'Remove negative political cartoons from textbooks'

The Thorat committee appointed by the government to review NCERT's political science textbooks for schools has said that textbooks should remove cartoons with negative references to politicians.

The Thorat committee appointed by the government to review NCERT's political science textbooks for schools has said that textbooks should remove cartoons with negative references to politicians.

The committee also pointed out that textbooks carry too many caricatures of the Nehru-Gandhi family and said that these had to be deleted.

In total the committee recommended the modification of 36 of the 176 cartoons in textbooks for classes 9-12.

The government had set up a panel headed by former UGC chairman SK Thorat in the wake of the cartoon row to review NCERT's political science textbooks for schools.

The committee reviewed Class 11 to 12 social science/political science textbooks of NCERT to identify educationally inappropriate material in them.

The members of the committee are AS Narang (School of Social Sciences IGNOU), Patricia Mukhim (the editor Shillong Times and social worker), Prof MSS Pandian, Abha Malik (teacher of social science of Sanskriti School) and Saroj Yadav (head of department of education in social science, NCERT).

Thorat, who is now the chairman of Indian Council of Social Science Research, is the chairman of the committee.

The committee was set up following uproar over the cartoon of BR Ambedkar in NCERT textbooks in May.

(With inputs from PTI)