Muslim clerics flay attempts to 're-write' history

Muslim clerics have sharply criticised, what they alleged, ''attempts to re-write'' the history of the country.
 
While reacting to the remarks by UP deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma that the Mughal emperors were ''plunderers'' and that the state government would effect changes in the history text books being taught to the children in the schools.
 
''If Mughal emperors were plunderers then what about the Britishers?...were they not plunderers?,'' said senior Muslim cleric and All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) member Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangimahali here. The cleric said that such remarks were uncalled for and were only aimed at inciting communal tension.
 
Another senior sunni cleric also echoed the similar sentiment. ''History is based on facts...we can not distort the facts as per our whims and fancies,'' the cleric said. ''Such an attempt will send a wrong message to the society and create a divide,'' he added.
 
Sharma while speaking at a function here on Tuesday, said that the state government would set up a committee for giving suggestions for effecting changes in the history text books. ''We will bring forward the constructive works of the Mughal emperors while not including in the books their negative sides,'' Sharma had said.
 
The UP deputy chief minister, who is also a senior faculty at the University of Lucknow, had said that Mughal emperor Shahjahan had got the hands of those artisans amputated, who had built the Taj Mahal. UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath had also earlier said that the state government would not allow the children of the state to be taught ''distorted'' history.