New Delhi: Several chapters on European revolutions have been removed from the new edition of the social science textbook for class 9 students and has instead prioritises the medieval history of India, regional resistance movements and the impact of foreign invasions, reported The Hindu.The new textbook which was released on Tuesday (September 29) is titled Understanding Society: India and Beyond – Part Two. It replaces the previous edition’s chapters on European revolutions, including the French and Russian revolutions, with a detailed exploration of Indian sovereignty and resilience.The new textbook goes on to say that starting from the 7th century onwards, the Indian subcontinent faced successive phases of invasions driven by “territorial expansion and religious motives”.It adds that India’s historic wealth was the primary catalyst for these incursions and that foreign forces made India their prime target owing to the surplus agrarian produce generated by the fertile plains of India’s perennial river systems.The textbook also talks about “the brutality of the Mughal state” against Sikh Gurus and as examples cites the execution of Guru Arjan Dev, detention of his son Guru Hargobind under Mughal emperor Jahangir and the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur under emperor Aurangzeb, reported The Hindu.It also discusses regional kingdoms that defended their sovereignty and gives the examples of the Jats of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, who rebelled in the Jat Uprising of 1669. The book attributes their uprising to severe economic exploitation, heavy Mughal taxation, and resentment toward Aurangzeb’s religious policies.Other regional movements are discussed in a chapter titled, ‘Safeguarding Sovereignity: Resistance, Alliances and Confederacies’.In recent years, the NCERT under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government has drawn flak for its reframing of textbooks where it is allegedly giving events and people in history an opinionated spin.At one point, some of the books describe Babur as a “brutal and ruthless conqueror, slaughtering entire populations of cities”, and then label Akbar’s reign as a “blend of brutality and tolerance”. Additionally, they have eliminated women rulers such as Nur Jehan and Razia Sultan from the text.