– Asad ur Rahman
The Centre for Educational Research & Training (CERT) hosted an incisive and deeply critical online talk titled “Distorting the Past: NCERT, Hindutva, and the Battle for India’s History” on July 24, 2025. The speaker, Dr. Ruchika Sharma, an Associate Professor at the Delhi School of Business, delivered a compelling indictment of recent NCERT textbook revisions that, she believes, reshape Indian historical consciousness, rather dangerously.
Opening the session, the moderator from CERT introduced the organisation’s mission to promote critical academic inquiry and spotlighted Dr. Sharma’s academic background from Jawaharlal Nehru University, her podcast Eyeshadow and Itihaas, and her history-rooted personal interest stemming from her Partition-affected lineage. The moderator also acknowledged the hostile media trials Dr. Sharma has faced due to her outspoken criticism of NCERT’s recent changes, affirming CERT’s solidarity with her.
Dr. Sharma began by laying out her central concerns regarding the Class VIII NCERT history textbook, asserting unequivocally:
“My biggest problem with the NCERT is that it’s riddled with factual inaccuracies.”
Her speech was logically organised, first, enumerating the inaccuracies, then, analysing the assumptions that they presuppose, and, lastly, commenting on the whole ideological project of it. The most disturbing distortion, she ascertained, revolves around the Islamic tax jizya, which is wrongly characterised in the textbook as a conversion strategy.
“This idea that jizya was a tool for conversion is a completely unfounded figment of imagination.”
Referring to the early history of Islam and Islamic studies, Dr. Sharma explained that even in the 7th century Iraq and Iran, conversion was a controlled experience. It was historically inaccurate that people switched to Islam due to jizya evasion motives only. She underlined that although the tax was removed later in the regime of Akbar, as the textbook pretends, in short, we have to admit that the tax was taken off at the very start of the reign of Akbar as one of his very first imperial acts.
She then moved to so-called value-laden historical framing, criticising NCERT by using words such as brutal and cruel applied to Muslim rulers only. The long and mostly tolerant reign of Akbar is condensed into one event: the Siege of Chittorgarh, through which he is described as a cruel emperor. In the meantime, bloody conquests of such conquerors as Ashoka or Rajendra Chola are skipped or glossed.
“You won’t find the word ‘brutal’ used for the Cholas, even when inscriptions describe women and children being massacred. But Akbar, Babur, and Aurangzeb? Brutal, cruel, again and again.”
She equally criticised how powerful women have been removed from the textbook, including Razia Sultan and Nur Jahan. Dr. Sharma characterised Razia Sultan as an unusual but critical personality – reeling out coins in her name, riding at the head of armies, and challenging the politics of patriarchy of the court directly.
“It’s a complete injustice to remove women like Razia from the narrative. Her life was a brilliant example of women’s agency in pre-modern India,” Dr. Sharma said.
Similarly, she argued, Nur Jahan was a de facto ruler when Jahangir was sick, a competent administrator, a lover of literary arts, and even a devotee of fashion trends. The fact that they were left out, Dr. Sharma believed, was ideological.
“It’s almost as if the NCERT wants students to believe empowered Muslim women never existed,” the history professor sarcastically commented.
The other significant part of the discussion was about the politics of temple destruction, in which NCERT only talks about Muslim rulers and fails to understand the evidence of temple desecration throughout Indian history, lacking any understanding of history itself. She said, citing Pushyamitra Shunga, Shaivite re-conversion of Jain temples and even Buddhist places of worship turned into Vaishnava shrines.
“Temple destruction was not exclusive to Muslim rulers; it had political, economic, and religious motives across eras. To isolate Muslims in this narrative is dangerous,” the historian, who did her PhD from prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, averred.
Such ideologically oriented hires in NCERT, especially pointing to Michael Danino, in-charge of social science curriculum, who received no formal training in history and has published books consistent with Hindutva accounts, were also condemned by Dr. Sharma.
“It’s like watching a WhatsApp forward become a textbook. That’s how dire the communalisation has become,” she added.
She cried an alarm about the effects of the textbook on students because it never actually mentions recent political violence, such as the Partition bloodshed, the Babri Mosque demolition, or Gujarat 2002, even as it decided to exaggerate instead ways in which Muslims were supposedly sadistic many centuries ago. “How is the Siege of Chittorgarh not a burden for students, but the Bengal Maratha campaign is too much to mention? There’s no longer even a pretence of objectivity,” she pointed out.
Framing of caste was another aspect that Dr. Sharma noted, which changes the way the struggles of Birsa Munda, as well as other leaders, are dispossessed of their anti-caste aspect. The phrase “Hindu landlords” is deleted. The caste realities turn into social realities. She wondered what we are sheltering students behind?”
The Q&A segment saw deep and spirited engagement. When asked how young students can navigate this distortion, Dr. Sharma recalled her own Class VIII history teacher. “She told us – never read just one book for history. Use your library. Compare versions. That advice changed my life,” Dr Sharma narrated.
Albeit, admitting that this was not easy in the prevailing climate, she still asserted that critical reading and raising awareness in humans were just among the essential first steps. When asked a question regarding the question of Chola invasions of Southeast Asia, she validated that these were, in fact, violent incursions contrary to the official story of the regime that ancient Indian empires striking out abroad were purely peaceful.
“There were at least 13 Chola raids on Srivijaya. There was looting, pillaging, and disruption of trade. Yet no textbook calls it ‘brutality’,” highlighted the historian.
In a poignant exchange with an audience member from Boston, Dr. Sharma discussed how social oppression, like caste discrimination – not taxes – was often the driving force behind conversion to Islam in regions like Bengal.
“People converted for dignity. To escape the crushing caste hierarchy. That’s a history we owe them the truth of,” Dr Sharma pointed out.
In her concluding remarks, Dr. Sharma issued a sombre warning: “This is no longer about a textbook; it’s about shaping the minds of 13- and 14-year-olds to believe that only Muslim rulers were villains. It’s a communal blueprint masquerading as history.”
She emphasised that students today are not just being misinformed but being ideologically armed with selective anger, which poses lasting damage to India’s pluralistic ethos.
“The NCERT textbook is now as communal as the movies it used to counter. And that’s the real tragedy,” she remarked.
