Reimagining Nationalism in the School Curriculum: A Critical Study of NCERT Textbooks

Abstract

This chapter examines the shifting conceptualization of nationalism within the textbooks produced by India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Drawing on the analytical framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study investigates how ideological narratives shape the “official knowledge” imparted to students across the Indian school system. The chapter focuses specifically on the hidden curriculum—the unspoken lessons conveyed through selective historical omissions, symbolic imagery, and the privileging of particular cultural themes—while also identifying patterns of representation that foreground certain identities at the expense of others. This research contends that school textbooks are not merely pedagogical instruments; rather, they function as political arenas wherein the State’s conceptualization of the “Self” and the “Other” is continuously redefined. By analyzing how history, culture, language, and social diversity are framed in NCERT texts, the chapter demonstrates the consequential impact of these framings upon the formation of students’ national identities. The study concludes that ideological biases embedded within these textbooks foster a particular image of the nation—one that may, at critical junctures, diverge from inclusive democratic values and the constitutional vision of a pluralistic India. The inquiry is organized around three interlocking analytical levels. First, it undertakes an analysis of the ideological narratives that define the concepts of nation, history, citizenship, and territorial belonging. Second, it identifies, within the hidden curriculum, the unwritten messages and values that are indirectly transmitted through textual language, illustrative choices, exercise formats, and teacher instructions. Third, it examines patterns of representation—specifically, which castes, communities, regions, languages, religious groups, and gender identities are positioned within the mainstream, and which are rendered peripheral or invisible. Employing qualitative content analysis, the chapter examines selected chapters from NCERT Social Sciences, Political Science, and History textbooks spanning grades six through twelve across three politically significant editions (1966, 2002, and 2006). The findings indicate that NCERT textbooks have, at various historical moments, constructed a monolithic, culturally hegemonic, and often conflict-sanitized image of nationhood, wherein diversity is acknowledged but frequently presented as subordinate to a discourse of “national unity.”