How Hindutva Is Changing History and Science Textbooks in Schools Christophe Jaffrelot May 8, 2022 https://janataweekly.org/how-hindutva-is-changing-history-and-science-textbooks-in-schools/
culture minister, Mahesh Sharma,commissioned a 14 member committee to produce a “holistic study of origin and evolution of Indian culture since 12,000 years before present and its interface with other cultures of the world.”.. it was coupled with the persistent effort by Hindu nationalists to present their mythology as history. ..Second, uncovering evidence from ancient history aimed “to prove that today’s Hindus are directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants many thousands of years ago” and thereby give Hindu nationalists arguments to claim a sort of superiority.
The former minister of state for human resource development Ram Shankar Katheria had said two years before, “There will be saffronisation of education and of the country. Whatever is good for the country will certainly happen, be it saffronisation or sanghwaad (propagation of the RSS ideology).” ..
According to The Indian Express, repeated interventions from the minister of human resource development (Prakash Javadekar, another RSS member) resulted in 1,334 changes in 182 textbooks originally put out by the NCERT, 68 without following the procedures that should have involved the NCERT and its experts.
These changes once again enhanced ancient Indian history (in terms of medicine, astronomy, yoga, etc) and major Hindu figures from the past (Maharana Pratap, Shivaji, Aurobindo, Vivekananda, etc.) at the expense of “the Muslim era.” Such alterations were not only made to history text- books. ..To foster assimilation of knowledge that amounted to propaganda, final exams have increasingly focused on the heroic deeds of Hindu icons and reforms initiated by the Modi government, even on the person of the prime minister. The economics exam at Lucknow University for the bachelor of commerce (BCom) asked students to evaluate schemes launched by Modi, such as Digital India (to develop digitisation throughout the country) and Startup India, or to describe job- creation schemes.