Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Sunday that the country’s history was deliberately distorted as part of a conspiracy. As a result, people are not familiar with many great personalities who had bravely fought foreign invaders, he said.
Speaking at a function here, Adityanath said he will make sure that those “forgotten personalities” find a place in the state syllabus. “We have forgotten our history... We did not give due place to great personalities. There was a deliberate attempt to distort history as part of a conspiracy and for political gains. Time has come to expose those who were behind it. Those who cannot preserve their history will not be able to preserve their geography either,” the chief minister said.
He said the children of today did not know about Maharaj Suheldev, a great warrior who had fought a three-lakh army of Muslim invaders. Suheldev was revered among the Rajbhar and Pasi communities, who were in sizeable numbers in some eastern Uttar Pradesh districts. The BJP had struck an alliance with the Suheldev Bharat Samaj Party in the Assembly polls.
Adityanath also said there should be a fresh debate on communalism and nationalism. “We must now debate whether there should be any place for those who associate themselves with Mughal emperors Babar and Mohammed Ghori,” he said.
Adityanath heaped praise on the RSS and said it was a nationalist organisation. “The RSS is attacked when it works in slums. It is accused of fomenting communalism. Let us debate who is communal and who is nationalist,” he said.
Published 14 May 2017, 19:28 IST