active role of Ahmadi School students— were quietly dropped, even though they had kept Centenary Gate closed till 19 August
2. Administrative accountability—the demand for replacing the Proctor, Director (Schools), and Controller of Exams was abandoned. The moment students pressed for the removal of the long-serving ad hoc Controller (a local appointee with entrenched clout), the entire protest was abruptly called off before sunrise on 19

This sequence exposes the deeper malaise: protests shaped less by genuine grievances than by the compulsions of entrenched elites.

The Larger Picture: Opportunism of the Muslim Elite

This episode raises uncomfortable questions not only about AMU but about India’s Muslim elites more broadly:

1. Why do entrenched cliques, clouts, lobbies monopolize university offices and student bodies?
2. Why is regional dominance—particularly of Western UP and Azamgarh—normalized, while voices from other provinces are systematically muted?

• Why do organizations like SIO or IYF remain silent on nepotism, gender insensitivity, or ad hoc appointments, yet selectively speak up when AMUSU’s revival is at stake?

The answer is crude opportunism. These elites are less invested in reform than in safeguarding their own hegemony.

Conclusion

The August 2025 AMU protests reveal a painful truth: genuine student concerns—fee hikes, gender justice, transparent governance, fair examinations—were eclipsed by the opportunism of a narrow faction bent on reviving AMUSU for self-interest.

The December election timeline, the abandonment of school fee issues, the silence on the ad hoc   appointments of high administrative officers/directors that too from within the internal teachers , and the abuse of female protesters expose the agitation for what it was: a cynical power       play.   Far      from sacrifice,               the    hunger    strike    was    political theatre. And the administration, complicit through opaque bargains, stands equally discredited.

In the end, one is left asking: was this agitation ever meant to empower students, or was it always designed to pressure the Hon’ble Supreme Court, which heard the case of VC’s appointed on 18 August 2025; the Petitioners, too, in the said case are insiders; and protect sub-regional dominance?

The anatomy of this protest leaves little doubt: AMUSU and the AMU administration mirror each other’s failures. Together, they embody what is wrong with entrenched elite politics of Muslims—visionless, opportunistic, and hostile to the aspirations of common students.

(The author of this article known to the Editors chooses to remain anonymous)

The post Power, Patronage, and Protest: The Making of AMUSU’s Opportunism appeared first on SabrangIndia.

First things first: it is necessary to clear away the red herrings. Mannan asserts that I, along with Bhavuk Sharma, “overlook that Hindu religious activities already occupy the public space in Kanwariya processions, Jagratas, Durga Pujas, Bhandaras, Matki Phodna, etc.” According to him, this ignorance leads me to celebrate JNU as “the most ideal, secular, and diverse campus” without calling those who celebrate Holi there as “Hindu right-wing.” “However, when Muslims mark their presence,” Mannan notes, “their practices are quickly pathologised, evoking a strong sense of injustice. What is celebrated as culture by the majority is often labeled communal when practiced by minorities.” This is supposed to be illustrative of the “double standards” that he later accuses me of holding. 

I have never expressed any admiration for JNU’s practice of holding Holi. However, since Mannan raises this example, I can clarify my own position. My outlook is closer to that of K. N. Panikkar, a staunch secularist who served as Professor of Modern Indian History at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Panikkar’s reflections emerge from both experience and theory. He recalls an incident soon after joining JNU, when students approached him for a contribution toward an Eid celebration. His refusal, grounded in the conviction that universities should remain free from public displays of religiosity, immediately provoked hostility. He was branded a “Hindu communalist” for declining to participate in a Muslim festival. Later, when he resisted a similar attempt to celebrate a Hindu festival, he met with the same disapproval and imagined that, had he not been Hindu by birth, he would have been dismissed as a Muslim communalist instead.

For Panikkar, the episodes of campus religiosity revealed more than just the personal difficulty of being misread; they crystallised the structural impossibility of escaping communal labeling once religion enters the campus as public spectacle. His critique of the Indian model of secularism is telling here: it circumscribes “social consciousness within religious parameters and thus keep[s] the possibility open for particularistic and antagonistic tendencies to re-emerge at opportune moments…It keeps religion in play and in turn enhances religiosity; it preserves and projects religious identities and thus increases the social distance between different religious communities.” Public celebration on campus, whether Hindu or Muslim, therefore cannot achieve neutrality or solidarity. It generates a long-term dynamic towards the religiocisation of social life, thus preparing the ground for the eventual emergence of communalism. This is also why such practices hold little appeal for me. The alternative to it is pithily outlined by Panikkar: “a frontal confrontation with religion – an all-out critique of religion, with a view to its eventual negation – ‘a resolute, positive, abolition’ in the words of Marx.”

The Exclusions of Religion

Now that the red herring is out of the way, I can address Mannan’s main arguments. Basing himself upon Dr. Ishtiaq Hussain’s article “The AMU Fee Hike Agitation and a Misleading Narrative,” Mannan says that the “Friday prayer is not a festival or a political act but a religious duty, a widespread and common culture of the Muslim students at the Indian universities all over the country”. I have already critiqued Hussain’s piece in my own article “The AMU Fee Hike Agitation and the Fallacy of Harmless Faith”. 

There, I argue that Hussain is plagued by a contradiction: on the one hand, he says that the Friday prayer was a “mere manifestation of religious identity or general religiosity”; on the other hand, he praises the students’ restraint in not continuing to organise prayers at the protest site: “they rejected calls from fringe groups to organise prayers on August 15 to prevent the protest from acquiring a religious overtone.” This shift negates Mannan’s celebratory rhetoric and implicitly acknowledges that prayer in public, especially when tied to a protest, cannot be reduced to “mere obligation” but is always susceptible to political meaning. If prayer were simply harmless, its repetition would not have required avoidance. The fact that Hussain frames its absence as evidence of political maturity suggests an awareness that faith and politics cannot be neatly separated, that there is no “general religiosity”. 

Religiosity itself is historically and institutionally constituted through political antagonisms: whether through colonial governance of religion, postcolonial state regulation of minority identity, or the identitarian agendas of Muslim elites. Hussain’s need both to defend prayer as harmless and to celebrate its absence already shows that religion cannot be cordoned off from politics, but is always entangled with it. By extension, Mannan’s attempt to portray the Bab-e-Syed prayer as a “religious duty” evades the question of what this religiosity means in its concrete setting. He asks us to accept religious obligation at face value, framing it as a call for “belonging, survival, and self-respect in a hostile political environment”. But “belonging, survival, and self-respect” for whom? Mannan presumes that the Islamic community he is addressing is an unproblematic entity, grounded in the simplicity and unity of all Muslims. But this is patently untrue, as is revealed by the analysis of the patriarchal Islamism embedded in the form of the Friday prayer at AMU.

This becomes clear when set against Tahrir Square in 2011, where prayer unsettled hierarchies. Muslims prayed under the protection of Coptic Christians and reciprocated by safeguarding a Coptic Mass, transforming ritual into a civic language of solidarity. Men and women prayed shoulder to shoulder, erasing the partitions that usually govern Salat. Even the khutba shifted, as Yusuf al-Qaradawi opened with “O Muslims and Copts! O children of Egypt!” dissolving the privilege of the ummah as sole addressee. In Tahrir, the form of prayer itself changed, becoming a medium for revolutionary equality and civic solidarity. Insofar as religiosity became a mode for bringing all Egyptians together against an authoritarian, neoliberal government, it lost the doctrinal exclusivist of faith, transforming into a broad-based culture. As Panikkar remarks, “The culture of the people, when divorced from faith, would provide the necessary channel for communication.”

The impossibility of imagining such a scene at AMU reveals the limits of Mannan’s narrative. The institutional history of AMU has been structured by women’s marginalisation, both spatially and ideologically. As Amber H. Abbas notes, women’s education has never been central to the university’s corporate life, with hostels situated kilometers from the centre and students’ visibility tightly controlled. The political culture of the campus has long been punctuated by moral panics over women’s public presence: the IYF’s 2024 statement against “indecency” in cultural programs, the 2019 poster depicting women as caged birds in need of protection from feminism, and the 2018 “blasphemous” picture case that criminalised students for a Facebook post. In each instance, religious and moral rhetoric has operated as a technology of control, limiting women’s movement, attire, and speech. 

This patriarchal Islamism has continued in the fee hike protests. Female fence-sitters have been branded as dalals, singled out through a steady churn of Instagram reels, WhatsApp clips, and public shaming rituals. These gendered attacks go beyond ordinary political name-calling. In one case, a young woman labelled a dalal publicly apologised for her stance, only to be praised not for her reasoning but for appearing in a dupatta and mask, which are visual markers of propriety in the Islamist worldview. In another, a leading female protester who had worn an abaya but opposed prolonging the agitation became the target of AI-morphed videos, abaya-clad parodies, and relentless online mimicry. 

Mannan’s framing of prayer as “duty” effaces the religio-patriarchal codes that structure the act and that spill over into other aspects of the protests. It asks us to treat ritual as self-contained, even when its performance re-inscribes institutional hierarchies. The contrast with Tahrir makes the stakes visible: if prayer can serve as a vehicle of revolutionary solidarity in Cairo and as an instrument of patriarchal closure in Aligarh, then it cannot be reduced to “general religiosity.” Mannan’s refusal to recognise this variability is itself political, since it secures the authority of religious form by denying that its meaning is always shaped by context, exclusion, and struggle.

Protecting Religion?

Mannan rightly stresses AMU as a “blessing for marginalised Muslim students who are left out of the mainstream of the Indian education system”. Why should “standing up” for AMU be imagined primarily in terms of praying in public or asserting religiosity? How is it that “strength, hope, and the existence of Indian Muslims” is made to signify faith above all else? This conflation is visible in the equivalence that Mannan draws between the protest slogan “Islam Ki Dawat Zinda Hai” and Qur’anic verse on AMU’s insignia, “Taught man what he knew not”. 

The verse, “Taught man what he knew not” (96:5), speaks about knowledge as a universal gift to humankind. Its reference is pedagogical, epistemic, and humanistic, placing education at the heart of AMU’s mission. It is a declaration of enlightenment and learning as common goods, accessible to every seeker, irrespective of faith. When this verse becomes the motto of AMU, it does not serve as a sectarian banner but as an emblem of secular modernity grounded in a universal conception of education. Its force lies in its generality, in its refusal to delimit who can or cannot partake in knowledge.

By contrast, the slogan “Islam Ki Dawat Zinda Hai” is not a neutral affirmation of knowledge but an assertive invocation of religious community. As Mannan puts it in his article, “A truly democratic system should enable Muslims to express their reality in their own terms, whether it is religious, cultural, or political, without being imposed into a pre-packaged ideology of others [emphasis mine]”. In other words, Islam should be a self-enclosed entity, immune from any influence exerted by non-Islamic others, or those who question the centrality of Islam in public life. In contrast, the Qur’anic verse addresses the universality of education, negating religious belonging to highlight the mission of imparting knowledge to those who need it. The verse invites all to the pursuit of knowledge, while the slogan calls forth only Muslims as a collective in struggle. To conflate the two, as Mannan does, obscures the fact that the verse is secular in scope while the slogan is sectarian in thrust.

The danger in this conflation is that it justifies communal idioms in the name of institutional heritage. Mannan argues that using Islamic slogans is a continuation of AMU’s spirit, yet this argument ignores the categorical difference between Islam as a source of civilizational inspiration and Islam as a rallying cry of political identity. One can accept that AMU’s history draws on Islamic civilization without endorsing slogans that, in effect, doctrinally exclude non-Muslim students or cast political conflict in religious terms. His framing allows no distinction between cultural inheritance and religious mobilization, and thus erases the distinction required to preserve AMU’s universal educational mission.

The erasure of this distinction allows Mannan to naturalise religion/religiosity as a desirable good, whose possession has to be maintained at all costs. In fact, when Muslims occupy a position of dominance, Syed Jalaluddin Umri, former president of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), counsels them to establish an Islamic state and govern it according to the laws of sharia. JIH’s student wing, the Students Islamic Organization (SIO), counts Mannan, its national secretary, among its leaders.

But is religion really that desirable? This question is not explored by self-assured theologians. Does the debate over AMU really concern the ability of students to protect their “Muslim Subjectivity,” or “Islam,” as Mannan insists? Put in more mundane terms, this would mean that the entire debate over AMU pertains to the Muslim youth’s right to recite Quranic verses in university premises. This seems more like the theologian’s dream, rather than a socially and economically disadvantaged student’s wish. The Supreme Court is correct in noting that what is primary in the determination of the minority character of an institution is not the “existence of a religious place for prayer and worship” or “the existence of religious symbols” but the objective of providing “benefit” to “a religious or linguistic minority community”. This means that “educational institutions could be established for minorities to provide secular education without imparting any lessons on religion”.

The Supreme Court’s observation about the general goal of providing “benefit” to “a religious or linguistic minority community,” rather than narrowly promoting faith or theology, forces us to ask the following question: is the attack on Indian Muslims really an attack on Islam as a theological system? The right to practice faith is just one among many human capacities that are being restricted. Even Muslims who are not particularly religious, who do not pray or wear visibly Islamic symbols, still face discrimination. Consider the following example. A study conducted in India tested hiring discrimination by sending out two nearly identical resumes for entry-level jobs. Both candidates had similar educational backgrounds, locations, and skills, with no photographs included to avoid visual bias. The only significant difference between them was their names: one had a recognizably Muslim name (“Habiba Ali”), while the other had a Hindu name (“Priyanka Sharma”).

Over eight months, 2,000 applications were sent for over 1,000 job listings. Despite being equally qualified, the candidate with the Muslim name received only half as many positive responses. This study underscores that discrimination against Muslims operates even in the absence of visible religious markers like dress, prayer, or religious expressions. Simply having a Muslim name, an ascriptive identity beyond personal choice, was enough to reduce opportunities, showing that the bias faced by Muslims in India is not necessarily about religious practice but about their very existence as Muslims. The issue is not about faith per se, but about the political and social vulnerability of a historically constituted, denominationally marked group. 

When the oppression is located at the level of Muslims-as-a-people, it becomes misleading to frame the defense of AMU or of Muslim students in overtly religious terms. To do so cements the very caricature produced by Hindutva, namely that Muslims are excessively, even obsessively, religious, and that every act they undertake flows from Islamic identity. This discursive trap is visible in the proliferation of “jihad” labels — “love jihad,” “population jihad,” “economic jihad,” even “corona jihad.” Hindu nationalists have already transformed ordinary social and economic practices into religious threats. In such a climate, when anti-secularists like Mannan elevate faith as the center of political self-definition, they unwittingly mirror Hindutva’s framework, reinforcing the notion that Muslim life can only be understood through the lens of excessive religiosity, as if every action was done for the sake of Islam’s theological sanctity.

The consequence of this is double-edged: on the one hand, it narrows the grounds of Muslim struggle to the defense of religiosity; on the other, it erases the broader human capacities that are being curtailed – education, economic opportunity, political participation, cultural flourishing. Faith is one dimension of human life, but not the sole or even primary capacity under siege. To focus resistance on religion alone is to surrender the universality of the claim: that Muslims, as equal human beings and citizens, are being denied the full range of their rights. 

For a genuinely emancipatory politics, the demand should shift from “protecting Islam” to “developing human capacities.” This means foregrounding the economic deprivation, lack of access to higher education, and structural discrimination that affect Muslims irrespective of their personal religiosity. It also means confronting internal hierarchies within the community: class divides, gender inequality, the marginalisation of Pasmanda Muslims, and the silencing of queer Muslims. Only such a politics can break from the religious template imposed both by Hindutva and by defensive communal rhetoric, moving toward a struggle that asserts Muslim dignity in its widest, most inclusive sense.

Indian Muslims thus are not just Muslims; they are full political, civic subjects whose rights and freedoms should not be contingent on religious identity. Instead of reacting to majoritarian pressures by asserting a religious counter-identity, the response of Indian Muslims should be: we refuse to be reduced to a religious category at all. The fight, then, is not for the recognition of Islam but for a secular space where no one – Muslim, Hindu, or otherwise – is pigeonholed by religious identity in the first place.

Questions

Given Mannan’s assertion that Muslims should “express their reality in their own terms” without paying attention the “pre-packaged ideology of others,” it is imperative to understand how such a politics of self-aggrandizement leads to the domination of those one considers to be “other”. I will attempt to show this through a series of questions for Mannan about the viewpoints espoused by his organization SIO (Student Islamic Organisation) or the parent organisation JIH (Jamaat-e-Islaami Hind). If Mannan’s vision is that Muslims should express their reality solipsistically, these questions expose the real-world implications of that worldview for gender, sexuality, and belonging.

On Sexuality and Homosexuality

• JIH describes homosexuality as “immoral and unnatural.” Do you believe that someone like Professor Ramchandra Siras of AMU deserved the humiliation, suspension, and eventual mysterious death he suffered simply for being gay?
• If homosexuality “destroys the family system,” as JIH says, do you acknowledge that many homosexuals themselves come from families, love their parents, siblings, and partners, and wish to build households of their own?
• Do you think the state has the right to police people’s private lives and consensual relationships inside their own homes?

On Women and Education

•  JIH calls for the abolition of co-education, effectively segregating women. While they are segregated, they should wear clothes that are “sober and dignified,” that “cover the body”. Can you explain why the burden of “preventing lust” falls entirely on women rather than teaching men self-restraint?
• Why should women’s dress be dictated by men in positions of authority? Does your logic not amount to blaming women for men’s violence?
• If women are forced into “separate” institutions and covered from head to toe, do you admit that what you call “modesty” is simply a system of control and surveillance over women’s bodies?

On Maududi and the SIO’s Intellectual Project

• Your student organization recommends Towards Understanding Islam, in which Maududi explicitly states, “there are certain women who do not mend their ways without a beating.” Do you condone the idea that men have the right to physically punish women in their households?
• Maududi asserts that men are naturally suited to govern the family because women have “natural limitations.” Given that Indian women today excel as doctors, engineers, judges, and university professors, do you claim these women are exceptions, or do you believe Maududi’s hierarchy still applies to all women?
• Maududi presents domestic confinement and withdrawal from public life as “freedom” for women. Do you agree that forcing women to stay at home, manage the household, and submit to male authority counts as true freedom?

On Equality and Democracy

• JIH advises Muslims to establish an Islamic state under sharia when they are in a position of dominance. Do you recognize that this vision is fundamentally at odds with the Indian Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law for all citizens?
• How do you justify advocating for laws that would make women second-class citizens, LGBT people criminals, and non-Muslims subjects of a religious order?
• If your worldview requires hierarchy, segregation, and surveillance to function, what place does it have in a modern secular university where equality is the very foundation?

Mannan will probably say that those who are raising such questions from a secular-liberal perspective are enacting “a kind of violence in the name of intellectualism”. His alternative, as we have seen, is to allow to “Muslims to express their reality in their own terms, whether it is religious, cultural, or political, without being imposed into a pre-packaged ideology of others.” Thus, instead of allowing the actions and thought processes of Muslims to be examined by others, Mannan wants the Muslim community to behave solipsistically, as if there is no disagreement about his religion-centric vision of politics. But I believe that it is only through democratic discussion and critique that Indian Muslims have any hope of reclaiming their future. 

 (The author is a student at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), India. He is the author of the book “Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia” (Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2024) and has a forthcoming book on Palestine and anti-imperialist political philosophy with Iskra Books)

Related:

Reluctant Democrats

Political History of India’s Two Muslim Universities since 1947

The post The Solipsism of Faith: A Response to Talha Mannan appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The region’s Muslim community has historically contributed richly to India’s culture, politics, and intellectual life, but remains educationally and socially disadvantaged in contemporary times. Their contributions to education in Uttar Pradesh stretch back centuries. During the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal period, UP’s cities like Lucknow, Agra, and Fatehpur Sikri emerged as centers of Persian scholarship, Islamic jurisprudence, and cultural refinement. Later, in the nineteenth century, reformers responded to the colonial encounter in distinct ways.

One of the most influential responses was led by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, whose Aligarh Movement recognized the urgency of reconciling tradition with modernity and championed Western-style modern education as the path to progress, establishing the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875 (later Aligarh Muslim University, AMU). This institution created a generation of lawyers, administrators, and professionals who shaped Indian politics and society both within India and abroad. The institution symbolised a community deeply engaged in self-reflection and reform.

The Sachar Committee Report (2006) was a watershed in documenting Muslim marginalization in India. For Uttar Pradesh, the findings were stark: Muslims had lower literacy rates, higher school dropout rates, and weaker access to higher education than even Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in some cases. Subsequent surveys (NSS 2017–18) confirm that progress has been uneven. The literacy gap between Muslims and the state average remains significant, and Muslim representation in higher education institutions—particularly in technical and professional courses—remains disproportionately low.

The major question remains unanswered: what drives this persistent backwardness?

Poverty and economic marginalisation are considered the prime reasons. Muslim-dominated districts like Rampur, Moradabad, Bijnor, and Azamgarh often rank poorly on human development indicators. Families struggling to survive cannot (always) prioritize education. For some families, mainstream schooling appears costly and uncertain in its returns; they prioritise earning over learning. Moreover, many Muslim-majority localities lack sufficient government schools, especially for girls. Travel distance, poor-quality teaching, and inadequate facilities exacerbate dropout rates may also be deemed a factor. Subtle biases in schools and colleges also discourage Muslim children, reinforcing feelings of exclusion. This crisis is not merely statistical; it perpetuates a cycle where Muslims remain concentrated in low-income, informal-sector jobs, with little upward mobility.

Uttar Pradesh has over 16,000 registered madrasas, with numerous unregistered ones. These institutions, while essential in preserving Islamic learning and identity, face critiques. Most madrasas follow a traditional curriculum focused on theology, Arabic, and jurisprudence, with limited integration of science, mathematics, or social sciences. Graduates often find few opportunities outside religious vocations. They need to be upgraded and integrated with modern educational curricula to provide sustainable livelihoods for graduates.

Attempts at madrasa modernization—introducing computer labs, English, and vocational training—have met with mixed success. Some clerics fear dilution of religious content, while bureaucratic inefficiencies hinder consistent reform. Yet, abandoning madrasas is neither realistic nor desirable. They serve millions of the poorest children. The challenge is to integrate them with mainstream education without undermining their religious mission. For example, partnerships with state universities, digital learning modules, and parallel certification could open new doors for madrasa graduates.

If education is the most powerful tool for social reform, women’s education is doubly so. In UP’s Muslim community, gender gaps in literacy and school completion are among the widest. Social norms, early marriage, and safety concerns often restrict girls’ education, especially beyond primary school. Women’s empowerment must be at the heart of reform. A single educated mother can transform the trajectory of her entire family. Scholarships, hostels, safe transportation, and female teachers in rural schools are concrete measures that can make a transformative difference.

Education cannot succeed in isolation; it must be linked with economic empowerment and social reform. In UP, where Muslims dominate certain artisanal trades—like weaving, brass work, and handicrafts—the decline of traditional industries due to globalization has deepened economic vulnerability. To break the cycle, vocational training should be embedded within schools to prepare students for modern markets. Digital skills and entrepreneurship can help Muslim youth participate in India’s growing service economy. Microfinance and start-up support in Muslim-majority districts can create employment opportunities, reducing dependence on informal work. Without such economic linkages, education risks being a dead end—producing degrees without jobs.

Since the Sachar Committee, several schemes have targeted Muslim educational uplift: scholarships, free coaching for competitive exams, and skill-development programs. Yet implementation has been patchy in UP. Awareness about schemes is low in rural Muslim communities. Bureaucratic hurdles and political polarization often dilute impact. Too often, focus remains on token measures rather than systemic reform of schools in Muslim-majority areas.

The post-Sachar period illustrates a broader problem: policy intent without political will. Unless the UP government adopts a non-partisan, long-term vision for minority education, interventions will remain fragmented. While state responsibility is paramount, community leadership cannot be ignored. Historically, Muslim reformers—from Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad—understood that renewal required both government support and internal reform. Today, Muslim civil society in UP must prioritise education over identity politics in community mobilization, establish local education trusts and scholarship funds, encourage parents to enroll children in quality schools rather than settling for minimal literacy, promote a culture of reading, critical thinking, and gender equality at the family level.

The recently launched “40 Under 40” Muslim leadership initiative by the All India Muslim Development Council (AIMDC) is a positive step in grooming young leaders in law, medicine, entrepreneurship, and academia who can serve as role models. But such leadership must trickle down to village schools and mohalla committees.

Institutions like AMU, Darul Uloom Deoband, and Nadwa continue to symbolise Muslim intellectual life in UP. Yet they must ask: are they adequately serving the wider community? AMU has expanded with outreach centers, but it remains prestige-focused and geographically concentrated. It should invest more in community schools, digital platforms, and partnerships with state education boards. Deoband and Nadwa must revisit their curricula to balance religious and modern education. Global Islamic universities (e.g., in Iran, Malaysia, and Egypt) have achieved such blends more successfully. These institutions must move beyond being islands of excellence toward engines of mass uplift.

Three pathways are crucial for meaningful change in UP’s Muslim educational and social landscape:

Integration and Innovation in Education:

Merge religious and modern curricula. Use technology (EdTech platforms, mobile learning) to overcome infrastructure deficits. Introduce compulsory vocational and digital literacy in high schools.

Gender-Centered Development:

Scholarships, safe schools, and mentorship programs for Muslim girls. Role models and visibility of educated Muslim women in public life.

Community-Led Social Reform:

Campaigns against early marriage and child labour. Encouragement of critical inquiry, interfaith dialogue, and pluralism as part of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (the syncretic culture of UP).

The challenges of Muslim education and social reform in Uttar Pradesh are undeniable: low literacy, poverty, inadequate access to higher education, and gender disparities. Yet these challenges are not insurmountable. History demonstrates the resilience and creativity of UP’s Muslim community—from the grandeur of Mughal institutions to the reformist zeal of Aligarh, Deoband, and Nadwa.

Today, the task is to translate that legacy into universal empowerment. This requires a synergy of state policy, community initiative, and institutional reform. Without it, Muslims in UP risk being trapped in a cycle of marginalisation. With it, they can reclaim their place as full partners in India’s democratic and developmental journey. Education is not just a pathway to jobs; it is a vehicle for dignity, equality, and citizenship. For UP’s Muslims, it is the cornerstone of social reform—and the promise of a brighter future.

(The author is a student of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

The post Muslim Education in Uttar Pradesh: Pathways to Inclusion and Reform appeared first on SabrangIndia.

There is a popular proverb related to education which says that if an incompetent person is appointed as teacher, the academic lives of generations of students are doomed. And when there are many such ‘teachers’ whose only qualification is having been trained in the far right, Hindutva wisdom appointed at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), what pray shall be the future of school social science education?

Recently, the NCERT released a ‘Special Module’ (for text/teaching) titled ‘Partition Horrors’. This module is described as a ‘supplementary resource’ for Classes 6 to 8 (middle to senior school) – not part of regular textbooks – and is meant to be used for ‘projects, posters, discussions and debates.’ The contents of this module, in fact, is supplementary resource material to pinpoint or understand those men/organisations responsible (read guilty) for the Partition of India as claimed but, in fact, presents an altogether a sectarian narrative driven by the body’s RSS masters.

The Module was released on August 14, 2025 as part of “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day” following PM Modi’s 2021 directive which stated that “Partition’s pains can never be forgotten. Millions of our sisters and brothers were displaced, and many lost their lives due to mindless hate and violence. In memory of the struggles and sacrifices of our people, August 14, will be observed as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.”

On detailed perusal, `The whole document is full of manipulation, contradictions, and untruths aiming   to hide more than it tries to convey about the Partition. We can divide the NCERT truths into following sections.

Falsehood 1: Muslim League leader Jinnah and political Islam founded two-nation theory

The document states that “Partition was primarily the result of flawed ideas, misconceptions, and erroneous decisions.” The party of Indian Muslims, the Muslim League [ML], held a conference in Lahore in 1940. Its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, said that Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures”. [page 5]

The module also traces Partition to Muslim leaders’ belief in a separate identity rooted in “political Islam”. It goes on to stress that “on the basis of religion, culture, customs, history, sources of inspiration, and worldviews, Muslim leaders called themselves as fundamentally separate from Hindus. The root of this lay in the ideology of political Islam, which denies the possibility of any permanent or equal relationship with non-Muslims.” [page 6].

It is true that ML under the leadership of MA Jinnah declared his firm faith in India being not one nation. His argument was that,

“The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature. They neither intermarry nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their views on life, and of life, are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Musalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, their heroes are different, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and likewise their victories and defeats overlap.” 

Facts concealed

This statement of Jinnah in defence of two-nation theory is reproduced twice in the short document (pages 4 & 6) but the authors shamelessly hide what Hindu nationalists aligned with Hindu Mahasabha and RSS had been arrogantly arguing for decades preceding Jinnah’s statement.

Privileged Caste Hindu nationalists of Bengal propounded the two-nation theory

Long-long before the appearance of Muslim advocates of the two-nation theory, the ball was set rolling by High Caste Hindu nationalists at the end of the 19^th century in Bengal. Raj Narain Basu (1826–1899), the maternal grandfather of Aurobindo Ghosh, and his close associate Nabha Gopal Mitra (1840-94) were the co-fathers of two-nation theory and Hindu nationalism in India. Basu established a society for the promotion of national feelings among the educated natives which in fact stood for preaching the superiority of Hinduism. He organized meetings proclaiming that Hinduism despite its Casteism presented a much higher social idealism than ever reached by the Christian or Islamic civilization.

Basu was the first person to conceive the idea of a Maha Hindu Samiti (All India Hindu Association) and helped in the formation of Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, a precursor of Hindu Mahasabha. He believed that through this organization Hindus would be able to establish an Aryan nation in India. He visualized a powerful Hindu nation not only overtaking India but the whole world. He also saw,

“[The] noble and puissant Hindu nation rousing herself after sleep and rushing headlong towards progress with divine prowess. I see this rejuvenated nation again illumining the world by her knowledge, spirituality and culture, and the glory of Hindu nation again spreading over the whole world.”

[Cited in Majumdar, R. C., History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. I (Calcutta: Firma KL Mukhpadhyay, 1971), 295–296.]

Nabha Gopal Mitra started organising an annual Hindu Mela (fête). It used to be a gathering on the last day of every Bengali year and highlighted the Hindu nature of all aspects of Hindu Bengali life and continued uninterrupted between 1867 and 1880. Mitra also started a National Society and a National Paper for promoting unity and feelings of nationalism among Hindus. Mitra argued in his paper that the Hindus positively formed a nation by themselves. According to him,

“[The] basis of national unity in India is the Hindu religion. Hindu nationality embraces all the Hindus of India irrespective of their locality or language.”

[Cited in Majumdar, R. C., Three Phases of India’s Struggle for Freedom (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1961), p. 8.]

1. C. Majumdar, a favourite of Hindutva intellectuals and a prominent researcher of the rise of Hindu nationalism in Bengal, had no difficulty in arriving at the truth that

“Nabha Gopal forestalled Jinnah’s theory of two nations by more than half a century… [And since then] consciously or unconsciously, the Hindu character was deeply imprinted on nationalism all over India.” [Ibid.] 

Role of Arya Samaj 

The Arya Samaj in northern India aggressively preached that Hindu and Muslim communities in India were, in fact, two different nations. Bhai Parmanand (1876–1947), a leading light of the Arya Samaj in northern India who was also a leader of Hindu Mahasabha, declared Hindus and Muslims as two nations. The following words of his seems to have been borrowed by Jinnah in his March 1940 speech at Lahore quoted in the NCERT module.

“In history the Hindus revere the memory of Prithvi Raj, Partap, Shivaji and, Beragi Bir, who fought for the honour and freedom of this land (against the Muslims), while the Mahomedans look upon the invaders of India, like Muhammad Bin Qasim and rulers like Aurangzeb as their national heroes…[whereas] in the religious field, the Hindus draw their inspiration from the Ramayan, the Mahabharat, and the Geeta. The Musalmans, on the other hand, derive their inspiration from the Quran and the Hadis. Thus, the things that divide are far more vital than the things which unite.”

[Parmanand, Bhai in pamphlet titled, ‘The Hindu National Movement’, cited in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1990), 35–36, first Published December 1940, Thackers Publishers, Bombay.]

Parmanand as early as 1908–9, called for the total exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations in two specific areas. According to his plan, elaborated in his autobiography,

“The territory beyond Sind should be united with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province into a great Musalman kingdom. The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time Mussalman in the rest of India should go and settle in this territory.”

[Parmanand, Bhai, The Story of My Life, S. Chand, Delhi, 1982, p. 36.]

Another Arya Samaj luminary Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) in 1924 proposed partition of India into Muslim India and non-Muslim India. He articulated his two-nation theory in the following words:

     “Under my scheme the Muslims will have four Muslim States: (1) The Pathan Province of the North Western Frontier (2) Western Punjab (3) Sindh and (4) Eastern Bengal. If there are compact Muslim communities in any other part of India, sufficiently large to form a Province, they should be similarly constituted. But it should be distinctly understood that this is not a united India. It means a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India.”

[Rai, Lala Lajpat, ‘Hindu-Muslim Problem XI’, The Tribune, Lahore, December 14, 1924, p. 8.] 

Hindu nationalist (supremacist) Moonje, Lala Har Dayal, Savarkar and Golwalkar as pioneers of two-nation theory

Dr. B. S. Moonje was another Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leader who carried forward the flag of Hindu Separatism long before Muslim League’s Pakistan resolution of March 1940. While addressing the third session of the Oudh Hindu Mahasabha in 1923, he declared: 

“Just as England belongs to the English, France to the French, and Germany to the Germans, India belongs to the Hindus. If Hindus get organized, they can humble the English and their stooges, the Muslims…The Hindus henceforth create their own world which will prosper through shuddhi [literally meaning purification, the term was used for conversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism]and sangathan [organization].“

[Cited in Dhanki, J. S., Lala Lajpat Rai and Indian Nationalism, S Publications, Jullundur, 1990, p. 378.]

Lala Har Dayal (1884–1938), a well-known name in the Ghadar Party circles, too, long before the Muslim League’s demand for a separate homeland for Muslims, not only demanded the formation of a Hindu nation in India but also urged the conquest and Hinduisation of Afghanistan. In a significant political statement in 1925, published in the Pratap of Kanpur, he stated:

“I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Muslims, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So long as the Hindu Nation does not accomplish these four things, the safety of our children and great grandchildren will be ever in danger, and the safety of Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogenous. But the Musalman and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab, and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam […] Just as there is Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and the frontier territory; otherwise, it is useless to win Swaraj.”

[Cited in Ambedkar, B. R., Pakistan or the Partition of India, Maharashtra Government, Bombay, 1990, p. 129.]

It was RSS’ ‘Veer’ V. D. Savarkar (1883-1966), the originator of the politics of Hindutva, who developed the most elaborate two-nation theory. The fact should not be missed that Muslim League passed its Pakistan resolution in 1940, but Savarkar propagated the two-nation theory long before it. While delivering the presidential address to the 19th session Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad in 1937, Savarkar declared unequivocally,

“As it is, there are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India. Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so…Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.”

[Samagar Savarkar Wangmaya (Collected Works of Savarkar), Hindu Mahasabha, Poona, 1963, p.296.]

It was no abrupt belief of Muslims (and Christians) being separate nations. Savarkar in his controversial book Hindutva as early as 1923 decreed:

“Christians and Mohamedan [sic] communities…cannot be recognized as Hindus as since their adoption of the new cult they had ceased to own Hindu Sanskriti [culture] as a whole. They belong, or feel that they belong, to a cultural unit altogether different from the Hindu one. Their heroes and their hero worship their fairs and their festivals, their ideals and their outlook on-life, have now ceased to be common with ours.”

[Maratha [V. D. Savarkar], Hindutva, VV Kelkar, Nagpur, 1923, p. 88.]

[1] How religiously RSS believed in two-nation theory even after the birth of a democratic-secular India was made clear when the English organ of the RSS, Organiser, on the very eve of Independence (August 14, 1947) editorially reaffirmed its faith in two-nation theory in the following words:

“Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation…the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations.” 

The ‘Hindu’ narratives make it clear that two-nation theory was the product of Hindu nationalists and Partition was a primary holy task which Hindu nationalists took upon themselves. The module does not bother to tell us that it was borrowed by Jinnah only in late 1930s. A leading English daily of India editorially stated:

“It was a theory which long preceded Jinnah, having been expounded by such names as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya in the late nineteenth-century Bengal and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the early part of the twentieth, among countless others.”

[Editorial: ‘Two-nation Gujarat’, The Times of India, April 18, 2002.]

Despite all the above-mentioned facts available in the RSS/Hindu Mahasabha archives the authors of the module continue the tirade that “Muslim leaders called themselves as fundamentally separate from Hindus. The root of this lay in the ideology of political Islam, which denies the possibility of any permanent [sic] or equal relationship with non-Muslims.”

Falsehood 2: Muslim League as party of all Indian Muslims

The module attempts to create a narrative that Muslim League represented all Muslims of India since it “won 73 out of 78 seats reserved for Muslims” in March 1946 elections to the Constituent Assembly. The authors do not disclose that Muslim League won due to highly restricted system of franchise in which a tiny minority of Muslims voted. The Muslim League was able to secure most of the Muslim seats due to the advantage it enjoyed under the prevalent restricted franchise at that time. The elections were held under the Sixth Schedule of the 1935 Act, which excluded the mass of peasants, most small shopkeepers and traders, and countless others from the rolls through tax, property and educational qualifications. According to Granville Austin, a renowned authority on making of Indian constitution, “Only 28.5 percent, of the adult population of the provinces could vote in the provincial assembly elections of early 1946…Economically and socially depressed portions of the population were virtually disenfranchised by the terms of the 1935 Act.”

[Austin, Granville, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, OUP, Delhi, 2014. pp. 12-13.]

Amongst Muslims it was far less due to prevalent poverty and want of education. For example, in Bihar where Muslim League secured 34 out of 40 Muslim seats in Provincial Assembly elections, the eligible Muslim electorate consisted only of 7.8 percent of the total population. It could win as Muslim elite/High Caste backed it whereas 92.2% Muslims of Bihar remained disenfranchised. It was the case in almost all other provinces.   [Ghosh, Papiya, Muhajirs and the Nation: Bihar in the 40s, Routledge, Delhi, 2010, 79.]

Savarkar led Hindu Mahasabha ran coalition governments with Jinnah led Muslim League

The Module describes Jinnah led ML as party of Indian Muslims but fails to take note of the fact that it was this party of Muslims with which Hindu Mahasabha led by Savarkar entered into alliances in order to break the united freedom struggle, specially, the 1942 Quit India Movement against the British rulers. While delivering Presidential address to the 24th session of Hindu Mahasabha at Cawnpore (Kanpur) in 1942, he defended hobnobbing with the Muslim League in the following words,

“In practical politics also the Mahasabha knows that we must advance through reasonable compromises. Witness the fact that only recently in Sind, the Sind-Hindu-Sabha on invitation had taken the responsibility of joining hands with the League itself in running coalition Government. The case of Bengal is well known. Wild Leaguers whom even the Congress with all its submissiveness could not placate grew quite reasonably compromising and sociable as soon as they came in contact with the Hindu Mahasabha and the Coalition Government, under the premiership of Mr. Fazlul Huq and the able lead of our esteemed Mahasabha leader Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji, functioned successfully for a year or so to the benefit of both the communities. Moreover, further events also proved demonstratively that the Hindu Mahasabhaits endeavoured to capture the centres of political power only in the public interests and not for the leaves and fishes of the office.” [Ibid, pp. 479-480.]

Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League formed a coalition government in NWFP also.

The module, not surprisingly, attempts to defend Jinnah, a co-traveller two-nation theorist. Jinnah is quoted to have said “I never thought it would happen. I never expected to see Pakistan in my lifetime” [page 9]. The message module wants to convey is Jinnah did not expect it, but Congress got Pakistan delivered to Jinnah!

Falsehood 3: Congress Guilty of Partition

In a section titled “Who was responsible for Partition” [page 6], the NCERT module reads: “Ultimately, on August 15, 1947, India was divided. But this was not the doing of any one person. There were three elements responsible for the Partition of India: Jinnah, who demanded it; second, the Congress, which accepted it; and third, Mountbatten, who implemented it. But Mountbatten proved to be guilty of a major blunder.” [page 8]

However, according to the module Congress was primarily responsible for Partition because in 1947 “for the first time Indian leaders themselves willingly handed over vast part of the country permanently outside the national fold-along with tens of crores of its citizens-without even their consent. This was a unique event in human history, when a nation’s own leaders, without a war, peacefully and in closed meetings, suddenly severed crores of their people from the country”. [page 10]

When the present bosses at NCERT trained in RSS ‘boudhik shivirs’ (ideological orientation camps) blame Congress for Partition it is the pot calling the kettle black. It is a highly questionable claim which even facts mentioned in the module do not corroborate. We are told, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel called it “bitter medicine,” while Jawaharlal Nehru described it as “bad” but “unavoidable” [page 5]. Elsewhere, the module reads: “Nehru and Patel accepted Partition to avert civil war and anarchy. Once they did, Gandhi too gave up his opposition”. [page 8] It is interesting to note that for concurring to Partition both wavering Nehru and Iron Man Patel are depicted on the same page!

If the authors of NCERT module had cared to read history honestly, Rammanohar Lohia, a renowned freedom fighter and Socialist leader, the truth would not have been crucified. He was unambiguous in holding that the Hindu communalist who shouted loudest for Akhand or united Bharat, “helped Britain and the Muslim League partition the country…They did nothing whatever, to bring the Muslim close to the Hindu within a single nation. They did almost everything to estrange them from each other. Such estrangement is the root cause of partition.”

[Lohia, Rammanohar, Guilty Men of India’s Partition, BR Publishing, Delhi, 2012, p. 2.]

Falsehood 4: British Rulers Did Not Want Partition

The module reflects the combined Hindu Mahasabha and RSS dilemma of how to navigate the issue of their loyalty to the colonial masters in independent India. Though it declares “Mountbatten proved to be guilty of a major blunder”, the defence of this monster is not far away. Giving him a character certificate, the document goes to declare that “he was not the cause of it” [page 8] Instead of presenting testimonies of the victims (of all religions) of Partition which are available in abundance, the module presents indefensible defence of Mountbatten. It prominently displays the following statement of his: “I did not Partition India. The plan for partition had been accepted by the Indian leaders themselves. My role was to execute it in the most peaceful way possible…I accept the blame for haste…But I do not accept the blame for the violence which followed. That was the responsibility of Indians themselves”. [page 6]”

The document brazenly attempts to belittle the role of British colonial rulers in partitioning India as part of its imperialist project. It is bone chilling to read that it “had long been the known position of the British government that it was against Partition, Congress leaders underestimated Jinnah. Also, Viceroy Lord Wavell repeatedly made it clear, ever since 1940 up to March 1947, that Partition would not resolve the Hindu-Muslim problem. It would only lead to mass violence, administrative collapse, and long-term hostility. His words proved prophetic”. [page 10] There could not have been more shameless defence of colonial masters’ project of ‘Divide and Rule’.

Shockingly, NCERT, appears to be working overtime to de-colonize Indian education resorts to a hardened Anglophile, Nirad C. Chaudhuri in support of the lie that British did not want Partition. Nirad’s quote reads: “I assert with confidence that not even at the end of 1946 did anybody in India believe in the possibility of a partition in the country…The Hindus and the British alike foreswore the principle of unity of India which they had always professed.”

The authors of this document, in fact, borrowed defence of the British rulers from Golwalkar. The most prominent ideologue of RSS did not believe that colonial rule was an injustice or unnatural. In a speech on 8 June 1942, at a time when freedom struggle was rearing to rise to the call of the Quit India movement, Golwalkar declared:

“[the] Sangh does not want to blame anybody else for the present degraded state of the society. When the people start blaming others, then there is weakness in them. It is futile to blame the strong for the injustice done to the weak … [The] Sangh does not want to waste its invaluable time in abusing or criticizing others. If we know that large fish eat the smaller ones, it is outright madness to blame the big fish. Law of nature, whether good or bad, is true all the time. This rule does not change by terming it unjust.”

[Golwalkar, M. S., Shri Guruji Samagr Darshan [Collected Works of Golwalkar in Hindi] vol. 1 (Nagpur: Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, 1974), pp. 11-12.]

Soft on culpability of Sir Cyril Radcliff

Authors of the module appear as apologists for the crimes of Sir Cyril Radcliff who supervised the land division between India and Pakistan. Radcliff was the person who caused additional blood bath as maps of both the countries were not available even after two days of Partition. The module rightly stated that

“The demarcation of borders was hastily done. Sir Cyril Radcliff was given only five weeks to draw the boundaries. In Punjab, even two days after 15 August 1947, millions of people did not know whether they were in India or in Pakistan…This recklessness and disregard for the fate of crores of people, and all critical matters was a grave act of negligence”. [pages 8-9]

NCERT shies away from censuring him and decided to print his photograph with the following apology of his: “I had no alternative, the time at my disposal was so short that I could not do a better job. I was given a job to do and I did my best, though it may not have been very good.” [page 10]

Falsehood 5: Silence on Partition violence by RSS

The module gives details of horrendous communal violence during Partition. “Nearly1.5 crores were forced to cross the new borders…Communal hostility spread between India’s major religious communities…Another horrifying aspect was the large-scale sexual violence against women and girls. In many places, women jumped into wells to protect themselves”. [page 2]

We know that Muslim National Guards (MNG) created by Muslim League as storm-troopers to maim and kill the opponents played a nefarious role in the partition violence, but they were not the only one. Sardar Patel, the first home minister of independent India in a letter to Golwalkar who was then Supremo of RSS, dated 11 September 1948 corroborated the fact that RSS also had killer gangs. He stated: “Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing…It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organize for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji.”

Cited in Justice on Trial, RSS, Bangalore, 1962, pp.26-28.

Truth: It was an AXIS OF HINDU MAHASABHA-RSS-JINNAH which got India Partitioned

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a peerless researcher of the communal politics in pre-independence India, underlying the close affinity and camaraderie between Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League on the issue of the Two-nation theory wrote:

“Strange it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah instead of being opposed to each other on the one nation versus two nations issue are in complete agreement about it. Both agree, not only agree but insist that there are two nations in India—one the Muslim nation and the other Hindu nation.”[i] 

[Ambedkar, B. R., Pakistan or the Partition of India, Govt. of Maharashtra, Bombay, 1990 [Reprint of 1940 edition], p. 142.]

Ambedkar agonized by the evil designs of Savarkar regarding the Two-nation theory and Hindutva rhetoric over it, wrote, as early as 1940, that,

“Hindu nation will be enabled to occupy a predominant position that is due to it and the Muslim nation made to live in the position of subordinate co-operation with the Hindu nation”. [Ibid., 143.]

The Hindutva lies about Partition of India presented as facts in Partition Horrors would not have been otherwise as the whole project is supervised by a specialist who specializes in historical negationism (denying the truths of the past which simultaneously means presenting false history), Michel Danino, an Indian writer of French origin. He secured Indian citizenship only in 2003. Modi government conferred on him Padma Shri award, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, in 2017.  He is a vocal supporter of Hindutva who enjoys, “[historical] controversies in a kind of perverse way”. [https://indianexpress.com/article/education/academia-margins-to-ncert-row-french-born-scholars-tryst-with-indias-past-10197438/] He is there to undo history and, in the process, undoing the glorious history of making of democratic-secular-egalitarian India. The irony is that it is happening in PM Modi declared Immortality Period (Amrit Kal) of the nation!

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Rewriting NCERT school textbooks: ‘Muslim Raj’ is a mere excuse, the project is to conceal historical facts

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NCERT drops Preamble of the Constitution from Class III and VI textbooks

The post NCERT’s ‘Partition Horrors’: A brazen exercise in white-washing the ‘crimes’ of the Hindu Mahasabha & RSS appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The organisations said this was the second such FIR against the news platform in two months. They alleged the Assam Police unleashed vindictive actions against the journalists through the Crime Branch in Guwahati. The FIR is reportedly based on complaint filed by a BJP leader over a story published in The Wire on June 28, based on a presentation by India’s defence attaché to Indonesia, Captain (Indian Navy) Shiv Kumar.

The statement said, “It is noteworthy that the summons were issued on August 12, 2025, even as the Supreme Court bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi had granted Mr. Varadarajan and all journalists at The Wire protection from any coercive action in an FIR (0181/2025) filed by the Assam Police in Morigaon on July 11, 2025 under Section 152 and other provisions of the BNS. Now, the Assam Police have filed another FIR without mentioning any reason and have asked Mr. Varadarajan and Mr. Thapar to appear before the investigating officer at the Crime Branch in Guwahati on August 22 — on pain of arrest in the event of non-compliance,” the statement added.

“The summons was received at The Wire’s office here on August 14. Today (August 18), an identical summons was received in the name of Thapar, for the same FIR,” read The Wire report. However, the FIR date was not mentioned, no details of the alleged offence were provided, and a copy of the FIR was not included.

“It is revealed that there are reasonable grounds to question you to ascertain the facts and circumstances from you, in relation to the present investigation.” Both Varadarajan and Thapar have been directed to appear at the Crime Branch office in Panbazar, Guwahati, on Friday, August 22, according to the summons.  “Failure to attend/comply with the terms of this Notice can render you liable for arrest,” the summons adds.

“While the FIR registered against Varadarajan in Morigaon on July 11, 2025, pertains to a complaint filed by a BJP officeholder over a story published in The Wire on June 28, 2025 (‘IAF Lost Fighter Jets to Pak Because of Political Leadership’s Constraints’: Indian Defence Attaché), it is not apparent what article or video the Crime Branch FIR relates to,” reads The Wire report.

On an earlier FIR in Assam on the same article, The Wire, approached the court to challenge the vires of Section 152 of BNS, and the bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi issued notice. In their response to the summons, both Varadarajan and Thapar have said they are ready and willing to cooperate with any investigation, but the preconditions laid down by India’s constitutional courts have to be fulfilled in any case. Please note, their reply says, that the “cannot be conceivably summoned and expected to answer questions on a matter, to ascertain the ‘facts and circumstances in relation to the present investigation’, without being supplied with the contents of the FIR to which your investigation pertains.”

Sedition Plus: ‘Section 152 now a tool to target media’

The media organisations said in May 2022, the Supreme Court had ordered the suspension of proceedings and criminal prosecutions for sedition under section 124A of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code.  “Section 152 of BNS is a repackaged version of Section 124A. In its writ petition last week, The Wire has also challenged the vires of Section 152, BNS and the apex court issued notice to the Assam government and others,” the journalists’ bodies said.

“While we welcome the relief given by Supreme Court to The Wire and Mr. Varadarajan last week, the registration of a new case against him and Mr. Thapar makes it apparent that Section 152 has become a tool with which to target the media in India,” they said, demanding immediate withdrawal of these cases against the senior journalists, as well as the withdrawal of the “draconian” Section 152 of BNS, which “threatens freedom of expression as enshrined in Article 19(1)a of Indian Constitution”.

“As can be seen from the actions of the Assam Police, Section 152 of BNS has been weaponised to chill the press into silence,” they said.

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Manipur violence: SC provides interim protection in sedition case against lawyer who accompanied fact-finding team

The post Journalists’ bodies strongly condemn sedition charges against Siddharth Varadarajan, Karan Thapar of The Wire appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), D. P. Saklani unveiled the Class 8 Social Science textbook with several fundamental changes on July 17, 2025. This revised version of texts will be utilised in schools from the academic session, 2025-26. Wide-ranging changes have been made in this new edition. Media reports have singled out how existing lessons on Mughal and Muslim rulers had been replaced with details of the religious persecution and other atrocities under ‘Muslim rule’ in India. And on this pretext, the Hindutva-captive media and ‘WhatsApp university’ have started another war against Islam and the country’s Muslims. Before this move, some radical changes had been made in the textbooks of classes 6-12.

The expert who has been given the responsibility to complete this work by NCERT, under the complete control of RSS, is Michel Danino, an Indian writer of French origin. He secured Indian citizenship only in 2003. The Modi government has conferred the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award on him, in 2017.  He is currently the chairman of the social science curriculum of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). He is a supporter of Hindutva and has been criticised for indulging in historical negationism (denying the truths of the past).

Let us first understand which crucial developments have been omitted from the school syllabus.

Emergency of 1975

The chapter on Emergency in the Class 12 political science textbook ‘Politics in India after Independence’ has been reduced by five pages. Parts relating to the harsh impact of the Emergency on people and institutions have been deleted.  Another reference to the ban imposed on all trade union activities during the Emergency has been removed from chapter 8 (‘Social Movements’) of the class 12 sociology textbook.

Material on protests and social movements dropped

Nearly three chapters detailing protests that turned into social movements in contemporary India have been removed from political science textbooks for classes 6 to 12. A chapter on “Rise of Popular Movements” has been removed from the class 12 textbook ‘Politics in India after Independence’. The Chipko movement, the growth of the Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra in the 1970s, the agrarian struggles of the 1980s, especially those led by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), the anti-alcohol movement of Andhra Pradesh, details on the famous Narmada Bachao Andolan [Save Narmada River Movement] opposing the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada River and its tributaries in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra and the Right to Information movement were removed in one go.

The chapter ‘Struggle for Equality’ also removed

NCERT has also removed the chapter ‘Struggle for Equality’ from the Class 7 Political Science textbook, which states how ‘Tawa Matsya Sangh’ fought for the rights of displaced forest dwellers of Satpura forests of Madhya Pradesh.

Chapter on struggles of indigenous people removed

The third chapter on mass struggles has been removed from the Class 10 political science textbook ‘Democratic Politics-II’. It dealt with indirect ways of influencing politics through pressure groups and movements. Besides the movement for democracy in Nepal and the protests against water privatization in Bolivia, South America. This chapter also covered the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the non-violent ‘Kittiko-Hachiko Movement’ (‘Kittiko-Hachiko Movement’, also known as the “Kittiko Hachiko” movement, was a non-violent protest in Karnataka, India, in 1987 which opposed eucalyptus plantations on grazing land. The movement involved people plucking eucalyptus saplings and planting alternative, useful plants instead) in Karnataka in 1987, the BAMCEF (All India Backwards SC/ST/OBC and Minorities Communities Employees’ Federation) founded by Kanshiram in 1971, and the National Alliance of People’s Movements, whose founders included Medha Patkar.

Scissors on study of social movements

The only chapter on social movements in the sociology syllabus of classes 11 and 12 has been significantly reduced. In the chapter titled ‘Social Movements’ in the class 12 textbook ‘Social Change and Development in India’ one of the several changes made is the removal of the exercise box in which students were asked to discuss the recent farmers’ protests against the three farm laws passed by Parliament.

Shredding of Indian democracy

Four chapters dealing with Democracy and the Making of Indian Democracy have been removed on the ground that similar topics are covered in Political Science textbooks of other classes. For example, a chapter titled ‘Key Elements of Democratic Government’ has been removed from the Class 6 political science book. This was the first detailed introduction to the concept of democracy in middle school and discussed some of the key elements that affect the functioning of a democratic government, including chapters like ‘Democracy and Diversity’ and ‘Challenges to Democracy’ that have been removed from the Class 10 political science textbook.

Both these chapters were first removed from the CBSE syllabus in April and have now been permanently removed from the NCERT textbook.

Jawaharlal Nehru cut short

The following comment of Nehru on Bhakra Nangal Dam has been removed from Class 12 Sociology textbook, ‘Social Change and Development in India’:

“Our engineers tell us that probably nowhere else in the world is there a dam as high as this. The work bristles with difficulties and complications. As I walked around the site I thought that these days the biggest temple and mosques and gurdwara is the place where man works for the good of mankind. Which place can be greater than this, this Bhakra Nangal, where thousands and lakhs of men have worked, have shed their blood and sweat and laid down their lives as well?”

Discussion on sedition deleted

A section describing the arbitrariness of colonial sedition law through the example of sedition and how Indian nationalists, specially, revolutionaries played a role in challenging it is no longer part of a chapter ‘Understanding Laws’ in the class 8 political science book. This deleted section also carried the following exercise for students: “State one reason why you think the Sedition Act of 1870 was arbitrary? In what ways does the Sedition Act of 1870 contradict the rule of law?”

Constitution making and creation of linguistic states left out

The chapter ‘India after Independence’, which talks about constitution making and creation of linguistic states, has been removed from the Class 8 history textbook ‘Our Pasts III’.

Description of demolition of Babri Masjid, Gujarat and Manipur violence removed

References to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya (1992), targeted killing of Muslims in the Gujarat communal violence (2002), and to the Manipur violence have been removed from Class 11 and 12 textbooks.

Pioneers of Anti-British struggle, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan dropped

NCERT’s new Class 8 social science textbook does not mention Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, or the four Anglo-Mysore Wars of the 1700s, in its chapter on India’s colonial period. Remember, Tipu Sultan, known as the “Tiger of Mysore”, led a glorious military resistance to British colonialism. He was the pioneer of rocket artillery which had great success against the British. The economy of Mysore reached its peak during his reign.

He was martyred on 4 May 1799 while fighting the combined forces of British-Maratha-Nizam at the Srirangapatna front. At the time of Tipu’s martyrdom, he was wearing a heavy gold ring on which ‘Ram’ was inscribed in Devanagari script.

How much British dreaded Tipu would be clear by the letter which A. Campbell, wrote to the Court of Directors of the East India Company in 1788, “the most active powerful, ambitious Prince of Hindustan, whose troops are in high order and whose powerful antipathy to the English is beyond what the Directors are yet well aware of.” When he died there were jubilant celebrations in Britain with declaration of public holiday in Britain.

Shockingly, Danino defending the removal of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan’s contribution to anti-colonial wars while confirming that Tipu Sultan and related events will likely remain absent in Part 2 of the series as well, stated: “If we include every war, we go back to cramming.”

The ‘Muslim’ rule not removed but toxified

The supplicant majoritarian regime-captive media and experts have been arguing that the period of rule of Muslim rulers in India has been removed, attributing this reason to the ire within the secular and progressive camp. The truth is different: Muslim rule has been related but re-configurated and now narrated with a vigorous anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric in tune with the current communal politics of RSS-BJP rulers (regime).

The history section of the new book, begins with the Delhi Sultanate and goes up to the colonial period (the British Raj), deliberating in a note on ‘Dark Periods of History’, when war, abuse, fanaticism and bloodshed prevailed. The description of ‘dark periods of history’ includes the oppressive policies of Mahmud of Ghazni and the Mughal rulers as we will know in the following.

1. Reference to Mahmud Ghazni of Afghanistan, who invaded the subcontinent and raided the Somnath temple, has been tweaked. First, the title “Sultan” has been dropped from his name. Second, the sentence “he raided the subcontinent almost every year” has been revised to “he raided the subcontinent 17 times (1000-1025 CE) with a religious motive”.
2. On Babur, the first Mughal emperor, the book notes that his autobiography points to him as being cultured and intellectually curious. “But he was also a brutal and ruthless conqueror, slaughtering entire populations of cities, enslaving women and children, and taking pride in erecting ‘towers of skulls’ made from the slaughtered people of plundered cities.”
3. 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 quoted 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.”
4. On Aurangzeb, the book points out that some scholars argue that his motives were primarily political, and they give examples of his grants and assurances of protection to temples. While politics played a part in his decisions, his farmans (edicts) “make his personal religious motive clear too.” He ordered governors of provinces to demolish schools and temples, and destroyed temples at Banaras, Mathura, Somnath, and Jain temples and Sikh gurdwaras.

This detailed account of the atrocities committed by the ‘Muslim’ rulers on their Hindu subjects has been accompanied by a commentary which underlines that it is important to study the dark events objectively, without blaming anyone of the present-day people (i.e. the Muslims of the country). If we want to identify the criminals of the ‘Muslim Raj’, then the historical facts of that period, as recorded by the ‘Hindu’ sources themselves, will clearly reveal that the upper caste Hindus were fully complicit in the atrocities committed by the Muslim rulers.

Majoritarian narrative of incidents in history when privileged caste Hindus helped ‘Muslim’ rulers

No sane person can deny that Somnath Temple in Gujarat was desecrated, looted and razed by Mahmud Ghazi (Mahmud Ghaznavi) in 1026. But a fact remains buried that it was done with the active help and participation of local Hindu chieftains. The most prominent ideologue of RSS, MS Golwalkar while referring to the desecration and destruction of Somnath Temple by Mahmud Ghazi added:

“He crossed the Khyber Pass and set foot in Bharat to plunder the wealth of Somnath. He had to cross the great desert of Rajasthan. There was a time when he had no food, and no water for his army, and even for himself left to his fate, he would have perished…But no, Mahmud Ghazi made the local chieftains to believe that Saurashtra had expansionist designs against them. In their folly and pettiness, they believed him. And they joined him. When Mahmud Ghazi launched his assault on the great temple, it was the Hindu, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul-who stood in the vanguard of his army. Somnath was desecrated with the active help of the Hindus. These are facts of history.”

[RSS English organ, Organizer, January 4, 1950.]

These were not ‘Muslim’ rulers only who were defiling Hindu temples. Swami Vivekananda shared the fact that,

“The temple of Jagannath is an old Buddhistic temple. We took this and others over and re-Hinduised them. We shall have to do many things like that yet”. [The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 3, 264.]

It has been corroborated by another darling of the Hindutva camp, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. According to him the rath yatra, an integral part of Jagganath Temple was a Buddhist ritual. Bankim wrote:

“It is a fact…that the images of Jagannath, Balaram, and Subhadra, which now figure in the Rath, are near copies of the representations of Buddha, Dharmma, and Sangha, and appear to have been modelled upon them.”

[Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, ‘On the origin of Hindu festivals’ in Essays & Letters, Rupa, Delhi, 2010, pp. 8-9.]

It was not an isolated takeover. Swami Dayanand Saraswati who is regarded as a Prophet of Hindutva and revered by RSS while dealing with the contribution of Shankaracharya (8th century) in his tome, Satyarth Prakash wrote:

“For ten years he toured all over the country, refuted Jainism and advocated the Vedic religion. All the broken images that are now-a-days dug out of the earth were broken in the time of Shankar, whilst those that are found whole here and there under the ground had been buried by the Jainis for fear of their being broken.” [Sarswati, Dayanand, Satyarth Praksh, chapter xi, p. 347.]

According to the Buddhist narrative of ancient Indian history the last of Maurya dynasty’s Buddhist king (Ashoka being one), Brihadratha was assassinated by Pushyamitra Shunga, a Brahmin in 184 BCE thus ending the rule of a renowned Buddhist dynasty and establishing the rule of Shunga dynasty. DN Jha an authority on ancient Indian history referred to Divyavadana, a Buddhist Sanskrit work from the early centuries which described how Buddhist and Jain religious places were destroyed by Pushyamitra Shunga, a great persecutor of Buddhists.

“He is said to have marched out with a large army, destroying stupas, burning monasteries and killing monks as far as Sakala, now known as Sialkot, where he announced a prize of one hundred dinars for every head of a Shramana (opposed to Vedas).”

Jha also presented evidence from the grammarian Patanjali, a contemporary of the Shungas, who famously stated in his Mahabhashya that Brahmins and Shramanas were eternal enemies, like the snake and the mongoose.[1]

Did Hindus join persecution of Sikhs by Mughals?

In the Hindutva narrative the persecution of Sikh Gurus and their followers by Mughal rulers is used to spread hatred against present day Indian Muslims. The Mughal rulers especially Aurangzeb’s armies committed the most heinous and unspeakable crimes against Sikhs. Was the conflict really Muslims versus Sikhs? The contemporary Sikh records reject such an interpretation. According to a Sikh site during the last and the most brutal siege of Anandpur Sahib in 1704, “The Muslims and the Hindu hill rajas completely surrounded the city and cut it off from outside supplies.” While trying to escape the Mughal invaders,

“The younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh, Baba Zorawar Singh age 9 and Baba Fateh Singh age 7, were separated from the group in the confusion. They walked through the rugged jungle with their holy grandmother, Mata Gujri ji (mother of Guru Gobind Singh) until they came to small village where they took shelter. An old servant of the Guru’s household, Gangu, heard they were there and came to Mataji. With sweet words he requested that they go with him to his village. He expressed care and concern, but his heart was dark with betrayal. Cold, wet and alone, Mata Gujri gratefully went with Gangu to his house. For a few gold coins, Gangu betrayed their whereabouts to the Moghul army. At dawn, a loud banging came on the door, and the soldiers of the evil governor Wazir Khan came to escort the holy family to Sarhind. As they travelled through the city, people thronged to see them pass offering words of encouragement. They shouted curses at the Brahmin and were shocked at the depravity of the Moghul governor”. [2]

Maratha Rule glorified overlooking what it did to Hindus

The class 8 social science book now has a separate chapter on the Marathas; it refers to the Anglo-Maratha wars between 1775 and 1818 and states that “the British took India from the Marathas more than from the Mughals or any other power”. Marathas in general are seen as having “contributed substantially to India’s cultural developments.”

Let us compare these claims with the horrendous experience of the contemporary Hindus. Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958), a renowned historian, held no brief for Islam or Muslim rulers in India. In fact, he is regarded as a true ‘Bhartiye’ historian by RSS and a truthful narrator of the Hindu history during the Mughal rule. However, his description of the Maratha invasion of Bengal in 1742, too, makes it clear that this army of ‘Hindu nation’ cared least about honour and property of Hindus of Bengal. According to Sarkar, “the roving Maratha bands committed wanton destruction and unspeakable outrage”.

[Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal-Volume II Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D. (Delhi: BR Publishing, 2003), (first edition 1948), 457.]

Sarkar, in his monumental work on the history of Bengal, reproduced eyewitness accounts of the sufferings of Bengali Hindus at the hands of Marathas. According to one such eyewitness, Gangaram,

“The Marathas snatched away gold and silver, rejecting everything else. Of some people they cut off the hands, of some the nose and ear; some they killed outright. They dragged away the beautiful women and freed them only after raping them”.

[Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal-Volume II Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D. (Delhi: BR Publishing, 2003), (first edition 1948), 457.]

Another eyewitness, Vaneshwar Vidyalankar, the court Pandit of the Maharaja of Bardwan, narrated the horrifying tales of atrocities committed by the Marathas against Hindus in the following words:

“Shahu Raja’s troops are niggard of pity, slayers of pregnant women and infants, of Brahmans and the poor, fierce of spirit, expert in robbing the property of everyone and committing every kind of sinful act.” [Ibid., 458.]

Babur’s atrocitiesNCERT does not tell the truth that Babur captured northern India by defeating and killing the Muslim Ibrahim Lodhi. It is also not mentioned that the chief commander of the Hindu king Rana Sanga who challenged Mughal army led by Babur was Hasan Mewati who was martyred while fighting Babur’s army in the Battle of Khanwa [near Bharatpur] on March 15, 1527. Atrocities of Aurangzeb

It cannot be argued that Aurangzeb [1618-1707] did commit heinous crimes against his Hindustani subjects. It is important, however, to remember that his cruelty was not confined to non-Muslims.
His own father (Mughal emperor Shah Jahan), brothers (Dara Shikoh, Murad Bakhsh and Shah Shuja), the Shia community, Muslims who did not follow his brand of Islam and the Muslim ruling dynasties in the eastern, central and western parts of India suffered his terrible cruelty and repression. They were destroyed. The word barbaric would be too mild a word to describe his treatment of the Sikh Gurus, their families and followers.

It was Aurangzeb who murdered the famous Sufi saint, Sarmad, in the premises of Delhi’s Jama Masjid [there is a mausoleum on his grave at the eastern gate of the Jama Masjid where the stairs begin, which is still revered by many people]. It is also true that there were numerous cases when Hindus and their religious places were violently targeted during the autocratic rule of Aurangzeb. He crushed the rebellions of the ‘Satnamis’ in Gujarat.

However, there are also contemporary records of his patronage of Hindu and Jain religious sites. Two surviving examples are the magnificent Gauri Shankar Temple, a short distance from the Lahori-Gate of the Red Fort, which was built during Shah Jahan’s reign which continued to function during Aurangzeb’s reign and the famous Jain Lal Mandir right opposite the Red Fort. [Trushke, Audrey, Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth, Penguin, Gurgaon, 2017, pp. 99-106.] Both these temples continue to function even today. It is important to remember that limiting all the crimes of Aurangzeb only to the suppression of Hindus would be tantamount to trivializing his grave crimes against humanity.

Mughal rule evolved and sustained by the support of the Hindu privileged castes

How naive is NCERT (or it is under the total influence of RSS) that it is unaware of the fact that Aurangzeb or Mughal ‘Islamic’ rule used Hindu upper castes in droves to establish and run their empire which was inhabited predominately by Hindus. How deep and strong this unity can be gauged from the fact that after Akbar, no Mughal emperor was born to a Muslim mother. The Hindu upper castes showed immense loyalty to the ‘Muslim’ rulers and served them well with both their brains and strength.

Aurobindo Ghosh, who played a major role in providing a Hindu dimension to Indian nationalism, acknowledged that Mughal rule survived due to the fact that the Mughal emperors gave Hindus “positions of power and responsibility, they used their brains and brawn to preserve their kingdoms”. [Chand, Tara, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 3, Publication Division, Government of India, Delhi, 1992, p. 162.]

The renowned historian Tara Chand, relying on primary source material of the medieval period, concluded that from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 19th century, “it can be reasonably concluded that the entire Punjab, except western Punjab, in whole of India, the ownership of land had come into the hands of the Hindus”, most of whom were Rajputs. [Chand, Tara, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 1, Publication Division, Government of India, Delhi, 1961, p. 124.]

What do the contemporary official records show?

Maasir-ul-Umara [Biographies of Commanders] A biographical dictionary of officials the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1780 [from Akbar to Shah Alam] in Persian language is the most authentic record of high-ranking officials employed by the Mughal rulers. This work was compiled by Shahnawaz Khan and his son Abdul Hai between 1741 and 1780. The details contained in it were based on the official records of the Mughal rulers. According to this compilation, during this period the Mughal rulers had about 100 Hindus (out of 365) were appointed to the high-ranking positions of Mughal empire, most of whom were from “Rajput Rajputana, Central-India, Bundelkhand, Maharashtra”. As far as numbers are concerned, Brahmins followed Rajputs in handling the Mughal administration.

[Khan, Shah Nawaz, Abdul Hai, Maasir al-Umara [translated by H Beveridge as Mathir-ul-Umra], volumes 1 & 2, Janaki Prakashan, Patna, 1979.]

Interestingly, the Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha, founded in 1893 which was “committed to the establishment of Hindi as the official language”, published part of this book in Hindi which contained ‘Biographies of Hindu Chieftains of the Mughal Court’ in 1931. [व्रज रत्न दास (अनुवाद), माआसिरुल–उमरा, काशी नागरी प्रचारिणी सभा, काशी, 1931]

Aurangzeb’s Hindu Generals & Advisors

Aurangzeb never faced Shivaji on the battlefield. It was his general, Jai Singh I (1611-1667), a Rajput ruler of Amer (Rajasthan), who was sent to subjugate Shivaji (1603-1680). Jai Singh II (1681-1743), (nephew of Jai Singh I) was another prominent Rajput general of the Mughal army who served Aurangzeb loyally against Shivaji. He was given the title of ‘Sawai’ by Aurangzeb in 1699. He was awarded the title of [one fourth time superior to his contemporaries] and thus he came to be known as Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh. He was also given the title of Mirza Raja [a Persian title for a royal prince] by Aurangzeb. Other titles given to him by other Mughal rulers were ‘Sarmad-i-Rajah-i-Hind’ [Eternal Ruler of India], ‘Raja Rajeshwar’ [Lord of Kings] and ‘Shri Shantanu Ji’ [Benevolent King]. These titles are even today displayed by his descendants today.

Akbar vs. Maharana Pratap

According to the prevalent Hindutva narrative, Pratap Singh I, popularly known as Maharana Pratap (1540-1597), fought for Hindus and Hindu nation against the Mughal emperor Akbar who wanted to subjugate the Hindus of India under Islamic rule. Interestingly, Akbar never faced the Maharana in any battle; it was Akbar’s most trusted Rajput military commander, Man Singh I (1550–1614), also his wife’s real brother, who fought against the Maharana on behalf of the Akbar.

The most important battle of Haldighati (June 18, 1576) was fought between the army led by Maharana and Mughal army led by Man Singh I. He was one of the Navratnas (favourite courtiers of Akbar). Akbar called him his Farzand (son), and he ruled several provinces of Akbar’s empire.

It also must be noted that chief of artillery of the army of Maharana Pratap was Hakim Khan Suri. He played a great role in confronting the Mughal army led by Man Singh in the Battle of Haldighati. Hakim Khan Suri fought alongside Maharana Pratap and was killed in the same battle while defending Maharana.

A Kayastha Prime Minister of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb

Contemporary documents carry first-hand accounts of Raja Raghunath Bahadur, a Kayastha, who served as the Diwan Aala (Prime Minister) of both Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. According to a biography written by one of his descendants, Raja Maharaj Lal,

“Raja Raghunath Bahadur was not oblivious to the interests of his co-castes [Kayasthas], having risen to the highest post of Dewan Aala (Prime Minister). Raja appointed each of them to positions of honour and emoluments according to their individual merits, while many of them were granted honours and valuable estates for their services. Not a single Kayastha remained unemployed or in needy circumstances.”

[Lal, Lala Maharaj, Short Account of the Life and Family of Rai Jeewan Lal Bahadur Late Honrary Magistrate Delhi, With Extracts from His Diary Relating to the Times of Mutiny 1857, 1902.]

This account reveals that in the Sultanate of Aurangzeb, who was a ‘fanatic Muslim’ and an unbridled tyrant, the Kayastha prime minister was free to patronize people of his caste, all of whom were Hindus. Aurangzeb was so fond of this Hindu Prime Minister that after his death he instructई one of his Wazirs (ministers) Asad Khan in a letter to follow the ‘saintly guidance’ of Raja Raghunath. [Trushke, Audrey, pp. 74-75.]

Investigating only the “Muslim period’ (500 years) in a 5000-year-old Indian civilization

Linking the crimes committed by Aurangzeb or other ‘Muslim’ rulers in pre-modern India to their religion is going to have serious consequences even for the ‘Hindu’ history as told by the RSS. For instance, take Ravana, the king of Lanka, who as per the ‘Hindu’ legend, committed unspeakable crimes against Sita, her husband Lord Rama and their companions during their 14-year long exile [exiled by Hindus only]. This Ravana, according to the same legend, was a learned Brahmin and one of the greatest worshippers of Lord Shiva.

Instances of Violence when in the earlier periods, when Hindus inhabited India

Mahabharata

The epic Mahabharata is not the story of a fierce war between Hindus and Muslims but between two ‘Hindu’ armies (Pandavas and Kauravas, both Kshatriyas). In this War, according to the ‘Hindu’ account, 120 crore people (all Hindus) were killed. Draupadi, the joint wife of the Pandavas, was disrobed by the Kauravas (all Hindus).

If the crimes of Ravana, Kauravas, Jai Singh I and II etc. are linked to their religion like Aurangzeb and other ‘Muslim’ rulers, then the country be represented as one that is perennially on the war path. If revenge then needs to be taken on the present co-religionists of the rulers/criminals of the past, then it must begin from the beginning of Indian civilization; the turn of Indian Muslims will come much later!

‘Muslims’ ruled India for centuries, but Muslim population remained a minority

Another crucial fact which is consciously kept under wrap is that despite more than five hundred hundreds of effective ‘Muslim’ rule which according to Hindutva historians was nothing but a project of annihilating Hindus or forcibly converting the latter to Islam, India remained a nation with an absolute Hindu majority. The British rulers held first census in 1871-72. It was the time when even ceremonial ‘Muslim’ rule was over. According to the Census report:

“The population of British India is, in round numbers, divided into 140½ millions [sic] of Hindus (including Sikhs), or 73½ per cent., 40¾ millions of Mahomedans, or 21½ per cent. And 9¼ millions of others, or barely 5 per cent., including under this title Buddhists and Jains, Christians, Jews, Parsees, Brahmoes…”

[Memorandum on the Census of British India of 1871-72: Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty London, George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office 1875, 16.]

These figures make it clear that persecution and cleansing of Hindus was not even a secondary project of the ‘Muslim’ rule. If it had been so Hindus would have disappeared from India. At the end of ‘Muslim’ rule Hindus were 73.5%. India seems to be the only country in world history where despite ‘Muslim’ rule of more than half of a millennium the populace did not convert to the religion of the rulers. Hindu High Castes remained in control of the national wealth during the ‘Muslim’ rule and continue to be in control whereas common Muslims remained paupers during the ‘Muslim’ rule and continue to be so!

In the latest NCERT rewrite spree on Muslim period, a mysterious note has been added which generously states that the dark events i.e., Muslim period should be studied impartially without blaming any present-day people (i.e. Muslims of the country). If we really want to identify the criminals of ‘Muslim Raj’ then it is very important to also settle the account with the privileged caste Hindus of the country and not Indian Muslims. There are historical reasons behind the huge amount of wealth that the upper castes of the country have today.

They Hindu privileged castes did not bear enmity towards either Muslim or Christian rulers but rather served them with utmost loyalty; they even developed bread-daughter [roti-beti] relationship with the Muslim rulers. It is not that the upper Caste Hindus did not fight these cruel rulers, but nobody of their lineage survived. The tragedy of the country is that children of those who betrayed common Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains of this country, served most loyally under both the ‘Muslim Raj’ and the British.

[1] https://caravanmagazine.in/reviews-and-essays/dn-jha-destruction-buddhist-sites

[2] https://www.sikhdharma.org/4-sons-of-guru-gobind-singh/

Related:

Now NCERT removes passages about caste and religious discrimination from social science books

Are citizenship and secularism ‘disposable’ subjects for Indian students?

The post Rewriting NCERT school textbooks: ‘Muslim Raj’ is a mere excuse, the project is to conceal historical facts appeared first on SabrangIndia.

I am nervous in speaking before this panel of knowledge elites who are far ahead of me in mediatized performance. In fact, I was hardly needed within this panel, given there is a galaxy of experts present.

These days, communicating within (and among) the like-minded audience is hardly a challenge and it doesn’t serve the desired purpose as much as it should.  The panellists have already spoken a lot on the theme of the symposium. At stake are the words, “evidence”, “proof”, “facts” (subut, sakshya, pramaan). The incumbent regime is doing everything in its power to create a common sense against “evidence” (rationality). Not just in the discipline of history but in every sphere of our daily lives. Not just in India; elsewhere too. Non-state actors, with the backing of state power and wilfully failed criminal-justice system, are deciding what we eat, what not to and what kind of edibles can be stored in our kitchens and refrigerators. These factors impinge on whether we can live or can be killed with impunity.

We are here to reflect upon the National Education Policy 2020. Its basis, as admitted by the Indian government is National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023. The three year of school education during the Grades 6 to 8, according to them are very critical. They do admit that content and pedagogy both are crucial. I looked into the textbooks meant for Grade 6 and for Grade 7. The title is Exploring Society, India and Beyond. The regime claims that these textbooks have an emphasis: minimizing the text by focusing on core concepts. “Focusing on big ideas”, is their emphasis in the “Letter to the Student”, appended at the beginning of the books; and multi-disciplinary approach is an important stated concern. Fundamental Rights and Duties are excerpted from the Constitution, and printed with embellishment. All these are high sounding claims, apparently. But not so, as we get into the details by proceeding further into the book.

A few years ago, we also had “Learning Outcomes based Curriculum Framework (LOCF): BA History Undergraduate Programme, 2021”. In an essay in the journal, Social Scientist, Irfan Habib has written extensively. The prose is endearingly satirical, a trait which the eminent historian employs in his public speaking and less in writing and within the classroom. I would strongly recommend that all of you read the essay. Such a Framework from the regime envisages political encroachment upon the curricula-framing and through this the shrinking autonomy of the universities.

Maulana Azad’s role as education minister (1946-58), along with Nehru and Radhakrishnan, in the autonomy of the UGC was foundational (1953-56). He championed the creation of an independent statutory body to manage and fund higher education, a move that was essential for the institutional autonomy of universities and for the development of a standardized and high-quality higher education system in India. Not only this, Maulana Azad served as the Chairman of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), a vital body for advising the central and state governments on educational matters and in framing school curricula. He presided over multiple meetings of the board, including those held in 1948, 1949, and 1950. This position gave him a direct platform to shape and influence educational reforms and policies at a national level.

Maulana Azad was quite conscious of the fact that the Medieval historical past (Muslim rulers) will be weaponized in certain ways by both, Hindu and Muslim communal forces. He therefore instructed (1949) ‘the historians of AMU to conduct research on that period by accessing original sources in Oriental languages.’ While resisting colonialism, his own perception of the Mughal past was distinctive. For instance, he looked upon Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi’s resistance (otherwise quite a conservative figure) against Akbar as an instance of why Muslim subjects too rise in resistance against the British colonial state (See Muzaffar Alam, “Maulana Azad and his memory of the Islamic past: a study of his early writings”, JRAS, Cambridge. 33, 4, 2023, pp 901-916)

For the diminishing autonomy of the universities in recent decades, politics is responsible as also the misuse and abuse of autonomy by the universities and the academia themselves, over a period of time. Recently, the Vice Chancellor (VC) of a prestigious university recently got a show cause notice on the flimsiest of grounds and the notice was not issued by the Visitor. More on that on another occasion!

The specific theme around which we have gathered here is something we are agitated about given that the incumbent regime is selective about facts, besides distorting the facts of history and more than that, which is, not less important, manipulating historical facts in most insidious ways. Manufacturing falsehood, parading these as history, and thereby poisoning the minds of children, of ordinary people in general. That is our concern here. There is a systematic attack on reason. People should not have minds, apply them, should not have or develop any critical faculty. They should not be thinking like citizens with powers of critical thinking, rather, they should function as mere subjects, praja, reáaya, before rulers. This appears to be the dominant political wisdom today.

We also need to keep in mind the fact that the NCERT textbooks are written more for the purpose of teaching material to the teachers. This is the purpose forgotten a long while ago.

Just four days ago, my teacher, Prof Farhat Hasan, along with Prof. Neeladri Bhattacharya, in their interview with Vrinda Gopinath (The Wire.In, July 31, 2025), have articulated all the important concerns pertaining to the issue. Ruchika has been doing it consistently in so many ways with effective communication. I hardly need to repeat these here. I would therefore seek your permission to raise some other issues which may not be getting adequate attention in terms of diagnosing the trouble. Just for the sake of informing the less informed, non-specialist audience here, allow me to do a quick recap, before embarking on the issues I wish to raise here:

In the latest version of NCERT textbooks, we have:

• Demonisation of Mughal rulers including Akbar (a feat achieved by Muslim reactionaries too); and the controversy around Aurangzeb-Shivaji. Through both of these, we can clearly identify the ways in which Hindu and Muslim Right Wing treat history.
• Discussing historical periods and rulers within the binaries of ‘Glorious’ and ‘Dark’ periods and rulers defined as ‘Heroes’ and ‘Villains’, in terms of their personal faith. This irrational method overlooks overall state policies and political contexts and values of the era, and thereby creates an atmosphere through which co-religionists of these past rulers are made answerable for certain deeds. Taken to extremes, this can mean ‘punishing them for the previous wrongdoers.’
• The authors/editors of the NCERT textbooks of the 1970s and then again in 2005-06 had reputed professional academic historians this is not the case anymore;
• Earlier, each chronological period had judiciously distributed adequate space, across the evolving grades from VI to XII;
• All regions had spaces in terms of history-making, in the earlier textbooks, yet there were allegations of selective emphasis;
• Gender, Caste, Environment, Technology and Socio-economic changes, Growth of Science in history, sports, literature, sartorial culture, etc., were the issues which remained less addressed; with the evolution of a historical understanding, these issues were attempted in the NCET textbooks of 2005-06. Yet, right wing allegations persisted.
• Allegations of the Right wing were and are (about earlier books), temple ‘destructions’ during the time when Muslim rulers ruled were not emphasized in these texts. Making this argument they pushed for deletion of similar acts by Hindu rulers. Narratives built to create a communally divisive atmosphere. As if today’s ordinary Muslims are answerable for the past conduct of Muslim rulers, and today’s Hindus aren’t answerable for the similar acts of the Hindu rulers in the past.
• Anglo-Maratha Wars are okay to be taught, the Anglo-Mysore wars must to be omitted
• Ironically, while right wing forces might apparently talk of nativism laced with the rhetoric of being anti-West, at the same time their historical narratives derive much from the colonially divisive projects of historical representation;   Dr Ruchika Sharma is doing a lot to speak and write on these.

History has a political goal, has been a tool of ruling class, across the globe. It was so, always. This reminds me of Paul Freire’s 1968 book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He identifies two objectives of pedagogy: a tool for domination, and a tool for liberation. Here there are two models viz., “Banking Model”, in which the students are treated as passive recipients who in turn become unthinking, “submissively obedient” and status-quoist.[1] This de-humanises both the teachers and the students. In this, the oppressed turn into a new batch oppressors. Another model of pedagogy, Friere says, is: “Problem-Posing Model” wherein the teachers and students are co-educators to each other, it is dialogic and interactive.

In this context, one is also reminded of a recent book, Hilary Falb Kalisman, Teachers as State-builders[2]. This book talks of teaching which turns students into a force of resistance, state-subverters, disruptors, challengers to the status quo, and thereby creating thinking citizens who will build stronger society and state, rather than collaborators of the regime.  That is how, Kalisman says, colonial societies emerged to resist the state and attain freedom.

School textbooks are often used to both craft what the nation is or must be and to “teach” future citizens how they are now bound to and by a common historical narrative. Therefore, it is not surprising that India and Pakistan (and later Bangladesh) have put concerted efforts into crafting propaganda-like historical narrations about what their nations stood for.

Such historical narrations ‘droned on, ponderously, sonorously, and repetitively’ in citizenship projects about how the nation came to be formed and what the nation-state did for people’s benefit. Joya Chatterji (in her Shadows at Noon, p. 145) writes: ‘It was not so much that this publicity was executed with brilliance. It was not. It was merely the case that it was repeated ad nauseam, and that everydayness made the message natural’.

Not that history has not been used as a tool in earlier times! But then it was, as it should be, used as a tool of emancipation. Emancipation of the colonised, enslaved people. To inject self-confidence among the rising nation, the nation in making. By the word, nation, I mean people, not merely territory.  Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery and Glimpses were written for those noble purposes. Tara Chand’s books, the books written on the history of 1857 in 1907-09, in 1957, in 2007, etc., by the scholar-activist nationalists were pursuits in those directions. The NCERT textbooks, the books written for popular readings and published by the NBT were all exercises in those noble desirable purposes and directions.

Modern rational, secular democracies need such pursuits immeasurably. Praja ko Nagrik mein badalna hai, that is our biggest challenge today. It is a battle between “communalisation” and “secularization”. Please do note the difference. I am not using the words, “communalism” and “secularism”. I am using its variants, the process, not the mere nouns.

Once we read, Yasmin Khan’s 2011 essay (Modern Asian Studies), “Performing Peace: Gandhi’s Assassination as a Critical Moment in the Consolidation of the Nehruvian State”, we get to know, beyond the stated motive of the author, that the Nehru-led state was making efforts which were, in turn, using it in a certain way; the way for the marginalizing the forces who liquidated Gandhi’s body and life, if not his mind and ideas and ideology and praxis and methodologies.  Nehru strategically managed the public mourning, funeral, and distribution of Gandhi’s ashes to assert state power and legitimise Congress leadership during the turbulent post-Partition period (1947–1950). The state-organised funeral in Delhi, contrasted with widespread, vernacular mourning rituals across India, bridged the gap between the state and the people, reinforcing Nehruvian secularism. Public grief, amplified by events like the Ardh Kumbh Mela, transformed Gandhi into a saintly figure, fostering communal harmony and countering Hindu nationalist sentiments. Yasmin Khan emphasizes that these rituals were not merely ceremonial but politically transformative, solidifying the Congress Party’s role in shaping a unified, secular Indian state.

Nehru was very clear about the problem of communalism. He knew it more clearly than anybody else that in colonial era Muslim communal separatism was stronger because of the colonial state; during 1938-47, competitive communalisms of the two largest religious communities became greater menace because of the colonial state. After 1947, more particularly, after January 30, 1948, Hindu communalism was greater threat. Patel realised it only after January 30, though he didn’t survive for long after that to help Nehru in a larger way. He died in December 1950; not in 1960 (our Home Minister, Mr Shah should allow me to correct him)!

I was referring to the processes of communalisation. These forces remained there, not exactly subterranean, in the early years of independence. The majoritarian forces were apparently and arguably not in a hurry to be state-centric. They were working more on cultural fronts, and in the spheres of education, with the “Catch-them-Young” approach. This focus was there among both Hindu and Muslim communal forces. Both, were waiting for the right moment to capture state power for a full scale implementation of their communalisation programmes. In Pakistan, this project was hardly ever in resistance, as the very basis of the creation of Pakistan was communal. Krishna Kumar and at least in a column, Arvind N Das had written extensively on this. Persons, some previously with the prestigious, St Stephen’s, [I H Qureshi (1903-1981) and also the Gen Zia’s regime] did much to push Pakistan rightward. Ali Usman Qasmi’s (essay in Modern Asian Studies, 2018), “A Master Narrative for the History of Pakistan: Tracing the origins of an ideological agenda”, explains this phenomenon at length.

Gen Zia’s reign (1977-1988), more aptly depicted in Hanif’s novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes[3], coincided with the Saudi-funded project of the Islamisation of Knowledge (IoK) scheme. A range of scholars in different parts of the world started promoting Islamisation of Knowledge (known as ‘IoK’) in the late 1970s. The first World Conference on Education in Makkah (1977) marked a decisive step in the formulation of this project on an international platform. [Among the best-known scholars advocating this notion were Palestinian–American scholar Ismail al-Faruqi and Malaysian philosopher Syed Naqib al-Attas. For radicalization under Gen Zia’s regime, see, Virinder and Waqas Bhatt’s ‘If I Speak, They Will Kill Me, to Remain Silent Is to Die’: Poetry of resistance in General Zia’s Pakistan (1977–88), Modern Asian Studies, 53, 4, 2019. Also see my blog, “Namo’s India a parody of Zia’s oppressive regime in Pakistan?”, SabrangIndia. In, February 17, 2020].

“Sub-continental Majoritarianisms”, to use Papiya Ghosh’s expression, and global politics of the Ummah created a fear among Hindus, especially after the Khilafat mobilisations during the national movement. After Partition too, Hindu Majoritarianism derived fodder from such political pursuits of the Ummah. (Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was against the pan-Islamic, extraterritorial, Ummah; he was for a Qaum confined within national boundary). This phenomenon (Muslim communalism) feeding majority communalism has been afoot since the 1970s and 1980s. This is not a marginal factor. One communalism feeds another, is what Nehru had said, and Bipan Chandra later elaborated upon it.

India and its own Muslim right wing organizations were not averse to or unconnected with the abovementioned schemes promoting the Muslim right wing. Please do have a look into Chapter 6 of Laurence Gautier’s latest book on post-1947 AMU and JMI, Between Nation and Community, Syed Anwar Ali, a Jamaat-e-Islami affiliated teacher in the AMU and his book, Hindustan Mein Islam, and I H Quraishi’s book, The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent, 610-1947, which give us a clear idea of Muslim Right Wing in our sub-continent, pre and post-1947.

All right wing forces have globalised networks. Secular resistance too has to ensure globalised networks of solidarity. No study or commentary in isolation will really help us understand the communal forces. (Communalisation of the textbooks is just a part of that politics); and thus, a less informed understanding and flawed or partisan diagnosis will not help us create an effective solidarity. Going soft on the Muslim right wing and hard against the Hindu right wing has proved a counterproductive strategy all these years.

Khoo gar-e- Hamd se thorha sa gila bhi sun le

Barring one or two lesser known pamphlets published by the Indian Left I have hardly come across any comprehensive criticism against the India’s Muslim right wing pursuits in these domains. We do understand that post-1947, the Muslim Right Wing couldn’t be as dangerous as the Hindu Right Wing. It was Nehru’s understanding of communalism and it was his desired magnanimity. That does not, however, really mean that such a lesser danger would not attract attention and will not be resisted. I am not compartmentalising the resistances we ought to offer.

Given the contemporary challenges, I strongly feel that Muslim intellectuals (if they really exist) of India need to speak out more on those aspects. India’s Liberals as also Leftists have reasons to agree with Nehru’s understanding on the colonial and post-Independence communalisms in India (Nehru understood that Muslim communal separatism was more dangerous only till 1947, under the colonial prodding; post-1947 India, Hindu communalism is more dangerous). To this, Late Prof Imtiaz Ahmad had an opinion: this differential understanding doesn’t really mean that while fighting the two communalisms you will discriminate between the two. They have reasons not to speak as much on Muslim right wing. But that cannot be a choice for the Muslim intellectuals. The more they avoid exposing India’s Muslim right wing, the more they provide weapons to the Hindu right and the more they weaken the moral authority of India’s Secularists.

I am only reminding this audience of the fact that minority rights discourses from Muslim leaders have remained weaker during our national movement (the Muslim League shifted this discourse to a direction in which Muslim minority was to be treated to be a nation of ex-rulers), and after Independence too, communal-identitarian concerns were given priority. Rather than strengthening the secularisation processes of India, Muslim intellectuals have remained more active in safeguarding regressive and patriarchal Personal Laws, and less at strengthening the secular forces of India. The religious and “secular” Muslim leadership has remained more identitarian, less secularistic. That has all along done a great disservice to the overall processes of secularisation, only to help majoritarian forces.

Fast forward to 1977 and after: Resurgence of competitive communalisms in the 1980s

Riding on alliance-politics, majoritarian forces in India eventually succeeded, more menacingly with the turn of this century/millennium. They had never really given up. Competitive majoritarianism remained a force to reckon with across the sub-continent. Whenever they formed governments in alliance/coalition in New Delhi, majoritarian parties preferred to the portfolios education, culture, information and broadcasting. Other non-Congress or anti-Congress regional forces hardly pitched for such portfolios.

Unlike majoritarian parties, secular forces, most of who have been state-centric; were dependent upon state resources, subsidy concessions and spaces to run their secularisation projects. Of course, the Left forces existed in industrial trade unions, on the university campuses, students and youth movements, and in the peasant movements, and through certain effected cultural organisations in both theatre, literature and art, too. A changing global economy and the disintegration of the USSR has weakened Left forces in recent decades.

One of the reasons why in recent years more and more Hindus have embraced Neo-Hindutva is the real question to be addressed, here. To my understanding, this question is fundamental because the attack on rationality and ever-increasing receptivity of the falsehood and of the distorted history is linked with this issue. This leads us to another question, how did we deal with the Muslim communalism, in the colonial era as well as in post-independence era?

What proportion of the Muslim literati looked at India’s ancient past with desirable and reasonable pride? Why did Shibli feel more agitated to write in defence of Aurangzeb? Why did he write biographies only of Muslims – non-Indian, Arab-Muslims at that? What proportion of Muslim elites are self-critical? To what extent do they look critically upon the ideas, institutions and history-making individuals of Muslims? What made a section of Muslim elites run a narrative of venerating Aurangzeb as Zinda Pir, and adding the suffix of rahmatullah alaih too?

An honest answer to those questions may help us find one of the missing answers for the first question I raised here as to why more and more Hindus have been embracing majoritarianism in recent decades.

The vilification and/or “villainisation” of Medieval Muslim rulers by Hindu majoritarian and reactionary forces, by stating half-truths, or putting out facts in a distorted manners, is just one problem! What is the obverse side of this problem? Why do a section of Muslims of today feel so very compelled to defend and justify and eulogize only a certain kind of Muslim rulers?  Omission of the story of valiant resistance and confrontation of British colonialism by Tipu Sultan is an obvious problem. The latest NCERT edition has omitted Tipu. A valid resistance to this politics does require that certain facts about Hyder-Tipu rule should not be ignored or omitted by secularists too. The Moplah-Nair “communal” conflict has an agrarian history of land ownership as to whose ownership preceded whose, before and after Hyder-Tipu rule? D N Dhanagre (Past and Present, OUP, vol. 74, 1977) has written about this. Quite a secular historian. Yet, that fact, uncomfortable for Muslims and Liberals and Left, has been obviously overlooked. Ignoring these aspects of history not just makes us intellectually dishonest, it also thereby weakens the legitimacy of our resistance. And that is how we self-restrict building a solidarity for our cause. We have to rethink and introspect.

I recall having read a long interview of Intezar Husain, with Umar Memon (July 1974), published in the early 1970s. (English rendering carried in the Journal of South Asian Literature, 1983). Intezar reminded us Muslims that, in comparison with the Hindus, our attitudes vary. This variation hasn’t been addressed as adequately as required. That has contributed to communalisation and pushing the country rightward.

Our discriminatory and dishonest treatment of both communalisms might be one of the factors why Hindutva has been gaining greater acceptance among growing number of Hindus?

I would therefore seek your permission to make you a bit uncomfortable at least in the last segment of this talk, if not intermittently throughout the talk.

Intezar argued that Shibli Nomani “continually romanticised our history, but there were some other aspects of our history which he didn’t describe at all”. Nirad Chaudhuri’s Continent of Circe, “dealt with the history of India and analysed the Hindu community in an uncompromising and even brutal manner”. “The Muslim community has taken great pride in the fact that the philosophy of history was born among Muslims. But the fact is that these Muslims do not face their history squarely, but merely picked out its good features and then celebrated these as the entire whole of our history. Nirad Chaudhuri’s approach is completely the opposite since he has no wish to “celebrate” the history of the nation of which he is one individual. We see him striving to reach its essence and to present that essence without regard to how his own people would react to it”, argued Intezar Husain.

Now, my question is this: why when such issues were raised in the 1970s, did they remain unaddressed (or inadequately) addressed as before? Addressing these questions may help us understand, at least partly, why more and more Hindus have begun to hate Muslims incrementally.

I have already referred to Syed Anwar Ali’s Urdu book Hindustan Mein Islam. This could be a case study to measure the Muslim right wing’s way of looking at post-Independent Indian History (and their political intent too) Anwar was a faculty at AMU.

As the Hindu right wing has engaged more in vilifying Muslim rulers in general, they appear to be less interested with the Muslim right wing’s knowledge production in India. The day they take this up, things would become even more difficult in terms of building solidarity and resistance against Neo-Hindutva.

Leaving this at that, let us come around the issue of Partition. The subject has been taught through the prism of causes, not on consequences. Why? Because, causation is motivated with the idea of blaming someone and absolving others. In this case, since the League asked for Pakistan and got it, it has to share greater blame. Nonetheless, in such a restricted or selective teaching of the causes behind Partition, Muslims and Muslim League are hardly distinguished from each other, even in among some of liberal circles.

Why is it that stories and narratives of Muslim resistance to Partition remain under-explored, under-prescribed and under-popularised? Why do a good number of educated Muslims of India still rejoice in a historical literature which absolves Jinnah and his League? I leave this question for certain sections of the Muslim educated elite of India: to undertake an honest self-introspection on this count too.

Following two works of Muslim writers are very significant in the genre of anti-League Partition literature.

Syed Tufail Ahmad Manglori’s 1946 book, Musalmanon Ka Raushan Mustaqbil, got translated into English in 1994 only. Similar literature, such as Hifzur Rahman Seohaarvi’s 1945 book, Tehreek-e-Pakistan Par Ek Nazar, remain least known. Does this mean that in academic circles as well as in the popular domain, anti-League Muslims remain lesser known? How many of the Muslim literati really talk about such figures and such writing? I have spent over three decades as student and as teacher in AMU. Few years back, when I was addressing an AMU gathering, on Tufail Manglori (Manglauri), the founder of the City School and shared that he was an ace wicket keeper of the MAO College Cricket team, the information was received by a large audience with surprise. Very few knew about this. A good number of Muslims do remember Seohaarvi as an ex-MP but his anti-League book, Tehreek-e-Pakistan is hardly known even among the literati or the chatterati.

Mushir-ul-Haq (1933-1990) has demonstrated it very well in his 1972 essay, “Secularism? No; Secular State? Well- Yes”. In this essay Haq highlighted a contradiction in the approach of some Muslim leaders. He observed that while they might publicly criticise “secularism” as a concept, they would simultaneously defend the “secular state” and the constitutional protections it afforded them, such as minority rights and the freedom to manage their own religious and educational institutions. He pointed out that this stance could appear to be a form of double standards.

With this, the point I am trying to emphasise here is: in order to strengthen the fight against Neo- Hindutva and in order to strengthen the hands of the likes of Yogendra Yadavas, Apoorvanands, Harsh Manders, Ravish Kumars, Ruchika Sharmas, we ought to resolve that critiquing and exposing the Muslim right wing should not be the business best ignored by thought-leaders, opinion-writers, academics, public intellectuals bearing Muslim names. They must not shy away from this urgent task. They must not keep arguing to the tune that ‘this is not the right time for burdening Muslims of India’ with such a task. For too long we have made such a fallacious and counterproductive argument. This is one of the many factors having contributed to the rise of Neo-Hindutva. The projects of communalising the textbooks, the state and the society have been gaining strength with the way we have been arguing, “this is not the right time to critique, expose and resist the Muslim conservatives and right wing ……’

Do we really even realise the depth of the threat?

I am very sorry to say the answer to this question is not in the affirmative. I am saying this with the unique experience of working with and living on a Muslim majority campus. This is a pessimism coming from me who in his own self-assessment is not someone who gives up on anything easily.

Before I leave, I must clarify what Neo Hindutva is:

The term “Neo-Hindutva” is a relatively recent academic and journalistic concept used to describe the evolution and new expressions of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India, popularised by scholars such as Edward Anderson and Arkotong Longkumer in a 2018 special issue of the journal Contemporary South Asia and an earlier 2015 article, which is, “idiosyncratic expressions of Hindu nationalism which operate outside of the institutional and ideological framework of the Sangh Parivar”, quite distinct from  the modernisation of Hinduism by figures like Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th century.

Neo-Hindutva is defined as a more diffused, mainstreamed, and adaptable version of traditional Hindutva. Unlike the original ideology formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, which was explicitly a political theory of Hindu nationhood, Neo-Hindutva is characterised by its ability to permeate new spaces and take on various forms.

Key characteristics that distinguish Neo-Hindutva from its traditional counterpart include:

• Mainstreaming and Normalisation: It is no longer confined to the institutional and ideological boundaries of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates (the Sangh Parivar). Instead, it has become a normalised, everyday discourse that is seen in popular culture, social media, and even in spaces like yoga and spiritual movements.
• Focus on Development and Neoliberalism: Unlike traditional Hindutva, which was often viewed as separate from economic policy, Neo-Hindutva has been linked to a specific brand of neo-liberalism. It often frames economic progress and material prosperity as a result of and a prerequisite for Hindu assertion. This ties national pride and economic growth together.
• “Hard” vs. “Soft” Expressions: Scholars like Anderson categorize Neo-Hindutva into two types: Hard Neo-Hindutva: This includes groups and movements that are openly connected to Hindu nationalism but operate outside the direct control of the Sangh Parivar, often with a more militant or vigilante approach. Soft Neo-Hindutva: This is a more subtle and concealed form, often avoiding explicit links to majoritarian politics. It operates through think tanks, international organisations, and cultural groups that promote a Hindu identity and narrative under the guise of cultural preservation, charity, or community building.
• Appeal to new constituencies: Neo-Hindutva has expanded its appeal beyond the traditional upper-caste support base by incorporating and co-opting the aspirations of lower-caste groups and Adivasi (tribal) communities, often by offering them a space within a broader, unified Hindu identity.

Thank you for the patience in listening to my discomfiting words!

(The author presented this view on August 4, 2025 at a symposium held at the Constitution Club of India, New Delhi, topic Distortions in the Syllabus of History Books; the presentation sent to us by the author has been suitably edited for publication)

[1] Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire written in Portuguese between 1967 and 1968.

[2] Assistant Professor of History and Endowed Professor of Israel/Palestine   in the Program for Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder

[3]  2008 comic novel by the Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif. It is based on the 1988 aircraft crash that killed Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the sixth president of Pakistan.

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