MADURAI: Vice chancellor (VC) of the

(CUHP) Kuldip Chand Agnihotri on Thursday said

largely ignored the history of south India and so for north Indians, the history of India meant only history of

. He said the north Indian history books predominantly covered only the "invaders of India" and “not the ancient Indian history.”

The CUHP VC was delivering the inaugural address at a two-day national conference “Literature and Society” organised in Madura College here.

Agnihotri said despite Tamil people being “the preservers of Indian culture”, there were hardly any mention about them in the history books of north India.

“The traits, qualities and history of south India haven’t been included in the history of India. In north India, the history of India means the history of north India. There’s no part of history of south India and not even northeastern India,” he said.

The VC added that even as a part of north Indian history, only Mughals, Sultans and a few others were majorly covered.

He said within India, the books and literary works of each language should be translated directly into other spoken languages in the country. As an example, he cited that a book from Tamil should directly be translated into Punjabi, Hindi and others rather than first translating it to English and from that, further translating into other languages. “By direct translation, the real flavour of the original work wouldn’t be lost,” he said.