Assam chief minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday welcomed the reported changes made by the National Council of Educational Research and Training to history textbooks, where the epithet great has been dropped from the names of Mughal emperor Akbar and Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan.

Sarma said he had not personally verified the revisions but supported them if they had been implemented. He added a pointed remark about Tipu Sultan, saying, “Tipu-Ipu ko maro ekdum… jahan bhejna hai bhej do… samundar mein phek do,” drawing immediate attention online.

“If they have done this, then many thanks to NCERT from my side,” he said.

His comments came a day after senior RSS functionary Sunil Ambekar said the council had made several corrections in the latest set of textbooks.

Ambekar claimed that terms like Akbar the Great and Tipu Sultan the Great had been removed, arguing that students should learn about what he described as the rulers’ “cruel deeds” and understand “from whom we were victimised and from whom we should be free.”

Ambekar’s remarks reflected more changes may follow but no historical figures had been dropped.

The reported revisions drew criticism from Congress MP Imran Masood, who questioned the purpose of such alterations. Masood argued that the rulers in question shaped centuries of Indian history and that symbolic edits to textbooks did little to change that.

He said India’s share of global GDP was high during their rule and recalled the final Mughal emperor’s refusal to surrender to the British.

“You removed their names, but what will the removal or addition achieve?” Masood asked, adding that those who “knelt before the British” were now “enjoying themselves in the present government.”