A Lesson the Court Wants Students to Forget

No sooner had the second part of the class eight social science textbook, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, been released than it was withdrawn from the classroom because the Supreme Court of India was displeased with some inconvenient truths in it. How can you teach young students that the Indian judiciary is corrupt? That’s what the SC asked. The judiciary can be corrupt, but that truth should not be revealed to young students, according to our judges.

According to reports, the chapter on the judiciary raised three points that the SC took strong exception to. “Heads must roll,” the Chief Justice Surya Kant has asserted. “I am not going to close this proceeding till I am satisfied.” The Chief Justice will be satisfied only when the person(s) who told the truth to young students are fired. The Indian judiciary is vindictive, to be sure.

What are the points that piqued the apex court?

1.     “People do experience corruption at various levels of the judiciary.” [Quoted from the textbook – emphasis added]

2.     There is a “massive backlog of cases” and a “lack of adequate number of judges.”

3.     The judges are bound by a code of conduct for their behaviour both inside and outside the court.

These are verifiable facts and the SC doesn’t deny them. What irks the court is that these truths are told to 13-year-old students with the intention of “instilling a bias against the judiciary in the impressionable minds.”

No one who knows the Indian judiciary even from a country mile away will dispute the facts given in the textbook.

There is an unholy nexus between the judiciary and the political system in the country. There are also many charges of corruption levelled against judges. Look at just a couple of examples from recent history. 

·      As Chief Justice in 2018-19, Ranjan Gogoi presided over sensitive cases like the Ayodhya land dispute, the Rafale jet deal, and the NRC of Assam. His judgements were all in favour of the Central Government. He was rewarded for them soon after his retirement by being nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2020 and he continues there even now. A female court officer had accused Gogoi of severe sexual harassment too.

·      Prime Minister Modi established an unholy friendship with D Y Chandrachud when the latter was the Chief Justice (2022-24) and secured favourable verdicts on Ayodhya Temple and the revocation of Article 370.  

·      Justice Yashwant Varma of the Delhi High Court was found to be in possession of a substantial amount of unaccounted money when a fire broke out at his official residence in March 2025.

We can cite any number of similar examples to show that the Indian judiciary isn’t a wee bit as sacred as Justice Surya Kant would like to pretend.

About delays in Indian courts, the less said the better. There are about 81,000 cases pending in the Supreme Court alone. In the High Courts, the figure is about 6.24 million. A staggering 47 million cases are currently pending in the lower courts.

So, what’s the problem with the social science textbook?

The problem is that it presents inconvenient truths to young students. There are blatant lies in the textbooks, never mind.

·      Babur becomes a “brutal and ruthless” ruler in a textbook. Aurangzeb wss “destructive and intolerant.”

·      Jaisalmer and parts of Rajasthan are marked as parts of the Maratha Empire – no evidence for that at all.

·      There are plenty of instances of ideological indoctrinations and biases. The present textbook in class 8 projects the European powers that came to India as sheer murderers and enslavers. The Portuguese are presented as people who “persecuted Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christian converts suspected of practising their original faith.”

We can go on and on with examples. But…

From Class 8 Social Science textbook

India’s present way of banning everything that is inconvenient and projecting falsehoods on billboards will turn disastrous sooner than later. India should stop editing the syllabus and start auditing the system. When it comes to the judiciary at least, its dignity will be best protected not by the absence of criticism, but by the presence of justice.