NCERT Is Bringing Bharat’s Intellectual Roots Back to the Classroom

Something interesting is happening in the new NCERT textbooks.

It isn't simply a return to “ancient India”. Rather, the textbooks are beginning to present Bharat's intellectual traditions as part of India's history of knowledge and inquiry.

The clearest example is the new Class VI Social Science textbook, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, particularly Chapter 7 — “India's Cultural Roots”. The chapter is explicitly devoted to the Vedas, Upanishads and the evolution of Indian schools of thought.

The Vedas are presented as knowledge traditions

The textbook describes the Vedas as India's ancient texts and identifies the four Vedas—Ṛig, Yajur, Sāma and Atharva. It also notes that Vedic hymns were composed by rishis and rishikas and preserved through an extraordinarily sophisticated oral tradition.

The book doesn't stop at rituals.

It asks students to explore the ideas contained in these traditions.

Then come the Upanishads

The textbook says:

“The Upaniṣhads introduced the ideas of rebirth, karma … ātman (the Self), and brahman…”

It then introduces Vedanta, explaining the idea that the universe, nature and human life are connected through the underlying reality of brahman. It also introduces the famous formulations:

“Aham brahmāsmi” — “I am brahman.”

and

“Tat tvam asi” — “You are That.”

These are not being presented as exotic mythology. They are being introduced as philosophical ideas that emerged from India's intellectual traditions.

The textbook even explains the Upanishadic concept of ātman and concludes:

“everything in this world is connected and interdependent.”

And this is not confined to the Class VI textbook

The National Curriculum Framework goes one step further.

It explicitly describes the Panchakosha teaching of the Taittiriya Upanishad as:

“one of the earliest articulations of the different domains of development of the human being.”

And then comes the really interesting part.

NCERT places this Indian framework alongside Developmental Biology, Psychology and Cognitive Neurosciences.

That is the right approach.

We don't need to claim that an ancient text already contained modern neuroscience.

Nor do we need to dismiss an ancient intellectual tradition simply because it predates modern science.

We can study it, understand it, question it—and see what it tells us about how Indians thought about the human being, consciousness, society and the universe.

Perhaps this is the real change

For a long time, Indian civilisation was often taught primarily through its monuments, rulers, invasions and political history.

The new textbooks are making room for something else:

India as a civilisation of ideas.

The Vedas.
The Upanishads.
Vedanta.
Yoga.
Buddhism.
Jainism.
Folk and tribal traditions.

Not necessarily as things that students must believe—but as ideas they should know existed, understand and critically examine.

That is not a rejection of modernity.

It may actually be a more confident form of modernity:

A modern Indian child can learn quantum physics and the Upanishads.
Study neuroscience and Panchakosha.
Learn Python and Panini.

There is no contradiction.

A civilisation does not become modern by forgetting its intellectual roots.

**Perhaps the most interesting thing happening in the new NCERT books is that Bharat's ancient tradition of inquiry is once again being allowed to speak in the classroom.**