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It is possible that Akshay Kumar has left this sura for the marketing of his upcoming film Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan. But the manner in which his opponents and the so-called secular people with colonial mindset broke down on social media proves that the school curriculum was not taught on Hindu Rajput heroes.
Film actor Akshay Kumar has rightly said that only the history of the Mughals has been taught in our course books. Not about Prithviraj Chauhan or Rana Pratap. In the NCERT course, History, Geography and Civics are taught only till class X. Out of this, Indian ancient and medieval history is taught only in the sixth, seventh. He teaches British history in the eighth and the French and Russian revolutions in the ninth, tenth. This also since the 1986 education policy. And after 2005 under the pressure of NCERT syllabus and National Curriculum Forum (NCF). But people of my age and those who have studied under the Uttar Pradesh Education Board have been taught History, Geography and Civics as social subjects only in class VI, VII and VIII.
In the above classes, all this used to come in optional subjects. Then the book of Ashirwadi Lal Srivastava was taught in history. In this, there was a complete description of the Sultanate period and the Mughal period and the British period. But after ancient India, Qutubuddin used to come directly from Harshavardhana to Aibak and read only about Prithviraj Chauhan that Muhammad Ghori defeated it. Where did it, did not read it. And not about the lineage of Prithviraj Chauhan. Rana Pratap had a splinter.
Hindu king with the help of public opinion
The truth is that we got information about these two great Rajput warriors only from Folklore. When Babu Sampurnanand was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, he had got Krishnadev Prasad Gaur’s book Our Ancestors installed in three parts from class six to eight. Through this book, we got to read folk tales from Yagyavalkya, Apala, Dadhichi to Ashoka, Skanda Gupta, Harsha, Prithviraj Chauhan, Akbar, Rana Pratap to Aurangzeb and Shivaji and Chhatrasal. But this book was not about history but about moral education. In a way, our history is silent on other Rajput warriors including Prithviraj Chauhan and Rana Pratap. It is the irony of our education department that it has put the valor of Hindu warriors in a folk saga. We get to know the tales of Rana Pratap’s valor from the poetry of Shyamnarayan Pandey and the bravery of Rani Laxmi Bai of Jhansi, the heroine of 1857, was known to Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, she was the queen of Jhansi, from poetry.
Historiography turned into a myth
The main reason for this is that the tradition of writing history in India was not that which was valid in Europe or other western countries. Here a lot of history has been written on the basis of myths or Puranas. When the meanings of words are discovered, even the historians of the West remain astonished. The biggest example of this is the Mahabharata, which sometimes seems unbelievable and sometimes completely reliable. That is why the history of India has been described as pervasive in the people. If the West is considered as the criterion, then the history of India begins with the war of Alexander (Alexander). Because he was the first European who came to India. But despite this, King Porus is not taught about and people consider Chanakya to be fictional.
The funny thing is that if we accept the truth of Chandragupta Maurya and his grandson Ashoka, then why do we forget Chanakya? The agony of the Kalinga war is reduced to just a few words and Pushyamitra Shunga is said to be such a Buddhist destroyer, who destroyed Buddhist stupas as far as Afghanistan during his short reign. While this is not possible. Obviously, history sense is weak in India. We accepted the same history as true, which our colonial mentality accepted.
Secular got stuck in Akshay’s game
It is possible that Akshay Kumar has left this sura for the marketing of his upcoming film Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan. But the manner in which his opponents and the so-called secular people with colonial mindset broke down on social media proves that the school curriculum was not taught on Hindu Rajput heroes. The history of Shivaji and the Hindu warriors of his later period is found, but not on the warriors of the 13th to the 17th century. In fact, historians like Ashirwadi Lal Srivastava took a different line. Due to secularism, neglect of Hindu heroes also became a reason. As a result, there was a rift within the society. Hindu historians felt that Hindus were neglected in independent India and Muslim historians attributed the bravery of Hindu warriors and the free will of the coming state to their hypocrisy.
Taksal language and absence of historians in the court
There was also a reason for this, that there was no tradition of proper historiography in the Hindu kings. There must have been some bards, who wrote geet-poetry in praise of the king in their Albeli language. Muhammad bin Qasim attacked King Dahir of Sindh in 712 AD and conquered Multan in 713 after Sindh Fateh. But no description of Dahir is found in history. The lyric-poetry of the bards can be interpolations, but not history. Similarly, a little before 1000 AD, an invader named Mahmud came from Ghazni. But the mention of Trilochan Pal who faced him is not available. Trilochan Pal was a Hindu king of Gandhara (Afghanistan). Mahmud kept attacking in India for about 25 years, yet the Hindu kings did not unite. Mahmud, who came from Ghazni, reached Kalinjar. He did not win everywhere, but his court historians called him the conqueror of India. There is a legend that Mahmud was captured by Vasudeva, the king of Mathura. He was about to kill him, when Mahmud began to make the sound of gongs from his mouth. Vasudeva was the king of Yaduvanshi, and after hearing this voice, he left him, because there is a call of cow in the cows. Mahmud had heard that if you get stuck somewhere in India, then chant the cow, the attacker will leave. That’s what he did. In many places the local Hindu kings also washed away. But the Muslim historians forgot to write the stories of the valor of these local kings of ours. Even the Iranian Yayawar Alberuni, who came with him, did not write this history. All he has written is that the Hindus were blown away like particles of dust by Mahmud’s attack. His loot in Somnath continued from 1025 to 1026. Then he became so afraid of the Hindu kings that he fled to Ghazni via Thar.
From Hassan Nizami to Irfan Habib, there is silence on some poets
All this is not in history. Muhammad Ghori’s historian Hasan Nizami does not make any special description about Prithviraj Chauhan. He has not even mentioned Chandvardai. That is why the famous historian Irfan Habib in his book Medieval India has described Chandvardai as a poet of the 15th century. While the decisive battle of Tarain between Prithviraj Chauhan and Muhammad Ghori took place in 1192 AD. At this time, Alok Vajpayee, an expert in medieval history, also says that the tradition of not writing history in India has also done a lot of damage. In The Wonder That Was India, saa rizvi has written that Prithvi Raj Chauhan was brought to Ajmer as a prisoner in the last days. Similarly, Cynthia Talbot has written that the language of some poets is after the 13th century, but in the 19th century the Rajput kings got the language changed. From this it is clear that even today we do not have any official history of Hindu kings. That’s why we read Mughals, even about Sultans, but the stories of Hindu heroes are still unknown.
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