The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has recently introduced history textbooks with ‘rationalised content’ at the senior secondary level, for the 2023-2024 session. The revised versions of Themes in Indian History (Part II) and Themes in Indian History (Part III) are available on the NCERT website. The two textbooks are intended for students of class 12 studying history.
The uploaded version of Themes Part II informs us that “the uploaded textbooks are rationalised in view of COVID-19 with an objective to reduce the content load”, and that “the content in these textbooks was rationalised for 2022-23. The same textbooks are continued for 2023-24”.
The general criteria for ‘Rationalisation of the Content in the Textbooks’ are briefly spelt out somewhat vaguely:
“In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to reduce the content load on students. The National Education Policy 2020 also emphasises reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with a creative mindset. In this background, the NCERT has undertaken the exercise to rationalise the textbooks across all classes.”
Further, overlapping of content, “difficulty level”, and “content, which is irrelevant in the present context [sic]” are factors to be considered for the purpose of ‘rationalisation’. The so-called rationalisation of NCERT history textbooks for class 12 does not appear to have any of these considerations as its basis.
It may also be mentioned that the history syllabus for class 12 available on the official website does not mention any of these changes, so the two textbooks are not in conformity with the syllabus.
An arbitrary exercise
The framing of a syllabus for any subject is serious business. It involves extensive consultation and long hours of discussion about what might be absolutely essential for a subject to be taught meaningfully, what ought to be included, or what could be excluded. The architecture of a syllabus is undermined by piecemeal modifications. Of course, nothing prevents the NCERT from altering the syllabus, and it may be assumed that this will be done sooner rather than later (as has happened with the history syllabi for history at the undergraduate level), but it would mean that textbooks would determine the rubrics of the syllabus rather than the other way round.
The arbitrary dropping of some of the chapters in the textbooks (which were first published in 2007 replacing an earlier set of NCERT history textbooks authored by R.S. Sharma, Satish Chandra and Bipan Chandra), ostensibly for ‘rationalisation of content’, quite obviously is a political intervention.
Other than the vague criteria mentioned earlier, no specific reasons have been provided for ‘rationalising’ by dropping some chapters and retaining others – a chapter on the Mughal period, another on colonial cities, and yet another on understanding partition – though there is a method in the madness.
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It might have appeared to the NCERT that the Mughal period had received more attention than it deserved; that the history of urban centres such as Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay could be excluded on account of what is cryptically referred to as “difficulty level” (whatever that might mean); and that there was little need to understand partition as its history was perhaps irrelevant.
The original version of Themes in Indian History (II) has two chapters on the Mughal period, both focussing on the 16th and 17th centuries. In terms of the chronology of the Mughal rulers, this is the period from Babur (d.1530) to almost the end of Aurangzeb’s reign (1707). The chapter which has been retained deals with the economic history of the period, agrarian relations, women in rural society, the structure of the village, artisans, irrigation and technology, forest-dwellers and tribes; and it introduces the Ain-i Akbari as a historical source.
Group portrait of Mughal rulers, from Babur to Aurangzeb, with the Mughal ancestor Timur seated in the middle. On the left: Shah Jahan, Akbar and Babur, with Abu Sa’id of Samarkand and Timur’s son, Miran Shah. On the right: Aurangzeb, Jahangir and Humayun, and two of Timur’s other offspring Umar Shaykh and Muhammad Sultan. Created c. 1707–12. Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0 igo
The chapter which follows, and has been now deleted in the ‘rationalised’ version, is entitled ‘Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Court (c. sixteenth-seventeenth centuries)’. This deals with the nature of the Mughal state, ideas of kingship, processes of legitimation, the nobility, and aspects of religion especially in the context of the elite, cities, provincial administration, royal pilgrimages, and relations with the Safavids.
The discussion on most of these issues incorporates an examination of some of the key sources for the period such as the Akbar Nama of Abu’l Fazl, and the Badshah Nama of Abdul Hamid Lahori (commissioned by Shah Jahan). The objective, according to the syllabus, is to “show how chronicles and other sources are used to reconstruct the histories of political institutions”, and “the ways in which historians have used the texts to reconstruct political histories”. While discussing a specific type of historical source, namely chronicles, the chapter acquaints the student with the evolution of history-writing during the Mughal period, and the manuscript as a physical object.
The two chapters complement each other. Removing one of them makes the textbook, and knowledge about the Mughal period, lopsided. This is unfortunate for two reasons.
Firstly, given that there is a vast scholarship on the themes dealt with in the deleted chapter, a student of history would remain ignorant of important insights provided by scholars who have contributed to an understanding of the issues dealt with in it. There has been a great deal of interest in recent years in questions of sovereignty, courtly ritual, governance, ideas of kingship, the production of manuscripts, scribes, paintings, royal symbolism, and the organisation of the imperial household. There is a lot of exciting published research on these themes.
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Secondly, the student would have an incomplete idea about the kind of questions historians are asking of their sources and the protocols of the historian. The purpose of this chapter is not merely to talk about the Mughal period, but also to impart basic training in the historian’s craft.
In fact, this is the pattern followed by all the chapters; the syllabus places a lot of emphasis on teaching students how to deal with sources, and the historical method. We should bear in mind that the two textbooks in question are intended for students of classes 11 and 12. These are students who would have opted for studying history at a higher level, as a specialised subject, which they could then study further in a university or for pursuing a career for which training a historian would be essential or desirable.
Whither rationalisation?
The deletion of this chapter is illustrative of the unprofessional manner in which the ‘rationalisation’ exercise has been undertaken, with little respect for the discipline, or regard for pedagogical requirements.
What is more disturbing is the politics underlying the ‘rationalisation’ of history textbooks. This politics can be perceived clearly when the dropping of this chapter is seen together with the removal of two other chapters, one of which has not been noticed much in reports or comments in the print media, namely the chapter in the Themes in World History meant for class 11 history students, entitled ‘The Central Islamic Lands’.
The arrangement of chapters in the textbook places this theme between the chapter on the Roman empire, and that on nomadic empires (mainly dealing with Genghis Khan, d. 1227, and the Mongols). The other chapter which has been dropped presumably because it does not conform to the political agenda of the present dispensation is that on partition, as mentioned earlier.
The chapter on the Roman Empire looks at the history of the empire till its crisis, the Germanic migrations, and the formation of the Byzantine Empire between the 4th and 7th centuries. The chapter on nomadic empires mainly deals with the latter half of the 12th century and the 13th century. There is thus a chronological gap of about six centuries in history that would be taught to students on the basis of the ‘rationalised’ textbook.
What is a matter of even greater concern is that these students would not learn much about the early history of Islam; the Umayyads, the Abbasids; the emergence of sultanates; the crusades; the evolution of the state in west Asia, Iran, central Asia, north Africa and Spain or the economy of these regions or their intellectual history, or cultural trends in a large part of the globe extending from Spain to Afghanistan to northern India, during the period from circa early seventh century to the twelfth century!
This would also mean they would remain largely ignorant about the emergence of societies with a large number of Muslims, the evolution of Islamic learning, and the interactions during these centuries between Islam and other religious beliefs. Again, given that the scholarship on these themes is vast, and has enormous depth and richness, this would deny a student the opportunity to be familiar with the insights and ways of seeing contributed by this scholarship. Moreover, as regions do not exist in watertight compartments, they would have little sense of the interconnections which shape history.
Similarly, the removal of the chapter on the historical processes which led to partition, and the violence which accompanied independence and partition, would leave the student inadequately informed about an extremely crucial phase of the history of modern India. This is a chapter written with great sensitivity chapter and is based on the extensive literature that has been produced on the partition, violence, memory and the history of the 1940s.
What is worrying here is that students would not learn how to handle, as historians, such sensitive questions. And as for the deletion of the excellent chapter on colonial cities, which was part of the original Themes in Indian History Part III, and has not attracted much comment, its deletion takes away the possibility of teaching to history students the early history of colonialism, aspects of urban history and colonial censuses. Ultimately, of course, we might be grateful for what has been retained, for the time being at least.
Amar Farooqui is a professor of history at the University of Delhi.