Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 5: The so-called “rationalisation” of syllabus to reduce the burden on the students hit by the Corona pandemic has typically taken toll of the references to the points disliked by the rightist forces from the textbooks of classes six to 12.
Even as the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), denies any governmental interference in deciding the contents of the textbooks, the experts could not but notice the facts that the trimmed text books invariably suited the ideology of the ruling party.
Among the chapters dropped from the textbooks were the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by a “Hindu extremist’,” the then central government ban of on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the 2002 Gujarat riots when the prime minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of his home state and was accused of showing definite bias against a particular community.
Though the NCERT insisted that no curriculum trimming has taken place this year and the syllabus was rationalised in June, last year, its chief DS Saklani could not justify why only the paragraphs disliked by the Hindutva forces had become victim of “syllabus rationalisation.”
“Gandhiji’s death had magical effect on communal situation in the country”, “Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists” and “Organisations like RSS were banned for some time” are among the texts missing from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session.
As part of its “syllabus rationalisation” exercise last year, the NCERT, citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant” as reasons, dropped certain portions from the course including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, among others from its textbooks.
The rationalisation note had no mention of excerpts about Mahatma Gandhi. “The entire rationalisation exercise was done last year, there is nothing new which has happened this year,” Saklani said. He, however, did not comment on the missing excerpts which went unannounced at the time of rationalisation.
Amid controversy over certain content related to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination being dropped from its textbooks without any notification, Saklani said it could have been an “oversight” that some deletions were not announced in its rationalisation exercise last year as the Congress hit out at the government calling the move “whitewashing with a vengeance.”
Last year, the NCERT had rationalised textbooks for all subjects to reduce curriculum load further to help students make a “speedy recovery” in learning, which has been hit by Covid disruptions. The changes were announced via a booklet that was uploaded on the Council’s official website and also formally shared with all schools. The textbooks (with rationalised content) were not reprinted last year due to shortage of time. The new books, however, have now hit the market and are available for the new academic year 2023-24.
A note by NCERT on its website reads, “in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was felt imperative to reduce content load on students. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also emphasises reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with creative mindset. In this background, the NCERT had undertaken the exercise to rationalise the textbooks across all classes and all subjects”.
“The present edition is a reformatted version after carrying out the changes. The present textbooks are rationalised textbooks. These were rationalised for the session 2022-23 and will continue in 2023-24,” it adds.
Among the reasons cited behind the choice of dropped subjects during rationalisation are – content based on genres of literature in the textbooks and supplementary readers at different stages of school education; for reducing the curriculum load and exam stress in view of the prevailing condition of the pandemic; content.
Subjects easily accessible to students without much interventions from teachers and can be learned by children through self-learning or peer learning and content which is “irrelevant” in the present context were also dropped from the curriculum.
An official from the education ministry, who did not wish to be identified, said the new curriculum framework as per the NEP is still being worked out and the new textbooks as per the updated curriculum will only be introduced from the 2024 academic session.
Among the paragraphs related to Gandhiji that have been deleted from the textbooks was the following: “He (Gandhi) was particularly disliked by those who wanted Hindus to take revenge or who wanted India to become a country for the Hindus, just as Pakistan was for Muslims…
* His steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate Gandhiji…
“Gandhiji’s death had an almost magical effect on the communal situation in the country… The Government of India cracked down on organisations that were spreading communal hatred. Organisations like the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh were banned for some time…
Another chapter dropped was the one on the Gujarat riots in NCERT Sociology textbooks Class 11 titled ‘Understanding Society’. NCERT has deleted a paragraph that talks about how class, religion and ethnicities often lead to segregation of residential areas and it then cites the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002 to illustrate how communal violence furthers ghettoisation.
The deleted paragraph reads: “Where and how people will live in cities is a question that is also filtered through socio-cultural identities. Residential areas in cities all over the world are almost always segregated by class, and often also by race, ethnicity, religion and other such variables. Tensions between such identities both cause these segregation patterns and are also a consequence. For example, in India, communal tensions between religious communities, most commonly Hindus and Muslims, results in the conversion of mixed neighbourhoods into single-community ones. This in turn gives a specific spatial pattern to communal violence whenever it erupts, which again furthers the ‘ghettoisation’ process. This has happened in many cities in India, most recently in Gujarat following the riots of 2002.”
With the removal of the above paragraph, all NCERT social science textbooks for Classes 6 to 12 have been purged of all references to the Gujarat riots.
The Council had officially announced deletion of two references to the Gujarat riots from the last chapter of the Class 12 political science textbook titled ‘Politics in India Since Independence and the Class 12 sociology textbook ‘Indian Society’ in its “list of rationalised content” released in June last year.
NCERT has also dropped the reference to the government’s ban on the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh following Gandhi’s assassination. The deleted sentences read, “Gandhiji’s death had an almost magical effect on the communal situation in the country. Partition-related anger and violence suddenly subsided. The Government of India cracked down on organisations that were spreading communal hatred. Organisations like the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh were banned for some time. Communal politics began to lose its appeal.”
However, the remaining content under the subheading ‘Mahatma Gandhi’s sacrifice’ mentions Gandhi’s visit to Kolkata on August 15, 1947, which was torn by Hindu-Muslim riots at that time and his subsequent efforts to persuade Hindus and Muslims to give up violence. It also briefly describes his assassination.
“Finally, on 30 January 1948, one such extremist, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, walked up to Gandhiji during his evening prayer in Delhi and fired three bullets at him, killing him instantly.” In the Class 12 History textbook titled ‘Themes In Indian History Part III’, the Council has dropped a “Brahmin” reference to Godse and that he was “the editor of an extremist Hindu newspaper.”