Prof irfan habib

Aligarh, India – India’s Hindu nationalist government has The government, led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has also removed references to the In the textbooks revised by a government-run educational body, ancient India has been glorified, often without the support of historical facts. Historians say the revision of school textbooks is a part of the Al Jazeera spoke to historian Irfan Habib, a globally renowned authority on Mughal history, to understand the BJP’s project of rewriting history and the impact it will have on knowledge dissemination in the South Asian country – home to 200 million Muslims. Al Jazeera: Why is the BJP removing Mughal and other Muslim rulers from school textbooks? Irfan Habib: Well, it’s not only [about] removing the Mughal rulers. They are actually trying to communalise Indian history by either removing or denigrating Muslims. But this is only one part of the BJP project, the other part is not only omission but myth-building. Al Jazeera: Can you talk about the recent changes in school textbooks in India? Habib: In the ancient Indian history syllabus recommended by the UGC [University Grants Commission, the body that governs the universities in India], the caste system is omitted from history. It claims Muslims introduced the caste system during the medieval period. Every virtue is to be credited to ancient Indian civilisation. It is not simply bias, but lies and falsehoods are being glorified. This Aryan business is just like t...

THE unanimous verdict of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute appears to have raised more questions than provided answers. While the decision to allow the construction of a temple where the Babri Masjid stood is based on a combination of selective historical “evidence” and matters of faith, eminent Indian historians with decades of specialisation in medieval and ancient history have reason to be cynical of the basis and the conclusions of the unanimous verdict. In fact, in 2010 after the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court passed its order on the basis of the findings of the Archaeological Survey of India, the Aligarh Historians Society strongly refuted the conclusions of the ASI report. The Society is a non-profit registered body devoted to the cause of promoting a scientific method in history with a non-chauvinistic lens, and Professor Irfan Habib was its president that year. Professor Habib, who is Professor Emeritus of History at Aligarh Muslim University and former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, is also the author of several books and monographs relating to ancient and medieval India. Notable among them are An Atlas of Ancient Indian History (jointly authored by Faiz Habib); Medieval India: The Study of a Civilisation; Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707 ; Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception and An Atlas of the Mughal Empire . Frontline spoke to Professor Irfan H...

According to Prof M. G. S. Narayanan, Prof Irfan Habib has poisoned not just history, but culture and social life by his narrow groupism, nepotism and treachery. – Jayakrishnan Nair Few decades back, at Irfan Habib: “This is not Ibādat Khāna” Muhammed: “No? This is not Ibādat Khāna?” IH: “What you gave in Times of India is not Ibādat Khāna” M: “How can you say that? Are you an archaeologist?” IH: “I may not be as good an archaeologist like you” M: “Sorry, you are not an archaeologist.” Irfan Habib was speechless. Habib pushed a paper to Muhammed and said, “write what you discovered is not Ibādat Khāna”. Muhammed refused and walked away. After working both at AMU and the Me, the Indian), which has details of his encounters with Prof Habib and his cabal. As part of his education, Mr Muhammed learned how a historian becomes secular. When Muhammed reached AMU as a student, he was initially excited to have someone as famous as Prof. Habib as his teacher. Muhammed recollects, “As a teacher, he did not make any impact on me.” His other classmates too had similar opinion. This news reached Habib’s ears. Muhammed ran for the Student’s Union as a Congressman. This too did not go well with the Marxists and they decided to contain him. This would cause various encounters between the Irfan Habib group and Muhammed and they are detailed in the first few chapters of the book. Due to some Machiavellian maneuvers by The Marxist attack came in multiple ways. First, they tried to prove that ...

Prof. Irfan Habib has said that the “discriminatory” Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and talk of a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) had filled Muslims with a “sense of fear”. “Yes, there is a sense of humiliation apart from fear, especially among the poor that they would be subjected to discrimination and repression because any citizens’ register after this bill will concentrate on Muslims, and perhaps Nepali Hindus or Sri Lankan Tamils; but basically against Muslims,” the eminent historian said in an interview with The Hindu. “My sense is the BJP government would not have a citizenship charter across the country in one go. They would go State by State and say how they are putting Muslims in place. I mean they have reduced a State into a union territory without any sanction from the constitution just because it is a Muslim majority State,” he asserted. This, he said, had become clearer in the recent elections in Britain, where Hindus didn’t vote for the Labour Party, which they traditionally supported, because the party had criticised the BJP government on the dilution of Article 370. “I saw a newspaper headline which said ‘Hindus bring about the defeat of Labour because of Kashmir’.” On the repeated assertions by Union Home Minister Amit Shah that Indian Muslims had no reason to fear the CAA and NRC, Prof. Habib retorted: “Why should they not fear? He has called them ‘termites’. Don’t they remember the Gujarat riots where he was one of the accused?” He also ...

Pointing out reason and liberty endorsed in Indian national movements, he drew attention to the need of secularism which excludes religion from political or social content. “Secularism, the scientific spirit put forward by Nehru, should be imbibed by every Indian. The message is of reason, secularism and of going by rational knowledge, so that India might shine in the world,” said Habib. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive. Let's work together to keep the conversation civil. HIDE

Aligarh, India – India’s Hindu nationalist government has The government, led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has also removed references to the In the textbooks revised by a government-run educational body, ancient India has been glorified, often without the support of historical facts. Historians say the revision of school textbooks is a part of the Al Jazeera spoke to historian Irfan Habib, a globally renowned authority on Mughal history, to understand the BJP’s project of rewriting history and the impact it will have on knowledge dissemination in the South Asian country – home to 200 million Muslims. Al Jazeera: Why is the BJP removing Mughal and other Muslim rulers from school textbooks? Irfan Habib: Well, it’s not only [about] removing the Mughal rulers. They are actually trying to communalise Indian history by either removing or denigrating Muslims. But this is only one part of the BJP project, the other part is not only omission but myth-building. Al Jazeera: Can you talk about the recent changes in school textbooks in India? Habib: In the ancient Indian history syllabus recommended by the UGC [University Grants Commission, the body that governs the universities in India], the caste system is omitted from history. It claims Muslims introduced the caste system during the medieval period. Every virtue is to be credited to ancient Indian civilisation. It is not simply bias, but lies and falsehoods are being glorified. This Aryan business is just like t...

THE unanimous verdict of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute appears to have raised more questions than provided answers. While the decision to allow the construction of a temple where the Babri Masjid stood is based on a combination of selective historical “evidence” and matters of faith, eminent Indian historians with decades of specialisation in medieval and ancient history have reason to be cynical of the basis and the conclusions of the unanimous verdict. In fact, in 2010 after the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court passed its order on the basis of the findings of the Archaeological Survey of India, the Aligarh Historians Society strongly refuted the conclusions of the ASI report. The Society is a non-profit registered body devoted to the cause of promoting a scientific method in history with a non-chauvinistic lens, and Professor Irfan Habib was its president that year. Professor Habib, who is Professor Emeritus of History at Aligarh Muslim University and former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, is also the author of several books and monographs relating to ancient and medieval India. Notable among them are An Atlas of Ancient Indian History (jointly authored by Faiz Habib); Medieval India: The Study of a Civilisation; Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707 ; Essays in Indian History: Towards a Marxist Perception and An Atlas of the Mughal Empire . Frontline spoke to Professor Irfan H...

Pointing out reason and liberty endorsed in Indian national movements, he drew attention to the need of secularism which excludes religion from political or social content. “Secularism, the scientific spirit put forward by Nehru, should be imbibed by every Indian. The message is of reason, secularism and of going by rational knowledge, so that India might shine in the world,” said Habib. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive. Let's work together to keep the conversation civil. HIDE

According to Prof M. G. S. Narayanan, Prof Irfan Habib has poisoned not just history, but culture and social life by his narrow groupism, nepotism and treachery. – Jayakrishnan Nair Few decades back, at Irfan Habib: “This is not Ibādat Khāna” Muhammed: “No? This is not Ibādat Khāna?” IH: “What you gave in Times of India is not Ibādat Khāna” M: “How can you say that? Are you an archaeologist?” IH: “I may not be as good an archaeologist like you” M: “Sorry, you are not an archaeologist.” Irfan Habib was speechless. Habib pushed a paper to Muhammed and said, “write what you discovered is not Ibādat Khāna”. Muhammed refused and walked away. After working both at AMU and the Me, the Indian), which has details of his encounters with Prof Habib and his cabal. As part of his education, Mr Muhammed learned how a historian becomes secular. When Muhammed reached AMU as a student, he was initially excited to have someone as famous as Prof. Habib as his teacher. Muhammed recollects, “As a teacher, he did not make any impact on me.” His other classmates too had similar opinion. This news reached Habib’s ears. Muhammed ran for the Student’s Union as a Congressman. This too did not go well with the Marxists and they decided to contain him. This would cause various encounters between the Irfan Habib group and Muhammed and they are detailed in the first few chapters of the book. Due to some Machiavellian maneuvers by The Marxist attack came in multiple ways. First, they tried to prove that ...

Prof. Irfan Habib has said that the “discriminatory” Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and talk of a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) had filled Muslims with a “sense of fear”. “Yes, there is a sense of humiliation apart from fear, especially among the poor that they would be subjected to discrimination and repression because any citizens’ register after this bill will concentrate on Muslims, and perhaps Nepali Hindus or Sri Lankan Tamils; but basically against Muslims,” the eminent historian said in an interview with The Hindu. “My sense is the BJP government would not have a citizenship charter across the country in one go. They would go State by State and say how they are putting Muslims in place. I mean they have reduced a State into a union territory without any sanction from the constitution just because it is a Muslim majority State,” he asserted. This, he said, had become clearer in the recent elections in Britain, where Hindus didn’t vote for the Labour Party, which they traditionally supported, because the party had criticised the BJP government on the dilution of Article 370. “I saw a newspaper headline which said ‘Hindus bring about the defeat of Labour because of Kashmir’.” On the repeated assertions by Union Home Minister Amit Shah that Indian Muslims had no reason to fear the CAA and NRC, Prof. Habib retorted: “Why should they not fear? He has called them ‘termites’. Don’t they remember the Gujarat riots where he was one of the accused?” He also ...