New NCERT textbook for social science for class 6 reduces content, merges three books on history, geography and government into one

The new social science textbook for class 6 is a much-abridged amalgamation of what were earlier three separate books for history, geography and civics, published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

Students in grades 3 and 6 will receive new textbooks for the 2024-25 academic year. Students in grade 6 will receive a single text on social sciences, titled Exploring Society — India and Beyond.The Hindu had previously reported that the National Commission for Syllabus and Teaching Materials was considering merging three books into one.

The much-shortened new social science book devotes an entire chapter (Chapter 5: India, That Is, Bharat) to a discussion of the etymology of the term “Bharat,” citing references from ancient Indian texts such as the Mahabharatadescribed as one of India’s most famous works, and the Vishnu Purana. Referring to the Mahabharatait states: “Interestingly, many regions are mentioned, such as Kāshmīra (more or less present-day Kashmir), Kurukṣhetra (parts of present-day Haryana), Vanga (parts of Bengal), Prāgjyotiṣha (roughly present-day Assam), Kaccha (present-day Kutch), Kerala (more or less present-day Kerala), and so on.” The text also contains many Sanskrit terms along with diacritics, the accent marks used over letters to aid the correct pronunciation of Sanskrit words.

Abbreviated content

The new textbook is structured around five themes. The first theme consists of 34 pages devoted to geography and contains two chapters: oceans and continents, and landforms and life, which begin with a quote from the Atharva Veda. Concepts such as measuring the longitude and latitude of the globe have been removed from the current version. The total number of pages devoted to geography has been reduced from 48 to 34 pages.

The second and third themes on ‘Tapestry of the Past’ and ‘Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions’ consist of 46 pages with five chapters on history. These have been substantially cut from the ten chapters in the older NCERT text. Chapter 4 is titled ‘Timeline and Sources of History’ while Chapter 5 deals with the origin of the term ‘Bharat’.

Vedas and Upanishads

Chapter 6 on ‘The Beginnings of Indian Civilization’ begins with a quote from the late B.B. Lal, a former head of the Archaeological Survey of India who led excavations at the Babri Masjid site in the mid-1970s and said that there was no trace of a Hindu temple at the site; however, a decade ago he said that there were temple pillar bases at the site. He also studied the Indus Valley and the Hindu epics Ramayana And Mahabharata, and is cited in the book in reference to the Harappan civilization as the Indus-Sarasvati or Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization. The chapter emphasizes Dholavira, a Harappan site in Gujarat, and uses a cover image of the northern gate leading to the castle area of ​​Dholavira; in the old textbook, the cover featured an image of Mohenjo-daro, a Harappan site in present-day Pakistan.

The seventh chapter, titled ‘India’s Cultural Roots’, contains an extensive commentary on the Vedas. While the older text contained one story from the Upanishads — the ‘Chhandogya Upanishad’ — the new book includes two additional stories from the ‘Katha Upanishad’ and the ‘Brihadaranyaka Upanishad’. An 18th century painting depicting a scene from the Ramayana is also included.

Lost kingdoms

Both the old and new textbooks contain references to Hindu texts, Buddhism and Jainism, as students of class 6 study ancient India before the Mughals. What has been drastically cut is the detailed exploration of the kingdoms of ancient India, which were in four chapters of the old book and have been removed from the new book. This includes accounts of the kingdoms of Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya, including the role of Chanakya and his Arthashastra, as well as the dynasties of the Guptas, Pallavas and Chalukyas, and the works of Kalidasa. In fact, the only mention of King Ashoka in the entire book is a single word in the timeline of Chapter 4.

A chapter in the old book on ‘Villages, Towns and Trade’, dealing with the tools, coins, irrigation, crafts and trade of the period, has been truncated. References to the famous iron pillar at the Qutub Minar site at Mehrauli, probably dating from the Gupta dynasty, have been omitted, along with mentions of the Sanchi stupa, the monolithic temples of Mahabalipuram and the paintings in the Ajanta Caves.

The fourth theme is about governance and democracy, with an emphasis on local government, while the fifth is about economics.

“We have tried to keep the text to a minimum by focusing on the ‘big ideas’. This has allowed us to combine inputs from different disciplines — be it history, geography, political science or economics — into a single theme,” writes NCERT director Dinesh Saklani in the introductory chapter of the new textbook.