The classroom is supposed to be a place where children learn to question, investigate and think independently. It should introduce them to the complexity of history, the diversity of human civilisation and the scientific methods through which knowledge advances. Above all, it should prepare them to become citizens of a democratic republic, capable of distinguishing evidence from assertion and disagreement from enmity.
That purpose is under scrutiny following reported changes to NCERT’s new Class IX Social Science textbook, Understanding Society: India and Beyond. According to The Indian Express report of 1 October 2026, the book describes 1000–1700 CE as a period of “Resistance and Resilience”, foregrounding regional rulers’ resistance to the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, described as foreign invaders. It gives comparatively limited attention to Rajput-Mughal alliances and composite culture.
These subjects belong in a school curriculum. The question is how they are framed, what evidence supports them and what context may be missing. Do curricular choices help create independent, constitutionally minded citizens, or encourage children to inherit a communal-nationalist understanding of India built on religious identity, selective memory and uncritical cultural reverence?
Poisoning young minds may feel provocative. The underlying concern is that repeated curricular choices can normalise prejudice without directly instructing children to hate. If one community is consistently associated with foreignness or aggression while another is presented as the guardian of national civilisation, students may absorb a divisive view of the pastand carry it into the present.
A Past Reconstructed Around Religious Antagonism
Recognising resistance to invasion is not objectionable. Regional kingdoms defended territories and navigated changing political circumstances; their achievements deserve attention. But medieval India was not a continuous struggle between two unified religious civilisations. It was a complex political world of rival dynasties, shifting alliances, territorial ambitions, trade and cultural exchange.
Hindu rulers fought other Hindu rulers; Muslim rulers fought other Muslim rulers; and political alliances crossed religious boundaries. Rajput–Mughal relations involved both conflict and cooperation. Mughal administrations included people from diverse religious and regional backgrounds. Acknowledging this complexity does not require romanticising imperial rule or concealing religious persecution. It requires applying the same historical standards to everyone.
When several centuries are presented chiefly as resistance to foreign, religiously identified powers, political conflicts can begin to look like evidence of an enduring struggle between communities. The distinction between particular historical rulers and present-day religious populations may blur. That is troubling in a country where Muslims have repeatedly been asked to prove their national belonging. Indian Muslims are not foreign guests: their histories, languages, cultural traditions and contributions are part of the subcontinent’s history.
Responsibility for historical actions belongs to particular rulers, institutions and actors. It cannot be transferred to entire communities across centuries.
The Politics of Omission
Curricular bias can be visible not only in what is added but in what disappears. In 2023, The Indian Express documented deletions from NCERT history and political science textbooks. These included reductions in material on the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire, the removal of the Class XII chapter “Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts”, and the deletion of a table comparing Mughal emperors’ milestones and achievements.
The changes also affected accounts of Akbar’s administrative policies, his engagement with different religious and social traditions, and the translation of Sanskrit works into Persian. Material about independent states emerging from former Mughal provinces was removed, while comparable material on other regional powers remained.
The same exercise removed references to the 2002 Gujarat riots. Deleted political science material had discussed communal violence, the National Human Rights Commission’s criticism of the Gujarat government’s handling of it, and A.B. Vajpayee’s appeal to Narendra Modi to follow raj dharma without discrimination based on caste, creed or religion. The Class XII account of the Babri Masjid demolition was also substantially pruned: references to the mosque by name, the BJP’s rath yatra, the role of kar sevaks, the violence that followed and the episode’s political repercussions were removed. These are documented changes.
NCERT defended the exercise as a way to reduce curricular burden. Its director also argued that selectively mentioning particular communal riots was inappropriate when many had occurred across the country. Reducing repetition and making schoolwork manageable are legitimate aims. But they do not resolve whether omissions weaken historical understanding or disproportionately remove material inconvenient to those in power.
The deletion of any one passage may have an editorial explanation. The cumulative pattern warrants scrutiny. A historical narrative can be distorted by selective silence as effectively as by falsehood. Removing politically uncomfortable events deprives students of context on democratic institutions, communal relations and political movements. If omissions repeatedly diminish accounts of Muslim rulers or remove discussion of violence against Muslims, questions about ideological selectivity are unavoidable.
Cultural Pride, Belief and Evidence
India should take pride in its achievements in mathematics, astronomy, literature, medicine, philosophy, architecture and the arts. Ancient and medieval intellectual traditions deserve serious study. But cultural pride becomes exclusionary when one tradition is treated as the nation’s principal inheritance and others as secondary.
The concern is not the celebration of Hindu traditions. It is the possibility that Hindu identity is increasingly treated as the default expression of Indian national identity, while Muslim, Christian and other traditions receive less recognition or appear chiefly in narratives of conflict. India’s civilisation includes Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Islamic, Christian, tribal, regional and secular traditions. They have interacted, disagreed, influenced one another and evolved together. A pluralistic curriculum should present diversity as one of the defining features of India’s history.
The BJP and wider Hindutva movement have long called for a reinterpretation of Indian history that foregrounds Hindu civilisational identity and challenges what they see as excessive praise of Muslim rulers. The correspondence between this political rhetoric and reported curricular changes merits investigation. It does not, by itself, prove the private motives behind every editorial decision. The educational test is whether students receive a sufficiently complete, balanced and critical accountor are taught to accept one communal interpretation as unquestionable national truth.
The textbook’s references to rulers receiving swords from goddesses raise a related issue: how to distinguish religious belief, cultural memory and historical evidence. A textbook can explain that a tradition holds that a goddess gave a ruler divine assistance. But reporting a belief is different from asserting divine intervention as established historical fact.
Secular education need not ridicule religious belief or exclude it from study. It should teach belief accurately and in context, without confusing faith with empirical verification. The same standard applies to claims about ancient science. India’s real contributions need no exaggeration that every modern discovery was already known in antiquity. Astrology, supernatural causation and unverified remedies should not be presented as scientifically established merely because they are associated with an ancient tradition.
Article 51A(h) of the Constitution identifies the development of scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform as a fundamental duty. Scientific temper is not hostility to religion; it is a willingness to ask what evidence supports a claim and whether a conclusion should change when better evidence emerges. Children should be able to respect a religious tradition while questioning empirical claims associated with it.
A separate controversy over NCERT’s Class IX arts textbook, Madhurima, illustrates the importance of evidence-based representation. In June 2026, The Indian Express reported that the textbook initially obscured the torso of the Harappan bronze figurine known as the Dancing Girl, making it appear clothed. After the newspaper’s report and scrutiny by the Education Ministry, NCERT decided to restore the original depiction in the digital edition and future copies.
The figurine is an archaeological artefact, significant for what it reveals about Harappan craftsmanship and material culture. Altering it to accommodate presumed sensitivities risks replacing accurate representation with contemporary moral assumptions. The episode does not establish a general censorship policy, but it raises a legitimate question about whether sensitivities are shaping the presentation of evidence without sound educational reasons. Its correction also shows the value of journalism and public scrutiny.
Teaching Democracy Consistently
The new textbook’s section on the Emergency of 1975-77 can help students understand constitutional breakdown, censorship, preventive detention and concentrated executive power. But democratic education loses credibility if it scrutinises abuses by one government while omitting politically inconvenient episodes involving another. The Babri Masjid demolition, the communal violence of 1992-93 and the 2002 Gujarat riots matter to understanding religious mobilisation, political power, minority rights and the State’s constitutional duties. A textbook need not discuss every riot;but it must explain significant events according to clear, consistent criteria. Removing material because it is contentious is not the same as addressing historical complexity.
Likewise, information about the Election Commission’s SIR of electoral rolls should help students understand both the legitimate goal of accurate voter lists and the safeguards needed to protect eligible citizens from arbitrary exclusion. Democracy is not strengthened by teaching children to trust every official action uncritically. It is strengthened by showing how institutions work, how decisions can be scrutinised and why accountability matters.
What Kind of Citizens are We Preparing?
Textbooks shape how children imagine their country and understand the relationship between communities. A sustained narrative associating one community with aggression, another with civilisational greatness, and religious tradition with unquestionable truth may encourage inherited suspicion and the belief that national belonging depends on religion. These effects cannot be attributed automatically to any single chapter or revision. But they are serious risks when selective framing and omission recur.
The BJP government should be held to standards that apply to any government shaping public education: transparency, scholarly accountability, constitutional equality and respect for scientific inquiry. That requires systematic comparison of old and new textbooks, documentation of changes, consultation with independent historians and scientists, and clear explanations for significant revisions. It also means distinguishing factual errors from legitimate scholarly disagreement.
NCERT should publish transparent reasons for major changes and include scholars with diverse perspectives in textbook committees. Students should be encouraged to compare sources, examine conflicting accounts and recognise the difference between evidence and ideological interpretation.
India’s future is shaped in classrooms as well as in Parliament, courts and political rallies. If education teaches that one religion represents the nation more authentically than others, that historical wrongdoing belongs collectively to particular communities, or that inherited beliefs should escape scrutiny, the effects may last for generations. If it teaches students to investigate evidence, acknowledge wrongdoing wherever it occurs, respect religious freedom and challenge abuses of power, it can strengthen the republic.
The choice is not between cultural pride and secularism. It is between an education that expands the mind and one that narrows it around predetermined identities. The Constitution of India promises equality, freedom of conscience and fundamental rights. A democratic republic should have the confidence to teach uncomfortable history: to discuss religious-site destruction without assigning collective guilt, communal violence without partisan selectivity, ancient achievements without exaggeration, and religious beliefs without confusing them with scientific evidence.
The textbook may not contain an obvious falsehood. It may present a selective past so consistently that students never realise which questions they have not been taught to ask. If NCERT’s changes privilege a communal-nationalist narrative, marginalise inconvenient facts and weaken the distinction between evidence and belief, their consequences will reach beyond examinations – to citizenship, secularism, science and the meaning of India itself.
Education in a constitutional democracy should free minds from inherited prejudice, not give prejudice the authority of a textbook. India’s children deserve to inherit a country and a history in all their complexity, and the Constitution that teaches them to live as equals.