The Delhi Sultanate: Why It Matters for Understanding Our past and the Consequences of Its Erasure
16 August 2026 | Syed Nadeem Rezavi | The Blog of Aligarh Society of History and Archaeology [ASHA]
For the past several days, since the news emerged that the University of Delhi had removed the long-standing postgraduate paper on the Delhi Sultanate from its revised History syllabus, journalists, academics, and concerned citizens have been asking two pressing questions. First, what is the actual importance and significance of the Delhi Sultanate for understanding Indian history? Second, what would be the negative consequences of removing this period from the curriculum? These are not merely academic queries; they go to the heart of how we understand our past and how we educate future generations. These questions were put to me too. I will try to address them in my own way here.
The decision by Delhi University to drop the elective paper, titled “The Delhi Sultanate: Structures of Authority in Medieval North India (13th-14th Centuries)“, from the postgraduate syllabus is not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader pattern of invisibilising the so-called “Muslim Period” of Indian history. Some of the other omissions in the third semester include papers on “History of North India, c. 1400-1550”, “Gender and Women in Early India: 1500 BCE to 1000 CE”, “Political Processes and Structure of Polities in Ancient India” and “Religion and Society in Ancient Indian Literature”. This began with the “rationalisation” of NCERT school textbooks, which removed all references to the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal rulers from Class 7 textbooks and reduced chapters on the Mughal Empire in Class 12. Influential women icons like Raziyya Sultan and Nur Jahan were also omitted from new Class 8 NCERT textbooks. In the past I wrote and spoke on these at a number of places. Let me also state at the very beginning that I started my teaching career by teaching Delhi Sultanate to undergraduate level, before shifting to the Mughals, whom I generally taught to post graduate students.