Rewriting history: Changes to India's textbooks drive lasting consequences

In India, names can change; streets, railway stations, buildings and archaeological heritage have all been renamed. In recent years, these are not anomalies but a part of a larger design to "reinvent" India's history.

This reinvention has spilled over to school curriculums with textbooks omitting chapters, deleting incidents of national importance, and renaming historical structures.

In a recent example of such a change, history books studied by 17-year olds were modified last month after recent elections by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the country's top educational body.

It sanctioned a change that removed the name of the Babri Masjid. When referring to its demolition in 1992, the famed mosque was instead called a "three domed structure." Further details reduced a description of the historical destruction from a four-pager in the earlier edition to a two-pager.

NCERT has also revised segments on the Gujarat riots of 2002 and "Father of the nation" Mahatma Gandhi's fervent efforts to foster Hindu-Muslim unity amid the push for Independence from Britain, among other changes.

Sweeping changes

Since 2017, this is the fourth round of "revisions" (or omissions and deletion of chapters/sections) pertaining to secular India, pluralism, or Muslim history in NCERT textbooks.

For the unversed, the curriculum drawn up by NCERT is followed by the Central Board of School Education (CBSE), which is affiliated with more than 30,000 schools nationwide. NCERT had always justified rationalising these omissions as "irrelevant" or "overlapping" or as a measure to reduce the load of the curriculum on the students (especially after COVID-19).

But a closer look finds these as strategies that mesh well with the existing political climate, which seeks to make Muslim, Christian and Dalit history "invisible" in more ways than one can imagine.

Notably NCERT defended its latest revisions and omissions by citing "positivity" in education. "Why should we teach about riots in school textbooks? We want to create positive citizens, not violent and depressed individuals," declared the organisation's director in June.

Omissions

NCERT was founded in 1961 to develop teaching materials including publishing model textbooks. From 1947 to 2005, India's school curriculum had previously undergone changes four times, in 1975, 1988, 2000 and 2005.

However, once the ultra-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014, rigorous and recurrent "revisions" in school textbooks began, a contrast to its earlier history.

Over the past decade, curriculums have been frequently changed or tweaked (from 2014-24) every two-three years. In the first round, in 2017 NCERT made 1,334 changes, data updates, and corrections across its 182 textbooks.

The second round of omissions, which were justified as "unburdening" the students from the pressure of the school syllabus, included parts of Mughal history from the section titled "Kings and Chronicles; the Mughal Courts," found in Class 12 textbooks read in state schools across the country,

Additionally, careful pruning was done to the section documenting Gandhi's assassination in 1948, the declaration of Emergency by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975 and more.

The most recent changes include elimination of the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 and its associated Hindutva politics from Chapter 8, "Recent Development in Indian Politics."

Within this segment, the subsection titled, "What is the legacy of Ram Janambhoomi movement and the Ayodhya demolition for the nature of political moblisation?" has been changed to "What is the legacy of Ram Janambhoomi movement."

This edition has excluded the rathyatra (Indian politician L.K Advani's road trip in a chariot) from Gujarat to Ayodhya, which led to the rise of politically charged mobs destroying the 16th century structure, and BJP's remorse on "happenings at Ayodhya."

Instead, these details have been replaced to drive the narrative towards the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement, leading to the consecration of the temple. To that end, the deadly Gujarat riots have been removed from the chapter on "Democratic Rights" making it generic in the context of human rights violations, while a section on "Secularism" in the same book, no longer mentions the casualties of the riots as being Muslim.

Limiting knowledge

Professor Richard Eaton, a renowned American historian of India in the pre-1800s, once stated, "historians, especially, are accustomed to thinking empirically, that is gathering evidence and building arguments 'from ground up.' "

Eaton further mentioned, "Post-Independence, the use of (Farsi) declined and historians did not look up sources in the original. To discover new information, you have to go to the mofussil record rooms and not just sit in Calcutta and expect them to come to you."

But for the BJP, guided by its ideological mentor Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS), India's history is not evidential, but rather driven by the lens of "ethnicity" and "civilization."

For example, China's education system boxing up the Tiananmen Square massacre; or erstwhile Soviet Union never letting public education speak truthfully about Joseph Stalin or his killings of Cossacks; or the sidelining of Black, indigenous history in the United States; and the Taliban's limiting autonomy in education.

Consequences

With the latest revisions, NCERT has presented fragmented lessons in Indian history to students who will soon be young adults, eligible to decide independently, and exercise their rights.

Since textbooks are often the last word in learning in Indian schools, the consequence will be impactful. Students' understanding of History as a subject would be incomplete. They will not know the role of Hindutva supporters in the demolition of a famous 16th Century mosque, or what happened on or post-December 6, 1992. They will not know how riots happen, the historical, cultural, political complexities behind them or that the "mistrust" between two religions are derivatives of a long history fueled by political interests from colonial times.

To that they would also not know the efforts of M.K Gandhi, and India's first leader Jawaharlal Nehru to retain Hindu and Muslim unity.

In all likelihood, they will normalise the invisibility of Muslims, Dalits and Christians from India's history. They will not know that despite their contributions, "Indian Muslims have always been under-represented in the institutions of India, including the bureaucracy, the police and the judiciary. Since the rise of the BJP they have also been marginalised in the elected bodies – the national parliament as well as state assemblies," writes Christophe Jaffrelot in his book Indian Muslims in an Era of Hindu Majoritarianism (2024).

Learning social sciences in a partial manner will deprive them of understanding the complexities and the connectivity of this country, how India remains diverse and composite all at once and how over centuries the country has been built by the contribution of tens of thousands on the framework of pluralism, the very same one which its Constitution is drafted.

One can't help but remember this couplet by legendary Firaq Gorakhpuri (pen name of poet Raghupati Sahay, 1896-1982):

"Sar-zamīn-e-hind par aqvām-e-ālam ke 'firāq' qāfile baste gae, hindostāñ bantā gayā (On the soil of Hindustan, O Firaq Caravans from all over the world kept coming, and so was Hindustan built)."