The Indian Supreme Court’s Textbook Case: From Ban to Sanitization

A century ago, the anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote a line that became the gospel of generations of educationists: “The children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” Many post-1945 Western nations tried to put this vision of education into practice, with mixed results. In India, we recently witnessed a striking demonstration that we have made little progress since the 19th century. On February 25, a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant took offense at the chapter “The Role of the Judiciary in Our Society” in Part 2 of a just-released Social Science textbook for Grade 8. Two prominent senior advocates, Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi, brought the matter to the bench’s notice, expressing indignation at the chapter — though neither they nor the Justices seemed to have seen or read it at that point.

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