Isaac Newton now shares the chapter on gravity with Bhaskaracharya II. Meteorologist Anna Mani, the “Weather Woman of India”, makes her first appearance. And foreign invasion no longer figures among the reasons the Harappan civilisation declined.These are among the changes in Maharashtra’s new Class 6 history, geography and science textbooks, introduced by Balbharati, the state’s textbook bureau, this academic year under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.A comparison of the old and new textbooks by The Indian Express shows the changes run along three lines.Ancient Indian science, scripture and scholars have been written into all three subjects, often placed alongside, or ahead of, modern science or standardised concepts. Contemporary Indian achievements and role models have been added. And in history alone, content on caste, priestly privilege and foreign invasion has been cut.The direction closely tracks NCERT’s own NEP-aligned textbooks, which have drawn criticism since 2024. Sample these:Ancient India in every subjectIndian geography in scripture (geography): A new section on the history of Indian geography cites the Vedas, Puranas, Upanishads and the Suryasiddhant. It describes the Earth as “Saptadweep”, with seven dweeps, or islands, mapped on to modern regions from Europe to Japan, and equates the ancient Kshir Sagar with the Indian Ocean and the Kshar Samudra with the Arctic. It sets the Vedic account of the creation of the universe alongside the Big Bang theory.Ujjain meridian (geography): The old book defined the prime meridian only as the Greenwich meridian. The new one says, “Ancient Indian astronomers considered Ujjayani (Ujjain) as the central point of the Earth and proposed the concept of base longitude for the first time.” It also introduces ancient units of time such as the ghatika and muhurt.Story continues below this adBhaskaracharya and gravity (science): When explaining gravitational force, the science textbook’s chapter on ‘Force and Pressure’ on gravitation states: “When we say gravitation, many people remember scientist Newton.” It then says Bhaskaracharya II wrote, around 950 years ago, that “the earth pulls objects towards itself” in his book called Siddhant Shiromani.Aryabhata (science): A “Do you know?” box in the chapter titled Beyond the Sky says Aryabhata was the first to explain that the Earth goes around the Sun. It states that “the time measured with modern instruments and the time calculated by Aryabhatta long ago are exactly the same.”Charak and the Rigveda (science): Sage Charak is introduced as “the founder of Ayurveda”, and his classification of animals appears in the chapter titled ‘Diversity in Living Organisms’. The chapter titled ‘From Diet to Health’ on diet cites the Rigveda for advice on adapting food and routine to the seasons. None of these references was in the old science book.Sushruta (history): Ancient medicine has grown from a short paragraph into a detailed section on Sushruta, called the “Father of Surgery”, including his method of reconstructing the nose. His surgical techniques, described in the ‘Sushruta Samhita’, the textbook says, “were later studied and adopted by Europeans in the 18th century.”Story continues below this adChanakya (history): Mentioned in one sentence in the old textbook, Chanakya now gets a full passage on his Arthashastra and his role in Chandragupta Maurya’s rise.The new textbook says the Arthashastra “deals with subject like governance, tax system, defence, Intelligence and politics”. It also tells the story of how Chanakya spotted Chandragupta as a child enacting a king’s role while playing with his friends**, and trained him in warfare and administration to end Dhananand’s “unjust rule.”What’s been taken outAll the cuts are in history.Caste: The old book said varnas were first based on occupation and later on birth. “This gave rise to castes. The caste system led to inequality in the society,” it said. The new book replaces the passage with a single line: “Vedic society was structured into four Varnas : Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra.”Story continues below this adPriestly monopoly: A paragraph on the priestly class controlling knowledge of yajna rites has gone from the new textbook. The paragraph in the old textbook stated, “Towards the end of the Vedic period, the minute details of yajna rites acquired undue importance. Only the priestly class had knowledge of those details. Others no longer had the freedom to gain that knowledge. The Varna System restrictions became very hard in the course of time. A person’s social position was decided by the varna into which he was born rather than by his achievements.” The new chapter instead speaks of Vedic values, moral duties and nature worship, stating, “The Vedic people performed sacrifices (Yajnas) and worshipped nature.”Jainism and Buddhism: Jainism and Buddhism: The link between caste discrimination and the rise of the two religions has been dropped. But the passages on Mahavir’s and Buddha’s own teachings against varna discrimination remain. Mahavir, the new book says, “taught the people that the greatness of a human being does not depend on his varna, but on his excellent conduct.”Buddha, it says, “refused the discrimination based on things like varna. No one is greater or smaller by birth. Greatness depends on one’s behaviour or conduct.”The paragraph from the old textbook, which is now omitted, stated, “Certain trends around the sixth century BCE made attempts to express religious thought in such a way that the common man would understand it easily. Many people realized that every person is free to find ways of his own upliftment. This led to the establishment of new religions. These religions emphatically stated that discrimination on the basis of caste has no place in an individual’s upliftment. The work of Vardhaman Mahavir and Gautama Buddha is of special importance among the proponents of new thoughts.”Story continues below this adIt is now replaced by saying that India is a country of religious diversity while listing various religions.Harappan decline: The old book listed “invasions by foreign tribes” among the causes. The new book cites a shift in river course, natural calamities, and falling trade with Sumerian, but not invasion.What’s been added for the presentBut not every change looks back, particularly in science.Space missions (science): Where the old science book only asked students to visit the ISRO and NASA websites, the new one describes Chandrayaan-1, Mangalyaan, Chandrayaan-3, Aditya-L1 and the NASA-ISRO NISAR satellite, launched in July 2025.Story continues below this adAnna Mani (science): The Indian meteorologist Anna Mani (1918-2001) is introduced as the “Weather Woman of India”. She designed numerous instruments useful for weather forecasting. “Because of Anna Mani’s contributions, India’s dependence on other countries for weather forecasting was reduced,” states the new textbook.Gaura Devi (science): The new textbook introduces her role in the Chipko movement. It says local women and activists, including Gaura Devi, “hugged trees and said, ‘First cut us before cutting the trees.’”Women in the Vedic period (history): The book expands on women in the early Vedic period, naming famous female scholars from the era such as Lopamudra, Ghosha, Gargi, Maitreyi and Apala. The old book named three. It states that women in the early Vedic period had the freedom to study the Vedas, before society became “increasingly patriarchal” and women “were reduced to a secondary position”.Several of these changes echo NCERT’s new Class 6 social science textbook, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, released in 2024. That book also says India had its own prime meridian through Ujjain – known as ‘Madhya Rekha’ or Ujjayini – centuries before Greenwich. It renamed the Harappan civilisation as the “Sindhu-Sarasvati” civilisation, and mentions caste only once, where the earlier NCERT book had a section on caste discrimination and BR Ambedkar. Both follow the NEP’s push to include Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) across the curriculum.Story continues below this adBalbharati on the changes madeAnuradha Oak, Director of Balbharati said that the changes made to the textbooks are in line with the NEP 2020 recommendations, which was also the reason for revision of textbooks. “The learning outcomes mentioned at the beginning of every textbook will provide the intentions behind why certain topics are part of the said curriculum for a particular class and subject. Comparison with old textbook will show that the concepts expected for a child to understand at that particular level remain similar; but there are changes in the process of understanding by bringing in the Indian contexts. The NEP 2020 recommendations have great emphasis on Indian Knowledge System (IKS) which is reflected in the textbook revisions.”Oak also insisted that this should not be misunderstood as way of establishing superiority between the two – ancient and modern – streams of knowledge. “The new textbooks only bring out the ancient Indian knowledge to create awareness among students that India throughout ancient times knew these concepts. They are introduced to children so that if anyone wants to pursue those for higher education can have knowledge about it,” said Oak.On the contemporary examples, Oak said they were added because they were not available when the previous textbooks were prepared.