Sibal not intervening in saffronisation of textbooks

Changes in education content for political reasons had hit headline recently but HRD minister Kapil Sibal has decided to remain oblivious on the ground that academics is an exclusive domain of the institutions.

Updated on: Nov 28, 2011, 01:44:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Changes in education content for political reasons had hit headline recently but HRD minister Kapil Sibal has decided to remain oblivious on the ground that academics is an exclusive domain of the institutions.

Sibal has also broken the trend of two previous HRD ministers - Arjun Singh of Congress and Murli Manohar Joshi of BJP - forcing institutions to remove content they considered improper for students and the society.

The Delhi University was recently hit by controversy of AK Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translations', which illustrate the myriad the story of Rama.

The university's academic council decided to remove the essay from the reading list for Bachelors of Arts (Honours) students even though an expert committee wanted to retain it. The university's decision was taken after right-wing organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had created ruckus in the campus over the essay resulting in protest by students and academic of DU.

"I will not comment," was Sibal's refrain when asked about Ramanujan essay controversy and other attempts to introduce religious text. The reason is that the minister does not want to intervene in academic independence of the institutions.

While most academics agree with Sibal's benign decision, a few differ. "When there is an attempt to introduce religious bias in the textbooks the ministry should intervene," said a historian with a Central government institution, who was not willing to be quoted.

Joshi as HRD minister during NDA regime had got the NCERT textbooks changed they were biased against Hindus. His successor Arjun Singh got the NCERT textbooks revised in a bid to de-saffronise them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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