One would normally believe that the more hardened an ideologue is, the more difficult it will be for the opposite camp to accept his treatises. In the case of the textbooks of history published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), however, the second generation of leftists, believed to be softer on Marxist beliefs, have disappointed more than their hardcore Communist predecessors.



Something similar to what had happened to Murli Manohar Joshi, the Human Resource Development Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, seems to have happened to the younger Marxists. Joshi was heckled so much for ‘saffronising’ education that the book writers commissioned by him ended up with compromised texts with no perspective. Similarly, Arjun Singh of the UPA1 was slammed so much for his ‘detoxification’ drive that UPA2 decided to be more subtle about peddling Marxist history. The result: one only gets fleeting glimpses of our past from the revised curriculum and presentation, all a fine hodgepodge.



The textbook recommended for Class VII, arguably the most controversial of books out of those for the grades from VI to XII, gives the student no sense of the time and space he is in. It comes across as a job done by some history-illiterate clerks who pasted facts at random rather than following the chronology of events.



Qutb Minar built by Qutbuddin Aibak figures along with the Kandariya Mahadeva temple of the Chandelas and the Rajarajeshwara temple in Thanjavur. Instead of dealing with the mosque in the premises of Qutb Minar in the section on the said monument, the mosque surfaces with a detailed diagram after the description of the temples.

In the second chapter called “New Kings and Kingdoms”, which deals with rulers like the Gurjara-Pratiharas, Rashtrakuta and Pala dynasties, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni pops up out of thin air, as if he were an Indian king rather than an invader. In the chapter on Mughal kings and emperors, Akbar resurfaces after the entire chronology from Babar up to Aurangzeb is over.



Think about the lasting impression an adolescent or youth will get from such a book. Unlike our generation that grew up on Marxist history till the 1980s and yet could recall the order of the monarchies from the Slave Dynasty to the navvabs, zamindars (Muslim and Hindu feudal lords respectively who emerged after the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb) and Maratha campaigners, today’s seventh graders will not be able to visualise the schedule of mediaeval history years after they are no longer in school, or earlier—when they have diversified to science or commerce at the higher secondary or undergraduate level.

Then there are gaps in dates. On page 31 of the book, early Turkish rulers are said to have ruled between 1206 and 1290. But if Ghiyasuddin Balban died in 1287, why are three extra years added to the period? How could the Khalji dynasty have ruled between 1290 and 1320 if Alauddin Khalji died in 1316? How does the period of Tughlaq dynasty span from 1320 to 1414 if Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s reign ended in 1388? How come the Sayyid dynasty is said to have ruled between 1414 and 1451 when the very next line says that Khizr Khan was gone in 1421? If Bahlul Lodi died in 1489, how on earth was the Lodi dynasty’s era 1451-1526?

But the order and timing of historical events is not the only issue with this NCERT textbook. There is an obvious attempt to underplay religious bigotry and despotism of the Islamists.



In the chapter called New Kings and Kingdoms, which deals with rulers like the Gurjara-Pratiharas, Rashtrakuta and Pala dynasties, Mahmud of Ghazni pops up out of thin air, as if he were an Indian king rather than an invader. Asserting that kingdoms in India frequently went to war against each other and that victorious rulers would often plunder the temples of the defeated, it goes on in the same breath to say: “One of the best known of such rulers is Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, Afghanistan.”One can be sure that Mahmud himself would have been horrified if he knew that one day he would be categorized with Indian kings.

Prithviraj Chauhan is dismissed in one sentence: “The best-known Chahamana ruler was Prithviraja III (1168-1192), who defeated an Afghan ruler named Sultan Muhammad Ghori in 1191, but lost to him the very next year, in 1192.” Again, no mention of invasion. However, quite incredibly, ‘invasion’ crops up when we come to the Delhi Sultanate: “The state was also challenged by Mongol invasions from Afghanistan.” It is of course never mentioned that the Delhi Sultanate itself was set up by Turkish invaders. So the only invaders, according to the textbook, are those who attacked Indian territories captured by foreigners!

If such omissions are not obtrusive enough, the Sikh gurus persecuted and executed through the period of Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb are altogether absent from the book. The book has skipped the death sentence given to the children of Guru Gobind Singh in Aurangzeb’s era, which is remembered as the most diabolical incident perpetrated on Sikhs in the history of the Mughal kings.

There is no mention of the torture Guru Arjan was put through under Jahangir, let alone his execution. The wars Guru Har Gobind fought against Jahangir and then Shah Jahan are absent, as is Guru Har Rai’s persecution by Aurangzeb. The last Mughal emperor—those after Aurangzeb can’t be called emperors—had also summoned Guru Har Krishan to Delhi on a flimsy ground of rebellion. Imagine the mighty empire feeling the heat from a person who died of small pox when he was all of eight, and the NCERT writers do not find a pious young soul serving those affected by the epidemic—and giving up his life in the process—amid harassment by a brutal king worth a mention!

If the Communists could not let these lesser incidents in, how could they recount the persecution, torture, imprisonment and execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur on Aurangzeb’s orders? They simply skipped this guru’s ordeal.

This is not a partisan issue dear only to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In 2001, Sikhs led by the Indian National Congress’s Arvinder Singh Lovely had taken serious exception to the Satish Chandra-authored history textbook for Class XI, where the Marxist historian had talked of Guru Tegh Bahadur as a plunderer. Mahmud of Ghazni is equated with Indian rulers and Muhammad Ghori was not a plunderer, but Guru Tegh Bahadur is!

Meanwhile every attempt is made to run down Hindu society. After describing the life of a village populated by the ‘lower’ castes, leading—and loaded—questions are asked: “Were there any Brahmanas in this hamlet? Describe all the activities that were taking place in the village. Why do you think temple inscriptions ignore these activities?” When talking about the local administration methods of the Cholas, the Class VII textbook asks: “Do you think women participated in these assemblies?” An entire sub-chapter is devoted to the Chola taxation system, titled Four Hundred Taxes! One is not defending the caste system or gender bias or the taxes the Cholas imposed, but one can certainly ask why the Cholas are singled out for criticism, while the status of women under Islam is never mentioned, and why no Islamic ruler/ dynasty seems to have done anything wrong. In fact, Alauddin Khalji taxing common peasants at 50 per cent of their yields is praised.

Timurlane, whose rapacious military conquests are estimated to have killed 17 million people, or about 5 per cent of the world’s population at that time, is called ‘great’ by the Class VII textbook, while Maharaja Ranjit Singh merits just one laconic sentence: “The Sikh territories in the late eighteenth century extended from the Indus to the Jamuna but they were divided under different rulers. One of them, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, reunited these groups and established his capital at Lahore in 1799.”