Maratha history downplayed in CBSE textbooks alleged BISM

August 23, 2013, 12:00 am


City-based Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal (BISM) on Thursday alleged that the history textbooks of CBSE by National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) have inadequate information on some of the important Maratha warriors and events.

The Mandal pointed out that some of the landmark events were of national importance and their significance was not just restricted to the history of Maharashtra.

Addressing a news conference, Pandurang Balkawde, history scholar and member of BISM said, "A team of history scholars from BISM evaluated nearly 1,600 pages of NCERT history textbooks from class VI to XII and found that the council has neglected the Maratha history."

Balkawde alleged that in the history textbook of class VI, the history of the Marathas was confined to only one-and-a-half page and did not even carry a photo of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. "The history of Marathas is not restricted to Maharashtra alone but is of importance to the entire country as they fought the Mughals to protect the country."

BISM was set up in 1910 to provide ready resources to historians and researchers and currently, it maintains more than 1,500,000 historical papers and 30,000 scripts mainly in Marathi, Modi, Persian, Portuguese and English languages. These resources hold sizeable volumes on the history of the Maratha Empire, its culture and Marathi literature. They also contain a large collection of the material on the British and Mughal rule over India.