Overview
- NCERT released Understanding Society: India and Beyond – Part 2 on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, and it adds a new chapter titled “Resistance and Resilience (1000–1700 CE)” that documents successive invasions and Indian responses.
- The council has restructured the syllabus by moving the planned ‘India and the World Part 1’ to Class 10 and replacing the chapter ‘Authority’ with ‘Governance and Public Policy’ to align topics with age and learning needs.
- The new chapter highlights episodes framed in stark terms, including what the book calls the ‘brutality of the Mughal state’ toward Sikh Gurus, 17th-century Jat uprisings under Gokul Jat, regional victories such as Saraighat, and traditions that link rulers to goddess-bestowed swords.
- Textbook sections also treat temples as economic and political institutions and record instances of plunder or conversion, while critics and some educators have questioned the mixing of legendary or religious motifs with empirical history and the framing of communal episodes.
- The book’s late arrival six months into the school year has drawn parental protests and raised practical and pedagogical concerns, and the release is likely to drive further public scrutiny of NCERT’s curriculum realignment and demand guidance for teachers and schools.