JAIPUR: Rajasthan’s education department has ordered district education officers to ensure four supplementary history textbooks used as non-evaluative reading material for Classes 9 to 12 are removed from schools for the 2026-27 academic session.The order, issued by the social education department under the Directorate of Secondary Education, states, “Please ensure that the aforementioned deleted books are not taught in schools during the current academic session.”The books listed are ‘Rajasthan Ka Swatantrata Andolan Evam Shaurya Parampara’ (Class 9), ‘Rajasthan Ka Itihas Evam Sanskriti’ (Class 10), and ‘Azadi Ke Baad Ka Swarnim Bharat’ Part 1 and Part 2 (reading material for Classes 11 and 12).Education minister Madan Dilawar had announced in July last year the withdrawal of ‘Azadi Ke Baad Ka Swarnim Bharat’ for Classes 11-12, citing its emphasis on the Gandhi family’s contributions. On Thursday, Dilawar told TOI, “We had already announced that these books will not be taught in schools and orders have been issued now.” He did not clarify why the Class 9 and 10 books were being removed.State Congress president Govind Singh Dotasra called the move “a direct assault on history.”“This constitutes a conspiracy to control and erase a mindset—one that deeply unsettles the RSS and the BJP in their exercise of power. By removing these books, the BJP govt intends to teach an entire generation of the state only a partial and incomplete version of the truth. The BJP govt must explain what specific objection it has to the books removed from classes 9-12,” Dotasra said.He added that if the books had factual errors, corrections could have been made, but “the act of removing the books entirely makes it abundantly clear that the true objective is not to correct, but to erase history.”
