NCERT releases textbook ‘rooted in Indian context’
The online version textbook titled ‘exploring society: India and beyond’ has been released by the NCERT on its official website
New Delhi: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on Friday released a new social science textbook for class sixth with chapters rooted in Indian context that states the naming of the country by ancient inhabitants was “Bharat” and that it was later changed to India by foreigners; and included sections on Vedic school of thought and stories from Upanishads, among others.
The online version textbook titled ‘exploring society: India and beyond’ has been released by the NCERT on its official website. This year, the Council announced that it will release revamped textbooks under National Education Policy (2020) and the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF), which emphasise the curriculum to be “rooted in the Indian and local context and ethos”, only for classes third and sixth. While the majority of the books have been released online, some are yet to hit the market in physical form.
The fifth chapter of the new book titled “India, that is Bharat’’, explains how the country had many names in the course of its history, and the names given by its ancient inhabitants include ‘Jambudvīpa’ and ‘Bhārata’. “However, the latter became widespread in time and is the name of India in most Indian languages,” it states.
Highlighting that ‘Bharata’ is a name that first appears in the Ṛig Veda, oldest of all Vedas, where it refers to one of the main Vedic groups of people. “In later literature, several kings named ‘Bharata’ are mentioned... A few centuries later, ‘Bhārata’ became the name generally used for the Indian subcontinent. For instance, in an ancient text called the Viṣhṇu Purāṇa, we read:The country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhārata,” it states.
Emphasising that the name “Bharata” is even in use today, the book mentions that in north India, it is generally written as ‘Bharat’, while in south India, it is often ‘Bharatam’.
It further says that foreign visitors to, or invaders of, India mostly adopted names derived from the Sindhu or Indus River; this resulted in names like ‘Hindu’, ‘Indoi’, and eventually ‘India’. Besides, the book mentions that the term ‘Hindustān’ was first used in a Persian inscription some 1,800 years ago, and was used by most invaders of India to describe the Indian Subcontinent.
“The first foreigners to mention India were the Persians, the ancient inhabitants of Iran. In the 6th century BCE, a Persian emperor launched a military campaign and gained control of the region of the Indus River, which, as we saw, was earlier called ‘Sindhu’. So, it is no surprise that in their earliest records and stone inscriptions, the Persians referred to India as ‘Hind’, ‘Hidu’ or ‘Hindu’, which are adaptations in their language of ‘Sindhu’. (Note that in ancient Persian, ‘Hindu’ is a purely geographical term; it does not refer here to the Hindu religion.)”
“Based on these Persian sources, the ancient Greeks named the region ‘Indoi’ or ‘Indike’. They dropped the initial letter ‘h’ of ‘Hindu’ because this letter did not exist in their Greek language,” the textbook states.
However, it also mentions that the Indian Constitution, which was first written in English, uses the phrase ‘India, that is Bharat’ right at the beginning, and the Hindi version of the Constitution mentions the same as ‘Bhārat arthāth India’.
Last year, a high-level committee formed by the NCERT to revise the social science curriculum had recommended that “India” should be replaced by “Bharat” in all textbooks.
The older version of the textbook did not have a full-fledged chapter on the naming of India.
The textbook has 14 chapters divided into five—India and the world: land and the people; Tapestry of the past; our cultural heritage and knowledge traditions; governance and democracy, and economic life around us.
“The selection of five themes takes care of the important requirement of maintaining a multidisciplinary perspective. Cultural rootedness, another requirement, is thus not limited to the theme ‘Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions’, but pervades the other themes as well,” said NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani in his foreword.
The textbook also has chapters on themes including Unity in Diversity, Family and Community, Grassroots Democracy, and the value of work, among others. The book also mentions three stories from Upanishads including Śhvetaketu and the seed of reality; Nachiketa and his quest; and the debate of Gārgī and Yājñavalkya.