New NCERT textbooks correct historical wrongs: Exposes forgotten brutality of invasions by Ghazni &

NEW DELHI: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has revised its Class 7 history textbook to include detailed accounts of Mahmud of Ghazni’s invasions, his large-scale massacres, enslavement campaigns, and the destruction of sacred cities such as Mathura, Kannauj, and Somnath. The new content is based on medieval Persian and Indian chronicles. It represents a conscious effort to present history in fuller detail, acknowledging both cultural achievements and the violence that shaped India’s medieval past.

For decades, the portrayal of medieval India in school textbooks was often filtered through a selective lens that highlighted political expansion and cultural synthesis while minimizing the brutality of invasions. The new NCERT revision breaks from this tradition. It aims to provide students with a more balanced narrative, one that does not shy away from describing the devastation that accompanied the rise of early Islamic rulers in the subcontinent.

The new six-page section titled “The Ghaznavid Invasions” chronicles Mahmud’s 17 expeditions into the Indian subcontinent with striking specificity. It narrates how the ruler’s armies stormed the temples of Mathura and Kannauj, and later demolished the grand Somnath temple in Gujarat. The book goes further to connect past and present by mentioning that the Somnath temple was rebuilt in 1950 and inaugurated the next year by President Rajendra Prasad. It was financed entirely through public donations, a reminder of India’s enduring spirit of cultural reclamation.

🚨 HUGE! NCERT’s new Class 7 textbook now details Mahmud of Ghazni’s massacres, enslavement, temple destruction and the plunder of Mathura, Kannauj & Somnath, based on medieval sources.

It also covers Ghuri, Aibak & Bakhtiyar Khilji, including Nalanda’s destruction. pic.twitter.com/8yePZQfIIZ

— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) December 8, 2025

For the first time, students will also learn about the scale of devastation caused by these invasions. The chapter describes the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians and the enslavement of prisoners, including children, who were transported to Central Asian slave markets. Drawing from the works of medieval chroniclers such as Al-Utbi and Al-Biruni, the textbook paints Mahmud as a formidable yet ruthless commander who targeted not only Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain “infidels” but even rival Islamic sects. These records emphasize both his religious zeal and his political ambition to spread his version of Islam through force and fear.

Such explicit details were absent in the previous Class 7 history textbook, which reduced Mahmud’s actions to a single paragraph about temple raids for wealth and religious motives. The inclusion of original historical references will now allow the students to explore the complexity of medieval power struggles rather than merely skimming over them.

Before diving into the invasions, the book also includes a “Word of Caution”, a thoughtful pedagogical note urging readers to understand that history often records wars and conflicts more vividly than peace and progress. It acknowledges that historians worldwide have sometimes hesitated to confront violent episodes, and encourages students to interpret such events critically and contextually.

The broader chapter, “Turning Tides: 11th and 12th Centuries,” expands the lens to include later conquerors such as Muhammad Ghuri, his general Qutb-ud-din Aibak, and Aibak’s commander Bakhtiyar Khilji. In a major addition, the book recounts Khilji’s destruction of the ancient universities of Nalanda and Vikramashila, two of the world’s greatest centres of Buddhist learning. It states that Khilji’s forces looted these institutions, killed hundreds of monks, and set fire to their libraries, which reportedly burned for months. Scholars of Buddhism, it notes, widely agree that these attacks hastened the decline of Buddhism in India. The chapter concludes on a reflective note, highlighting that despite these invasions, large parts of northern and almost all of southern India remained outside Turkic control. It reminds readers that several Indian rulers united periodically to resist the foreign forces.

Earlier portions of the book have also been enriched with sections on other foreign incursions from the Hunas to the Arabs. For instance, it now mentions Muhammad bin Qasim’s 8th-century campaign in Sindh, quoting a 13th-century Persian chronicle that described his expedition as a religious duty. The book also explains that the Arab conquest of Sindh did not bring major political or cultural changes and had less impact than later invasions.

Beyond content, NCERT has restructured the learning format as well. Class 7 students will now study two integrated social science textbooks instead of three separate ones for history, civics, and geography. This shift shows a holistic approach to understanding past societies and their interconnections rather than treating disciplines as isolated subjects.

With these comprehensive updates, NCERT’s new Class 7 textbook signals a decisive move toward presenting a fuller, more balanced picture of India’s past, neither glorifying nor sanitizing it. By grounding lessons in primary sources and evidence, it encourages students to think critically about how history is written, remembered, and sometimes forgotten.

Ultimately, this revision is not about rewriting history: it is about restoring it. By shedding light on the invasions, devastations, and the unyielding spirit of survival that defined medieval India, the new textbook empowers young minds to understand their heritage with honesty, empathy, and pride.