The new NCERT Class 6 Social Science textbook released a couple of days back has a pack of surprises in the way history has been interpreted. Though NCERT says it adheres to the parametres laid down by the NEP 2020, the exaggerated attempts at Indianisation and subsequent obliteration or downplaying of certain relevant but unsavoury facts take us to something beyond the obvious.
For instance, the Harappan civilisation has been renamed as the ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’ and ‘Indus-Sarasvati’ civilisation, while the ‘Sarasvati’ river’s desiccation has been mentioned as one of the reasons for the decline of the Harappan society. The book also says India had a “prime meridian of its own” called the ‘Ujjayini meridian’.
‘Exploring Society: India and Beyond’ is the first Social Science textbook released by the NDA government in alignment with the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023. It is intended for use in schools starting from the current academic session. Unlike earlier, when there were separate textbooks for History, Political Science and Geography, the new textbook is the sole resource for Social Science.
The book explains that Social Science has many sub-disciplines, but students “need not feel intimidated by all these terms”. Instead, the book is divided into five themes: ‘India and the World: Land and the People’; ‘Tapestry of the Past’; ‘Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions’; ‘Governance and Democracy’; ‘Economic Life Around Us’.
In a departure from the past, the textbook makes multiple references to the ‘Sarasvati’ river in the chapter pertaining to the beginning of Indian civilisation. The old History textbook, ‘Our Past I’, mentioned the river only once in a section on the Rig Veda, where it is included among the rivers named in the hymns in the Vedas.
In the new textbook, the river finds a prominent place in a chapter on the ‘Beginnings of Indian Civilisation’, where the Harappan civilisation is referred to as the ‘Indus-Sarasvati’ or ‘Sindhu-Sarasvati’ civilisation. It says the ‘Sarasvati’ basin included major cities of the civilisation — Rakhigarhi and Ganweriwala — along with smaller cities and towns. The river, according to the new textbook, “today goes by the name of ‘Ghaggar’ in India and ‘Hakra’ in Pakistan (hence the name ‘Ghaggar-Hakra River’)”, and is now seasonal. In two maps in the book — one that marks out some of the rivers of the sub-continent, and another showing the main settlements of the ‘Indus-Sarasvati civilisation’ — the river has been marked out along with the Indus and its tributaries.
The river also plays a key role in a section on how the Harappan civilisation declined. It says that two factors are agreed upon: one is “climate change” which caused reduced rainfall, and the other is that the “Sarasvati river dried up in its central basin; suddenly, cities there, such as Kalibangan or Banawali, were abandoned”.
The old textbook does not refer to the drying up of the river as being among the reasons behind the decline of the Harappan cities – it says that some scholars suggest that the rivers dried up, others suggest that there was deforestation, and in some areas there were floods. “But none of these reasons can explain the end of all the cities. Flooding, or a river drying up, would have had an effect in only some areas. It appears as if the rulers lost control,” the old book said.
In response to a question on mentions of the Sarasvati River and its marking on maps in the new textbook compared to the old one, NCERT sources said: “The entire content, illustrations and maps of the present textbook is based on the new syllabus developed as a follow-up of NCF-SE 2023. Therefore, question of comparison between the content of old and new textbook does not arise.”
In keeping with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which calls for the “accurate inclusion of traditional Indian knowledge including tribal and other local knowledge throughout into the curriculum, across humanities, sciences, arts, crafts and sports, whenever relevant”, the new textbook contains a note on the pronunciation of Sanskrit words since it uses some words “in Sanskrit and a few other Indian languages”.
The Geography section, on mountains and landscapes, also includes poetry by Kalidasa — the Kumarasambhava and its reference to the Himalayas — and mentions Tamil Sangam poetry and its association with landscapes.
A chapter titled ‘Locating Places on the Earth’ says that the Greenwich Meridian “is not the first prime meridian” and that “many centuries before Europe, India had a prime meridian of its own” which was called the “madhya rekha (or ‘middle line’)” which passed through the city of Ujjain. “The Ujjayini meridian became a reference for calculations in all Indian astronomical texts,” it says.
Like in the old Political Science textbook, the new one too has a chapter on diversity, but has left out references to caste-based discrimination and inequality. In the old textbook, there was an explanation of the term Dalit and even a section on B R Ambedkar, his fight for the rights of the Dalit community, and his experience of caste-based discrimination. The chapter, ‘Unity in Diversity, or Many in One’, in the new textbook focuses on diversity in terms of food, textiles and clothing, festivals and literature in the country.
The word ‘caste’ finds a single mention in chapter 7 on ‘India’s Cultural Roots’, in a quote by sociologist André Béteille which reads: “The thousands of castes and tribes on the Indian subcontinent have influenced each other in their religious beliefs and practices since the beginning of history and before.”
On why the section on discrimination and BR Ambedkar’s experience of caste-based discrimination was removed, NCERT sources said: “New textbooks are necessarily very different from the old ones as mandated by the NEP 2020, which calls for profound changes in the way new syllabi, teaching materials (including textbooks) and pedagogical methods need to be designed. The NCF-SE 2023 further defines and refines the parameters for this systemic change. The new textbooks attempt to reflect this change; therefore, comparing them with the old textbooks is pointless.”
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