You've probably seen headlines saying NCERT's new Class 9 textbook "cites the Manusmriti" and assumed the worst, or at least felt confused about what that even means. Let me walk you through what the textbook actually says, because the real content is more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
What the Textbook Says About Women in the Vedic Period
The book in question is NCERT's newly introduced Class IX Social Science textbook, "Understanding Society: India and Beyond Part 1," specifically in a chapter titled "State and Society up to 1000 CE" (Deccan Herald). The chapter describes the Vedic period as one "often described as a period during which women held a high and respectful position in society" (NewKerala). To back that up, it points to specific evidence: women participated in scholarly learning, performed rituals alongside men in certain contexts, attended public gatherings, and several hymns of the Rig Veda are traditionally attributed to women sages — Apala, Visvavara, Ghosha, and Lopamudra among them (NewKerala).
The Manusmriti Verse in Question
Here's where the Manusmriti — an ancient Sanskrit text laying down social and legal norms, and one that's long been at the center of debates over its provisions on caste and gender (NewKerala) — actually enters the picture. The textbook says respect for women shows up in texts composed after the Vedic period too, and then reproduces Manusmriti verse 3.56: "Where women, verily, are honoured, there gods rejoice; where, however, they are not honoured, there all sacred rites prove fruitless" (NewKerala).
The Nuance Headlines Missed
This is the part that matters most, though: immediately after quoting that verse, the textbook doesn't stop there and imply everything stayed rosy. It explicitly adds that women's status did not remain unchanged — that "the position and roles of women fluctuated, even declined, as social and political conditions changed" over time (Deccan Herald). So the verse isn't presented as the final word — it's framed as one data point in a period, followed directly by an acknowledgment of decline afterward.
The chapter goes further than just that one verse, too. It notes women continued contributing to household management, agriculture, crafts, and religious practice even as their formal status shifted, and cites later historical examples like Prabhavati Gupta, who ruled as regent of the Vakataka kingdom, alongside literary evidence from the Gupta-Vakataka period and Sangam literature showing women's continued participation in governance, arts, and economic life (Deccan Herald).
Other Notable Additions to the Textbook
There's also a broader thread in the same chapter worth knowing about: it revisits the concepts of varna and jati (class and caste), arguing that early Vedic social identity wasn't determined "solely by birth," pointing to a Rig Veda hymn — "I am a poet; my father is a physician; my mother is a grinder of corn" — as evidence that occupation could vary within a family (Deccan Herald). It also quotes the Buddhist text Sutta Nipata making a similar point about status depending on deeds rather than birth (Deccan Herald).
And this isn't the only headline-grabbing addition to this textbook — the same book also introduced a section on the 1975 Emergency for the first time in a Class 9 NCERT book, describing it as a major challenge to democracy (Latestly).
The Bigger Picture
None of this makes the Manusmriti itself uncontroversial — historians, social reformers, and Dalit organisations have long criticized several of its passages on caste hierarchy and women's status, even as some scholars view it as an important historical source (Deccan Herald).
If you're a student actually reading this chapter, or a parent skimming it over your kid's shoulder, my honest take is this: the headline version — "NCERT textbook cites Manusmriti" — strips out the "even declined" half of the sentence that immediately follows it in the actual text. Read the full passage before you form an opinion on it; the chapter is making a more layered argument about change over time than a single lifted quote can capture.