Nobody can change history, says Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar

History is history, he said when a journalist asked for his comments on Amit Shah’s remark about revisiting history books

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Monday that nobody could change history.

“I don’t understand how one can change history... History is history…language is a different issue,” he told media persons on the sidelines of his weekly janata durbar (public interaction) programme when a journalist asked for his comments on Home Minister Amit Shah’s recent remark about revisiting history books.

Senior BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Tarkishore Prasad was beside Mr. Kumar when he made the remark and party leader and State Labour Resource Minister Jibesh Kumar Mishra was behind him smiling.

Mr. Shah had said recently that it was time to revisit history books as historians had focused only on Mughal empires, ignoring other glorious empires. He had appealed to historians to “resuscitate the glory of the past for the present” as it would help in “building a bright future”.

“History does not depend on government, and truth comes into existence if historians start writing correct facts about those who did not get their rightful place in history”, said Mr. Shah on the occasion of a book launch. “We’ve had many empires, but historians have focused only on the Mughals and written mostly about them”.

Mr. Kumar had differed with ally BJP on earlier occasions too. He had asserted that there was “no need of any anti-conversion law” in Bihar, when senior BJP leader Giriraj Singh said this law was the need of the hour. He said the government was on the alert and “members of different religious communities live in peace and harmony”.

He had taken a line different from the BJP on issues like Uniform Civil Code, Abrogation of Article 370, Ram Temple in Ayodhya and Triple Talaq, among others. The State and central leadership of the BJP had differed with Mr. Kumar even on the issue of caste-based census.