Michel Danino

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Michel Danino
Michel Danino.png
Danino in 2016
Born
Honfleur, France
OccupationAuthor
Honours Padma Shri (2017)

Michel Danino is an Indian author. He currently serves as the chairperson of the National Council of Educational Research and Training's (NCERT) social science curriculum. A proponent of Hindutva, he has been criticised for engaging in historical negationism.

Contents

Biography

Michel Danino was born in Honfleur, France. Danino spent a few years in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, before shifting to the Nilgiri Mountains in 1982, where he resided for two decades. [1] In 2003, he settled near Coimbatore. In an interview, he said that he had adopted Indian citizenship. [2]

He currently serves as the chairperson of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) curriculum committee for social science. He is also a visiting professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Gandhinagar. [3] In 2017, the Indian government, under prime minister Narendra Modi, conferred upon him the Padma Shri, the country's fourth-highest civilian award. [4]

Works and views

Danino's works and views are influnced by Aurobindo, who speculated against the Indo-Aryan migrations. [5] Danino translated Mother's Agenda , the 13 volume biography of Mirra Alfassa, from French to English. [5] Sri Aurobindo and India's Rebirth (2018) describes Danino's views on the development of Aurobindo's thought. [5]

Indigenous Aryanism

In The Invasion that Never was, published by Danino in 1996, he argued against the academically accepted view that the Indo-Aryans originated in Central Asia, before migrating to India. Furthermore, he has falsely said, "No ancient or medieval Indian text would support the Aryan invasion theory" and "It is genetically proven that Aryans and Dravidians belong to the same race." [6]

Sarasvati River

Danino wrote The Lost River: On The Trail of the Sarasvati in 2010, arguing against longstanding scholarly consensus. In the book, Danino sought to connect the Hindu mythological Sarasvati River, first mentioned in the Rigveda, an ancient Hindu text, with the current Ghaggar-Hakra River. [7] Danino has defended the inclusion of names such as "Sindhu-Sarasvati" and "Indus-Sarasvati", as alternatives for the Indus Valley Civilisation, in NCERT Textbooks. [8] He has argued that the drying of the Sarasvati River was the cause of Indus Valley Civilisation's collapse. [6]

Reception

A proponent of Hindutva, he has been criticised for his sectarian scholarship and historical negationism. [9] [10] [11]

Historian Peter Heehs' opinion of one of Danino's works, Sri Aurobindo and Indian Civilization, is that it was lacking in linguistic knowledge, and made up of attacks on colonial orientalists and half-informed invocations of nationalist orientalists. Heehs also criticised Danino's other works for appropriating Sri Aurobindo in his campaign against the Indo-Aryan migrations, and for distorting Aurobindo's speculative views as assertions. Heehs added that Danino selectively cherry-picked quotes from his draft-manuscripts and ignored his published works, which were far more nuanced. [12]

NCERT social science curriculum changes and controversy

As head of NCERT’s social science committee, Danino has overseen the presentation of a gentle and sanitised version of Indian history. For instance, under his leadership, the Class 8 social science textbooks portray the Maratha Empire in a favourable light, while depicting the Mughal Empire highly negatively. Critics have characterised the changes as an ideological move. In an interview with ThePrint, Danino denied any ideological bias. In the same interview, he said, "We avoid all unpleasantness, thinking perhaps that this is going to, you know, traumatise the student and so on." [13]

See also

References

  1. Iftikhar, Fareeha (12 August 2025). "Auroville drew Michel Danino to India. He now leads NCERT team drafting new social science textbooks". ThePrint .
  2. Pande Daniel, Vaihayasi (22 May 2010). "The Sarasvati was more sacred than Ganga". Rediff.com . Retrieved 8 August 2011. Technically, I am not a 'foreigner': I adopted Indian citizenship some years ago.
  3. Iftikhar, Fareeha (24 August 2024). "'Keeping Indian civilisation accomplishments out of school syllabus wrong ideology,' says Michel Danino". ThePrint .
  4. "Ministry of Home Affairs Press Note" (PDF). Padma Awards. 25 January 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 January 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 'The past has a knack of exploding in our faces', Rediff, 19 September 2018.
  6. 1 2 "'Indian history was distorted by the British'". Hindustan Times . 1 February 2013.
  7. "TOI Crest: Quick review". The Times of India. 29 May 2010. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
  8. Chopra, Ritika (20 August 2024). "Calling Harappan Civilization Sindhu Sarasvati in new textbooks is based on established scholarship, not politics: NCERT Social Science panel head". The Indian Express . Archived from the original on 20 August 2024.
  9. Guha, Sudeshna (2005). "Negotiating Evidence: History, Archaeology and the Indus Civilisation". Modern Asian Studies. 39 (2): 399–426. doi:10.1017/S0026749X04001611. ISSN   0026-749X. JSTOR   3876625. S2CID   145463239.
  10. Chadha, Ashish (1 February 2011). "Conjuring a river, imagining civilisation: Saraswati, archaeology and science in India". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 45 (1): 55–83. doi:10.1177/006996671004500103. ISSN   0069-9667. S2CID   144701033.
  11. Bhatt, Chetan (1 January 2000). "Dharmo rakshati rakshitah : Hindutva movements in the UK". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 23 (3): 559–593. doi:10.1080/014198700328999. ISSN   0141-9870. S2CID   144085595.
  12. Heehs, Peter (2003). "Shades of Orientalism: Paradoxes and Problems in Indian Historiography". History and Theory. 42 (2): 169–195. doi:10.1111/1468-2303.00238. ISSN   0018-2656. JSTOR   3590880.
  13. ‘Honest history, not ideology’—NCERT social science panel chief on changes in Class 8 textbook, ThePrint, 1 Aug 2025.