Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), D. P. Saklani unveiled the Class 8 Social Science textbook with several fundamental changes on July 17, 2025. This revised version of texts will be utilised in schools from the academic session, 2025-26. Wide-ranging changes have been made in this new edition. Media reports have singled out how existing lessons on Mughal and Muslim rulers had been replaced with details of the religious persecution and other atrocities under ‘Muslim rule’ in India. And on this pretext, the Hindutva-captive media and ‘WhatsApp university’ have started another war against Islam and the country’s Muslims. Before this move, some radical changes had been made in the textbooks of classes 6-12.

The expert who has been given the responsibility to complete this work by NCERT, under the complete control of RSS, is Michel Danino, an Indian writer of French origin. He secured Indian citizenship only in 2003. The Modi government has conferred the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award on him, in 2017.  He is currently the chairman of the social science curriculum of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). He is a supporter of Hindutva and has been criticised for indulging in historical negationism (denying the truths of the past).

Let us first understand which crucial developments have been omitted from the school syllabus.

Emergency of 1975

The chapter on Emergency in the Class 12 political science textbook ‘Politics in India after Independence’ has been reduced by five pages. Parts relating to the harsh impact of the Emergency on people and institutions have been deleted.  Another reference to the ban imposed on all trade union activities during the Emergency has been removed from chapter 8 (‘Social Movements’) of the class 12 sociology textbook.

Material on protests and social movements dropped

Nearly three chapters detailing protests that turned into social movements in contemporary India have been removed from political science textbooks for classes 6 to 12. A chapter on “Rise of Popular Movements” has been removed from the class 12 textbook ‘Politics in India after Independence’. The Chipko movement, the growth of the Dalit Panthers in Maharashtra in the 1970s, the agrarian struggles of the 1980s, especially those led by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), the anti-alcohol movement of Andhra Pradesh, details on the famous Narmada Bachao Andolan [Save Narmada River Movement] opposing the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada River and its tributaries in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra and the Right to Information movement were removed in one go.

The chapter ‘Struggle for Equality’ also removed

NCERT has also removed the chapter ‘Struggle for Equality’ from the Class 7 Political Science textbook, which states how ‘Tawa Matsya Sangh’ fought for the rights of displaced forest dwellers of Satpura forests of Madhya Pradesh.

Chapter on struggles of indigenous people removed

The third chapter on mass struggles has been removed from the Class 10 political science textbook ‘Democratic Politics-II’. It dealt with indirect ways of influencing politics through pressure groups and movements. Besides the movement for democracy in Nepal and the protests against water privatization in Bolivia, South America. This chapter also covered the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the non-violent ‘Kittiko-Hachiko Movement’ (‘Kittiko-Hachiko Movement’, also known as the “Kittiko Hachiko” movement, was a non-violent protest in Karnataka, India, in 1987 which opposed eucalyptus plantations on grazing land. The movement involved people plucking eucalyptus saplings and planting alternative, useful plants instead) in Karnataka in 1987, the BAMCEF (All India Backwards SC/ST/OBC and Minorities Communities Employees’ Federation) founded by Kanshiram in 1971, and the National Alliance of People’s Movements, whose founders included Medha Patkar.

Scissors on study of social movements

The only chapter on social movements in the sociology syllabus of classes 11 and 12 has been significantly reduced. In the chapter titled ‘Social Movements’ in the class 12 textbook ‘Social Change and Development in India’ one of the several changes made is the removal of the exercise box in which students were asked to discuss the recent farmers’ protests against the three farm laws passed by Parliament.

Shredding of Indian democracy

Four chapters dealing with Democracy and the Making of Indian Democracy have been removed on the ground that similar topics are covered in Political Science textbooks of other classes. For example, a chapter titled ‘Key Elements of Democratic Government’ has been removed from the Class 6 political science book. This was the first detailed introduction to the concept of democracy in middle school and discussed some of the key elements that affect the functioning of a democratic government, including chapters like ‘Democracy and Diversity’ and ‘Challenges to Democracy’ that have been removed from the Class 10 political science textbook.

Both these chapters were first removed from the CBSE syllabus in April and have now been permanently removed from the NCERT textbook.

Jawaharlal Nehru cut short

The following comment of Nehru on Bhakra Nangal Dam has been removed from Class 12 Sociology textbook, ‘Social Change and Development in India’:

“Our engineers tell us that probably nowhere else in the world is there a dam as high as this. The work bristles with difficulties and complications. As I walked around the site I thought that these days the biggest temple and mosques and gurdwara is the place where man works for the good of mankind. Which place can be greater than this, this Bhakra Nangal, where thousands and lakhs of men have worked, have shed their blood and sweat and laid down their lives as well?”

Discussion on sedition deleted

A section describing the arbitrariness of colonial sedition law through the example of sedition and how Indian nationalists, specially, revolutionaries played a role in challenging it is no longer part of a chapter ‘Understanding Laws’ in the class 8 political science book. This deleted section also carried the following exercise for students: “State one reason why you think the Sedition Act of 1870 was arbitrary? In what ways does the Sedition Act of 1870 contradict the rule of law?”

Constitution making and creation of linguistic states left out

The chapter ‘India after Independence’, which talks about constitution making and creation of linguistic states, has been removed from the Class 8 history textbook ‘Our Pasts III’.

Description of demolition of Babri Masjid, Gujarat and Manipur violence removed

References to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya (1992), targeted killing of Muslims in the Gujarat communal violence (2002), and to the Manipur violence have been removed from Class 11 and 12 textbooks.

Pioneers of Anti-British struggle, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan dropped

NCERT’s new Class 8 social science textbook does not mention Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, or the four Anglo-Mysore Wars of the 1700s, in its chapter on India’s colonial period. Remember, Tipu Sultan, known as the “Tiger of Mysore”, led a glorious military resistance to British colonialism. He was the pioneer of rocket artillery which had great success against the British. The economy of Mysore reached its peak during his reign.

He was martyred on 4 May 1799 while fighting the combined forces of British-Maratha-Nizam at the Srirangapatna front. At the time of Tipu’s martyrdom, he was wearing a heavy gold ring on which ‘Ram’ was inscribed in Devanagari script.

How much British dreaded Tipu would be clear by the letter which A. Campbell, wrote to the Court of Directors of the East India Company in 1788, “the most active powerful, ambitious Prince of Hindustan, whose troops are in high order and whose powerful antipathy to the English is beyond what the Directors are yet well aware of.” When he died there were jubilant celebrations in Britain with declaration of public holiday in Britain.

Shockingly, Danino defending the removal of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan’s contribution to anti-colonial wars while confirming that Tipu Sultan and related events will likely remain absent in Part 2 of the series as well, stated: “If we include every war, we go back to cramming.”

The ‘Muslim’ rule not removed but toxified

The supplicant majoritarian regime-captive media and experts have been arguing that the period of rule of Muslim rulers in India has been removed, attributing this reason to the ire within the secular and progressive camp. The truth is different: Muslim rule has been related but re-configurated and now narrated with a vigorous anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric in tune with the current communal politics of RSS-BJP rulers (regime).

The history section of the new book, begins with the Delhi Sultanate and goes up to the colonial period (the British Raj), deliberating in a note on ‘Dark Periods of History’, when war, abuse, fanaticism and bloodshed prevailed. The description of ‘dark periods of history’ includes the oppressive policies of Mahmud of Ghazni and the Mughal rulers as we will know in the following.

1. Reference to Mahmud Ghazni of Afghanistan, who invaded the subcontinent and raided the Somnath temple, has been tweaked. First, the title “Sultan” has been dropped from his name. Second, the sentence “he raided the subcontinent almost every year” has been revised to “he raided the subcontinent 17 times (1000-1025 CE) with a religious motive”.
2. On Babur, the first Mughal emperor, the book notes that his autobiography points to him as being cultured and intellectually curious. “But he was also a brutal and ruthless conqueror, slaughtering entire populations of cities, enslaving women and children, and taking pride in erecting ‘towers of skulls’ made from the slaughtered people of plundered cities.”
3. Akbar’s reign is described as a blend of “brutality and tolerance”, and that during the seizure of the Chittor fort, Akbar, then 25 years old, ordered the massacre of 30,000 civilians, and the enslavement of women and children, the new textbook states. Akbar’s message is also quoted in the textbook: “We have succeeded in occupying a number of forts and towns belonging to infidels and have established Islam there. With the help of our bloodthirsty sword, we have erased signs of infidelity from their minds and have destroyed temples in those places and also all over Hindustan.”
4. On Aurangzeb, the book points out that some scholars argue that his motives were primarily political, and they give examples of his grants and assurances of protection to temples. While politics played a part in his decisions, his farmans (edicts) “make his personal religious motive clear too.” He ordered governors of provinces to demolish schools and temples, and destroyed temples at Banaras, Mathura, Somnath, and Jain temples and Sikh gurdwaras.

This detailed account of the atrocities committed by the ‘Muslim’ rulers on their Hindu subjects has been accompanied by a commentary which underlines that it is important to study the dark events objectively, without blaming anyone of the present-day people (i.e. the Muslims of the country). If we want to identify the criminals of the ‘Muslim Raj’, then the historical facts of that period, as recorded by the ‘Hindu’ sources themselves, will clearly reveal that the upper caste Hindus were fully complicit in the atrocities committed by the Muslim rulers.

Majoritarian narrative of incidents in history when privileged caste Hindus helped ‘Muslim’ rulers

No sane person can deny that Somnath Temple in Gujarat was desecrated, looted and razed by Mahmud Ghazi (Mahmud Ghaznavi) in 1026. But a fact remains buried that it was done with the active help and participation of local Hindu chieftains. The most prominent ideologue of RSS, MS Golwalkar while referring to the desecration and destruction of Somnath Temple by Mahmud Ghazi added:

“He crossed the Khyber Pass and set foot in Bharat to plunder the wealth of Somnath. He had to cross the great desert of Rajasthan. There was a time when he had no food, and no water for his army, and even for himself left to his fate, he would have perished…But no, Mahmud Ghazi made the local chieftains to believe that Saurashtra had expansionist designs against them. In their folly and pettiness, they believed him. And they joined him. When Mahmud Ghazi launched his assault on the great temple, it was the Hindu, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul-who stood in the vanguard of his army. Somnath was desecrated with the active help of the Hindus. These are facts of history.”

[RSS English organ, Organizer, January 4, 1950.]

These were not ‘Muslim’ rulers only who were defiling Hindu temples. Swami Vivekananda shared the fact that,

“The temple of Jagannath is an old Buddhistic temple. We took this and others over and re-Hinduised them. We shall have to do many things like that yet”. [The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, vol. 3, 264.]

It has been corroborated by another darling of the Hindutva camp, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. According to him the rath yatra, an integral part of Jagganath Temple was a Buddhist ritual. Bankim wrote:

“It is a fact…that the images of Jagannath, Balaram, and Subhadra, which now figure in the Rath, are near copies of the representations of Buddha, Dharmma, and Sangha, and appear to have been modelled upon them.”

[Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra, ‘On the origin of Hindu festivals’ in Essays & Letters, Rupa, Delhi, 2010, pp. 8-9.]

It was not an isolated takeover. Swami Dayanand Saraswati who is regarded as a Prophet of Hindutva and revered by RSS while dealing with the contribution of Shankaracharya (8th century) in his tome, Satyarth Prakash wrote:

“For ten years he toured all over the country, refuted Jainism and advocated the Vedic religion. All the broken images that are now-a-days dug out of the earth were broken in the time of Shankar, whilst those that are found whole here and there under the ground had been buried by the Jainis for fear of their being broken.” [Sarswati, Dayanand, Satyarth Praksh, chapter xi, p. 347.]

According to the Buddhist narrative of ancient Indian history the last of Maurya dynasty’s Buddhist king (Ashoka being one), Brihadratha was assassinated by Pushyamitra Shunga, a Brahmin in 184 BCE thus ending the rule of a renowned Buddhist dynasty and establishing the rule of Shunga dynasty. DN Jha an authority on ancient Indian history referred to Divyavadana, a Buddhist Sanskrit work from the early centuries which described how Buddhist and Jain religious places were destroyed by Pushyamitra Shunga, a great persecutor of Buddhists.

“He is said to have marched out with a large army, destroying stupas, burning monasteries and killing monks as far as Sakala, now known as Sialkot, where he announced a prize of one hundred dinars for every head of a Shramana (opposed to Vedas).”

Jha also presented evidence from the grammarian Patanjali, a contemporary of the Shungas, who famously stated in his Mahabhashya that Brahmins and Shramanas were eternal enemies, like the snake and the mongoose.[1]

Did Hindus join persecution of Sikhs by Mughals?

In the Hindutva narrative the persecution of Sikh Gurus and their followers by Mughal rulers is used to spread hatred against present day Indian Muslims. The Mughal rulers especially Aurangzeb’s armies committed the most heinous and unspeakable crimes against Sikhs. Was the conflict really Muslims versus Sikhs? The contemporary Sikh records reject such an interpretation. According to a Sikh site during the last and the most brutal siege of Anandpur Sahib in 1704, “The Muslims and the Hindu hill rajas completely surrounded the city and cut it off from outside supplies.” While trying to escape the Mughal invaders,

“The younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh, Baba Zorawar Singh age 9 and Baba Fateh Singh age 7, were separated from the group in the confusion. They walked through the rugged jungle with their holy grandmother, Mata Gujri ji (mother of Guru Gobind Singh) until they came to small village where they took shelter. An old servant of the Guru’s household, Gangu, heard they were there and came to Mataji. With sweet words he requested that they go with him to his village. He expressed care and concern, but his heart was dark with betrayal. Cold, wet and alone, Mata Gujri gratefully went with Gangu to his house. For a few gold coins, Gangu betrayed their whereabouts to the Moghul army. At dawn, a loud banging came on the door, and the soldiers of the evil governor Wazir Khan came to escort the holy family to Sarhind. As they travelled through the city, people thronged to see them pass offering words of encouragement. They shouted curses at the Brahmin and were shocked at the depravity of the Moghul governor”. [2]

Maratha Rule glorified overlooking what it did to Hindus

The class 8 social science book now has a separate chapter on the Marathas; it refers to the Anglo-Maratha wars between 1775 and 1818 and states that “the British took India from the Marathas more than from the Mughals or any other power”. Marathas in general are seen as having “contributed substantially to India’s cultural developments.”

Let us compare these claims with the horrendous experience of the contemporary Hindus. Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958), a renowned historian, held no brief for Islam or Muslim rulers in India. In fact, he is regarded as a true ‘Bhartiye’ historian by RSS and a truthful narrator of the Hindu history during the Mughal rule. However, his description of the Maratha invasion of Bengal in 1742, too, makes it clear that this army of ‘Hindu nation’ cared least about honour and property of Hindus of Bengal. According to Sarkar, “the roving Maratha bands committed wanton destruction and unspeakable outrage”.

[Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal-Volume II Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D. (Delhi: BR Publishing, 2003), (first edition 1948), 457.]

Sarkar, in his monumental work on the history of Bengal, reproduced eyewitness accounts of the sufferings of Bengali Hindus at the hands of Marathas. According to one such eyewitness, Gangaram,

“The Marathas snatched away gold and silver, rejecting everything else. Of some people they cut off the hands, of some the nose and ear; some they killed outright. They dragged away the beautiful women and freed them only after raping them”.

[Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal-Volume II Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D. (Delhi: BR Publishing, 2003), (first edition 1948), 457.]

Another eyewitness, Vaneshwar Vidyalankar, the court Pandit of the Maharaja of Bardwan, narrated the horrifying tales of atrocities committed by the Marathas against Hindus in the following words:

“Shahu Raja’s troops are niggard of pity, slayers of pregnant women and infants, of Brahmans and the poor, fierce of spirit, expert in robbing the property of everyone and committing every kind of sinful act.” [Ibid., 458.]

Babur’s atrocitiesNCERT does not tell the truth that Babur captured northern India by defeating and killing the Muslim Ibrahim Lodhi. It is also not mentioned that the chief commander of the Hindu king Rana Sanga who challenged Mughal army led by Babur was Hasan Mewati who was martyred while fighting Babur’s army in the Battle of Khanwa [near Bharatpur] on March 15, 1527. Atrocities of Aurangzeb

It cannot be argued that Aurangzeb [1618-1707] did commit heinous crimes against his Hindustani subjects. It is important, however, to remember that his cruelty was not confined to non-Muslims.
His own father (Mughal emperor Shah Jahan), brothers (Dara Shikoh, Murad Bakhsh and Shah Shuja), the Shia community, Muslims who did not follow his brand of Islam and the Muslim ruling dynasties in the eastern, central and western parts of India suffered his terrible cruelty and repression. They were destroyed. The word barbaric would be too mild a word to describe his treatment of the Sikh Gurus, their families and followers.

It was Aurangzeb who murdered the famous Sufi saint, Sarmad, in the premises of Delhi’s Jama Masjid [there is a mausoleum on his grave at the eastern gate of the Jama Masjid where the stairs begin, which is still revered by many people]. It is also true that there were numerous cases when Hindus and their religious places were violently targeted during the autocratic rule of Aurangzeb. He crushed the rebellions of the ‘Satnamis’ in Gujarat.

However, there are also contemporary records of his patronage of Hindu and Jain religious sites. Two surviving examples are the magnificent Gauri Shankar Temple, a short distance from the Lahori-Gate of the Red Fort, which was built during Shah Jahan’s reign which continued to function during Aurangzeb’s reign and the famous Jain Lal Mandir right opposite the Red Fort. [Trushke, Audrey, Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth, Penguin, Gurgaon, 2017, pp. 99-106.] Both these temples continue to function even today. It is important to remember that limiting all the crimes of Aurangzeb only to the suppression of Hindus would be tantamount to trivializing his grave crimes against humanity.

Mughal rule evolved and sustained by the support of the Hindu privileged castes

How naive is NCERT (or it is under the total influence of RSS) that it is unaware of the fact that Aurangzeb or Mughal ‘Islamic’ rule used Hindu upper castes in droves to establish and run their empire which was inhabited predominately by Hindus. How deep and strong this unity can be gauged from the fact that after Akbar, no Mughal emperor was born to a Muslim mother. The Hindu upper castes showed immense loyalty to the ‘Muslim’ rulers and served them well with both their brains and strength.

Aurobindo Ghosh, who played a major role in providing a Hindu dimension to Indian nationalism, acknowledged that Mughal rule survived due to the fact that the Mughal emperors gave Hindus “positions of power and responsibility, they used their brains and brawn to preserve their kingdoms”. [Chand, Tara, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 3, Publication Division, Government of India, Delhi, 1992, p. 162.]

The renowned historian Tara Chand, relying on primary source material of the medieval period, concluded that from the end of the 16th century to the middle of the 19th century, “it can be reasonably concluded that the entire Punjab, except western Punjab, in whole of India, the ownership of land had come into the hands of the Hindus”, most of whom were Rajputs. [Chand, Tara, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. 1, Publication Division, Government of India, Delhi, 1961, p. 124.]

What do the contemporary official records show?

Maasir-ul-Umara [Biographies of Commanders] A biographical dictionary of officials the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1780 [from Akbar to Shah Alam] in Persian language is the most authentic record of high-ranking officials employed by the Mughal rulers. This work was compiled by Shahnawaz Khan and his son Abdul Hai between 1741 and 1780. The details contained in it were based on the official records of the Mughal rulers. According to this compilation, during this period the Mughal rulers had about 100 Hindus (out of 365) were appointed to the high-ranking positions of Mughal empire, most of whom were from “Rajput Rajputana, Central-India, Bundelkhand, Maharashtra”. As far as numbers are concerned, Brahmins followed Rajputs in handling the Mughal administration.

[Khan, Shah Nawaz, Abdul Hai, Maasir al-Umara [translated by H Beveridge as Mathir-ul-Umra], volumes 1 & 2, Janaki Prakashan, Patna, 1979.]

Interestingly, the Kashi Nagari Pracharini Sabha, founded in 1893 which was “committed to the establishment of Hindi as the official language”, published part of this book in Hindi which contained ‘Biographies of Hindu Chieftains of the Mughal Court’ in 1931. [व्रज रत्न दास (अनुवाद), माआसिरुल–उमरा, काशी नागरी प्रचारिणी सभा, काशी, 1931]

Aurangzeb’s Hindu Generals & Advisors

Aurangzeb never faced Shivaji on the battlefield. It was his general, Jai Singh I (1611-1667), a Rajput ruler of Amer (Rajasthan), who was sent to subjugate Shivaji (1603-1680). Jai Singh II (1681-1743), (nephew of Jai Singh I) was another prominent Rajput general of the Mughal army who served Aurangzeb loyally against Shivaji. He was given the title of ‘Sawai’ by Aurangzeb in 1699. He was awarded the title of [one fourth time superior to his contemporaries] and thus he came to be known as Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh. He was also given the title of Mirza Raja [a Persian title for a royal prince] by Aurangzeb. Other titles given to him by other Mughal rulers were ‘Sarmad-i-Rajah-i-Hind’ [Eternal Ruler of India], ‘Raja Rajeshwar’ [Lord of Kings] and ‘Shri Shantanu Ji’ [Benevolent King]. These titles are even today displayed by his descendants today.

Akbar vs. Maharana Pratap

According to the prevalent Hindutva narrative, Pratap Singh I, popularly known as Maharana Pratap (1540-1597), fought for Hindus and Hindu nation against the Mughal emperor Akbar who wanted to subjugate the Hindus of India under Islamic rule. Interestingly, Akbar never faced the Maharana in any battle; it was Akbar’s most trusted Rajput military commander, Man Singh I (1550–1614), also his wife’s real brother, who fought against the Maharana on behalf of the Akbar.

The most important battle of Haldighati (June 18, 1576) was fought between the army led by Maharana and Mughal army led by Man Singh I. He was one of the Navratnas (favourite courtiers of Akbar). Akbar called him his Farzand (son), and he ruled several provinces of Akbar’s empire.

It also must be noted that chief of artillery of the army of Maharana Pratap was Hakim Khan Suri. He played a great role in confronting the Mughal army led by Man Singh in the Battle of Haldighati. Hakim Khan Suri fought alongside Maharana Pratap and was killed in the same battle while defending Maharana.

A Kayastha Prime Minister of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb

Contemporary documents carry first-hand accounts of Raja Raghunath Bahadur, a Kayastha, who served as the Diwan Aala (Prime Minister) of both Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. According to a biography written by one of his descendants, Raja Maharaj Lal,

“Raja Raghunath Bahadur was not oblivious to the interests of his co-castes [Kayasthas], having risen to the highest post of Dewan Aala (Prime Minister). Raja appointed each of them to positions of honour and emoluments according to their individual merits, while many of them were granted honours and valuable estates for their services. Not a single Kayastha remained unemployed or in needy circumstances.”

[Lal, Lala Maharaj, Short Account of the Life and Family of Rai Jeewan Lal Bahadur Late Honrary Magistrate Delhi, With Extracts from His Diary Relating to the Times of Mutiny 1857, 1902.]

This account reveals that in the Sultanate of Aurangzeb, who was a ‘fanatic Muslim’ and an unbridled tyrant, the Kayastha prime minister was free to patronize people of his caste, all of whom were Hindus. Aurangzeb was so fond of this Hindu Prime Minister that after his death he instructई one of his Wazirs (ministers) Asad Khan in a letter to follow the ‘saintly guidance’ of Raja Raghunath. [Trushke, Audrey, pp. 74-75.]

Investigating only the “Muslim period’ (500 years) in a 5000-year-old Indian civilization

Linking the crimes committed by Aurangzeb or other ‘Muslim’ rulers in pre-modern India to their religion is going to have serious consequences even for the ‘Hindu’ history as told by the RSS. For instance, take Ravana, the king of Lanka, who as per the ‘Hindu’ legend, committed unspeakable crimes against Sita, her husband Lord Rama and their companions during their 14-year long exile [exiled by Hindus only]. This Ravana, according to the same legend, was a learned Brahmin and one of the greatest worshippers of Lord Shiva.

Instances of Violence when in the earlier periods, when Hindus inhabited India

Mahabharata

The epic Mahabharata is not the story of a fierce war between Hindus and Muslims but between two ‘Hindu’ armies (Pandavas and Kauravas, both Kshatriyas). In this War, according to the ‘Hindu’ account, 120 crore people (all Hindus) were killed. Draupadi, the joint wife of the Pandavas, was disrobed by the Kauravas (all Hindus).

If the crimes of Ravana, Kauravas, Jai Singh I and II etc. are linked to their religion like Aurangzeb and other ‘Muslim’ rulers, then the country be represented as one that is perennially on the war path. If revenge then needs to be taken on the present co-religionists of the rulers/criminals of the past, then it must begin from the beginning of Indian civilization; the turn of Indian Muslims will come much later!

‘Muslims’ ruled India for centuries, but Muslim population remained a minority

Another crucial fact which is consciously kept under wrap is that despite more than five hundred hundreds of effective ‘Muslim’ rule which according to Hindutva historians was nothing but a project of annihilating Hindus or forcibly converting the latter to Islam, India remained a nation with an absolute Hindu majority. The British rulers held first census in 1871-72. It was the time when even ceremonial ‘Muslim’ rule was over. According to the Census report:

“The population of British India is, in round numbers, divided into 140½ millions [sic] of Hindus (including Sikhs), or 73½ per cent., 40¾ millions of Mahomedans, or 21½ per cent. And 9¼ millions of others, or barely 5 per cent., including under this title Buddhists and Jains, Christians, Jews, Parsees, Brahmoes…”

[Memorandum on the Census of British India of 1871-72: Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty London, George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office 1875, 16.]

These figures make it clear that persecution and cleansing of Hindus was not even a secondary project of the ‘Muslim’ rule. If it had been so Hindus would have disappeared from India. At the end of ‘Muslim’ rule Hindus were 73.5%. India seems to be the only country in world history where despite ‘Muslim’ rule of more than half of a millennium the populace did not convert to the religion of the rulers. Hindu High Castes remained in control of the national wealth during the ‘Muslim’ rule and continue to be in control whereas common Muslims remained paupers during the ‘Muslim’ rule and continue to be so!

In the latest NCERT rewrite spree on Muslim period, a mysterious note has been added which generously states that the dark events i.e., Muslim period should be studied impartially without blaming any present-day people (i.e. Muslims of the country). If we really want to identify the criminals of ‘Muslim Raj’ then it is very important to also settle the account with the privileged caste Hindus of the country and not Indian Muslims. There are historical reasons behind the huge amount of wealth that the upper castes of the country have today.

They Hindu privileged castes did not bear enmity towards either Muslim or Christian rulers but rather served them with utmost loyalty; they even developed bread-daughter [roti-beti] relationship with the Muslim rulers. It is not that the upper Caste Hindus did not fight these cruel rulers, but nobody of their lineage survived. The tragedy of the country is that children of those who betrayed common Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains of this country, served most loyally under both the ‘Muslim Raj’ and the British.

[1] https://caravanmagazine.in/reviews-and-essays/dn-jha-destruction-buddhist-sites

[2] https://www.sikhdharma.org/4-sons-of-guru-gobind-singh/

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 Rewriting NCERT school textbooks: ‘Muslim Raj’ is a mere excuse, the project is to conceal historical facts appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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.

It is worth noting that over 200 million Muslims and Christians have resided in India for centuries. They share a common culture with Hindus, work in the fields, and celebrate their festivals together. While Hindus are the majority in India, the combined population of Muslims and Christians is approximately four times greater than that of the United Kingdom, which ruled over India for two centuries.

Historical records show that Christianity’s presence in India dates back over two thousand years, and Islam reached India’s coastal areas centuries before the arrival of Muhammad ibn al-Qasim in Sindh in the 8th century. Yet Hindu-Right forces led by the RSS and the BJP are not willing to accept Christianity and Islam as part of the so-called “Indic” religion. However, they often define “Indic” in terms of elite Brahmin culture and exclude the cultural practices of the majority of Hindus as “impure.”

Continuing the communal approach to history, Hindu-Right forces have been spreading false narratives among the people that the original inhabitants of this country are only Hindus, while Muslims and Christians are “invaders.” Even though Brahminical literature and intellectuals are intolerant of the egalitarian principles of Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, they prefer not to outright reject them publicly for political reasons but to appropriate them slowly. The act of appropriation is not easy for them. The Hindu Right, in order to divert attention from the caste inequality within the Hindu fold, tries to demonize Islam and Christianity as “alien” to Indian tradition.

However, history is not with the RSS and the BJP. It tells us that two thousand years ago, the Christian society was established in India. Since ancient times, India’s relations with Arab, Jewish, and Roman traders have been strong. According to tradition, Saint Thomas, one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus, arrived in Kerala in the year 52 and founded Christianity. Two hundred years after this event, many Christians fled Syria and settled in India, later called Syrian Christians. It is a historical fact that Oriental and Syrian Christian communities have been living in India for thousands of years and have no connection with the imperialist countries of Europe. Their services are as much for the country as the majority, yet the RSS and the BJP continue to call these religions foreign.

Apart from Christians, the BJP and RSS have biases against Muslims. They are trying to erase Islamic culture from Indian history. The NCERT’s proposed seminar is part of the same ‘saffronisation’ project. This communal narrative demonizes the medieval period as a “dark” period for Hindus because Muslims became rulers. It is true that Muslim rulers exploited the working classes, both Hindus and Muslims, and lived on their taxes. Hindu rulers, too, were not lenient in their exploitation of Hindu and Muslim peasants and workers alike. However, during the medieval period, the process of intermingling various cultures intensified, and a refined form of composite culture emerged. Many popular Hindu texts were written in the medieval period, and many religious texts of Hindus were translated during the same period.

Credible historians do not agree with the narrative of the victimization of Hindus during the medieval period. For example, Prof. Romila Thapar has criticized the history-writing method of “RSS and Hindutva ideologues for whom the past has only to do with Hindu history of the early period and the victimization of Hindus under Muslim tyranny in the medieval period.” Prof. Thapar has shown the intellectual dishonesty of the Hindutva writers who are at the forefront of “speaking of Hindus being enslaved for a thousand years by Muslim rule” but are dead against any talk of how “caste Hindus” have “victimized the lower castes, Dalits, and Adivasis for two thousand or more years.” While Prof. Thapar rejects the communal narrative that Hindus were victimized by Muslim rulers, she has shown that the medieval period was a period of cultural intermingling when the Bhakti and Tantric traditions in India emerged in the north (On Nationalism, Aleph Book, New Delhi, 2016, pp. 11-16).

Moreover, the egalitarian ideas of Islam also confronted caste society and gave much relief to Dalits and lower castes. Historian Sulaiman Nadvi (1884–1953)—who was associated with the establishment of Jamia Millia Islamia—has shown that before the coming of Islam, education was denied to the lower castes, but things began to change under the egalitarian influence of Islam. Furthermore, the term “Hindu” has roots in Arabic and Persian, with hundreds of Persian and Arabic words integrated into everyday Indian language.

Even the claim of Hindus being the authentic people of India is historically untenable. Prof. Romila Thapar has shown that the process of unification and homogenization of the “Hindu” religious community took place in the modern period. As she put it, “There were in pre-modern times a conglomerate of communities, identified by language, caste and ritual, occasionally overlapping in one or the other of these features but rarely presenting a uniform, universalising form. What is often mistaken for uniformity, namely Brahminical culture, was only the culture of the elite” (The Politics of Religious Communities in Cultural Past: Essays in Early Indian History, Oxford University Press, 2000, New Delhi, p. 1097).

To associate India with any particular religion or culture is highly problematic. In everyday life, the influence of Christianity and Islam can be seen in various aspects of Indian life, including language, customs, rituals, food habits, education systems, agriculture, architecture, music, technology, and philosophy. Calling Hindus an “indigenous” community in opposition to Christians and Muslims is highly problematic. Yet, public institutions such as NCERT continue to propagate such a communal narrative.

Despite this deep influence, the sub-themes of the seminar overlooked the substantial impact of Christianity and Islam. It is concerning that a premier educational body like NCERT, responsible for textbooks from class one to twelve, continues to display such bias and myopia in its approach. This biased perspective is indicative of the influence of right-wing forces in our public institutions.

If one goes through the brochure of the NCERT, the tone and tenor are coloured by self-glorification and jingoism. “India’s talent is capable and sufficient for running the entire world.” It further says that the purpose of such a seminar is to instil a sense of pride in the youth and act accordingly so that India again becomes a “world leader” (Vishwa Guru). Our criticism of such an approach does not mean that we are not recognizing the positive contribution of Indians, but it does not serve any purpose if it is over-hyped. The democratic approach is to work in cooperation and with an egalitarian spirit, rather than leading others or being led by them. The concept of master (Guru) and disciple (Chela) is mediated through power. The history of any invention and tradition would reveal that it has been shaped by many forces. It carries the stamps of different traditions and regions. Nothing is born in isolation, nor does it grow in isolation. Yet, the RSS and the BJP are adamant about proving that the “pure” Indic tradition remains “untouched” by the “foreign” and “corrupt” influence of Christianity and Islam.

The NCERT brochure continues to make unsubstantiated claims. For example, it asks researchers to explore writing papers on how “India’s knowledge tradition and its implementation” have been successful during the COVID [pandemic]. The brochure claims that “India has come forward for the welfare of the entire world.” Let the people living in foreign countries testify how far the Indian government came to their help. We living in India can speak for ourselves. For example, I myself heard cases of people running for medicine and oxygen cylinders in the national capital New Delhi, not to talk of the remote areas where health facilities are worse.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the extent to which migrant laborers, mostly coming from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and West Bengal, suffered cannot be expressed in words. In the absence of public transport, Adivasi workers left for their homes running along the railway tracks. However, some of them could not meet their family members and got crushed by the running trains. The plights of workers have not found a place in the themes of NCERT’s national seminar.

Worse still, during the coronavirus pandemic, minority Muslims were demonized for spreading coronavirus by the establishment-backed Hindu right forces. As a result, hundreds of Muslims, on charges of being members of Tablighi Jamaat, were arrested across the country. Are these not examples of mismanagement and the failure of the governments to stand with the people, who have elected them to power for their own welfare? According to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), 4.7 million people died in India during the coronavirus pandemic, ten times more than the official data. Yet, the organizers of the seminar are inviting the participants to praise their political masters for “leading the welfare work” across the world. Can such a politically designed and communally oriented meeting contribute to knowledge formation? I leave this question to you.

While Islam was excluded from the themes of the seminar, the organizers were happy to quote a few lines from the famous Tarana-e-Hindi penned by the eminent Urdu poet and philosopher Allama Iqbal. In Tarana-e-Hindi, the nationalist poet-philosopher Iqbal defended and praised Indian civilization, which was demonized by the colonizers. But see the irony: while the Hindu Right is fond of quoting Iqbal when he showers praises on Indian Civilization and calls Lord Rama Imam-e-Hind (Leader of India), they have not spared the same Iqbal and removed a theme from the political science syllabus of Delhi University. Justifying the erasure of poet-philosopher Iqbal, they have called him a “fanatic” Muslim and “the Father of Pakistan.” Look at the narrow-mindedness of Hindu Right forces. While the RSS and the BJP want to become “Vishwa Guru” in knowledge, they are tearing off the chapter on Iqbal from the syllabus, about whom the whole world is curious to do further research.

Rejecting the Indian tradition in toto is as harmful as celebrating it uncritically. If one reads the brochure of the NCERT seminar, one is misled to believe that everything great and positive in the world that has happened has taken place in Indic tradition, particularly in the ancient period. The communal approach to history has divided Indian history into three parts and called the ancient period the Hindu period and the medieval period the Muslim period. Such a communal construction was done by colonial historians, including James Mill. The RSS and the BJP, which call themselves nationalist forces, have often been at the forefront of upholding and carrying forward the communal narrative. The RSS and the BJP are not comfortable talking about deep social inequality in the ancient period because it pricks their narrative of the glorious Hindu period. In the NCERT brochure, there was no reference to caste-based discrimination. Similarly, there was no talk of gender disparity. The division of Hindu society into varnas and castes and how the working-class Shudras were not only exploited but also demonized in subsequent literature are all missing in the brochure. The conflicts between Buddhism and Brahminism and Devas and Asuras have been erased too.

For quite some time, NCERT has been in the news for toeing the establishment line and making decisions under political pressure. Intellectuals have often alleged that it works under RSS and BJP pressure. Last year in June, Professor Suhas Palshikar and Professor Yogendra Yadav, the chief advisors of the political science book, sent a letter to the NCERT director calling the changes in the NCERT books “arbitrary” acts. They wrote a letter after NCERT deleted several progressive contents without consulting them. The list of deleted items from the NCERT textbooks is long, but here are some of them: a few lines from the political science book that discuss the 2002 Gujarat Violence have been deleted; similarly, the report by the Human Rights Commission on it and then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s call to the Gujarat government to follow “raj dharma” without discriminating people based on caste and religion, have been removed; the reference to Gandhi being disliked by Hindu extremists and the identity of his assassin Nathuram Godse as a Brahmin have been erased as well. Even the references to ghettoization as a result of anti-Muslim Gujarat violence have been deleted from NCERT sociology books. The chapters on the Mughal Court, Central Islamic Lands, the Cold War, and the era of one-party dominance discussing the early phase of the Congress party have been torn off.

According to a recent report in The Indian Express (June 16, 2024), the Class 12 political science book of NCERT erased the references to the 16th-century old Babri Masjid, which was illegally demolished in broad daylight on December 6, 1992, by Hindu Right forces. The newly printed textbook calls Babri Masjid “the three-dome structure,” which was built “at the site of Shri Ram’s birthplace in 1528.” It was also written in the new chapter that the structure has “visible displays of Hindu symbols and relics in its interior as well as its exterior portions.” However, no historian with any credible record of research can uphold these communal fabrications, which are being injected into our children.

In light of these concerns, intellectuals should express dissent against the communal conceptualization of the NCERT seminar and call upon members of civil society to raise their voices in protest as a demonstration of our intellectual integrity. Please remember that the penetration of the communal forces is fast taking place at other institutes as well. Therefore, a collective fight needs to be waged to uphold India’s pluralism, secularism, and social justice. Upholding such values and rejecting sectarian approaches is not just essential but also our Constitutional duty. Such a communal approach to Indian tradition is not only an act of intellectual dishonesty but also a conspiracy to weaken people’s solidarity.

(Dr. Abhay Kumar earned a PhD in Modern History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is working on a book about Muslim Personal Law. Contact: debatingissues@gmail.com)

The post Redefining Indian Tradition Minus Christianity & Islam is Intellectual Dishonesty appeared first on SabrangIndia.

On one level the New Education Policy is out to change the whole pattern and structure of our educational system. On a regular basis new instructions are being sent to induct the Hindu nationalist sentiments and ethos for the students. One recalls that when this Government was trying to intimidate and undermine the student movements and protests, these activities were labelled as anti-National and the then MHRD Minister Smriti Irani came up with the idea of installing a tall pole in each University to hoist the national flag. The idea was also floated to put a military tank in JNU in particular, where the vocal students were articulating on various issues which went against the grain of thinking of the ruling Government.

Recently a few more circulars have been issued. One is that students should be made to participate in the yearlong celebrations of the birth Centenary year of Dattaji Didolkar. Didolkar was a RSS Pracharak, who set up the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). This cult building exercise for a Hindu Nationalist is particularly meant for colleges in Maharashtra. Is UGC right in promoting the celebration of figures from Hindu Nationalist stable? The figures who should be promoted are surely those who stood for Indian Nationalism or fought against British colonial rule. Mr. Didolkar, being a part of RSS, was never part of neither freedom struggle nor he stood for the values enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

The other circular is asking for setting up of ‘Selfi points’ with the backdrop of Prime minister, Modi. Such a step is being taken surely with the 2024 elections in mind. This is an idea, which has no place in a democratic country. It is a deliberate propaganda for a leader belonging to one party and its supreme leader. It violates the ethos of democracy for sure! Such blatant violation of democratic and constitutional values; is a gross abuse of power by the ruling party.

Topping it all has come the instruction that for students between 7to 12 standard Ramayana and Mahabharata should be taught as a part of history, (Times of India, 22^nd November). As per the expert Panel of NCERT, this will bring self-esteem, patriotism and pride in the Nation! These two great epics of India are definitely a part of our mythology. They do represent the social norms of the times when they were written. One can learn a lot about those times from these epics.

Ramayana amongst these is extremely popular not only in India but also in different countries of Asia like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bali, Sumatra etc. Interestingly it has many versions. Originally written by Valmiki, later it was made more popular by Goswami Tulsidas, who rendered it in popular Avadhi. It became part of popular culture from 16^th Century onwards in Northern parts India. Interestingly there are many versions of Lord Ram Story. The version being promoted by Hindu nationalists is one among many. The book by Richa Paulman, “Many Ramayana’s’ (OUP) deals with the diverse version of Lord Ram Story. On similar lines A.K. Ramnujan wrote an essay, ‘300 Ramayana’s: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on translation’. This remarkable essay was part of Delhi University curriculum till the ABVP protested and this was removed from the syllabus.

The Hindu nationalists want a particular version of Lord Ram’s story to be projected. Ramanujan in his essay tells us the diverse telling of the story, Jain version, Buddha version, and Women’s version (by Rangnayakmma of Andhra). Adivasi Ramayana has yet again a different story line. Ambedkar wrote ‘Riddles of Hinduism’ and drew our attention to Ram killing Shambuk as he was performing penance, and as Shudra’s were not permitted such a thing he was done to death by the Lord Himself. Ram also killed Bali from behind, Bali is a king revered by backward castes, who chant:’Eida Pida Javo: Baliche Rajya Yevo’ (Let our pains go: Let Bali’s return as a King). Ambedkar is very critical of Ram banishing Sita to forest on the suspicion of fidelity. Periyar is also critical of Lord Ram for imposing the North Indian Aryanism on the Dravidas. The real history is mired in some vague understanding while the great epic gives us a valuable insight into that time.

Similarly Mahabharata, composed by Maharishi Ved Vyas is the longest poem ever composed, gives us a valuable glimpse of those times. They are important sources of historical knowledge. To put them in the syllabus as history is a different idea altogether. It is linked more to the Hindu nationalist agenda than unravelling the truth of history.

In addition, among many other moves by the panel; is to instruct the name India with Bharat on the ground that India denotes slavery, as the word was given by the British. They deliberately want to suppress the fact the variations of word India are prevalent from the times much before the British came here. As early as BCE 303, Megasthanese had called it Indica. The derivatives from river Sindhu have been in vogue from early times. ‘Bharat that is India’ is the perfect formulation outlined in our Constitution. But in tune with Hindu Nationalist Agenda they are not comfortable with the word India. Lastly they want to re-periodize Indian history. The early period of Indian history, which the British called as Hindu period, they want to call it ‘Classic Period’. The idea is to present the values of that period as the baseline for our society. And these values, outlined in Manusmriti were the precise one’s which made Ambedkar rebel against and to burn this book.

UGC-NCERT are totally being guided by the Hindu Nationalist agenda, totally in contrast to the values of Indian Constitution.

Related:

Muslim student denied to sit for UGC-NET due to hijab

UGC asks Maharashtra colleges to encourage students to attend the celebration of RSS leader’s birthday

Withdraw UGC directive to hold lectures on “ancient Indian democracy” on Constitution day: AIDWA, CPI-M

The post Education for a Hindu Rashtra: UGC-NCERT pushing a divisive agenda appeared first on SabrangIndia.

So says an “interactive module” prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for nursery and Class I and II children and released by the Modi.2 government on Tuesday. The text, word formulations, several space experts said, gives the impression that the Chandrayaan-3 mission was possible (sic) because of the “encouragement of the Prime Minister”, which is against ISRO’s track record of never giving up after failure. This was reported by Basant Kumar Mohanty in The Telegraph today.

These special supplementary reading modules on the Chandrayaan mission have been brought out by the NCERT, a body which prepares school textbooks, for children from the foundation, preparatory, middle, secondary and senior secondary sections. They were released by education minister Dharmendra Pradhan at a programme in the presence of Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chairman S.P. Somanath.

This module, which is meant for the foundation stage, is an interactive document where the teacher initiates a discussion with the children and tells them about Chandrayaan. One of these modules for the secondary stage says Modi had a “crucial role” in the success of Chandrayaan-3. “The leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi played a crucial role in the triumph of Chandrayaan-3 and landed our country’s name on the surface of the moon,” it says.

A space analyst who wished to remain anonymous said the text created the impression that the third Moon mission was possible because of the Prime Minister and was not in consonance with Isro’s performance record. He also said the Satellite Launch Vehicle launched by Isro in 1979 had failed. But the agency tried again the next year and was successful. ISRO’s Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle failed in 1987 and again in 1988, but was launched successfully in 1994. Isro’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle failed in 1993, but was successfully launched in the next attempt the following year.

“After every failure, ISRO never gave up. But the text in the NCERT module creates the impression that Chandrayaan-3 was launched only after the Prime Minister asked the scientists to try once more. This may not be matching Isro’s track record,” the space expert said.

The module has pictures of Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon’s surface, the Prime Minister joining the live telecast of the launch and his interaction later with scientists at the Isro headquarters in Bangalore. Moreover, one more module for middle school children seeks to provide information on India’s traditional knowledge related to space, appearing to mix science and mythology.

“Did scientific achievement happen only now?… Literature tells us that it can be traced back through Vymaanika Shastra: ‘Science of Aeronautics’, which reveals that our country had the knowledge of flying vehicles in these days,” the module says, adding: “This book has mind boggling details of construction, working of engines and gyroscopic system.”

“The Vedas, the oldest of Indian texts, makes a mention of various gods being transported on wheeled chariots pulled by animals, usually horses, but these chariots could also fly,” the module adds. The module refers to Pushpak Vimaan, a floating chariot mentioned in the Ramayana.

“It was created by Vishwakarma, the chief architect of gods, out of the dust from the Sun for Brahma. Brahma gave it to Kuber. When Ravana took over Lanka from Kuber, it was used by Ravana as his personal vehicle,” the module says.

Sabrangindia had reported how, NCERT under the present regime has invited controversy after controversy excluding Darwin from science texts inviting sharp criticism from India’s top scientists; “dropping” all mention of Maulana Azad, India’s first education minister and also references to catastrophic bouts of intra-community carnages be it Gujarat 2002 or others. In fact just a few months ago, in July 2023, Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav distanced themselves from the NCERT after such crude moves at exclusion from the civics curriculum.

On June 9, in an open letter to the Director, NCERT, stating they were “Embarrassed” with the NCERT textbooks, Suhas Palshikar, Yogendra Yadav asked NCERT to drop their names. Following recent controversial changes made to political science textbooks, the political scientists wrote to NCERT asking it to drop their names as chief advisors. We feel embarrassed that our names should be mentioned as chief advisors to these mutilated and academically dysfunctional textbooks,” they said.

The letter was written jointly by Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav since they have been advisors for political science textbooks for the central body. They released their letter in light of disagreements with controversial changes that the education council recently made to many of its textbooks. “We were never consulted or even informed of these changes … The frequent and serial deletions do not seem to have any logic except to please the powers that be,” Palshikar and Yadav said in their letter to the NCERT director. Prof. Suhas Palshikar and I have dissociated ourselves from the six NCERT textbooks that we had the honour to put together but that have now been mutilated beyond recognition. We have asked NCERT to remove our names from these books.

Related:

Our protest, why we want our names removed from NCERT textbooks: Suhas Palshikar

Peddling a coloured narrative: NCERT Textbooks

The post NCERT module “credits PM Modi” for success of Chandrayaan-3, skips ISRO’s track record appeared first on SabrangIndia.

With the Kerala SCERT releasing supplementary texts that now include RSS ban, Gujarat riots, Mughal history to stay in Kerala syllabus, Kerala becomes the first state to reassert constitutional first principles of federalism: Education comes under the State Article 1 of the Indian Constitution states, ‘India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states’. The distribution of powers between the union and state governments is what makes India a federal country. In India, there are three lists divided between the center and state governments, i.e. Union List: It includes areas of national importance like defense, foreign affairs, currency, banking, and communications.

With 52 items in the Concurrent List of the Indian Constitution that include subjects of common interest to both the Union as well as the States. These include education, forest, trade unions, marriage, adoption, and succession. What is the state list in Indian Constitution? The State List is a list of 66 subjects in the Schedule Seven to the Constitution of India. The respective state governments have exclusive power to legislate on matters relating to these items. The Union List details the subjects on which the Parliament may make laws while, the state list details those under the purview of state legislatures. The Concurrent list on the other hand has subjects in which both Parliament and state legislatures have jurisdiction.

Now, the Curriculum Committee of Kerala’s SCERT has decided to release a supplementary textbook by SCERT to cover these portions. Earlier, Education Minister V Sivankutty had stated that Kerala will not accept the central decision to exclude subjects like RSS ban, caste system and social movements from the curriculum.

 According to Hindustan Times, CM Vijayan expressed deep concern over the changes introduced by NCERT for the 2023-24 academic year. He criticised the “rationalisation” process, which led to the removal of crucial segments from the syllabus. The CM stated that these eliminated lessons were vital components that should never have been expunged.

“The lessons that were deleted were those that should not have been removed. As a result, we have prepared additional textbooks by including those portions that should not have been taken out,” asserted CM Vijayan. The state government’s move aimed to preserve the integrity of education, prevent skewed perspectives, and ensure that students are presented with a holistic view of history and society.

The CM shared the news on Twitter, with the following caption: “A set of new textbooks was unveiled, with sections that were omitted by the NCERT, seemingly driven by a political agenda aimed at undermining scientific awareness and democratic values. This marks Kerala’s unwavering stand against the Sangh Parivar’s insidious attempts to transform our educational institutions into breeding grounds for communalism.”

A set of new textbooks was unveiled, with sections that were omitted by the NCERT, seemingly driven by a political agenda aimed at undermining scientific awareness and democratic values. This marks Kerala’s unwavering stand against the Sangh Parivar’s insidious attempts to… pic.twitter.com/VaBXmb5zl0

— Pinarayi Vijayan (@pinarayivijayan) August 24, 2023

Jayaprakash RK, the director of State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), revealed that six textbooks across four subjects were promptly revised by incorporating sections removed by NCERT.

CM Vijayan further highlighted that the removed sections included significant events such as the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, raising concerns about an attempt to distort historical narratives for political interest. He further stated that the omissions from textbooks could potentially pave the way for glorifying individuals and organisations associated with Gandhi’s assassination, leading to a dangerous erosion of social values. The textbooks released by the CM also count the  deletion of Mughal history, industrial revolution, partition of India, five-year economic plans, and capitalism.

Background

The corrections were made in textbooks from 6th to 12th grades as part of ‘syllabus rationalisation’.

The NCERT has omitted references of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a freedom fighter and India’s first education minister , from the new political science textbook for class 11. The council also dropped certain portions including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, among others from its textbooks citing ‘overlapping’ and ‘irrelevant’ as reasons..

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The post Asserting the principle of federalism, Kerala CM releases revised textbooks restoring chapters removed by NCERT appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Against the saffronisation of education, voices of protests have been raised and the mainstream media have overlooked these. In fact the dominant, mainstream media has not really analysed the deletions and their impact beyond parroting the establishment’s position.

However, Professor Suhas Palshikar and Professor Yogendra Yadav, the chief advisors of the political science book, sent a letter to the NCERT director and called the changes “arbitrary” acts. After Yadav shared the letter on his Twitter handle on Friday, it drew the attention of a few media houses.

In their letter, they alleged the NCERT authority of “mutilating” textbooks “beyond recognition” and blamed the authority for acting in a “partisan manner”. They were right to argue that such an act by NCERT killed “the spirit of critique and questioning”.

Lodging their strong protest, they have dissociated themselves from the textbooks. Under the supervision of Palshikar and Yadav, political science books for high schools and intermediate levels were prepared in 2006-2007. Suhas Palshikar’s interview to Max Maharashtra explains this process.

While the books have not been “replaced” by the current regime, a large share of the previous contents are now deleted. The fact that the significant changes were made without even consulting the chief advisors is a pointer to the political agenda of Hindutva forces.

It appears that the erasure is a part of the well-thought s t r a t e g y. The Hindutva game has been able to remove almost all those contents that have long challenged their communal politics. Such deletion is justified in the name of “rationalization of syllabus”.

In the name of “reducing” curriculum burden to help students achieve “speedy recovery” post-Corona pandemic, the real agenda is to hollow out the textbooks from their progressive contents and to deny the young mind the right to know the ugly face of communalism.

Look at the irony. The Modi Government has not introduced any new textbooks, yet their intellectual sharpness has been blunted.

The tinkered textbooks and changed syllabus appear to be alive, yet they seem dead in their effect. These textbooks have bodies, yet they have been reduced to soul-less beings. Remember that the process of deleting the contents began a couple of years ago.

2020 deletions: NCERT 

During the outbreak of the Corona (Covid-19) pandemic in 2020, the media reported that the chapters on secularism, citizenship, nationalism and federalism from NCERT political science books were deleted. Wasn’t it a shameful act? While the world was fighting the pandemic, the Modi Government was searching for an “opportunity in crisis”.

During those critical days, not only the chapters of textbooks were removed but this was akso accompanied by some policy moves: anti-people farm laws were imposed on the country. From the tampering with NCERT textbooks to enacting anti-labour laws and holding the ground-laying ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, the Modi Government has been occupied with fulfilling Sangh’s (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-RSS) agenda.

In the more recent past, this process of mutilation of textbooks has been rapid. Selected contents dealing with Mughal history, Freedom Struggle(s), social movements, democracy, communalism, regional identity and marginalised groups, have been deleted.

The chapters discussing Mughal courts have also been torn off. Lines about Mahatma Gandhi have shamelessly been erased and the name of Maulana Azad, freedom fighter and the first education minister of Independent India, has been dropped without giving any reason.

The long list of deleted items continues:

• A few lines from the political science book that discusses the 2002 Gujarat Violence have been deleted; similarly,
• Content on the report by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Gujarat 2002 as well
• Then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s call to the Gujarat government to follow “raj dharma” without discriminating people based on caste and religion, have been removed;
• The reference to Gandhi being disliked by Hindu extremists and the identity of his assassin Nathuram Godse as a Brahmin have been erased as well.
• Even the references to ghettoisation as a result of anti-Muslim Gujarat violence have been deleted from NCERT sociology books; the chapters on the Mughal Court, Central Islamic Lands, the Cold War, and the era of one party dominance discussing the early phase of the Congress party have been torn off.

While the themes of the deleted contents and disciplines may vary, the unifying thread running through all of them is that these contents have brought to the students the complexities of Indian politics and histories and challenged the narrow Hindutva narrative.

Communal forces are fully aware that they can only protect the interest of the elites if they can peddle “their” narration as the “truth”. By capturing educational institutions, these saffron forces have been relentlessly working to replace secular ideas and the egalitarian values of the Constitution with their partisan ideology based on supremacy of historically dominant castes.

Though, the main targets of the supremacist forces appear to be only Muslims, this is not the complete picture. The RSS are not against Muslims alone but against the majority of Indians who are Dalits, Adivasis, backwards, women, and minorities and the poor among the upper castes.

While their direct assault appears to be on Indian Muslims, they are also busy erasing the emancipatory histories of other marginalised communities. While the chapters on Mughals were being removed, the Hindutva forces deliberately projected the deletion as an act of “nationalising” history and “removing” contents of the “foreign aggressors” from the curriculum.

At the same time as Mughal history was erased, however, what was not made public was the fact that a powerful poem that inspires the Dalit Movement, was also removed from the political science book and contents dealing with Sikh history have been removed as well.

Similarly, when a chapter on poet-philosopher Allama Iqbal was removed from the BA Political Science syllabus of Delhi University, the tinkering on a course on Ambedkar was also planned (and implemented) at the same time.

Something else is happening besides this erasure. While the histories of the marginalized communities are being deleted, Hindutva ideologues are also being promoted as “national icons”.

For example, the University of Delhi recently passed a proposal to teach a full course on Hindutva ideology V. D. Savarkar, the person who tendered an apology to the British Raj and divided Indians on religious lines during the Freedom Struggle!  Savarkar is likely to be taught ahead of the courses on Gandhi and Ambedkar. These developments are a pointer to the fact that Hindutva forces are not just against minorities but also against the vast section of Indians, diverse and dynamic, especially all marginalised sections.

That is why the battle has to be waged by forging a unity of the oppressed.

 Long back philosophers have cautioned that while constructing the past, historians must confront complexities and resist constructing a sanitized version of historical truth.

The Hindutva agendas is the polar opposite of this. Instead of attempting an understanding of the multiple and complex histories of India, saffron forces are desperate to establish only their one truth, by erasing all others. Their conception of India is Brahmanical and narrow, which goes against the spirit of the Constitution and the interests of the majority of Indians, i.e., Dalits, Backwards, Adivasis, women, minorities and Dravidians.

The mutilation of the textbooks should be a big concern for the nation. Such an act attempts to deny young minds the right to know the truth. Critical thinking is being denied and the young minds are injected with the narrative promoting contempt for marginalized communities and minorities.

Such an act also goes against pluralism and communal harmony and it tries to identify India with one culture and one religion. It is high time we waged a unified struggle against the saffronisation of education.

(Dr Abhay Kumar is a Delhi-based journalist. He has taught political science at the NCWEB Centre of Delhi University.)

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The post Peddling a coloured narrative: NCERT Textbooks appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The letter was written jointly by Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav since they have been advisors for political science textbooks for the central body. They have released their letter in light of disagreements with controversial changes that the education council recently made to many of its textbooks.

“We were never consulted or even informed of these changes … The frequent and serial deletions do not seem to have any logic except to please the powers that be,” Palshikar and Yadav said in their letter to the NCERT director. Prof. Suhas Palshikar and I have dissociated ourselves from the six NCERT textbooks that we had the honour to put together but that have now been mutilated beyond recognition. We have asked NCERT to remove our names from these books.

While for the regime, the modifications have been justified on the grounds of ‘rationalisation’, we fail to see any pedagogical rationale at work here. We find that the text has been mutilated beyond recognition,” the letter also reads.Among the changes the NCERT made to its political science textbooks earlier this year are removing references to the 2002 Gujarat communal violence  from its Class 12 book, chapters titled ‘Democracy and Diversity’, ‘Popular Struggles and Movements’ and ‘Challenges of Democracy’ from its Class 10 book and a section on sedition from its Class 8 book. The NCERT has also removed chapters relating to Mughal history from a Class 12 history textbook, and last year it also summarily deleted chapter on Darwin’s theory of evolution from its Class 10 biology textbook.It justified its decisions as part of a ‘rationalisation’ exercise designed to “reduce the content load” on students following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Palshikar and Yadav were chief advisors for the NCERT’s political science textbooks that were published in 2006 and asked that their names in this capacity be removed from the revised books.”feel embarrassed that our names should be mentioned as chief advisors to these mutilated and academically dysfunctional textbooks,” they said. The text of the letter mah be read here;

Director,
NCERT, New Delhi
director.ncert@nic.in

Subject: Political Science Text Books for classes IX to XII

Dear Professor Dinseh Prasad Saklani,

We, the undersigned, Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, were Chief Advisors for the NCERT text books of political science prepared and originally published in 2006-07 for classes IX to XII. Through a very enriching and valuable collaboration with colleagues across the country, we were able to put together six textbooks as per NCF 2005.

Of late, we have been coming across detailed news reports of the many modifications made to these textbooks. While the modifications have been justified on the grounds of ‘rationalization’, we fail to see any pedagogic rationale at work here. We find that the text has been mutilated beyond recognition. There are innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions, often without any attempt to fill the gaps thus created. We were never consulted or even informed of these changes. If NCERT did consult other experts for deciding on these cuts and deletions, we explicitly state that we fully disagree with them in this regard.

We believe that any text has an internal logic and such arbitrary cuts and deletions violate the spirit of the text. The frequent and serial deletions do not seem to have any logic except to please the powers that be. Text books cannot and should not be shaped in this blatantly partisan manner and should not quell the spirit of critique and questioning among students of social sciences.These textbooks as they stand now do not serve the purpose of training students of political science both the principles of politics and the broad patterns of political dynamics that have occurred over time.

As academics originally associated with the preparation of these text books, we feel embarrassed that our names should be mentioned as Chief Advisors to these mutilated and academically dysfunctional textbooks. We wish to explicitly record our full disagreement with the entire process of re-shaping the text in the name of rationalization. Both of us would like to to dissociate ourselves from these textbooks and request the NCERT to drop our names as ‘chief advisors’ from all Political Science Textbooks of classes IX, X, XI and XII mentioned in the ‘Letter to the Students’ and also in the list of Textbook Development Team at the beginning of each textbook.

We request you to give effect to this request immediately and ensure that our names are not used in the soft copies of the textbooks available at NCERT website as also in the subsequent print editions.

Sincerely,

Suhas Palshikar  & Yogendra Yadav

The post “Embarrassed” with textbooks: Suhas Palshikar, Yogendra Yadav ask NCERT to drop their names appeared first on SabrangIndia.

While rejecting the recommendation of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to shift non-Muslim students to other educational institutions from madrasas, UP Madrasa Board has decided to implement the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus from the upcoming session.

The decision to this effect was taken collectively by the board members at a meeting presided over by Board chairman Iftikhar Ahmed Javed announced to the media on Wednesday, January 18. The UP Madrasa Board also decided to introduce the NCERT syllabus in recognised and state-aided madrasas in a phased manner in the upcoming session. “Madrassa children will also study the NCERT syllabus from his year. Modern education will be given along with Dinee Talim (religious education),” said Javed.

He added that in the new academic year, the focus of UP Madrasas will be more on ‘modern’ education through modern tools of pedagogy. He also stated that the board would work out a system for an easy distribution of uniforms to madrasa students from class I to VIII by the state basic education department.

In November 2022, the Uttar Pradesh (UP)  Madrassa Education Board had publicly expressed its reservation to the interference of officers of the education department in the day-to-day working of madrassas in the state, which has led to a situation of discomfort in these institutions. In this connection, the Board chairman Dr Iftikhar Ahmed Javed, also told the media: “Officials of the state education department are not the competent authority to inspect the madrassas run by the department of minority welfare.

“After the formation of the minority welfare department in 1995, all work of the madrassas, managed by the education department till then, was transferred to the minority welfare department.

“Later, the Uttar Pradesh Madrassa Education Council Act, 2004, was made through which the Uttar Pradesh Non-Government Arabic and Persian Madrassa Recognition, Administration and Service Regulations 2016 were made. Since then, the district madrassa education officer became the district minority welfare officer.

“As per the arrangement made in the Uttar Pradesh Madrassa Education Board Act 2004 and Regulations 2016, neither inspection nor notice will be given to any madrassa by any officer of any department other than the minority welfare department.”

NCPPR’s controversial recommendations

Opposing the NCPCR’s recent ‘recommendation’, the Board chairman said it was a discriminatory practice that was against the tenets of the Madrasa Education Board. The students taking education cannot be differentiated on the basis of religion.

“We follow the ideology ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ (the progress and development of all) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and will never remove the students of non-Muslim faith from madrasa shifting them to other institutions. This kind of practice should not be implemented in the education sector. If parents are sending their children to our madrasas, they will continue to study there,” said Javed. “The madrasa education board unanimously rejected the NCPCR recommendations,” he added.

Controversially, in December last year, the NCPCR had written to Chief Secretaries of all states and UTs, recommending a detailed inquiry into all government-funded and recognised madrasas admitting non-Muslim children.  The Commission had also recommended all non-Muslim children studying in madrasas be admitted to other schools after the inquiry.

NCPCR Chairperson Priyank Kanoongo, in a letter written in December, last year, to all chief secretaries, had noted that children belonging to non-Muslim communities were attending government-funded or recognised madrassas. “It is also learnt by the commission that some States and Union Territories are providing them with scholarships too.” “It is a clear-cut violation and contravention of Article 28 (3) of the Constitution of India that prohibits educational institutions from obligating the children to take part in any religious instruction, without the consent of the parent,” the letter stated.

Madrassas, as institutions, are primarily responsible for imparting religious education to children, the commission had said, adding it was learnt that those madrassas funded or recognised by the government were imparting both religious and to some extent formal education to children.

UP: After Madrasas, UP Govt to Survey Waqf Properties

The decision of the Adityanath-led UP government to survey Waqf properties in September 2022 was met with disquiet and concern by the state’s minority community.

There are 162,229 Waqf properties, including 1,50,000 registered with Sunni Central Waqf Board and 12,229 with Shia Central Waqf Board in UP, with the government occupying quite a few of these in the state. Danish Azad Ansari, Minister of State for Minority Welfare and Waqf, had then however termed the exercise a “normal departmental process”, saying it has nothing to do with other Waqf properties.

The decision had been announced amidst the ongoing surveys of unrecognised madrasas across Uttar Pradesh, the Yogi Adityanath government has ordered a survey of properties managed by Sunni and Shia Central Waqf Boards in what the government says is an attempt aimed at preventing illegal encroachment of the properties in the state. It has also cancelled a 1989 government order under which uncultivable land at several places was “illegally registered” as Waqf property. 

In a directive issued by the Chief Minister, he had “asked” all district magistrates and commissioners to scrutinise and demarcate Waqf properties in the revenue records. The directive came in response to a letter written by the state minority affairs ministry that said that several properties have been illegally occupied by Waqf boards. Sources say that the survey aims to stop “illegal possession and sale” of Waqf properties.

The official communication –a letter –had at the time, four months ago, been sent to commissioners and district magistrates by Shakeel Ahmed Siddiqui, deputy secretary, UP government. It had reportedly stated that several Waqf authorities had “neglected the regulations regarding property registration as per the Waqf Act-1995 and the UP Muslim Waqf Act of 1960. In 1989”. An order was also issued to properly register such properties in the revenue records. In this letter, Siddiqui reportedly alleged there were pieces of barren land that were registered as Waqf property by “manipulating” provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Muslim Waqf Act, 1960.

Thereafter, concurrently, in the order issued by the government, it has been said there is no provision in the Act for the registration of properties without following due process. Siddiqui’s letter had stated that according to the Act, only those properties come under the category of Waqf that are donated for religious and welfare work according to Muslim law and customs.

As per the directive, the state government has said that cemetery, mosque and idgah land should be demarcated because, on the basis of the 1989 ordinance, many such lands registered as banjar (barren), usar (uncultivable), and bhita (mound) were declared as Waqf properties. Also, gram sabha and municipal councils had land that could be used for the general public but were actually “occupied by Waqf boards”, it said. However, any change in management and nature of these areas is prohibited under the 1989 order.

Historically, waqf properties are donated to be used for religious or pious purposes, such as building mosque, cemetery, orphanage or hospital.

At the heart of the UP government’s latest move is a 1989 government order, under which uncultivable land at several places was “illegally registered” as Waqf property, the PTI had reported quoting an official. This has been revoked by the government with immediate effect with divisional commissioners and district magistrates being asked to examine all proceedings taken under the order to “correct revenue records” accordingly. 

“Waqf properties are very important and they are god’s property with nobody having the right to illegally occupy it. The state government, with a noble intention, has started a survey and we have given orders to first identify the Waqf properties and then take further action,” Dharam Pal Singh, minister for minority welfare, Muslim Waqf and Haj, told media persons.

Under Islamic law and customs, properties that are donated for religious and welfare work come under the category of Waqf, which means a charitable, religious endowment. Once donated, it is treated as “god’s property”. There are 162,229 Waqf properties, including 1,50,000 registered with the Sunni Central Waqf Board and 12,229 with the Shia Central Waqf Board in Uttar Pradesh.

Community React to Order

Reacting to the 2022 directives, senior members of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) had explained how these moves amounted to a counter-attack by the state administration since, over the last decade especially, it was the Waqf Board that had been demanding that all government offices or any Waqf property encroached by any organisation or allotted by the government should either be handed over to the Waqf Board or rent be paid as per market rate!

Besides, the dual pronged attack by the aggressive UP government, first on Madrassas and then on Waqf Board land caused a disquiet in the community. Tracing the history of both mismanagement of properties and the government’s hostility the member had stated that a fair and transparent streamlining was for long being demanded by the community.

The 2022 ongoing survey of private madrasas across Uttar Pradesh was hotly debated. However, Darul Uloom Deoband, an Islamic seminary, organised an ‘Ijlas’ (conference) on September 18 were the heads of over 250 major madrasas from across the state attended the event and said it had no objection to the survey of private madrasas. However, the seminary noted that the entire system of madrasas —Islamic religious schools— should not be disregarded just because some institutions are found to have violated rules.

The government had then justified the act, claiming that it conducted surveys of “unrecognised and private madrasas” to gather information about the number of teachers, curriculum, and basic facilities available there, among other factors.

December 2022

Then at the end of last year, once again another issue arose when the police –in a completely autocratic act –in Faridpur, Bareilly booked the school principal and a para teacher of a government higher primary school, after the local unit of Vishwa Hindu Parishad accused Siddiqui and Waziruddin of hurting “religious sentiments” of people in “a Hindu-dominated area by reciting madrassa-type prayers in the school”. The poem also known as Bachche ki Dua, was composed by Muhammad Iqbal in 1902 and its first verse has also been used in a song in a Hindi movie called ‘Raazi’.

The VHP raised objection on the line: mere allah burai se bachaana mujhko’. (O God! protect me from the evil ways). The VHP’s city president Sompal Rathore on whose instance the FIR was filed, alleged that school principal Nahid Siddiqui and Shiksha Mitra (teacher) Waziruddin were trying to convert the students and that students who protested against such prayers were threatened.

At the time, in an opinion piece in Indian Express, Devyani Onial wrote that the Urdu poem talks about a child’s wish for a life like a candle (shama), that banishes darkness from the world (door duniya ka mere dum se andhera ho jaye) and brings light to all corners (har jagah mere chamakne se ujala ho jai). It talks about protecting the poor (garibon ki himayat karna) and loving the weak (dard mandon se zaifon se mohabbat karna). She wrote,

“Before this, no one who had sung it had thought of it as a religious prayer. Children who followed faiths other than Islam neither paused nor stopped at the word “Allah”; everyone sang along, praying to God, asking him to keep us on the right path (nek jo raah ho us raah pe chalana mujhko). But in times when Urdu, the language, has become Muslim and the colour orange Hindu, what chance does a line like that have in an orange-lit India?”

The entire poem written by Mohammad Iqbal reads as follows:

lab pe aatī hai duā ban ke tamannā merī

zindagī sham.a kī sūrat ho ḳhudāyā merī!

duur duniyā kā mire dam se añdherā ho jaa.e!

har jagah mere chamakne se ujālā ho jaa.e!

ho mire dam se yūñhī mere vatan kī zīnat

jis tarah phuul se hotī hai chaman kī zīnat

zindagī ho mirī parvāne kī sūrat yā-rab

ilm kī sham.a se ho mujh ko mohabbat yā-rab

ho mirā kaam ġharīboñ kī himāyat karnā

dard-mandoñ se za.īfoñ se mohabbat karnā

mire allāh! burā.ī se bachānā mujh ko

nek jo raah ho us rah pe chalānā mujh ko

(Based on reports in PTI, New Indian Express, Indian Express, Newsclick and Sabrangindia)

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UP: After Madrasas, Yogi Govt to Survey Waqf Properties; Muslim Citizens Doubt ‘Intention’

UP: After Madrasas, Yogi Govt to Survey Waqf Properties; Muslim Citizens Doubt ‘Intention’

The post UP Madrasa Board to introduce NCERT syllabus, no to NCPCR’s diktat on non-Muslim students appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has deleted some content related to caste, religious discrimination, references to Jawaharlal Nehru, Mughal emperors and text dealing with Muslim stereotypes in its latest review of school textbooks, reported The Telegraph.

On its website, the NCERT said the Covid-19 pandemic had made it imperative to reduce the content load on students. As such, it resolved to remove content which “overlapped with that included in textbooks for other subjects or lower or higher classes, and content that it deemed irrelevant in today’s context.”

As per the report, NCERT termed the exercise a “rationalisation of textbook content” by an unknown group of experts. On the recommendation of this group, a paragraph from the Social and Political Life-I textbook for Class 6 was removed. The paragraph read, “A common stereotype about some Muslims is that they are not interested in educating girls and therefore do not send girls to school. However, studies have now shown that poverty amongst Muslims is an important reason why Muslim girls do not attend school or drop out from (sic) school after a few years.”

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.

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, feel that the deletions were made along ideological lines rather than for academic integrity. Speaking to the newspaper, Rampal 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.

Even the All India Peoples’ Science Network (AIPSN) 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.

Earlier, 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.

On the other hand, former NCERT Director during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government J.S. Rajput 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.

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