ABSTRACT
Medieval India , authored by Meenakshi Jain, is like Ancient India a textbook for class XI. This implies that Medieval India was presented to the students shortly after they read Ancient India . This chapter is concerned with the period ranging from the advent of Islam on the subcontinent in the seventh century to the end of Sultanate rule in the sixteenth. In the next chapter, I focus more specifically on the period of Mughal rule. This structure follows the textbook’s own emphasis on a historical shift as the era of Mughal rule commences. However, as I will show, the narrative emplotment in the textbook suggests that there were high degrees of continuity between the two periods. For this reason, the conclusions are placed in the second of these chapters. I analyze Jain’s textbook in light of the previous textbook – with the same title – authored by Satish Chandra. I have used the 2005 edition of Chandra’s book. This edition is similar to the original version used by the NCERT prior to the period of BJP rule.
