August 20, 2025
There is a popular proverb related to education which says that if an incompetent person is appointed as teacher, the academic lives of generations of students are doomed. And when there are many such ‘teachers’ whose only qualification is having been trained in the far right, Hindutva wisdom appointed at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), what pray shall be the future of school social science education?
Recently, the NCERT released a ‘Special Module’ (for text/teaching) titled ‘Partition Horrors’. This module is described as a ‘supplementary resource’ for Classes 6 to 8 (middle to senior school) – not part of regular textbooks – and is meant to be used for ‘projects, posters, discussions and debates.’ The contents of this module, in fact, is supplementary resource material to pinpoint or understand those men/organisations responsible (read guilty) for the Partition of India as claimed but, in fact, presents an altogether a sectarian narrative driven by the body’s RSS masters.
The Module was released on August 14, 2025 as part of “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day” following PM Modi’s 2021 directive which stated that “Partition’s pains can never be forgotten. Millions of our sisters and brothers were displaced, and many lost their lives due to mindless hate and violence. In memory of the struggles and sacrifices of our people, August 14, will be observed as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.”
On detailed perusal, `The whole document is full of manipulation, contradictions, and untruths aiming to hide more than it tries to convey about the Partition. We can divide the NCERT truths into following sections.
Falsehood 1: Muslim League leader Jinnah and political Islam founded two-nation theory
The document states that “Partition was primarily the result of flawed ideas, misconceptions, and erroneous decisions.” The party of Indian Muslims, the Muslim League [ML], held a conference in Lahore in 1940. Its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, said that Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures”. [page 5]
The module also traces Partition to Muslim leaders’ belief in a separate identity rooted in “political Islam”. It goes on to stress that “on the basis of religion, culture, customs, history, sources of inspiration, and worldviews, Muslim leaders called themselves as fundamentally separate from Hindus. The root of this lay in the ideology of political Islam, which denies the possibility of any permanent or equal relationship with non-Muslims.” [page 6].
It is true that ML under the leadership of MA Jinnah declared his firm faith in India being not one nation. His argument was that,
“The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature. They neither intermarry nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their views on life, and of life, are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Musalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, their heroes are different, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and likewise their victories and defeats overlap.”
Facts concealed
This statement of Jinnah in defence of two-nation theory is reproduced twice in the short document (pages 4 & 6) but the authors shamelessly hide what Hindu nationalists aligned with Hindu Mahasabha and RSS had been arrogantly arguing for decades preceding Jinnah’s statement.
Privileged Caste Hindu nationalists of Bengal propounded the two-nation theory
Long-long before the appearance of Muslim advocates of the two-nation theory, the ball was set rolling by High Caste Hindu nationalists at the end of the 19th century in Bengal. Raj Narain Basu (1826–1899), the maternal grandfather of Aurobindo Ghosh, and his close associate Nabha Gopal Mitra (1840-94) were the co-fathers of two-nation theory and Hindu nationalism in India. Basu established a society for the promotion of national feelings among the educated natives which in fact stood for preaching the superiority of Hinduism. He organized meetings proclaiming that Hinduism despite its Casteism presented a much higher social idealism than ever reached by the Christian or Islamic civilization.
Basu was the first person to conceive the idea of a Maha Hindu Samiti (All India Hindu Association) and helped in the formation of Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, a precursor of Hindu Mahasabha. He believed that through this organization Hindus would be able to establish an Aryan nation in India. He visualized a powerful Hindu nation not only overtaking India but the whole world. He also saw,
“[The] noble and puissant Hindu nation rousing herself after sleep and rushing headlong towards progress with divine prowess. I see this rejuvenated nation again illumining the world by her knowledge, spirituality and culture, and the glory of Hindu nation again spreading over the whole world.”
[Cited in Majumdar, R. C., History of the Freedom Movement in India, Vol. I (Calcutta: Firma KL Mukhpadhyay, 1971), 295–296.]
Nabha Gopal Mitra started organising an annual Hindu Mela (fête). It used to be a gathering on the last day of every Bengali year and highlighted the Hindu nature of all aspects of Hindu Bengali life and continued uninterrupted between 1867 and 1880. Mitra also started a National Society and a National Paper for promoting unity and feelings of nationalism among Hindus. Mitra argued in his paper that the Hindus positively formed a nation by themselves. According to him,
“[The] basis of national unity in India is the Hindu religion. Hindu nationality embraces all the Hindus of India irrespective of their locality or language.”
[Cited in Majumdar, R. C., Three Phases of India’s Struggle for Freedom (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1961), p. 8.]
- C. Majumdar, a favourite of Hindutva intellectuals and a prominent researcher of the rise of Hindu nationalism in Bengal, had no difficulty in arriving at the truth that
“Nabha Gopal forestalled Jinnah’s theory of two nations by more than half a century… [And since then] consciously or unconsciously, the Hindu character was deeply imprinted on nationalism all over India.” [Ibid.]
Role of Arya Samaj
The Arya Samaj in northern India aggressively preached that Hindu and Muslim communities in India were, in fact, two different nations. Bhai Parmanand (1876–1947), a leading light of the Arya Samaj in northern India who was also a leader of Hindu Mahasabha, declared Hindus and Muslims as two nations. The following words of his seems to have been borrowed by Jinnah in his March 1940 speech at Lahore quoted in the NCERT module.
“In history the Hindus revere the memory of Prithvi Raj, Partap, Shivaji and, Beragi Bir, who fought for the honour and freedom of this land (against the Muslims), while the Mahomedans look upon the invaders of India, like Muhammad Bin Qasim and rulers like Aurangzeb as their national heroes…[whereas] in the religious field, the Hindus draw their inspiration from the Ramayan, the Mahabharat, and the Geeta. The Musalmans, on the other hand, derive their inspiration from the Quran and the Hadis. Thus, the things that divide are far more vital than the things which unite.”
[Parmanand, Bhai in pamphlet titled, ‘The Hindu National Movement’, cited in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1990), 35–36, first Published December 1940, Thackers Publishers, Bombay.]
Parmanand as early as 1908–9, called for the total exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations in two specific areas. According to his plan, elaborated in his autobiography,
“The territory beyond Sind should be united with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province into a great Musalman kingdom. The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time Mussalman in the rest of India should go and settle in this territory.”
[Parmanand, Bhai, The Story of My Life, S. Chand, Delhi, 1982, p. 36.]
Another Arya Samaj luminary Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) in 1924 proposed partition of India into Muslim India and non-Muslim India. He articulated his two-nation theory in the following words:
“Under my scheme the Muslims will have four Muslim States: (1) The Pathan Province of the North Western Frontier (2) Western Punjab (3) Sindh and (4) Eastern Bengal. If there are compact Muslim communities in any other part of India, sufficiently large to form a Province, they should be similarly constituted. But it should be distinctly understood that this is not a united India. It means a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India.”
[Rai, Lala Lajpat, ‘Hindu-Muslim Problem XI’, The Tribune, Lahore, December 14, 1924, p. 8.]
Hindu nationalist (supremacist) Moonje, Lala Har Dayal, Savarkar and Golwalkar as pioneers of two-nation theory
Dr. B. S. Moonje was another Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leader who carried forward the flag of Hindu Separatism long before Muslim League’s Pakistan resolution of March 1940. While addressing the third session of the Oudh Hindu Mahasabha in 1923, he declared:
“Just as England belongs to the English, France to the French, and Germany to the Germans, India belongs to the Hindus. If Hindus get organized, they can humble the English and their stooges, the Muslims…The Hindus henceforth create their own world which will prosper through shuddhi [literally meaning purification, the term was used for conversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism]and sangathan [organization].“
[Cited in Dhanki, J. S., Lala Lajpat Rai and Indian Nationalism, S Publications, Jullundur, 1990, p. 378.]
Lala Har Dayal (1884–1938), a well-known name in the Ghadar Party circles, too, long before the Muslim League’s demand for a separate homeland for Muslims, not only demanded the formation of a Hindu nation in India but also urged the conquest and Hinduisation of Afghanistan. In a significant political statement in 1925, published in the Pratap of Kanpur, he stated:
“I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Muslims, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So long as the Hindu Nation does not accomplish these four things, the safety of our children and great grandchildren will be ever in danger, and the safety of Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogenous. But the Musalman and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab, and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam […] Just as there is Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and the frontier territory; otherwise, it is useless to win Swaraj.”
[Cited in Ambedkar, B. R., Pakistan or the Partition of India, Maharashtra Government, Bombay, 1990, p. 129.]
It was RSS’ ‘Veer’ V. D. Savarkar (1883-1966), the originator of the politics of Hindutva, who developed the most elaborate two-nation theory. The fact should not be missed that Muslim League passed its Pakistan resolution in 1940, but Savarkar propagated the two-nation theory long before it. While delivering the presidential address to the 19th session Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad in 1937, Savarkar declared unequivocally,
“As it is, there are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India. Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do so…Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary, there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.”
[Samagar Savarkar Wangmaya (Collected Works of Savarkar), Hindu Mahasabha, Poona, 1963, p.296.]
It was no abrupt belief of Muslims (and Christians) being separate nations. Savarkar in his controversial book Hindutva as early as 1923 decreed:
“Christians and Mohamedan [sic] communities…cannot be recognized as Hindus as since their adoption of the new cult they had ceased to own Hindu Sanskriti [culture] as a whole. They belong, or feel that they belong, to a cultural unit altogether different from the Hindu one. Their heroes and their hero worship their fairs and their festivals, their ideals and their outlook on-life, have now ceased to be common with ours.”
[Maratha [V. D. Savarkar], Hindutva, VV Kelkar, Nagpur, 1923, p. 88.]
[1] How religiously RSS believed in two-nation theory even after the birth of a democratic-secular India was made clear when the English organ of the RSS, Organiser, on the very eve of Independence (August 14, 1947) editorially reaffirmed its faith in two-nation theory in the following words:
“Let us no longer allow ourselves to be influenced by false notions of nationhood. Much of the mental confusion and the present and future troubles can be removed by the ready recognition of the simple fact that in Hindusthan only the Hindus form the nation and the national structure must be built on that safe and sound foundation…the nation itself must be built up of Hindus, on Hindu traditions, culture, ideas and aspirations.”
The ‘Hindu’ narratives make it clear that two-nation theory was the product of Hindu nationalists and Partition was a primary holy task which Hindu nationalists took upon themselves. The module does not bother to tell us that it was borrowed by Jinnah only in late 1930s. A leading English daily of India editorially stated:
“It was a theory which long preceded Jinnah, having been expounded by such names as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya in the late nineteenth-century Bengal and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the early part of the twentieth, among countless others.”
[Editorial: ‘Two-nation Gujarat’, The Times of India, April 18, 2002.]
Despite all the above-mentioned facts available in the RSS/Hindu Mahasabha archives the authors of the module continue the tirade that “Muslim leaders called themselves as fundamentally separate from Hindus. The root of this lay in the ideology of political Islam, which denies the possibility of any permanent [sic] or equal relationship with non-Muslims.”
Falsehood 2: Muslim League as party of all Indian Muslims
The module attempts to create a narrative that Muslim League represented all Muslims of India since it “won 73 out of 78 seats reserved for Muslims” in March 1946 elections to the Constituent Assembly. The authors do not disclose that Muslim League won due to highly restricted system of franchise in which a tiny minority of Muslims voted. The Muslim League was able to secure most of the Muslim seats due to the advantage it enjoyed under the prevalent restricted franchise at that time. The elections were held under the Sixth Schedule of the 1935 Act, which excluded the mass of peasants, most small shopkeepers and traders, and countless others from the rolls through tax, property and educational qualifications. According to Granville Austin, a renowned authority on making of Indian constitution, “Only 28.5 percent, of the adult population of the provinces could vote in the provincial assembly elections of early 1946…Economically and socially depressed portions of the population were virtually disenfranchised by the terms of the 1935 Act.”
[Austin, Granville, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, OUP, Delhi, 2014. pp. 12-13.]
Amongst Muslims it was far less due to prevalent poverty and want of education. For example, in Bihar where Muslim League secured 34 out of 40 Muslim seats in Provincial Assembly elections, the eligible Muslim electorate consisted only of 7.8 percent of the total population. It could win as Muslim elite/High Caste backed it whereas 92.2% Muslims of Bihar remained disenfranchised. It was the case in almost all other provinces. [Ghosh, Papiya, Muhajirs and the Nation: Bihar in the 40s, Routledge, Delhi, 2010, 79.]
Savarkar led Hindu Mahasabha ran coalition governments with Jinnah led Muslim League
The Module describes Jinnah led ML as party of Indian Muslims but fails to take note of the fact that it was this party of Muslims with which Hindu Mahasabha led by Savarkar entered into alliances in order to break the united freedom struggle, specially, the 1942 Quit India Movement against the British rulers. While delivering Presidential address to the 24th session of Hindu Mahasabha at Cawnpore (Kanpur) in 1942, he defended hobnobbing with the Muslim League in the following words,
“In practical politics also the Mahasabha knows that we must advance through reasonable compromises. Witness the fact that only recently in Sind, the Sind-Hindu-Sabha on invitation had taken the responsibility of joining hands with the League itself in running coalition Government. The case of Bengal is well known. Wild Leaguers whom even the Congress with all its submissiveness could not placate grew quite reasonably compromising and sociable as soon as they came in contact with the Hindu Mahasabha and the Coalition Government, under the premiership of Mr. Fazlul Huq and the able lead of our esteemed Mahasabha leader Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerji, functioned successfully for a year or so to the benefit of both the communities. Moreover, further events also proved demonstratively that the Hindu Mahasabhaits endeavoured to capture the centres of political power only in the public interests and not for the leaves and fishes of the office.” [Ibid, pp. 479-480.]
Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League formed a coalition government in NWFP also.
The module, not surprisingly, attempts to defend Jinnah, a co-traveller two-nation theorist. Jinnah is quoted to have said “I never thought it would happen. I never expected to see Pakistan in my lifetime” [page 9]. The message module wants to convey is Jinnah did not expect it, but Congress got Pakistan delivered to Jinnah!
Falsehood 3: Congress Guilty of Partition
In a section titled “Who was responsible for Partition” [page 6], the NCERT module reads: “Ultimately, on August 15, 1947, India was divided. But this was not the doing of any one person. There were three elements responsible for the Partition of India: Jinnah, who demanded it; second, the Congress, which accepted it; and third, Mountbatten, who implemented it. But Mountbatten proved to be guilty of a major blunder.” [page 8]
However, according to the module Congress was primarily responsible for Partition because in 1947 “for the first time Indian leaders themselves willingly handed over vast part of the country permanently outside the national fold-along with tens of crores of its citizens-without even their consent. This was a unique event in human history, when a nation’s own leaders, without a war, peacefully and in closed meetings, suddenly severed crores of their people from the country”. [page 10]
When the present bosses at NCERT trained in RSS ‘boudhik shivirs’ (ideological orientation camps) blame Congress for Partition it is the pot calling the kettle black. It is a highly questionable claim which even facts mentioned in the module do not corroborate. We are told, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel called it “bitter medicine,” while Jawaharlal Nehru described it as “bad” but “unavoidable” [page 5]. Elsewhere, the module reads: “Nehru and Patel accepted Partition to avert civil war and anarchy. Once they did, Gandhi too gave up his opposition”. [page 8] It is interesting to note that for concurring to Partition both wavering Nehru and Iron Man Patel are depicted on the same page!
If the authors of NCERT module had cared to read history honestly, Rammanohar Lohia, a renowned freedom fighter and Socialist leader, the truth would not have been crucified. He was unambiguous in holding that the Hindu communalist who shouted loudest for Akhand or united Bharat, “helped Britain and the Muslim League partition the country…They did nothing whatever, to bring the Muslim close to the Hindu within a single nation. They did almost everything to estrange them from each other. Such estrangement is the root cause of partition.”
[Lohia, Rammanohar, Guilty Men of India’s Partition, BR Publishing, Delhi, 2012, p. 2.]
Falsehood 4: British Rulers Did Not Want Partition
The module reflects the combined Hindu Mahasabha and RSS dilemma of how to navigate the issue of their loyalty to the colonial masters in independent India. Though it declares “Mountbatten proved to be guilty of a major blunder”, the defence of this monster is not far away. Giving him a character certificate, the document goes to declare that “he was not the cause of it” [page 8] Instead of presenting testimonies of the victims (of all religions) of Partition which are available in abundance, the module presents indefensible defence of Mountbatten. It prominently displays the following statement of his: “I did not Partition India. The plan for partition had been accepted by the Indian leaders themselves. My role was to execute it in the most peaceful way possible…I accept the blame for haste…But I do not accept the blame for the violence which followed. That was the responsibility of Indians themselves”. [page 6]”
The document brazenly attempts to belittle the role of British colonial rulers in partitioning India as part of its imperialist project. It is bone chilling to read that it “had long been the known position of the British government that it was against Partition, Congress leaders underestimated Jinnah. Also, Viceroy Lord Wavell repeatedly made it clear, ever since 1940 up to March 1947, that Partition would not resolve the Hindu-Muslim problem. It would only lead to mass violence, administrative collapse, and long-term hostility. His words proved prophetic”. [page 10] There could not have been more shameless defence of colonial masters’ project of ‘Divide and Rule’.
Shockingly, NCERT, appears to be working overtime to de-colonize Indian education resorts to a hardened Anglophile, Nirad C. Chaudhuri in support of the lie that British did not want Partition. Nirad’s quote reads: “I assert with confidence that not even at the end of 1946 did anybody in India believe in the possibility of a partition in the country…The Hindus and the British alike foreswore the principle of unity of India which they had always professed.”
The authors of this document, in fact, borrowed defence of the British rulers from Golwalkar. The most prominent ideologue of RSS did not believe that colonial rule was an injustice or unnatural. In a speech on 8 June 1942, at a time when freedom struggle was rearing to rise to the call of the Quit India movement, Golwalkar declared:
“[the] Sangh does not want to blame anybody else for the present degraded state of the society. When the people start blaming others, then there is weakness in them. It is futile to blame the strong for the injustice done to the weak … [The] Sangh does not want to waste its invaluable time in abusing or criticizing others. If we know that large fish eat the smaller ones, it is outright madness to blame the big fish. Law of nature, whether good or bad, is true all the time. This rule does not change by terming it unjust.”
[Golwalkar, M. S., Shri Guruji Samagr Darshan [Collected Works of Golwalkar in Hindi] vol. 1 (Nagpur: Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, 1974), pp. 11-12.]
Soft on culpability of Sir Cyril Radcliff
Authors of the module appear as apologists for the crimes of Sir Cyril Radcliff who supervised the land division between India and Pakistan. Radcliff was the person who caused additional blood bath as maps of both the countries were not available even after two days of Partition. The module rightly stated that
“The demarcation of borders was hastily done. Sir Cyril Radcliff was given only five weeks to draw the boundaries. In Punjab, even two days after 15 August 1947, millions of people did not know whether they were in India or in Pakistan…This recklessness and disregard for the fate of crores of people, and all critical matters was a grave act of negligence”. [pages 8-9]
NCERT shies away from censuring him and decided to print his photograph with the following apology of his: “I had no alternative, the time at my disposal was so short that I could not do a better job. I was given a job to do and I did my best, though it may not have been very good.” [page 10]
Falsehood 5: Silence on Partition violence by RSS
The module gives details of horrendous communal violence during Partition. “Nearly1.5 crores were forced to cross the new borders…Communal hostility spread between India’s major religious communities…Another horrifying aspect was the large-scale sexual violence against women and girls. In many places, women jumped into wells to protect themselves”. [page 2]
We know that Muslim National Guards (MNG) created by Muslim League as storm-troopers to maim and kill the opponents played a nefarious role in the partition violence, but they were not the only one. Sardar Patel, the first home minister of independent India in a letter to Golwalkar who was then Supremo of RSS, dated 11 September 1948 corroborated the fact that RSS also had killer gangs. He stated: “Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing…It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organize for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji.”
Cited in Justice on Trial, RSS, Bangalore, 1962, pp.26-28.
Truth: It was an AXIS OF HINDU MAHASABHA-RSS-JINNAH which got India Partitioned
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a peerless researcher of the communal politics in pre-independence India, underlying the close affinity and camaraderie between Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League on the issue of the Two-nation theory wrote:
“Strange it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah instead of being opposed to each other on the one nation versus two nations issue are in complete agreement about it. Both agree, not only agree but insist that there are two nations in India—one the Muslim nation and the other Hindu nation.”[i]
[Ambedkar, B. R., Pakistan or the Partition of India, Govt. of Maharashtra, Bombay, 1990 [Reprint of 1940 edition], p. 142.]
Ambedkar agonized by the evil designs of Savarkar regarding the Two-nation theory and Hindutva rhetoric over it, wrote, as early as 1940, that,
“Hindu nation will be enabled to occupy a predominant position that is due to it and the Muslim nation made to live in the position of subordinate co-operation with the Hindu nation”. [Ibid., 143.]
The Hindutva lies about Partition of India presented as facts in Partition Horrors would not have been otherwise as the whole project is supervised by a specialist who specializes in historical negationism (denying the truths of the past which simultaneously means presenting false history), Michel Danino, an Indian writer of French origin. He secured Indian citizenship only in 2003. Modi government conferred on him Padma Shri award, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, in 2017. He is a vocal supporter of Hindutva who enjoys, “[historical] controversies in a kind of perverse way”. [https://indianexpress.com/article/education/academia-margins-to-ncert-row-french-born-scholars-tryst-with-indias-past-10197438/] He is there to undo history and, in the process, undoing the glorious history of making of democratic-secular-egalitarian India. The irony is that it is happening in PM Modi declared Immortality Period (Amrit Kal) of the nation!
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