The 2025, new textbooks released this week have, according to media reports, been designed in accordance with the National Education Policy (NEP) and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023, which emphasise the ‘integration of Indian traditions, philosophies, knowledge systems and local context into school education.’ Both the NEP, 2020 and the NCFSE 2023 have been widely critiqued on issues related to pedagogy, content and structure.

The newly published NCERT Social Science textbook ‘Exploring Society: India and Beyond’ reportedly has new chapters on ancient Indian dynasties like the Magadha, Mauryas, Shungas and Satavahanas with a focus on “Indian ethos”. With a government in power that is ideologically geared towards shaping (or manipulation of) of young minds with a particular, majoritarian and sectarian view of the past, the definition of “Indian ethos’ itself as defined by it has come into sharp question.

Such a cut and paste attitude of the present union government has been evident since its first term when inclusive and rational history found the current regime’s displeasure. This government went further in 2022 and removed all mention of religious or caste discrimination from social science NCERT texts.

Coming back to 2025, another new edition in the book (NCERT Social Science textbook ‘Exploring Society: India and Beyond’) is a chapter called “How the Land Becomes Sacred” that focuses on places considered sacred and pilgrimages across India and outside for religions like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.

The book has no mention of the Mughals or the Delhi Sultanate.

NCERT officials said that this is only the first part of the book, with the second part expected in the coming months reported DH. However, they are tight-lipped on whether the removed portions would be included in the second part.

The book introduces the concept of “sacred geography”, detailing networks of revered sites such as the 12 Jyotirlingas, the Char Dham Yatra, and the Shakti Pithas. The chapter also explores sacred locations like river confluences, mountains and forests. The textbook claims that while the ‘varna-jati’ initially originally contributed to societal stability, it later became rigid, especially under British rule, resulting in inequalities. This attribution of caste inequity, humiliation and discrimination only to colonial rule while ignoring gross societal practices before (like for instance during Peshwa rule in Maharashtra) is an integral part of the majoritarian right wing narrative!

The Maha Kumbh Mela held in Prayagraj earlier this year is mentioned in the book, claiming that 660 million people participated in the event! The book also includes a chapter on the Constitution of India, noting that there was a time when people were not permitted to fly the national flag at their homes.

Litany of deletions post 2014

In 2022, as reported by Sabrangindia here, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), in 2022, as the school system recovered from the traumas of the online system during the Covid-19 pandemic, the CBSE dropped more topics including ‘democracy and diversity, Mughal courts,’ as well as poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz from the syllabus. According to a report in India Today at the time, the dropped chapters taught the “Non-Alignment Movement, the Cold War era, the rise of Islamic empires in Afro-Asian territories, chronicles of Mughal courts, and the industrial revolution.” These were a part of the CBSE’s Class 11 and 12 political science syllabus.

Similarly, the group deleted a paragraph from the “Diversity and Discrimination” chapter in the same book that talked about how cleaners, washers, rag-pickers and barbers are considered dirty or “impure”. The paragraph was about how caste rules kept the discriminated castes from taking on work outside of their caste category.

For example, those assigned with picking up garbage or clearing carcasses as per caste rules were not allowed to enter houses of Brahmins or enter temples. The paragraph also talked about how people are kept from drawing water from common wells and how Dalit children are separated from other children even in schools.

Another casualty in the same book is the chapter “Key elements of a democratic government” that covered popular participation, conflict resolution, equality and justice.

In the Our Pasts-I book for Class 6, the chapter on Emperor Ashoka carried a box on Ashoka’ message, from which a reference to Nehru has been erased. The deleted line said, “Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, wrote: ‘His edicts (instructions) still speak to us in a language we can understand and we can still learn much from them’.”

Further, a few paragraphs on Prophet Mohammed were deleted from the New empire and kingdoms chapter in the same book. One of the deleted sentences read: “Like Christianity, Islam was a religion that laid stress on the equality and unity of all before Allah.”

Meanwhile, the Social and Political Life-II book for Class 7, lost characters such as domestic help Kanta, Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki, and the Ansari family who experienced discrimination over poverty, caste and religion, respectively. Certain introductory content on the Mughal emperors Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb were also dropped from the Our Pasts-II book.

In the Social and Political Life-III book for Class 8, a box was removed from the “Confronting marginalisation” chapter that read, “The term Dalit which means ‘broken’ is used deliberately and actively by groups to highlight the centuries of discrimination they have experienced within the caste system.”

The chapter Weavers, iron smelters and factory owners, on crafts and industries under British rule, has been dropped from the book Our Pasts-III for Class VIII.

“Weavers often belonged to communities that specialised in weaving. Their skills were passed on from one generation to the next. The tanti weavers of Bengal, the julahas or momin weavers of north India, sale and kaikollar and devangs of South India are some of the communities famous for weaving,” a paragraph in the chapter reportedly said.

When these changes were introduced in 2022, academicians and experts such as NCERT’s Textbook Development Committee for Primary Education Chairperson Anita Rampal and National Confederation of Dalit and Adivasi Organisations Chairperson Ashok Bharti, had expressed the opinion that the deletions were made along ideological lines rather than for academic integrity. Speaking to the media, Rampal had even pointed out that the content was changed without consulting the original advisers and writers. On the other hand, Bharti accused the NCERT’s “expert committee” of trying to hide historical facts out of guilt. Both demanded that the group members reveal their identity.

The All India Peoples’ Science Network (AIPSN) too had, in 2022, in a press statement voiced concern about the various changes made “without any academic considerations or academic logic”. It argued, “No consultation with the SCERTs and the education departments of the state governments, school teachers, and the wider academic community, having been done before deletions and revisions in the content of social sciences textbooks used at the school level.”

The AIPSN argued that all changes were done in a hasty manner, shortly after academics, teachers and the Peoples’ Science Movements voiced concern about the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020.

In the same year, 2022, the CBSE, according to a report in India Today, dropped chapters taught the “Non-Alignment Movement, the Cold War era, the rise of Islamic empires in Afro-Asian territories, chronicles of Mughal courts, and the industrial revolution.” These were a part of the CBSE’s Class 11 and 12 political science syllabus.

Earlier in the year, the Financial Express also reported how the NCERT deleted chapters on climate change and monsoon to reduce the load on students. In fact, the Teachers Against the Climate Crisis (TACC) claimed that around 30 percent of the syllabus was reduced for this academic session.

An entire chapter on greenhouse effect for Class 11, a chapter on weather, climate, and water for Class 7 and information about the monsoon for Class 9 was removed. They argued that while the NCERT is reasonable in trying to reduce workload on children, it cannot remove fundamental issues such as climate change science. They demanded a reinstatement of all these chapters.

Expressing a different point of view at the time, former NCERT Director during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government J.S. Rajput had then told The Telegraph that social science content in textbooks had for decades reflected ideological bias. He accused Left intellectuals of starting this trend with help from Congress-led governments. He criticised the previous history textbooks of dwelling on Mughals while containing little on the histories of north-eastern states or south India.

Even before, in 2020 the Board had ‘edited’ the Class 12 history syllabus. It had dropped the chapter ‘The Mughal Court: Reconstructing Histories through Chronicles’. The act was hotly debated. However, soon after that the Covid-19 pandemic devastation hit, and the controversy ebbed. Though even in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) decided that high-school students no longer need to learn about “federalism, citizenship, nationalism, and secularism”. Those chapters were deleted from the political science curriculum of Class 11. Chapters on demonetization, were also removed from CBSE syllabus ostensibly ‘to reduce burden on students’. However, the ‘deleted’ topics were then restored in the 2021-22 academic session and still remained a part of the CBSE syllabus, reported the India Today.

Related:

Now NCERT removes passages about caste and religious discrimination from social science books

Are citizenship and secularism ‘disposable’ subjects for Indian students?

The post 2025 NCERT Textbooks: Mughals, Delhi Sultanate out; ‘sacred geography’, Maha Kumbh in appeared first on SabrangIndia.

(In view of its topicality, we are republishing this story)

I really like Indian Leftist historians, some of them are my role models like Irfan Habib (not the bearded one, but the clean shaven one, although the bearded one is cool too), but sadly they have made a big mess while trying to explain  Alauddin Khilji’s supposed “anti-Hindu” policies.  What could have been a simple explanation was turned into something very complicated and hence inaccessible to people not trained in history, which resulted in Alauddin Khilji’s unnecessarily demonization and politicization. Below, I have tried to make it clear why we need to change the way we look at Alauddin Khilji.

Contextualizing Alauddin Khilji’s Reign

Alauddin Khilji’s kingdom was a state which was constantly at war. Although this could be said about different kingdoms and empires in India across history, but the threat to Indian civilization and culture during Alauddin Khilji’s reign was unprecedented. If you think I am overselling my point consider this- by the time Alauddin had ascended the throne in Delhi the Mongols controlled the largest land empire ever in the history of mankind. Everything from China to Russia, from Turkey to Central Asia was under the control of Mongols, so they had India surrounded from the Northern, Western and Eastern sides.

Mongol Empire in 1280 A[i]

Now if you are thinking- “what is the point? Just one more invader in Indian history and didn’t we have a successful Mongol invasion into India in the form of Timur?” This is where you are wrong.

Let’s start from the end of the question, with “Timur”- he was a strong Mongol ruler, but by his time the glue keeping the Mongol Empire together had come off which weakened it considerably.

Now let us consider the “just one more invader” point of the question. Yes, even before the Mongols India has been invaded by everyone from A-list invaders like Alexander the Great to C-List invaders like Yeuh Chihs whom you probably know as the Kushanas.[ii] But Mongols were nothing like them. Historians consider that one-third of the total Chinese population was killed during the successful attempt of the Mongols to capture China. This is based on the evidence that if you look at the population numbers before and after the Mongol conquest of China- it shows a 45% drop![iii] A look at the Chinese economy shows that it took them at least 200 years to recover from the devastation caused by the Mongol Conquest of China.

Source[iv]

Alauddin Khilji’s Personality

Don’t get me wrong, I do think that if Alauddin Khilji saw the heading of this article he would have the same reaction as you- something akin to “No way in hell!”. Alauddin Khilji had no love for the Hindu religion, by all accounts he was a devout Muslim, but he was a realist too. Many contemporary heavy weights in Islamic thoughts condemned Alauddin Khilji for not implementing Sharia throughout his kingdom and for not basing his state laws on sharia which is why they called Alauddin Khilji’s kingdom- “jahandari” or based on laws of the world, in other words- not based on the laws that Allah wanted people to have in the world- or sharia[v].

There is also a minor side issue here- Delhi Sultans prior to Alauddin like Iltutmish, Raziya and Balban also had jahandari policies but Alauddin had also committed regicide when he assassinated the previous ruler- Jalaluddin Khilji, a ruler who was trying to establish amicable relationship between different groups of nobles and who also happened to be Alauddin Khilji’s uncle and father-in-law.[vi] This is why a lot of people tended to look down on him.

So, Alauddin Khilji knew that he was stuck in a situation where he was a Muslim king, who was supposed to carry out God’s work on earth, except that over-whelming number of people in his kingdom did not believe in his God and most of his courtiers looked down on him as he failed to meet the basic standards of an Islamic ruler set by other Muslim rulers while ruling states where majority of the people were Muslims. So, Alauddin did what all Indians even to this day do when they are stuck in a tight spot- adjust.

His Economic Policies

Now that we have contextualized Alauddin Khilji’s kingdom and the situation he found himself in let us get into the different controversies and nothing was more controversial than his economic policies of which the imposition of the jaziya tax is the most debated.

Alauddin Khilji found himself in a situation where he had to ward off the Mongol threat by maintaining the fortifications in Northern and Western India which were built by Balban and by extending them further. He also realised that fortifications will not be enough and that he needed good fighting men. So, he decided not only to pay his army in cash but to increase their salary substantially. Alauddin paid his cavalry men 20 tankas per month which was almost the same amount that Akbar paid his cavalry men but since Akbar ruled India more than 250 years after Alauddin Khilji the difference due to inflation adjustment is quite substantial[vii].

Cambridge Economic History of India: Vol. II C.1757

All of these expenditure in defence required massive sums of money and since most of the people in his kingdom depended on agriculture and were Hindus Alauddin Khilji saw a unique opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. He decided to increase agricultural taxes to half the produce and decided to call a section of this tax “jaziya tax” or the tax that non-Muslims pay to their Muslim overlords for protection.[viii] In fact it was only in the time of Firuz Shah Tughlaq, that the jaziya tax was separated from the agricultural tax.[ix] So, Alauddin Khilji showed his detractors that he was implementing sharia and at the same time got the resources he needed to defend his kingdom.

But, there is a third thing that Alauddin managed to do with this step that people do not realise  – which is to reduce the burden on peasants. Yes, increasing taxes and reducing burden might look paradoxical but to see how he did it we have to dig a little deeper.

The period immediately preceding the Delhi Sultanate is recognised as the golden era for Indian Feudalism when we see classical feudalism at work across India.[x] This was a time when land was parcelled off to feudal lords called samantas and to Brahmans in the form of Brahmadeya[xi]. Under this arrangement the samantas and the Brahmadeya had the right to tax whatever they wanted and had the powers of jurisprudence over their territories. All these resulted in a plethora of “creatively” created taxes. I am not going to comment on the caste and gender discriminations this system caused- you can do some imagining on your own if you can’t then you can read it here[xii]. But what I am going to comment on is visti– the right of the feudal lords and the Brahmans of the brahmadeya to claim forced labour for their lands[xiii]. Under the system of vishti the peasant or kasak had to stop working for his field and instead work for the privately owned fields of his overloads for a particular time period and got no portion of the produce or profits from this labour. So, vishti was essentially a nice Sanskrit word for slavery.

So, although in the period before the Sultanate the agricultural tax amounted to only one-sixth of the produce but in practice it was much more than that[xiv].

Indian Feudalism

Alauddin Khilji took the above mentioned revenue system and decided to rationalise it and limit it to only 3 kinds of taxes- Kharaj-i-jaziya (agricultural tax), cattle tax and house tax.[xv]

But not content with this Alauddin Khilji decided to go one step further to safeguard the peasants and enacted price control on markets. Prices of all commodities were fixed in the market so there was no inflation and people were able to decide which businesses to get into, what to cultivate and on what to invest in to maximise their profits. Some argue that the price control in the markets was because the soldiers were being paid in cash and inflation would result in them demanding more while others like Ziauddin Barani has argued that it was done to hurt the Hindus by reducing their profits.

Both arguments have significant drawbacks- first, the soldiers comprised of less than 1% of the population in Alauddin Khilji’s kingdom and were already getting very high salaries for their time as mentioned above.[xvi] So, taking such a massive economic step for so few people who were not facing economic problems is meaningless.

Secondly, Barani’s communal insinuation is also non-applicable at the ground level because a large section of the merchants and traders in Delhi and surrounding areas where this price control was in full force, were Muslims.[xvii]

So, the peasants who were impacted negatively by the increase in tax rates, did not have to worry about their purchasing power going down and could plan for investing more in the future as the market conditions were more or less stable.

Propaganda Then and Now

After reading the above you might be saying that you heard elsewhere about how Hindus suffered because of the jaziya tax. For you I have two things to say- firstly to repeat what I have said above that jaziya tax was indistinguishable from agricultural tax during Alauddin Khilji’s time.

A History of Medieval India

Secondly, the stories you heard about the suffering of the Hindus, did it sound something like this-“the Hindus were so badly affected by Alauddin’s taxes that womenfolk of rich Hindu households had to find work in other’s lands and houses to pay their dues”. Don’t worry, I have heard them too, but I beseech you to exercise caution while making assumptions on this story. Remember the feudal lords called samatas and the land grants made to the Brahmins called brahmadeya, mentioned above? Well after conquest of their lands by the Turkish Sultans their rights over the lands of course deteriorated. Under Turkish rule they changed their identity and became the biggest landlords in the villages or the village headman. They were called khuts and muqqadams by the officials of the Delhi Sultanate.[xviii]

But till Alauddin’s reign the khuts and muqqadams continued to use vishti or forcing other peasants in their area of influence to work their fields, without pay. Since they lost the right to the tax breaks that they used to enjoy before the Delhi Sultanate came to power, they used this kind of forced labour to pay their taxes.

But Alauddin Khilji needed all the resources he could get and khuts and muqqaddams keeping peasants away from their own fields to work on their own not only impoverished the peasants but also negatively impacted state revenue which is why Alauddin Khilji ordered the discontinuation of this system. The khuts and muqqadams were forced to work their own fields, or could hire labourers for a price but since this would mean other peasants had to leave their own lands and work in someone else’s land and keeping in mind that the taxes appropriated were extremely high (half the produce), the village elite found it difficult to get enough labour to meet their needs. On top of it anyone found using vishti in their fields were severely punished. This is why you have all these stories about rich Hindu families becoming impoverished due to Alauddin Khilji’s new tax laws.

But if you study Alauddin Khilji’s reign without any pre-conceived ideas you will realise that there are far more stories about him punishing Muslims for their failure to obey his tax laws than there are about Hindus being dealt with in the same way.

How did Alauddin Khilji Save Hinduism?

While facing the Mongol onslaught Alauddin Khilji found himself defending his kingdom of Hindustan where most of the people were Hindus. We have to remember that during the time of Alauddin Khilji although there were substantial Hindu populations in the Malay Islands and in Indo-China, but they were eventually eclipsed by either Buddhism or Islam, so the Indian subcontinent was basically the last stronghold of the Hindus.

The Mongols led two massive attacks against India during Alauddin Khilji’s time. The first one was in 1297 AD when the invasion force was 200,000 men strong and the second one was in 1303 when it was 120,000 strong.[xix] But both these invasions were not only stopped but also definitively repulsed by Alauddin Khilji’s forces. From a military history point of view this victory was very significant because the main strength of the Indian forces were their cavalry and the Mongols had possibly the best cavalry force in the history of mankind. Defeating such large Mongol cavalry forces not once but twice is almost unheard of in history.

But what would have happened if Alauddin Khilji had failed to defend his kingdom?

To answer this question we have to look at the geographies of India and China.

Mapping China’s Growth and Development in the Long Run, 221 BC to 2020

Both demographically and geographically the Indo-Gangetic plains dominate India. Then as it is now, most of India’s population resided there. Since economically and demographically important cities of India like Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore did not exist, the Great Indian Plains assumed much more importance during Alauddin Khilji’s reign than now.

Compare this to China- there are different plain areas in China like the Central Plains or Zhongyuan, but they do not geographically dominate the Chinese landscape like the Great Indian Plains. Moreover, the geographical barriers for an advancing army while trying to reach the East and the South East which were the traditional power centres in China and their economic engines were numerous. This meant that the even after the Mongols broke through the Northern and North Western defences of China they had a hard and long fight ahead of them.

But this has historically not been true in India. Once invading armies break through the Western and the North Western barriers they are free to exploit the most important political and economic centres of India located in the Gangetic plains.

So, I want you to imagine a scenario where Alauddin Khilji fails to protect his Northern and Western boundaries and the Mongol armies break through and get access to the Indo-Gangetic plains- what do you think would have happened then? There are two ways this could have panned out- the Mongols would say something like “Indians are so nice and peaceful people and their food is so great, so we have decided not to harm them in any way”, or they would have pillaged, looted, raped and killed their way through the most densely populated Hindu area in the world and possibly the richest region in the world at the time.[xx] Which scenario do you think is more credible? Moreover even when China provided protection to various populations with its geography even then 45% of its population perished in their unsuccessful fight against the Mongols. What do you think will happen to India where most of the population lived in wide open plains?

Oh, are you thinking they will escape South of the Vindhyas? Think again. The Mongols with much smaller forces than the ones which attacked India during Alauddin’s time successfully invaded Turkey which was protected by mountain ranges far more inaccessible than the flat Vindhyas. But really, how many people do you think would have escape given how fast Mongols seem to travel in flatlands like the Gangetic plains.

Conclusion

The reality is stark and staring at our faces and we only need to have the courage to look it in the eye. If Alauddin Khilji had failed to stop the Mongol Invasion of India- the Mongols would have engaged in a large scale slaughter of the Hindus. Of course the Mongols would have done the same to Muslims in India as well, but by that time Islam had spread from South of Spain to Indonesia so the effect on the religion of Islam demographically would not have changed a whole lot. But the Hindus by the late 13^th and early 14^th century remained largely confined to the Indian subcontinent, so a mass slaughter of Hindus in India would have been disastrous for the Hindu religion and might very well have led to its extinction.

(Source of both the Featured Image and Image at the top of the page is Jami-al-Tawarikh by Rashid Al Din).

[i] http://asianhistory.about.com/od/Genghis_and_Mongols/ss/The-Mongol-Empire.htm
[ii] Thapar, R., Early India (Noida, 2002).
[iii] https://myweb.rollins.edu/jsiry/ChinesePopulationHistory.htm#diagram
[iv] http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_pop_0-2050_large.htm
[v] Chandra, S., History of Medieval India (New Delhi, 2007), p. 134.
[vi] Chandra, S., Medieval India (New Delhi, 1997), p. 76.
[vii] Chandra, S., History of Medieval India (New Delhi, 2007), p.103
[viii] Habib, I., The Cambridge Economic History of India (Delhi, 1984), pp.48-76
[ix] Chandra, S., Medieval India (New Delhi, 1997), p. 124.
[x] Sharma, R.S., Indian Feudalism (Delhi, 1965).
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Sharma, R.S., Economic History of Early India (New Delhi, 2011), pp-52-75.
[xiii] Sharma, R.S., Indian Feudalism (Delhi, 1965).
[xiv] Chandra, S., History of Medieval India (New Delhi, 2007), pp. 41-42.
[xv] Habib, I., The Cambridge Economic History of India (Delhi, 1984), p.55
[xvi] Compare the data you find here: http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm with Chandra, S., History of Medieval India (New Delhi, 2007), p. 120.
[xvii] Chandra, S., History of Medieval India (New Delhi, 2007), p. 104.
[xviii] Ibid, p-124.
[xix] Ibid, p 87.
[xx] http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/oriindex.htm
 

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