Politics Of Retraction: How Is The Indian Education System Moulded?

The contested legacy of the Mughal empire is once again at the centre of India’s curriculum reforms. As Mughals re-enter the secondary classroom, a redefined heritage begins to take shape.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has released a textbook titled ‘Exploring Society: India and Beyond’ for Class 8th from the 2025-26 session, describing Babur as a “brutal and ruthless conqueror, slaughtering entire populations of cities”, Akbar’s reign as a “blend of brutality and tolerance”, and Aurangzeb as someone who destroyed temples and gurdwaras. 

The descriptions are followed by a careful disclaimer- “it is important to keep in mind that we, today, bear no responsibility for actions of individuals hundreds of years ago”. 

Does this disclaimer inherently validate the effect that such rousing descriptions might cause? 

Dr. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, an expert in Muslim politics and history and the author of Shikwa-e-Hind - The Political Future of Indian Muslims asserts that he finds the disclaimer to be a little contradictory as such content might further the prejudices against the minority community that are already prevalent in our society. 

As the scope of education narrows, so do the spheres of independent thoughts and heterogenic ideas. The result? Homogenic ideas gain precedence. 

In Outlook Magazine’s October 11, 2021’s issue Out of Syllabus, we looked at the Saffronisation Of Education in India. Preetha Nair visited the GLT Saraswati Bal Mandir School, a world removed from the bustling traffic just outside—a narrow street in South Delhi’s Nehru Nagar. GLT Saraswati Bal Mandir is among thousands of schools run by Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, the educatio­nal wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

On the walls of the three-storeyed building are emblazoned teachings and photographs of RSS ideologues K.B. Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar. Idols of goddess Saraswati in various hues can be spotted around corners and in the courtyard. The many paintings on the inner walls depict scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. A board outside a classroom announces a prayer schedule: Tuesdays, Hanuman Chalisa; Wednesdays, patriotic songs; Thursdays, Ramayana and on Fridays  hymns from the Bhagavad Gita.

RSS-run schools have been charged in states like Kerala and West Bengal with a saffronisation of its text books. In 2018, the West Bengal government ordered closure of 125 RSS run schools in the state, alleging distortion of history in its text books. In 2017, Kerala, too, witnessed protests by parents and activists over text books. 

This subversive control does not limit itself to a certain ideological whitewash, it seeps beyond, permeating deeper layers of thoughts and perception. Chinki Sinha highlights the Pedagogy Of The Oppressed: When Caste, Gender, Women’s Movement Were All 'Out Of Syllabus'.  

She saw Draupadi in Mahabharat on Doordar­shan. Rupa Ganguly played the character and she remembers the part where an attempt to disrobe her was made in the king’s court. She remembers getting angry. My mother, who told me things that were “out of syllabus”, said Draupadi was a strong woman, not a victim.

The missionary interventions in education in all-girl schools like hers were to inculcate family-­women values. She remembers the morning assembly and the moral science classes. Sexuality was never mentioned. Only bras were prescribed along with a short film titled Growing Girl, where they were made familiar with menstruation. 

She asserts that we grew up with a limited syllabus that left so many things out. Feminist pedagogy is important. Engaged pedagogy is important. Pedagogy of the oppressed is needed in a post-truth world.

These restrictions to curtail independent thoughts are systemically imposed into the written word. They begin with a Culture Of Intolerance that is hurting India's tradition of debate And discussion. Kuldeep Kumar points towards the concern that India, with its glorious tradition of rational thinking and reason-­based public debates, finds its­elf in a situation where prejudice prevails and coercion is used to stifle dissent. Ideas are not countered by alternative and better ideas, but forcibly suppressed by coercive State apparatus or raw vigilante muscle power. Ideological hegemony is freely utilised to promote certain ideas and to suppress others. Free, fair and public deba­tes and discussions of contentious iss­ues have become almost impossible, naturally impinging on literary and art­istic creativity. 

Vikas Pathak questions the Future of Education: Are Curriculum Changes Politically Motivated? On July 7, 2020, then Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank announced that he had advised the CBSE to reduce the course load for students of classes 9 to 12 because of the ­extraordinary situation prevailing during the pandemic. The result: chapters on secularism, federalism, gender, caste and religion were ­removed from the exam syllabus, along with those on the functioning of the human eye, the cleaning capacity of soap in hard and soft water, practical experiments like tests with acetic acid etc. They would, however, be retained as ­concepts to be taught. The CBSE said rationalisation of syllabus to the extent of 30 per cent was being done for nearly 190 subjects from classes 9 to 12 for 2020-21 as a one-time ­measure to ­reduce the burden on students ­during the pandemic.

Such challenges, pertaining to syllabus are more political than academic.Giridhar Jha explained Bihar's Conundrum: To Drop Or Not To Drop JP Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia From PG Syllabus. For someone who grew up as an “unswerving socialist”, as Nitish’s biographer-friend Arun Sinha puts it in Nitish Kumar and The Rise of Bihar (2011), and was drawn towards Lohia’s writings in his student days at Sri Ganesh High School at Bakhtiyarpur in Patna district, it was an embarrassment when the Chhapra-based Jai Prakash University (JPU) unceremoniously dropped works of both his idols—ironically, the university itself is named after JP—from its PG syllabus of political science recently. At the same time, the varsity included BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay along with Subhash Chandra Bose and Jyotiba Phule in the course. Apart from Lohia and JP, material on and by Dayanand Saraswati, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Bal Gangadhar Tilak were also dropped. But it was primarily the exclusion of Lohia and JP that kicked up a row; the inclusion of Upadhyay, in particular, was interpreted as a bid to saffronise education.