New Delhi: India has tended to present a ‘very gentle‘ and ‘sanitised‘ version of history, avoiding unpleasant aspects, but “we took a different and more honest approach by introducing students to the ‘darker chapters‘ of history as well“, Michel Danino, the head of the NCERT committee behind the drafting of the new social science textbooks, told ThePrint in an interview.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has recently released the Class 8 social science textbook, in line with the National Curriculum Framework and the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The book, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, highlights instances of “brutality” and “religious intolerance” during the rule of the Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate. The Marathas, in contrast, are portrayed in a more positive light.
Critics have described these changes as an “ideological move” that selectively glorifies or vilifies historical figures.
In an interview with ThePrint Tuesday, Michel Danino, however, denied any ideological interference in the drafting of the new textbooks.
“No political leader came to us saying, ‘You have to include this, or mention this particular figure or fact’. No ideological group of any kind contacted us to say, ‘You must include this chapter’, and so on,” he said.
Danino said that so far in India, there had been a tendency to make a “very gentle” and “slightly sanitised” version of history, “where we avoid all unpleasantness, thinking perhaps that this is going to, you know, traumatise the student and so on”.
“We took another approach. First of all, we made an honest one—disclaimer, if you wish to call it that, to the student—that there are darker chapters in history. And we were not, some commentators in the media said that we spoke of the dark ages in the medieval period; we never use this phrase,” he said.
In a ‘Note on some darker periods in history’, the disclaimer reads: “No one should be held responsible today for events of the past.”
Michel Danino explained that the textbook addressed the brutality of some historical events, particularly warfare. He noted that while warfare always existed, there are different types—some with limited impact on civilians, and others that involve significant cruelty and suffering. The committee intended to highlight the distinction because it represented a valid historical approach, he said.
Danino also said the textbook did not focus solely on violence or negativity. “Contrary to media reports, we did not simply state that Akbar was brutal in his youth. That perspective comes from his admission in his memoir, Akbarnama, where he recounts his military campaigns. You can sense, he is not entirely proud of his past, but he is honest about it.”
“There is nothing wrong with mentioning this—it helps us understand the different sides of a historical figure. We aimed to reflect the complexity of such personalities and to avoid extreme characterisations, whether overly positive or negative.”
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‘Marathas dismantled the Mughal Empire’
The revised Class 8 textbook portrays the Marathas, who ruled over a 17th-century kingdom in western India, as rulers who established “sovereignty”, describing their founder, Chhatrapati Shivaji, as a “strategist” and “true visionary”.
It compares Shivaji’s defeat of the Mughal nobleman Shaista Khan to a “modern-day surgical strike”, highlighting that during his retaliatory actions, Shivaji was always “careful” not to attack religious places.
Denying “selective glorification” allegations, Michel Danino said: “We selected the Marathas because they played an important—and largely uncontested—role in dismantling the Mughal Empire.”
“Remember, Aurangzeb spent the last 25 years of his life in the Deccan and was unable to return to Delhi. While he was also fighting other regional powers, the Marathas quickly became his main concern. After his death, the Maratha Empire controlled a large part of India, even if only for a relatively short period,” he said.
From a political history perspective, Danino added, the Marathas deserved the attention of the Indians.
“Whether we have glorified them excessively, I am not sure. For example, we insisted on including the Maratha raids in Bengal, which were very brutal and traumatised the local population. We could have left that out if we were only glorifying them, but we did not,” he said.
Danino added: “I believe some members of our team also wanted to counterbalance the neglect the Marathas have received in earlier textbooks, where they find brief mention only. The Marathas deserve much more study than we were able to provide—for instance, their administrative system was quite innovative in many ways.”
Critics have pointed out that the textbook does not get into as many details on the violence of the Marathas—the raids in the Rajput kingdoms or violent annexations of Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha, devastating local populations and forcing people to pay tributes called ‘chauth‘, or the destruction of temples in Karnataka—as it does for the Mughals.
Michel Danino, however, emphasised it was important to avoid simply saying something had been removed from or added to the textbook. The committee drafted the new textbooks with a different approach, covering a much broader chronological scope, he said, adding that the designing of textbooks under the National Curriculum Framework was such that the books were not supposed to be text-heavy, and therefore, the panel had to come up with “compressed timelines”. “We made certain choices. There are things which are left out, and we have not denied that.”
“We have been under criticism for leaving certain things out, but given the context—which I have explained—it was unavoidable. We have tried to be honest with history. There are many perspectives, including nationalist history, Marxist history, and others. Good historians understand that no interpretation is ever final,” Danino said.
“I believe we can strive for what I call honest history—based on the data available—where we aim to do justice to the past, even though we inevitably have to make certain choices,” he added.
Wrong image of colonial times?
According to Michel Danino, the committee widely felt that many young Indians continue to hold a somewhat positive image of the colonial period, without fully understanding the extent of the damage it caused.
The revised book is more critical of the history of the Colonial Era than the earlier books.
“Famines, at least, are now slowly becoming more widely known,” Danino said. “Though they were almost completely absent from earlier textbooks, these were, after all, engineered famines, or at the very least, made much worse by the ruthless taxation policies of the British, and the deliberate lack of relief provided to the victims.”
Moreover, Michel Danino emphasised that confronting such historical truths was essential for national self-respect. “We felt that any self-respecting nation owes recognition and respect to the victims of past atrocities—and these were atrocities.”
He further highlighted the massive economic exploitation India endured under colonial rule.
“The plunder of India’s wealth is not controversial—it is something the British themselves documented. The data shows the vast amount of wealth extracted from India through multiple channels: outright taxation, the creation of the so-called ‘India debt’, and forced contributions to colonial projects like railway and telegraph construction, the Indo-Afghan wars, and even the deployment of troops to suppress the Great Rebellion of 1857,” Danino said.
According to Michel Danino, historical records confirm that India was still a prosperous and economically vibrant land before British expansion.
“There was strong agricultural production, vibrant trade, and flourishing exports—from cotton and spices to finished goods. All of this—destroyed in a remarkably short time. Within just a century, India became a deeply impoverished country,” he said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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