A chapter called “Note on Some Darker Periods in History” has been added in the NCERT’s new Class 8 Social Science textbook. This book introduced students about the Mughal and Delhi sultanate period, where “many instances of religious intolerance” have been mentioned. This book specifically gave description about Babur as a “brutal and ruthless conqueror, slaughtering entire populations of cities”, Akbar’s reign as a “blend of brutality and tolerance”.
The book has one of chapters which comes with a cautionary note, “no one should be held responsible today for events of the past”. For the ongoing academic session, Part 1 of the Social Science book of class 8 has been released this week, ‘Exploring Society: Indian and Beyond’. This is the first NCERT Book that has been introduced to students about Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals.
This new book covers the 13th to the 17th century Indian History. The chapter called ‘Reshaping India’s Political Map’ focuses on the rise and fall of the Delhi Sultanate and resistance to it, the Vijayanagara Empire, the Mughals and the resistance to them, and the rise of the Sikhs. The Sultanate has been described as the period of political instability and military campaign that plundered villages and cities and temples and educational institutions being destroyed.
The topic of Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, and the Marathas were already studied btw class 7 in the early years. But now the NCERT says, these will now be dealt with in class 8 in the new syllabus.
In the old NCERT book of class 7, there are no the references of Mughals “attack” on temples, and the “brutality” of some rulers which are now mentioned in these new syllabus.
NCERT has been launching books following the guidelines of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023. The new books with a revised syllabus have already been released from Class 1 to class 4, class 6 and class 7. Now books of class 5 and class 8 are being made available.
