We have always been taught in school that Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb were the ‘greatest’ emperors of the Mughal dynasty. Our history books were replete with anecdotes of their bravery and valour. In fact, in some publications, chapter after chapter was devoted to extolling these Mughal emperors. On the contrary, we found very few textbooks that spoke about India’s rich dynasty and cultural heritage that was mercilessly decimated by these Islamic tyrants.
We had to, in fact, buy additional non-syllabus books to study this because all of this information was conveniently removed from school textbooks after India gained independence and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was chosen as the first Education Minister.
Abul Kalam Azad exalted Mughals and attempted to whitewash their sins while obfuscating Hindu history
From 1947 till his death in 1958, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was India’s Education Minister. Today (November 11), the entire nation observes National Education Day in his honour and discusses how he was instrumental in the development of independent India’s education system, but no one seems to discuss how he began the process of negationism of history to cover up misdeeds of Islamic tyrants.
He served as Education Minister for over 11 years. During that period, he recruited individuals who were either members of the same community or adhered to the Leftist ideology. Humayun Kabir, MC Chagla, and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed were among them. All of them combined to present the Mughals as “messiahs of the oppressed Hindu masses” and in the worst case as ‘benevolent dictators.’
A report by Freedomfirst.in published in 2014 read, “As Union Education Minister for eight years, Azad saw to it that the history of India presented in the textbooks was negationist; that is, cover up deeds perpetrated by the Muslim invaders and settlers and converts – loot, slaughter, destruction of temples, Jazia tax, forced conversions, forcing widows of dead soldiers into harems, sale of captured children in the slave bazaars of Baghdad, burning of libraries and appropriation of defeated peoples’ properties to constitute Wakfs for the welfare of Muslims etc.”
Azad’s ideas demonstrated unequivocally that his allegiances were always with Islam and the true ramifications of his ideology—agreed to and supported by Nehru—reflected in our history textbooks where crimes of Islamic invaders were downplayed while Hinduism vilified
How Hindus were maligned
On Freedomfirst.in, you can read about the modifications made by Maulana Abul Kalam in the Indian education system that exonerated the Mughal emperors. As Minister of Education, Azad distorted Indian history by whitewashing deadly Islamic conquests, the research found.
In fact, in the year 2020, M Nageswara Rao, a senior IPS officer, asserted that “negation and whitewashing of deadly Islamic invasions or rule” occurred under education ministers such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was “in charge of Indian mind space” for 20 of the 30 years following Independence.
In a series of tweets, Nageswara Rao highlighted the fact that there is an organised attempt underway to relegate the Hindu Civilisation to the dustbins of history. According to him, there is a deliberate attempt to deny Hindus knowledge of their history and vilify Hinduism as a collection of superstitions.
Nageswara Rao also said that the education system has been Abrahamised and so have the media and entertainment industry. He said an attempt has been made to shame Hindus about their identity and consequently, if the glue of Hinduism ceases to exist, then Hindu society withers away.
Furthermore, the IPS officer attached four photos to his tweet which highlighted the phases in which subversive elements attempted to undermine Hindu society. In the first phase, the attached picture said that the Ministry of Education was under the hands of people such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Humayun Kabir and Nurul Hassan and leftists.
During this phase, there was the distortion of history at an industrial scale and an attempt to whitewash the crimes of the genocidal Muslim invaders. Leftist and pro-minority academicians and scholars were patronised by the government while their Hindu Nationalist counterparts were deliberately sidelined.
Today, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is depicted by the so-called leftist ecology as a secular figure symbolising the Ganga-Jamuna tehzeeb (a phrase used to depict Hindu-Muslim togetherness) and a staunch nationalist. Despite this effort, the question of why Hindus were denied the opportunity to learn about their own history pricks everyone like a needle. But, more importantly than the alterations he made hereafter becoming Education Minister, the question is, on what basis would he have been elected as India’s Education Minister?
Azad’s father wanted him to become a ‘Pir’ (Muslim saint)
If his biography is studied, it is apparent that Maulana Abul Kalam’s ancestry did not fit in as secular India’s education minister. He was born into the family of an Islamic Ulema who travelled to Bharat from Herat in Afghanistan during Mughal emperor Babur’s regime.
Maulana Khairuddin, his father, had gone to Mecca in Saudi Arabia in 1857 and returned to Kolkata, Bharat in 1898 after spending several years in the company of Islamic scholars from Mecca and Medina. He not only learned the teachings of Islam there but he was also picked to preach Islam and deliver sermons in what is considered the world’s holiest Muslim seminary.
Azad was born in Mecca on November 11, 1888, and spent his childhood in Mecca and Medina. His mother taught him Arabic, and his father taught him Urdu.
According to his own admission, he was home-schooled, and while he was taught a variety of courses, the emphasis was on Islamic studies, which he learned from his father three times a day.
Maulana Khairuddin did not value English education and wished for his sons to succeed him as Pirs (Muslim saints). Azad and his brother’s schooling was mostly controlled by their father, who was adamant that his sons carry on the family legacy of commitment to, learning of, and propagation of Islam.
His father sent him to the world-renowned Islamic university of Al-Azhar in Cairo for two years in 1905.
Because of his dislike for the modern and preference for the medieval, Khairuddin home-schooled his children, teaching them the Koran, Hadith, and Sharia. After finishing their Koran studies in Mecca, the boys were sent to haram sharif for Qerat (reading and singing the Koran) courses after moving to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
Although the children were taught Persian and Arabic, mastering the Quran, Hadith, and other Islamic holy texts remained the focus of their studies. Due to Khairuddin’s worsening health, eminent Islamic teachers were hired to share his burden.
Knowing his family’s strong Islamic beliefs, it’s easy to see why, even after becoming the education minister, Abul Kalam allegedly tried to hide the Mughals’ brutalities. Why didn’t he have the students read about the atrocities perpetrated by Mughal rulers like Tipu Sultan and Alauddin Khilji, and why did he include valourous sagas of Akbar the ‘great,’ emperor Porus, and Bappa Rawal in school textbooks?
Today, it is because of his partisan curriculum that people engage in frivolous debates over how Indian principles are anti-humanity. People are aware of the practice of Sati, but they are not aware of atrocities such as triple talaq and Nikah halala. In the name of free expression, Islamists and so-called liberals beat their chests clamouring for India’s secession, but Hindus are expected to remain silent even as they continue to face atrocities and see their history being swept under the rug.
