The new Social Science textbook for Class 6 is a heavily truncated amalgamation of what was earlier three separate books for History, Geography, and Civics published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
Students in Class 3 and Class 6 are getting new textbooks for the 2024-25 academic year. Class 6 students will get a single Social Science text, titled Exploring Society โ India and Beyond.The Hindu had earlier reported that the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee was considering merging three books into one.
The heavily truncated new Social Science book has one entire chapter (Chapter 5: India, that is Bharat) dedicated to a discussion of the etymology of the term โBharatโ, citing references from ancient Indian texts like the Mahabharata, described as one of Indiaโs most famous works, and the Vishnu Purana. Citing the Mahabharata, it says: โInterestingly, it lists many regions, such as Kฤshmฤซra (more or less todayโs Kashmir), Kurukแนฃhetra (parts of Haryana today), Vanga (parts of Bengal), Prฤgjyotiแนฃha (roughly todayโs Assam), Kaccha (todayโs Kutch), Kerala (more or less todayโs Kerala), and so on.โ The text also features many Sanskrit terms along with diacritics, the accents used over letters to encourage the correct pronunciations of Sanskrit words.
Truncated content
The new textbook is structured around five themes. The first theme comprises 34 pages dedicated to Geography and includes two chapters: Oceans and Continents, and Landforms and Life, which starts with a quote from the Atharva Veda. Concepts such as measuring longitude and latitude of the globe have been culled from the current version. The total pages dedicated to geography have been brought down from 48 to 34 pages.
The second and third themes on โTapestry of the Pastโ and โOur Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditionsโ consist of 46 pages with five chapters of History. These have been heavily cut from the ten chapters in the older NCERT text. Chapter 4 is titled โTimeline and Sources of Historyโ, while Chapter 5 is about the origins of the term โBharatโ.
Vedas and Upanishads
Chapter 6 on โThe beginning of Indian Civilisationโ starts with a quote from the late B.B. Lal, a former Archaelogical Survey of India chief who had led excavations at the Babri Masjid site in the mid-1970s and said there was no trace of any Hindu temple at the site; ten years ago, however, he said there were temple pillar bases at the site. He also studied the Indus Valley and the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, and is quoted in the book referring to the Harappan civilisation as the Indus-Sarasvati or Sindhu-Sarasvati civilisation. The chapter emphasises Dholavira, a Harappan site in Gujarat, and uses a cover image of the north gate leading to Dholaviraโs castle area; in the old textbook, the cover featured a picture of Mohenjodaro, a Harappan site located in modern-day Pakistan.
The seventh chapter, titled โIndiaโs cultural rootsโ, has an extended commentary on the Vedas. While the older text featured one story from the Upanishads โ โChhandogya Upanishadโ โ the new book has two additional stories from the โKatha Upanishadโ, and the โBrihadaranyaka Upanishadโ. An 18th century painting depicting a scene from the Ramayana has also been included.
Vanished kingdoms
Both the old and new textbooks contain references to Hindu texts as well as to Buddhism and Jainism, given that Class 6 students are studying about ancient pre-Mughal India. What has been culled drastically is the detailed exploration of the kingdoms of ancient India, such as which were in four chapters of the old book that have been deleted from the new. 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 Chapter 4โs timeline.
A chapter in the old book on โVillages, Towns and Tradeโ, about the tools, coins, irrigation, crafts, and trade of the period has been truncated. References to the famed iron pillar at the Qutub Minar site at Mehrauli, which probably dates back to the Gupta dynasty era have been dropped, along with mentions of the Sanchi stupa, the monolithic temples of Mahabalipuram, and the paintings in the Ajanta caves.
The fourth theme is on governance and democracy, with a focus on local governance, while the fifth is on economics.
โWe have tried to keep the text to a minimum by focusing on the โbig ideasโ. This has enabled us to combine in a single theme inputs from several disciplines โ whether history, geography, political science or economics,โ NCERT director Dinesh Saklani writes in the introductory chapter of the new textbook.
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