There is a pedagogic core in the third set of issues: what does reference to some marginal material that is subversive of conventional piety mean when students might not have inner grasp of those pieties in the first place? And in a complex society we will differ over what we judge to be important. Perhaps those disagreements are best handled by ending state monopoly over textbooks. But the new textbooks have made difficult pedagogic calls that are necessary if we want to surpass ourselves.

One ought not to judge these new materials either in a partisan political frame or by repeating pieties that have sucked the life out of history and political science. A student body provoked into thinking will learn the valuable lesson that liberal citizens have to exercise their own judgment. This is a better outcome than the repression of argument, first by the old Left and then the RSS. The issue is not whether we can we trust the NCERT. It is whether we can trust our students.

The writer is president, Center for Policy Research, New Delhi