Ever since the BJP came to power in 2014, the efforts to turn Secular India into Hindu Rashtra have been intensified. The recent changes done by NCERT in the textbooks of History, Political Science and Social Science betray the hidden agenda of the Sangh Parivar-monitored government. Deleting and rewriting chapters in NCERT textbooks to suit the partisan agenda of a particular group is an injustice to the students, teachers, parents and history itself. History is the chronological record of the events of the past, as they evolved in history at different times and in different places. Tempering history in view of distorting the facts as per one’s whims and fancies is a moral crime.
Saffronisation of education began and intensified since 2014. NCERT books have been revised thrice since 2014. The first revision was done in 2017 in view of updating the textbooks to reflect the recent events including the legislation on GST. It resulted in 1,334 changes across 182 books and increased content on ancient Indian knowledge and practices and a focus on national icons that had been overlooked according to BJP and the right-wing advocates. The second revision took place in 2018. It is known as the ‘textbook rationalization’ to reduce syllabus burden on students. The exercise led to 20% reduction primarily in Social Science textbooks. The third revision was done in 2022 which aimed to reduce the curriculum load further and to help the students to recover from learning disruptions caused by COVID-19 pandemic.
All references to 2002 Gujarat massacre are removed, content related to caste system has been reduced, chapters on protests and social movements and excesses during the Emergency have been dropped from History, Political Science and Sociology from class VI to XII. Removal of mention of Gandhi’s unpopularity among the Hindu extremists and of the ban on RSS in the aftermath of his assassination has incurred the wrath of historians, scholars, and political leaders. All evidence that Gandhi was killed because of his insistence that India belongs to all who live in it, Muslims and Christians and not just Hindus has been deleted. In fact, Hindutva ideology claims that India belongs to Hindus only. The major cut is of the section on Mughal history, the contribution of Akbar and Shah Jahan and an attempt is made to portray Muslims as barbarians, who invaded India only to rape, pillage, plunder and murder. Akbar invited to his court Islamic, Hindu, Jain and Zoroastrian scholars for religious discussions and Jesuits from Goa to learn about teachings of Christianity.
Fr Rudolf Aquaviva, Fr Antony Monserrate and Br Francis Henriques went on a mission to Fatehpur Sikri and interacted with Akbar, who built a church in Agra in 1599. Shah Jahan’s reign is known as the ‘Golden Age of Mughal Architecture.’ The wonder of the world ‘Taj Mahal’ in Agra is his brainchild. The studies of medieval history will be incomplete without the reference to the Mughal Empire. There is complete saffronisation behind the changes made in NCERT books and it undermines the secular education envisaged by the Constitution. The truth will prevail. Abraham Lincoln said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
