As the coronavirus crisis causes unprecedented disruption to India’s education system, an ideological battle over the country’s history and identity is being fought using school syllabuses and textbooks.

Back in June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government began revising nationwide curriculums to reduce student workloads. The move was announced as a way to mitigate challenges posed to educational institutions by Covid-19 restrictions. Since then, individual Indian states have taken additional steps to pare down examination requirements and accommodate remote learning.

But the material being excised from syllabuses and classroom resources suggests that the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using the pandemic as an opportunity to further an ongoing project to redefine the country’s history.

In July, the Central Board of Secondary Education removed chapters from high school political science textbooks focusing on federalism, citizenship, secularism, diversity, caste and gender. This prompted some 500 historians and academics to petition for their restoration.