Indian Thought Latest News & Views
New Delhi. The top official of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has included several subjects including Mahatma Gandhi, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse and the 2002 Gujarat riots in the political science, political science, and academic papers of classes 11 and 12 for the new academic session. The ‘quiet’ removal from history and sociology textbooks has been described as a ‘surveillance case’. The NCERT, however, has claimed that there has been no curtailment in the syllabus this year and the syllabus was rationalized in June last year.
Last year, on the grounds of rationalization of the syllabus and some parts being irrelevant, NCERT had removed some parts of Gujarat riots, Mughal court, Emergency, cold war, Naxal movement etc. from the textbook. There is no mention about the passage on Mahatma Gandhi in the text book rationalization note.
NCERT Director Professor Dinesh Prasad Saklani told News18, “References to new textbooks have been removed as per the rationalization process and their non-keeping in the list could be a matter of oversight.” He added that the National Education Policy (NEP) is being implemented. The paragraphs were removed from the textbooks in line with the 2020 implementation.
Important parts that have been removed from the books include: ‘Impact of Mahatma Gandhi’s death on the communal situation in the country, Gandhi’s concept of Hindu Muslim unity incited Hindu fundamentalists’, ban on RSS after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, Nathuram Godse’s identity as a ‘Brahmin of Pune’, communal violence including the 2002 Gujarat riots’.
These changes in the books are not included in the ‘Rational Contents List’ released by NCERT in June 2022 and the changes were directly introduced in the new books without any official notification. In June last year, the NCERT rationalized the syllabus for classes 6 to 12 to reduce the burden on students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Changes made last year included removing all references to the Mughal courts, the Emergency, the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Cold War and the Industrial Revolution. Some Dalit writers were also dropped from the Class 7 textbook.
A comparison of the text of the chapter titled ‘The Sacrifice of Mahatma Gandhi’ from this year’s and last year’s Class 12 Political Science book, Politics in India Since Independence, shows that the reference to Gandhi – was disliked by those who wanted Hindus to take revenge… Gandhi’s strong desire for Hindu-Muslim unity so incensed Hindu extremists that they made several attempts to assassinate Gandhi…’ This is missing in the reprinted version.
A note on the NCERT website states, “In view of the Kovid-19 pandemic, it was felt that the burden of course material on the students should be reduced. The National Education Policy 2020 emphasizes on reducing the burden of course material and on experiential learning using creative thinking. In this perspective, the work of rationalizing textbooks in all classes and in all subjects has been started. It has been said that the present edition is a newly prepared edition after the changes and the present textbook is a rational book. These were made rational in the year 2022-23 and will continue in 2023-24 as well. An official of the Ministry of Education said on the condition of anonymity that work on the new curriculum framework under the National Education Policy is still underway and the new curriculum will be introduced from the academic session 2024.
