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References to Gujarat riots, Cold War dropped from NCERT books
The NCERT dropped references to the 2002 Gujarat riots, Cold War and Mughal courts from a Class 12 textbook, industrial revolution from a Class 11 textbook and some Dalit writers from a Class 7 textbook as part of a new rationalised syllabi for the current academic session
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on Thursday dropped references to the 2002 Gujarat riots, Cold War and Mughal courts from a Class 12 textbook, industrial revolution from a Class 11 textbook and some Dalit writers from a Class 7 textbook as part of a new rationalised syllabi for the current academic session.
The curriculum for Classes 6 to 12 was rationalised to “reduce the content load” on students in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Around 30% of the syllabi was reduced for this academic session, said NCERT officials. There was no selective omission of topics, said a senior NCERT official, requesting anonymity.
The NCERT started the rationalisation process last December for 2022-23 academic session and the same in now completed. A team of subject experts from NCERT worked on rationalisation process.
Curriculum documents showed that in the Class 12 Political Science textbook, pages 187-189 that were on the topic “‘Gujarat Riots” will be excluded from Chapter Nine titled “Recent Developments in Indian Politics” for this year.
An online version of the book on the NCERT website showed the pages mentioning the 2002 riots, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) report on the violence, and a quote from then Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee on “raj dharma”.
Other topics removed from class 12 syllabus are full chapters on Mughal Courts in History, a poem on ‘The Dalit Movement’ and a chapter on the Cold War from the political science textbook.
In the Class 11 history textbook, chapters titled “Central Islamic lands” and the Industrial Revolution were also dropped for this year, the curriculum documents showed.
In the social science textbook of Classes 7 and 8, references to Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki were removed. In the Class 7 textbook titled “Our Pasts-2”, pages 48 and 49 were excluded. These pages mentioned “Mughal Emperors: major campaigns and events”, showed online versions of the books on the NCERT website.
NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani denied to comment on the matter and said the process of rationalisation began before he took charge.
A senior official at the ministry of education, requesting anonymity, said, “The topics have been rationalised after due consideration by subject experts. They were either taught in earlier classes or will come in future classes. There has been no selective omission of topics.”
According to a note released by NCERT, content was dropped in case of “overlapping” of similar content, included in other subject areas in the same class, or similar content included in the lower or higher class in same subject, or on the basis of “difficulty level” of the content, or if the content was “irrelevant” in the present context.
The topics may be taught in earlier or later classes, NCERT officials maintained.
“The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, also emphasises reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with creative mindset. In this background, NCERT has undertaken the exercise to rationalise the textbooks across all classes,” the body said in a note released with the rationalised syllabus document of each subject.
In a Class 8 social science book “Social and Political Life-2”, a write-up by artist Ainee A Farooqi on religious identity associated with clothes was also dropped, showed documents. In Class 8 social sciencebook ‘Our pasts-3’, chapter 10 ‘India after Independence” – which mentioned the formation of the Constitution, establishments of states and five-year plans – was excluded.
Many of these changes were announced earlier this year when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) rationalised its syllabi for this year in April. Schools under CBSE use the NCERT textbooks, which are also used by some state boards.
In Class 10, for example, NCERT reiterated the exclusion of the chapters and topics already removed by CBSE in April. They included verses of poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the “Religion, Communalism and Politics — Communalism, Secular State” section textbook “Democratic Politics II”, and full chapter titled ‘Democracy and Diversity’, ‘Popular Struggle and movements’ and ‘Challenges to Democracy’.
Tanvir Aeijaz, associate professor of political science at Delhi University’s (DU) Ramjas College, termed it as “selective rationalisation”.
“This type of rationalisation and revision is done on the basis of some agenda. It is a political agenda the present government is trying to carry out in educational institutions be it schools or colleges. They are trying to invisibilise certain parts of history to give a perspective to students that this had never happened. This rationalisation by erasing some selective content has some agenda behind it,” he said.
