A paragraph describing the Mughal Empire as one of the greatest ever was removed from a government website, KnowIndia.gov.in, after some Twitter users flagged it to the Union Culture Ministry on Monday.
In a section about India’s medieval history covering various rulers, the introduction of the page on Mughal Empire had said: “In India, the Mughal Empire was one of the greatest empires ever. The Mughal Empire ruled hundreds of millions of people. India became united under one rule, and had very prosperous cultural and political years during the Mughal rule. There were many Muslim and Hindu kingdoms split all throughout India until the founders of the Mughal Empire came...”
An author, Ratan Sharda, whose works include ‘Secrets of RSS’, ‘The Sangh and Swaraj’ and ‘RSS 360’, tweeted on Monday morning that a government portal was “singing the praises of ‘great’ Mughal empire”. In a subsequent tweet, he shared a screenshot of the website and tagged the Culture Ministry’s official handle.
MeitY informed
According to Culture Ministry officials, the issue was flagged when several tweets were directed at it in the morning. An official said officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology (MeitY) were informed.
By afternoon, the Culture Ministry responded on Twitter, saying: “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.”
In the evening, the website no longer had an introduction for the Mughal Empire page, with the space left blank. However, information on the reigns of various Mughal Emperors remained on the site.
A response from the MeitY was awaited at the time of writing.
( With inputs from Yuthika Bhargava )
