But future lessons won’t learn this passage. Mr. Modi, now prime minister of India, is trying to impose a Hindu-led majoritarianism upon the nation, together with on its college curriculum and textbooks. Two pages in regards to the Gujarat occasions had been slashed, and different occasions within the lengthy historical past of India’s 200 million Muslims deleted. India’s schoolchildren and its democracy are the more severe for it.

India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training has been working since final yr on the revised curriculum. According to The Post’s Anumita Kaur, the adjustments shall be felt in thousands of classrooms in at the least 20 states. The deletions are wide-ranging. Chapters on the nation’s historic Islamic rulers are both slimmed down or gone; a whole chapter within the Twelfth-grade historical past textbook, “Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts,” was deleted. Millions of scholars throughout India will know of the long-lasting Taj Mahal, however their textbooks won’t delve into the Mughal Empire that constructed it.

According to the Indian Express, which first detailed the cuts final June, 4 chapters in numerous grade ranges about democracy — and the making of India’s famend democracy — have been sliced. For instance, a chapter titled “Key Elements of a Democratic Government” within the sixth-grade political science textual content was dropped. The Express stories that is the primary detailed introduction to the idea of democracy in center college and describes crucial components that affect the working of a democratic authorities, together with folks’s participation, battle decision, equality and justice.

State governments led by Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have for years been rewriting native college textbooks, however now the hassle has been prolonged to the nationwide stage. This is a discouraging growth for the world’s most populous democracy. A wholesome democracy have to be ready to re-examine its previous with out airbrushing out disagreeable occasions. It should accommodate completely different views and disparate peoples in open debate. Erasing the story of India’s Muslims from textbooks is simply as outrageous as Russia airbrushing out the historical past of Stalin’s repressions or China suppressing point out of the Tiananmen Square bloodbath. What’s extra, indoctrinating youngsters now will be sure that a warped model of historical past lingers for generations.

There are different disturbing indicators of retreat. The BBC just lately aired a two-part documentary, “India: The Modi Question,” proven on tv solely in Britain. The movie is targeted on the prime minister’s function within the Gujarat violence. It describes a beforehand unpublished report, obtained by the BBC from the U.Okay. Foreign Office, claiming that Mr. Modi was “directly responsible” for the “climate of impunity” that enabled the violence. (The United States additionally banned Mr. Modi from getting into the United States for a decade due to his actions. It was lifted when he grew to become prime minister in 2014.) Mr. Modi has rejected the accusation, and a Supreme Court panel stated there wasn’t sufficient proof to prosecute.

But as quickly as phrase of the documentary started circulating in India, Mr. Modi’s authorities reacted harshly, trying to block people from streaming it. Then Indian tax brokers raided BBC places of work in New Delhi and Mumbai. This is an intimidation tactic mostly utilized by China, Russia and different dictatorships to silence the information media. It is hardly applicable for a democracy.

India has now surpassed China because the world’s most populous nation. Its function on the planet, a counterweight to China’s, stays an important concern of the United States. The Biden administration has chosen to not communicate loudly about Mr. Modi’s distressing retreat from democracy. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo described Mr. Modi recently as “unbelievable, visionary.” The administration must be simply as vocal about his backsliding.