Dropping references to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the killing of Muslims in the 2002 Gujarat riots and Hindutva, and tweaking the reference to Manipur’s merger with India, are among the latest set of revisions in school textbooks made public by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

A reference to the abrogation of Article 370, replacing the term ‘Azad Pakistan’ with Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK), and revising a paragraph defining the Left as those who prefer “state regulation over free competition” are also among the changes.

While NCERT did not comment on the topics being dropped, officials said the tweaks are part of a routine update, not linked to the development of new books as per the New Curriculum Framework (NCF). The changes have been made in Political Science and Social Science textbooks of classes 11 and 12, besides others.

According to a document detailing the changes prepared by the NCERT’s curriculum drafting committee, the reference to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement has been tweaked “as per latest developments in politics”.

Chapter 8 on Secularism in the class 11 textbook earlier said, “More than 1,000 persons, mostly Muslims, were massacred during the post Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002.”

That has been changed to “more than 1,000 persons were killed during the post Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002”. The NCERT’s rationale behind the change is “in any riots, people across communities suffer. It cannot be just one community”.