If Culture Ministry does not run knowindia.gov.in then who runs it and why is it still online

The love and the incessant urge to glorify the Mughal invaders and barbarians by the Indian government and its NCERT-fed officials have once again come out in its full glory. Reportedly, the KnowIndia.gov.in website was found singing songs of praises for the Mughals while, shielding their atrocities, toning down their criticism and giving cold shoulder to other much more illustrious Indian rulers.

In the ‘culture and heritage section of the subsection Medieval History, the website claims “India became united under one rule, and had very prosperous cultural and political years during the Mughal rule.” It doesn’t stop here and further claims, “In India, there were many Muslim and Hindu kingdoms split all throughout India until the Mughals came.”

In nutshell, the website and its authors believe that the idea of India didn’t exist before the Mughals and that the invaders only brought the entire subcontinent together. They said that the sections have since been wiped out of the website after the controversy reached the realms of social media platforms.

As for Aurangzeb, one of the biggest anti-Hindu rulers of all time, the website, not surprisingly, goes way too easy on him. It claims that Aurangzeb failed to fulfil his ambition of bringing the entire sub-continent under one rule, insinuating that he was benevolent and allowed all other non-Muslim religions to flourish.

However, in reality, non-Muslims didn’t have any rights in polity or administration. Non-Muslims were called jimmies and they did not have any rights a Muslim had during the time of Aurangzeb.

Read More: Read glorification of Aurangzeb by HuffPost? Time to untangle their web of lies

Muslims did not have to pay land revenue tax. But non-Muslims had to pay a special land revenue-oriented tax. They even had to pay war taxes to take care of the soldiers in the Mughal army. Only Muslims could become a warrior. Non-Muslims were forbidden from riding a horse. 

The only position they could obtain in the Mughal army was that of a servant. Non-Muslims had to exhibit humility in both behaviour and speech. Non-Muslims were forbidden from wearing fancy clothes. They were not allowed to carry weapons. In the court of law, the evidence provided by a Muslim citizen carried more weight than that provided by a non-Muslim.

There is not a single mention, even if passing, of the brutal atrocities, inflicted by foreign barbarians like Aurangzeb on the cultural, archaeological and religious wealth of India. There is no mention of how they destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples, including the holiest of Hindu shrines and converted them to mosques.

Reported extensively by TFI, in 1669, Aurangzeb issued a ‘farman’ to destroy the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Fortunately, the temple priests hid the linga deep inside the ground which was later used to reconstruct the temple in 1742. 

In the original site of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, now stands the Gyanvapi Masjid. Mathura- the birthplace of Lord Krishna is another such holy place where Aurangzeb unleashed his hatred for Hindus. Aurangzeb destroyed the temple in 1669 which had been built by Veer Singh Bundela.

For Jehangir, the website claims, “He strived to reform society and was tolerant towards Hindus, Christians and Jews.” Rajput and Maratha rulers, or the Ahoms who fought for centuries with Mughals, and limited the spread of their empire has no mention in the said section of the website.

The website claims that Guru Arjan Dev (the website refers to him as Arjun Dev which is incorrect) was killed by Mughal emperor Jehangir because he provided aid and support to the Jehangir’s stranded son Khusrau. However, the fifth Sikh Guru was killed as he refused to pay a fine for preaching Sikhism and also refused to remove certain hymns from Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Vaani, which Jehangir founded offensive.

After being thrashed by the netizens for butchering the historical facts, the Ministry of Culture came up with a timid response, claiming that the Ministry didn’t run the website. Even if the Ministry did not run the website, wasn’t it the job of Ministry officials to keep a close eye on what goes live on the website? The brazen way through which Ministry tried to wash its hands off the controversy explains how the history books have been replete with such distortion.

The Ministry tweeted, “It has been brought to the Ministry’s notice about content in Know India website (http://KnowIndia.gov.in) that misrepresents India’s history. The Ministry of Culture does not run this website and is working with the concerned entities to accurately portray the events.”

The Know India website making an absolute hash of Indian history shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As reported by TFI earlier this year, despite being questioned repeated times, NCERT failed to produce a source for the claim, “All Mughal emperors gave grants to support the building and maintenance of places of worship. Even when temples were destroyed during the war, grants were later issued for their repair – as we know from the reigns of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb,” made in a history textbook for class 12, titled ‘Themes of Indian History’.

To compound NCERTs misery, one RTI query and its reply revealed the NCERT did not have any source to back the claim that Delhi’s famous Qutub Minar was built by Qutubuddin Aibak and Iltutmish, the Muslim ruler of the city.

Read More: Like Aurangzeb, NCERT is clueless about Qutub Minar as well. And time has come to investigate and penalise the Distorians

Most of the NCERT textbooks, especially of Humanities and Social Sciences like History, Geography, Civics, Economics, etc have been written by the professors of JNU under the tutelage of ‘distorians’ like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Satish Chandra, Bipin Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee- most of whom are self-professed “Marxist historians”.

It’s been seven years since the Modi government assumed power at the centre and yet the history books and websites remain adulterated with historical hogwash. In July, the GoI after being put under the pump finally invited suggestions via email from the public for removing distortions in Indian History from the school textbooks. It needs to be seen what is the outcome of the exercise but with the KnowIndia website controversy, the public’s anger is expected to rise only.