Dev 360 | Cholas, Mughals & India’s Education: Past & Present | Patralekha Chatterjee

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Gangaikonda Cholapuram for the Aadi Thiruvathirai festival carried a pointed subtext. By spotlighting Rajendra Chola’s naval campaign and expansive trade networks, Mr Modi cast ancient statecraft as a blueprint for India’s modern global positioning, subtly asserting that India’s historic ambition underpins its contemporary stature.

Unsurprisingly, this visit — alongside the ongoing rewriting of school history textbooks — has reignited debates that in some instances seek to frame the Cholas and the Mughals in binary, even “morality play” terms. The controversy, hinged on the reduction of Mughal-era chapters and the heightened emphasis on dynasties like the Cholas, has catalysed polarised narratives. Right-leaning voices elevate Chola feats and Hindu greatness, portraying the Mughals as foreign invaders; while liberal commentators caution against this reductive dichotomy, warning of its distortion of historical understanding and the risks to social harmony. History, they argue, is being remade into a politicised script: Hindu heroes on one side, the “big, bad Mughals” on the other.

In the digital public square, Mr Modi’s visit has intensified these tendencies, driving the discourse further toward binaries, often overshadowing deeper reflection. Chola kings are now framed by many as icons of Hindu pride, but the moment demands a much more meaningful conversation — about what this rich and complex legacy can offer contemporary India, beyond selective celebration.

It's also a moment to ask not just what India’s youth learn, but how they learn.

As contemporary political discourse in India focuses on the Cholas, it is worth interrogating what they can truly teach India today. Celebrating temple architecture, maritime reach and administrative prowess is valid, but risks becoming ornamental without a deeper engagement with the values and cognitive strategies that produced those feats. Without reforming how education fosters analysis, inquiry and adaptation, these historical parallels remain superficial.

This should be a conversation about minds, not just a conversation about monuments. “The Chola kings of early medieval South India should be remembered for their cultural innovations. They made the portable sacred image popular, recorded their history in temple inscriptions, and redistributed wealth through festivals. Chola inscriptions estimate 56 festival days a year, marked by tree planting, road construction and productivity,” says historian Samyak Ghosh.

Their administrative depth extended to water systems and environment engineering, among other things. Chola kings pioneered sophisticated irrigation techniques that remain relevant. “Tamil Nadu can be proud of some of the oldest examples of irrigation works in the country... Cholas were the first to realise the importance of irrigation. They constructed many reservoirs and changed dry lands into cultivable ones through artificial irrigation,” writes scholar C.R. Rathika in her 2016 paper “Irrigation System in Thanjavur District Under the Cholas”, published in the International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research in Arts and Humanities. The Kallanai Dam, also known as Grand Anicut, was built by Karikalan Chola in the 2nd century CE and is among the world’s oldest water-diversion structures still in use.

And yet, even as history offers these models of adaptive governance and systemic thinking, India’s education system continues to prioritise rote learning, and largely de-emphasise critical thinking in school and college. Most Indian students still memorise and reproduce. “Our education system has long been shaping one-dimensional personalities — people trained to memorise, reproduce, and conform. The lack of critical thinking is not new; it is systemic and deeply rooted in how we have defined learning for decades,” says academic Anurag Shukla, who has taught at several of India’s top universities and consults on education reform. “What is new, and worrying, is how technology is now amplifying this problem. AI (Artificial Intelligence), unless used with care and intention, risks further flattening intellectual curiosity and nuance. It can become a tool for outsourcing thought, rather than enhancing it. So yes, the crisis of critical thinking will likely deepen if we do not urgently rethink the foundations of our education,” warns Mr Shukla.

In his classrooms, he observes a growing intellectual passivity: “Students often feel they no longer need to wrestle with ambiguity or make meaning for themselves because an answer, any answer, is always just a click away. This ease breeds passivity, not inquiry.”

There are consequences. India faces a persistent disconnect between education and employability. The India Skills Report 2025 indicates a rise in overall employability among Indian graduates to 54.81%, up from 51.25% in 2024. Maharashtra leads with 84% employability followed by Delhi, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. But the challenge of aligning education and training with the evolving needs of the global economy persists.

While just over 50% of Indian graduates are considered employable (a rise from 33% a decade ago), this also means that nearly half are not. There are ongoing issues with alignment between education and industry needs, sectoral gaps (especially in new technology and high-demand sectors), and the need for more robust, future-ready training methods and partnerships. The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) points out that although basic literacy and numeracy have recovered slightly post-pandemic in government schools, the proportion of Class 5 children who could read a Class 2-level text was 44.8% in 2024. Numeracy remains patchy across states. These are not academic technicalities — they are structural threats to a future shaped by automation, climate challenges, and global flux. The jobs of the future demand the human faculties machines cannot replicate — judgment, empathy, originality and ethical reasoning. Whether in public health, governance or business, the most valuable skill will be the ability to think across domains.

Looking to the Cholas for inspiration is not a misstep. Every society needs historical anchors. Chola irrigation systems, built to endure climate variability, can inform modern resilience. Their festivals, blending cultural and economic planning, reflect an integrated civic vision. But their real gift is the model of nuanced, adaptive thought. That is what must reach students.

Indian students deserve a curriculum that engages the Cholas, the Mughals and others with a critical lens — not a script of heroes and villains, nor as objects of nationalist pride in a narrow sense or inherited shame, but as subjects for inquiry. In an increasingly complex world, the goal shouldn’t be to label rulers good or evil but to explore how they navigated complexity.

In Finland, a global leader on education, students are actively involved in posing questions, investigating problems and forming conclusions based on evidence they gather through research. This contrasts with traditional models where students primarily receive information from the teacher.

In the end, the true legacy of the Chola dynasty lies not in stone, but in strategy. India doesn’t need more monuments to memory… it needs monuments to inquiry.

The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com