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| Michel Danino. Image: IIT, Gandhinagar |
The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday, 11th March 2026, directed the Government of India, state governments/union territories, universities and public institutions receiving government funds to disassociate forthwith from the three members of the Textbook Development Team of the National Council of Educational Research and Training's (NCERT, Education Ministry, Govt. of India) social science curriculum and not to assign any responsibility which incurs, fully or partially, public funds.
Earlier, the Supreme Court in a suo motu hearing on 26th February objected to the mention of corruption and delay in a chapter of the book on the Indian judiciary and banned the entire book. During the hearing senior advocates criticised that the judiciary had been singled out, as there was no mention of corruption in the Executive and by politicians.
The three members banned by the Supreme Court are Michel Danino, guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar; Alok Prasanna Kumar, co-founder of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy; and Suparna Diwakar, an educator and development sector professional.
Michel Danino was first drawn to India and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and joined Auroville at the age of 21 in 1977 and then moved to Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, in 1982. He was part of a team that translated from French to English the Mother's Agenda, a 13-volume book series containing conversations of the Mother and the documents she gave to Satprem (Bernard Enginger), who was a disciple and inmate of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Danino also published a book in collaboration with Sujatha, partner of Satprem, on the Indus Valley Civilisation, presenting evidence disproving the Aryan Invasion Theory that was originally promoted by Western Indologists and widely accepted as a fact in Indian education. The Indian government, in 2017, conferred upon him the Padma Shri, the country's fourth-highest civilian award. Danino was a member of the last International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the Auroville Foundation, which completed its tenure in October 2025.
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