The book, to be introduced in schools from the 2025-2026 academic year, marks a shift in tone in its portrayal of the Mughal emperors, offering detailed accounts of conquest, religious decisions, cultural contributions, and brutality.
Ahead of NEET UG 2026 -- which opens the door to 1.2 lakh MBBS seats in the country annually -- education expert Nagarajan JSK explains why lakhs of students attempt the exam every year.
Art education, physical education and wellbeing, vocational education and interdisciplinary studies will be compulsory.
The Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly has strongly condemned racial discrimination against people from the Northeast and urged the central government to enact a stringent anti-racism law.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has removed all references to the Mughals and Delhi Sultanate from its class 7 textbooks. The new textbooks, released this week, have been designed in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP) and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE) 2023, which emphasize incorporating Indian traditions, philosophies, knowledge systems, and local context into school education. The textbooks now include new chapters on ancient Indian dynasties, sacred geography, and government initiatives like Make in India and Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao. The revamp has been met with criticism from opposition parties who equate it with "saffronisation."
'My argument was straightforward: If the Constitution allows this reservation and SC/ST and OBC candidates are already getting reservation in private institutions -- backed by Constitution Bench orders -- then not extending the same to EWS candidates directly violates the 103rd Amendment and Article 14, which guarantees the right to equality.'
Private schools failing to provide these facilities risk de-recognition
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday said the Preamble to the Constitution is very well there in NCERT textbooks of Class VI as he refuted charges made in this regard by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
'You can see both being used in our textbooks already and that will continue in new textbooks'
Instead, they argue, three actors shaped the division, "Jinnah, who demanded it; the Congress, which accepted it; and Mountbatten, who formalised and implemented it."
The suggestions have been part of the final position paper on social sciences, which is a key perspective document that helps in the development of new NCERT textbooks on the subject. The proposal has yet to get a final nod from NCERT.
There are tweaks in references to B R Ambedkar's experience about the discrimination.
He hinted that the same hue and cry is not made about 1984 riots not being in textbooks.
Dropping references to the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the killing of Muslims in Gujarat riots and Hindutva, and tweaking the reference to Manipur's merger with India are among the latest set of revisions made public by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in its textbooks.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday said that in his personal opinion, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh should be banned as most law and order problems in the country are arising because of the Bharatiya Janata Party-RSS.
The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), however, said the withdrawal of anyone's association is out of question as textbooks at the school level are developed on the basis of knowledge and understanding on a given subject and at no stage, individual authorship is claimed.
A number of academicians as well as political scientists Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, who were part of the textbook development committee of the NCERT, had asked the council to drop their names from textbooks over 'several substantive revisions of the original texts'.
The committee has also recommended highlighting 'Hindu victories' in various battles in the textbooks.
The signatories to a letter sent to NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani include Kanti Prasad Bajpai, a former Jawaharlal Nehru University professor who currently serves as the vice dean at the National University, Singapore, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a former vice-chancellor of the Ashoka University, Rajeev Bhargava, a former director of CSDS, Niraja Gopal Jayal, a former JNU professor, Nivedita Menon, a JNU professor, Vipul Mudgal, the head of civil society watchdog Common Cause, K C Suri, a former professor at the University of Hyderabad who is now associated with the Gitam University, and Peter Ronald deSouza, a former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies.
The UGC chief said the NCERT is fully justified in carrying out rationalisation of its textbooks' contents.
The 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) will be headed by National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) chancellor MC Pant and develop textbooks for classes 3 to 12.
Certain references and subjects being quietly dropped from the new NCERT textbooks without any notification has kicked off a political controversy with the Opposition accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of 'whitewashing with vengeance'.
Palshikar and Yadav, who were chief advisors for the original Political Science books for classes 9 to 12, said, "While the modifications have been justified in the name of rationalisation, we fail to see any pedagogic rationale at work here. We find that the text has been mutilated beyond recognition. There are innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions without any attempts to fill the gaps created.
References to freedom fighter and India's first education minister Azad have been removed from the new class 11 political science textbook by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
The NCERT has dropped references to the demand for a separate Sikh nation of Khalistan from the class 12 political science textbook following objections from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), according to top education ministry officials.
The SERT, an autonomous body of the general education department, is considering a decision by its curriculum steering committee to include these deleted portions in the state syllabus.
The Left leader said the NCERT, which was set up on the basis of the 2005 National Curriculum Framework, has been demolishing the very goals of the NCF through the removal of such passages from textbooks.
References to freedom fighter and India's first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad have been removed from the new class 11 political science textbook by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
rediffGURU Radheshyam Zanwar, founder of Zanwar Classes, guides students on how to prepare for engineering entrance exams and secure engineering admissions.
rediffGURU Radheshyam Zanwar offers expert advice to students preparing for engineering college admissions and competitive exams.
"Gandhi's pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists" and "Organisations like RSS were banned for some time" are among the texts missing from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session.
'Whenever present-day politics do get involved, history sinks to the level of a morality play, with advocates for this or that cause seeking to praise their heroes or condemn their villains.'
His comments come after the new NCERT textbooks hit the market and it was found that more contents than the ones notified in the curriculum rationalisation booklet last year are missing.
'Maharashtrians are facing a dual battle -- numerical battle with North Indians and financial battle with Gujaratis and Marwaris.' 'This has created anxiety about survival and ownership over Mumbai and Maharashtra.'
More than 1,800 scientists, science teachers and educators have written an open letter raising concerns about the chapter on 'Theory of Biological Evolution' being dropped from the NCERT textbook for Class 10.
rediffGURU Nayagam PP, career counsellor and the founder of EduJob360, counsels students and aspiring professionals about how they can make the right career decision.
The idea is to help madrasa students join the academic mainstream and prepare them for a better future.
The panel will examine the reasons behind the emergence of dummy schools and their role in encouraging full-time coaching at the cost of formal schooling, and will suggest ways to mitigate the issue.
'When I undertook a study of temple desecration in precolonial India, it was not enough simply to document what temples were desecrated, by whom, when, and where.' 'It was also important to explore the total historical context of such incidents, with a view to discovering patterns, which in turn could reveal the reasons why they occurred.'
Delhi Zone's Rajit Gupta scored 332 out of 360 marks to bag the top rank in the IIT Joint Entrance Exam (Advanced).
