Page 22 - EW July 2024

Education News

DELHI President’s Rule in BJP-ruled states
History textbooks row have been omitted.

Reacting on June 16, Prof.
Dinesh Saklani, director of NCERT
and a historian himself, justified the
changes saying that the deletions
were necessary as NCERT wants “to
create positive citizens, not violent
and depressed individuals.” “Hatred,
violence are not subjects of teaching
in school and shouldn’t be the focus
of textbooks,” he explained.
This chopping and changing of
textbooks has outraged well-known
public intellectuals Suhas Pal-
shikar and Yogendra Yadav, who
were chief advisors to the pre-Covid
class IX-XII political science text-
books. In a letter to NCERT (June
17), they requested Prof. Saklani
to delete their names from the
textbooks. “Both of us don’t want
Prof. Dinesh Saklani: justified deletions NCERT to hide behind our names to
pass on to students such textbooks of
ational council of Educa- many contending that selected chap- political science that we find politi-
tional Research and Train- ters were rewritten to suit the politi- cally biased, academically indefen-
Ning (NCERT), the country’s cal and ideological propaganda of the sible and pedagogically dysfunction-
largest publisher of K-12 textbooks, ruling BJP. For instance, Darwin’s al… The new editions of these books
is again in the throes of a contro- theory of evolution which posits that that have been published with our
versy following its “rationalisation- human beings are descended from names should be withdrawn from the
cum-revision” of class XII social apes — anathema to the Rashtriya market forthwith… If NCERT fails to
science (history) textbooks, widely Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the take immediate corrective action, we
prescribed by schools countrywide ideological mentor organization of may be forced to take legal recourse,”
including 29,662 upscale schools the BJP — was dropped from science wrote the duo.
affiliated with the Central Board of textbooks in 2023, prompting 1,800 However, all political parties
Secondary Examinations (CBSE), scientists and educators to sign a tend to rewrite history. When the
India’s largest schools national protest petition. Congress government established
exams board. NCERT and CBSE are This time round, the revised edi- NCERT in 1961, its brief to the coun-
purportedly autonomous subsidiar- tion of the class XII political science cil was to rewrite children’s text-
ies of the Union education ministry. textbook has evoked sharp reactions books “positively” — “in the back-
The rationale of the recent revi- from several educators and authors drop of a school system struggling
sion of class VII-XII textbooks is who allege that selective portions to disengage from its elitist colonial
the world’s most prolonged closure have been omitted and/or edited to past and to create a common pro-
of schools during the Covid-19 suit the political agenda of the BJP. gramme of school education that was
pandemic (2020-21) and learning In the revised political science universally accessible and reflected
loss experienced by school-going textbook released by NCERT in the pluralist character of India”.
children. This necessitated pruning mid-June, the Babri Masjid is not Therefore, school textbooks in
of syllabuses and curriculums by mentioned by name (“three-domed post-independence India have been
NCERT to reduce student stress. structure”) and all references to BJP propagating the Congress party’s
However, the selection of deleted chieftain LK Advani’s rath yatra mantras of socialism, secularism and
content has generated controversy from Somnath (Gujarat) to Ayod- national integration, often glossing
since the first revised textbooks were hya; vandalisation of Babri Masjid over the depredations of Muslim in-
published in 2022. Critics, including by RSS/BJP kar sevaks; communal vaders from the 14th-18th centuries.
authors of the textbooks, charged violence after destruction of Babri Rightist historians critical of this bias
NCERT with hasty deletions with Masjid in 1992, and imposition of had criticized NCERT textbooks of

22 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2024