The Maharashtra State Education Board has deemed the history of Mughals and western countries 'irrelevant' for Class VII and IX students.

Students studying in schools under the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education will now study Shivaji's Maratha empire instead of Mughal history.

The change in the syllabus reportedly took place after a meeting led by the State Education Minister Vinod Tawde at Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini, an RSS-endorsed think tank.

The new textbook does not mention any Muslim rulers except Akbar. There is no trace of Razia Sultan, Sher Shah Suri, Muhammad bin Tughlaq.

Sadanand More, chair of the history subject committee of the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research said that the move is in favour of the students.

"We have looked at history from a Maharashtra-centric point of view. Even if it is the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughal rule and the medieval history of India, we have kept Maharashtra at the centre. It is a natural course as we are from Maharashtra. What's wrong in that? In fact the central board books have very little about our state."

According to the committee, the changes are not a "political decision" and the process involved subject experts and teachers.

This is not the first time that the state education boards have decided to change the syllabus of History or English textbooks to make the curriculum more 'nationalist'.

In May 2016, the BJP-led government in Rajasthan was on a chopping and changing spree of school textbooks of the state board. Foreign poets such as John Keats, Thomas Hardy, William Blake, T S Eliot and Edward Lear were removed from the Class VIII course.

A chapter on Nelson Mandela too was called 'meaningless' and cut. It was replaced with writing on India's tribal communities to bring the work of Indian authors closer to students.

The Rajasthan Education Board also removed short stories by Ismat Chugtai and Hari Shankar Parsai. Apparently, those chapters in the Hindi books which were loaded with Urdu words were removed along with chapters whose theme revolves around a particular faith.

The revised textbooks had no mention of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and also of Mahatam Gandhi's assassination by Nathuram Godse. While the chapter talks about the National Movement and contribution of Sardar Patel, there is no mention of Jawaharlal Nehru. According to the Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Vasudev Devnani, the re-designing was done to ensure "no Kanhaiya Kumar was born in the state".

The Class V Hindi textbooks, after the re-designing, includes a chapter in which the cow "writes" a letter to students as a "mother". The chapter has images of Hindu gods within a bigger picture of a COW.

In May 2015, the Union Human Resource Development Ministry instructed the NCERT to emphasise more on Indian sciences. The ministry also asked to teach students about the lives of "Indian heroes". Few professors and faculty of government colleges felt that the new course reflected a saffron ideology. They were disappointed by the exclusion of Akbar and his contribution to the Indian society and culture.

POLITICS-FREE EDUCATION

During a seminar on "New Education Policy" at Delhi University, RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra had spoken about making "education politics-free". He claimed that the books and syllabus taught in schools and colleges change as and when the government changes.

"In our country, when the government changes, we see all books are being changed, syllabus also changes which creates an atmosphere of tension", he said.

"Education should be autonomous as Election Commission or Supreme Court. There should be no politics in education but only education in politics", Batra said, who is also an advocate of moral science and cultural education in schools.