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When Riya, a 13-year-old Indian student opened her new social science textbook this school year, she noticed something strange. Gone were the chapters on the Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate - eras that shaped the subcontinent’s politics, architecture, and culture for centuries. In their place: sections on ancient civilisations, pilgrimage sites, and spiritual traditions.
India is rewriting its school history books and, in the process, reshaping how its future generations will assess the past.
This year, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which guides curriculum in thousands of schools across the country, dropped chapters on Muslim rulers and medieval India from the Class 7 and 8 history syllabi. These changes follow earlier deletions in 2023, which removed the Mughals from Class 12 textbooks, and erased lessons on Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution from lower grades.
Broader cuts across subjects
The curriculum revisions go beyond medieval history. Entire chapters on modern political movements, global revolutions, and social justice have also been deleted. From the Class 11 history syllabus, topics such as "Central Islamic Lands", "Confrontation of Cultures", and "The Industrial Revolution" are no longer included. Similarly, the Class 12 history book, Themes in Indian History – Part II, has dropped the chapter "Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts (16th and 17th Centuries)".
Chapters on post-independence politics have also been removed. In Class 12 political science textbooks, topics such as the "Rise of Popular Movements" and the "Era of One-Party Dominance" have been omitted. The Class 10 civics book "Democratic Politics – II" has seen the removal of chapters such as "Democracy and Diversity", "Popular Struggles and Movements", and "Challenges to Democracy".
According to reports by Jagran Josh and IANS, NCERT has also deleted references to sensitive historical and political episodes, including the aftermath of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, as well as paragraphs detailing Gandhi’s efforts towards Hindu-Muslim unity, which had provoked anger from Hindu extremists. Mentions of the 2002 Gujarat riots have also been dropped.
The NCERT states that this is about easing academic pressure following the pandemic. “They recommended that if this chapter is dropped, it won’t affect the knowledge of the children, and an unnecessary burden can be removed,” NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani told Indian media.
But many academics and educators believe something more deliberate is happening — a narrowing of history that aligns with political ideology.
“This tradition of rewriting history began from the beginning of the Republic of India in 1947,” says Professor Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, emeritus professor of history at Victoria University of Wellington. “It started with the Congress leaning on its political ideology to write school history and the CPI (M) in Bengal prioritised their left-leaning political ideology to do the same. Now, the current BJP government undid it all to write their version of history.”
A Sanitised Past, A Selective Present
The BJP-led central government has, since coming to power in 2014, focused heavily on shaping a cultural identity rooted in Hindu pride. In this framework, the medieval period - dominated by Muslim dynasties like the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals - becomes an uncomfortable chapter.
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-Asia Media Centre
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