Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday (Dec 28, 2025) warned that history as a discipline is facing a sustained political assault, with communal and dark forces distorting the curriculum and undermining academic institutions. He urged historians to defend evidence-based scholarly work to protect democracy.
Inaugurating the 84th session of the Indian History Congress, Mr. Vijayan said that the rewriting of history over the last decade had moved from an academic debate to an organized political project. He argued that institutions like the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) were ideologically reshaped, while the textbooks of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) were systematically emptied to suit a narrow vision of the past.
The chief minister pointed out that the dilution or removal of key topics from the school curriculum, including the Mughal period, popular resistance movements against caste oppression, communalism and the trauma of Partition. He said that the ideological depth of figures like Bhagat Singh had been removed while the freedom struggle was increasingly portrayed as uncontested and led by a few icons.
Omission of key leaders
Describing the omission of the Malabar Rebellion of 1921 as particularly telling, Mr. Vijayan said the erasure of leaders like Variyamkunnath Kunhahamed Haji and Ali Musaliar marked the erasure of an entire chapter of the anti-imperialist struggle led by the rural poor.
He criticized attempts to elevate figures with marginal roles in the freedom movement while downplaying Mahatma Gandhi, calling it a sheer distortion of history.
The marginalization of Marxist historiography and scholars such as DD Kosambi, RS Sharma, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib, he argues, reflects a discomfort with history as a critical discipline based on evidence and debate. Mr Vijayan also warned against the capture of research bodies through ideologically driven appointments and the promotion of pseudo-scientific claims, arguing that attacks on scientific nature and dissent would inevitably strengthen authoritarianism.
History of Kerala
Highlighting Kerala’s alternative historical trajectory shaped by anti-caste struggles, social reform and class politics, he said figures like Ayyankali, Sree Narayana Guru and movements like Vaikom Satyagraha are marginalized in national narratives, as is the elected communist government of 1957 and its reforms.
Defending history, the Chief Minister said, is a democratic duty. “History will not be surrendered. Truth will not be replaced by mythology. Scholarship will not bow to power,” he said, assuring the state government’s full support to the Indian History Congress and its efforts to promote a secular, inclusive and scholarly approach to the past.
Published – 28 Dec 2025 19:39 IST
