The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)’s recent decision to exclude Odisha’s Paika Rebellion from its revised Class 8 history curriculum has sparked widespread backlash across political and academic circles, with former Chief Minister and current Leader of Opposition Naveen Patnaik leading the chorus of condemnation.
In a sharply worded post on social media, Patnaik called the exclusion a “huge dishonour” to Odisha’s historic legacy of resistance to British colonial rule.
“Deeply concerned to know that the NCERT has dropped Odisha’s Paika Rebellion or Paika Bidroha from its textbooks. The rebellion was a watershed moment in our history—our brave Paikas fought with exceptional courage against British oppression as early as 1817,” he wrote.
The Paika Rebellion, led by Buxi Jagabandhu, is widely regarded by historians and Odia scholars as a significant uprising that predated the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny by four decades. Patnaik once again urged the central government to recognise it as India’s first war of independence, a longstanding demand that has received repeated attention from both the state and the Centre in recent years.
“To omit this epic resistance movement from school textbooks, especially 200 years after it took place, is not just erasure—it’s a betrayal of the memory of the Paikas who laid down their lives for the country,” he emphasised.
The controversial removal comes as part of the newly introduced textbook “Exploring Society: India and Beyond”, under the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023, aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. While the earlier textbook Our Past-III featured the Paika Rebellion prominently, it has now been completely removed, replaced by accounts of four other early uprisings:
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The Sannyasi-Fakir rebellion in Bengal (post-1770 famine)
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The Kol uprising in Chota Nagpur (1831–32)
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The Santhal rebellion in Jharkhand and Bengal (1855–56)
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The Indigo Revolt (1850–62)
The exclusion has prompted strong reactions from across the political spectrum in Odisha. Rabindra Nath Behera, president of the Samajwadi Party in Odisha, called it an “insult to the valour and courage of the Paikas and their sacrifice in the anti-colonial struggle.”
The controversy is further complicated by the fact that Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who hails from Odisha, now finds himself under scrutiny. Critics accuse him of overseeing a move that directly contradicts earlier efforts to recognise the Paika rebellion’s national importance.
“Pradhan once compelled the Odisha government to demand national recognition for the rebellion. Today, under his watch, the NCERT has removed it. This is a deep scar on the pride of Odisha,” Behera added.
Notably, both the BJD and BJP have previously attempted to claim credit for bringing the Paika Rebellion into the national spotlight. In July 2017, the NDA government hosted a grand bicentenary celebration in New Delhi, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi felicitated descendants of 16 Paika families. The Centre also sanctioned ₹200 crores for commemorative events, and Union Minister Pradhan had publicly praised Patnaik for his campaign to gain official recognition for the rebellion.
Later that year, then-President Ram Nath Kovind laid the foundation stone for a Paika Memorial at Barunai, a key historical site near Khurda linked to the 1817 uprising.
This latest move, however, seems to reverse years of progress toward acknowledging the rebellion’s historical weight. For many in Odisha, it represents a symbolic erasure of their state’s contribution to India’s freedom struggle.
Meanwhile, the revised textbooks have also come under fire for drastically altering portrayals of the Mughal Empire. The new narrative focuses heavily on religious violence and conquests, with Babur described as a ruthless invader, Akbar linked to massacres, and Aurangzeb depicted as a destroyer of temples. The Mughals’ contributions to administration, architecture, and art have been largely cut.
Moreover, the removal of references to the 2002 Gujarat riots and critical facts surrounding Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, including the role of the RSS, has previously drawn flak. NCERT, however, maintains that the new textbooks represent a “fresh, evidence-based approach” in line with the NEP and dismisses comparisons with earlier content as unproductive.
“This is not a sanitisation of history. It is a reframing rooted in facts and research,” an NCERT statement noted, though many academics and politicians remain unconvinced.