NEW DELHI: Historian S Irfan Habib, speaking at the inaugural panel on the distortion of history and facts at the Nehru Centre, Jawahar Bhawan, on Friday, said, “The fantasy of seeing the past through the lens of the present is very unfortunate.”
He emphasised that today’s tendency to view history without context only serves to diminish its stature. “You can only run away from the past,” he remarked, citing growing instances of the distortion of Mughal history, which is often portrayed as a period of Hindu oppression marked by forced conversions.
“If it had been the official policy of Mughal emperors to forcefully convert Hindus, it must have been a very inefficient one,” he said.
While acknowledging that conversions did take place, he added that broader social factors also played a role. Many artisans, historically marginalised within Hindu society, turned to Islam, he explained.
Other speakers on the panel included historian and social-media commentator Ruchika Sharma, and online commentators Sanjay Rajouria and Dev (known as Baaghi Haryanvi).
Pointing to the increasingly blurred lines between distortion and concoction in the teaching of history, Habib referred to the national education board’s Class 8 history textbook, which describes Maratha founder Chhatrapati Shivaji as a “devout Hindu”. He noted that texts from that era contain no reference to Hinduism as a religion, stressing that the very idea of “isms” is a 19th-century construct.