The model textbooks published by the council for adoption by school systems across India have generated controversies over the years.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was established in 1961 by the Government of India by combining a number of existing organisations.
[5][6] The Minister of Education M. C. Chagla was concerned that the textbooks in history should not recite myths but be secular and rational explanations of the past.
The controversy centers around the charges of an attempted "saffronised" rewriting of Indian history (i.e., making lessons consonant with the Hindutva).
The main issues seemed to be that they were not sufficiently critical of certain Muslim invaders during the medieval period and that they emphasized the role of leaders like Tilak and Aurobindo in the development of Hindu-Muslim antagonisms.
[7] Nonetheless, the government passed an act in July 1978, withdrawing R. S. Sharma's Ancient India from the syllabus of the Central Board of Secondary Education.
[10] The BJP opined that their only goal was to overhaul the stagnant and saturated institutions like NCERT and free them from the alleged dynastic control and hegemony of the Indian National Congress and the Communists.
[17] The NDA was defeated in the elections of 2004 and the new UPA government pledged to "de-saffronise" textbooks and curricula nationwide and restore the secular character of education.
[10] The Ministry of Human Resource Development, which oversaw this project, stated that it had made only minor modifications to the books that predated the "saffronised" era.
This panel suggested that the textbooks that were being used in school syllabuses had poor content, were presented shoddily, and contained significant amounts of irrelevant information.
[10] Press reports indicated that the rush to "de-saffronise" school texts resulted in Urdu versions not being ready for the academic year, which began in April.
On 2 April, Ramdas Athavale held a press conference and burnt copies of the page from the textbook prescribed in the political-civic science syllabus.
Athavale demanded the resignation of Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal who also was the president of the NCERT board.
NCERT chief advisors Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar resigned on Friday after the government issued an apology and promised to remove the cartoon.
Mukarram Ahmed wrote to Kapil Sibal asking to remove a medieval painting of Gabriel the Archangel and another of pilgrims at the Kaaba from the chapter 'The Central Islamic Lands' on the ground that they were against Sharia.
However, rejecting this, Najaf Haider, an associate professor at the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University said "The Gabriel painting was sourced from a 13th century text called Ajaib-ul-Makhluqat, written by a renowned scholar, Qazwini.
[31][32] The erased chapters are related to ‘Kings and Chronicles; the Mughal Courts (C. 16th and 17th centuries)’ from the book ‘Themes of Indian History-Part II’.
Apart from this, from Class 12 civics book Politics in Indian since Independence, chapters like Rise of popular movements, ‘Era of one-party dominance’ have been removed.
NCERT has removed from the new Class 12 political science and history textbooks references such as the “dislike of Hindu extremists for Mahatma Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity” and banning of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) after his assassination.
A comparison of the new Class 12 political science textbook titled “Politics in India since Independence” with its older version showed that a reference to how Gandhi's “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate Gandhiji” has also been deleted from the sub-topic titled “Mahatma Gandhi’s sacrifice” in the first chapter.
References to Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki have been removed from the social science textbooks of Classes 7 and 8 as part of the latest revision.
Critics, however, argued that the revisions were politically motivated and aimed at downplaying the role of these events in shaping modern India.
[36] According to S. Irfan Habib, a historian, the rewriting of history is in line with the BJP's attempts to impose its Hindu nationalist propaganda.
He further called it "a conscious act by the present government to pursue agendas to further the religious divide in India by brainwashing young kids.
[38] According to Apoorvanand, a University of Delhi professor, Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government "seeks to portray India as a historically Hindu-only land".
[40] According to Harbans Mukhia, a historian of medieval India, the Modi-led BJP is using a strategy to win the next general elections in 2024 by unifying the Hindu vote by way of attaching the narrative that Hindus are under threat from Muslims.
[40][41] According to Suhas Palshikar, a political scientist, the deletion exercise is an "act of rewriting" adding that the BJP government intends "not to mention inconvenient facts".