Politics in School Textbooks: Congress, BJP Accuse Each Other of Distorting History

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, June 9: With politics having entered the school textbooks, controversy has erupted both at the national and Karnataka state levels as the ruling parties made or are intending to make changes in the textbooks to suit their respective political ideologies.

Just as the Congress accused the BJP government at the centre of trying to “rewriting history” by dropping chapters on the Mughal era and other changes made in the school textbooks published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the BJP in Karnataka on Friday charged the newly-formed Congress government in the state of “distorting history” because the education minister said the government was considering to drop the chapter on the RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar from school textbooks introduced by the previous BJP government.

Calling it a “bizarre censoring of Indian history,” Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the alleged removal of lessons on RSS founder from school textbooks in Karnataka would be a “crime against youth.” Congress MLC BK Hari Prasad has claimed that the new Karnataka government would not approve the inclusion of chapters on Hedgewar, whom he also slammed as a “coward” and “fake freedom fighter.” The BJP has hit out at the state government, demanding an apology, saying the Congress was distorting history.

The controversy erupted after the Karnataka Primary and Secondary Education Minister Madhu Bangarappa said the school books would be revised from this year itself. Old books won’t be recalled, but supplementary textbooks would be sent to school with instructions on what to teach and what to be left out. Since the academic year started before he took charge, students already have the old textbooks, Bangarappa said and suggested supplementary reading to aid the transition.

The revisions are being done in the interest of the children’s future, he said, adding that the Congress already committed to it in their pre-election manifesto. Madhu Bangarappa was the Vice Chairman of the manifesto committee. Without getting into details of the revision, he said a “purely technical team” would handle it.

The Congress in its poll manifesto had promised to undo the changes made to school textbooks when the BJP was in power, and had also promised to scrap the National Education Policy. Changes would be minimum to avoid inconveniencing students, the minister stressed.

At the national level, embarrassed over the unscrupulous changes made in the school textbooks in the name of reducing the burden on the students, at least two advisors have written to the NCERT director to drop their names from the list of the advisory board.

Objecting to the recent “innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions” made by the NCERT in school textbooks, Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav, who were chief advisors for the political science books for classes 9 to 12 have written to the Council disassociating themselves from the textbooks in their current form and requested that their names be dropped from them.

The NCERT school textbooks are at the centre of yet another controversy with academicians and politicians criticising the sweeping changes and deletions decided last year (and implemented this year) on the pretext of reducing curriculum to help students recover from learning disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. These changes include removing all references to the 2002 Gujarat riots when the prime minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of his home state and had faced criticism for the handling of the riots, reducing content related to the Mughal era and the caste system, and dropping chapters on protests and social movements.

Citing concerns over the integrity of the rationalisation process, Yadav and Palshikar, in a letter addressed to the NCERT director DS Saklani on Friday, said, “We fail to see any pedagogic rationale at work here. We find that the text has been mutilated beyond recognition without any attempt to fill the gaps thus created.” The letter adds, “We believe that any text has an internal logic and such arbitrary cuts and deletions violate the spirit of the text. The frequent and serial deletions do not seem to have any logic except to please powers that be.”

Stating that the textbooks in their current shape do not serve the purpose of training students in political science and that they are embarrassed to have their names associated with “mutilated and academically dysfunctional” books, the Yadav and Palshikar have requested Saklani to drop their names from all political science textbooks of classes 9 to 12 in the soft copies as well as all print editions in future.

The NCERT recently defended the changes in a series of tweets, stating that the rationalization of textbooks was a “need-based exercise aimed at reducing the content load, keeping in view students’ mental health” during the pandemic. The Council clarified that the rationalised content is applicable only for the academic year 2023-24, as a new set of textbooks would be developed based on the upcoming National Curriculum Framework.

In Karnataka, the BJP has launched a frontal attack against the Congress even though the technical committee has yet not given any recommendation on what is going to be removed or carried forward. Once the Committee makes its recommendations, it will be sent to the Minister, who will put it in the Cabinet for discussion and approval. The entire process will take 10 to 15 days, and Madhu Bangarappa has said he will get things going “as soon as possible.”

Within days of coming to power in Karnataka, the Congress had said they would revise school textbooks which had, in turn, been revised by the previous government. Congress says that they will not allow texts and lessons that “poison the minds” of children. Bangarappa also said they were not doing anything against BJP or RSS, but only for the benefit of children.

The BJP leader CN Ashwath Narayan has said the Congress should take its own time. “They shouldn’t be in a hurry. As a popular government, they should address the concern of all sections of society. Government has to be inclusive,” he said. The BJP national general secretary CT Ravi has termed the book revision move as “intolerance”.

“They (Congress) had used the word intolerance, this shows that they have intolerance against a patriot. They have the right to oppose ideologically, but they don’t have the moral right to question Hedgewar’s patriotism. Lessons on Marx and Mao who are not from this country and were against democracy can be there in the textbook, but lessons on patriots like Hedgewar cannot be there. This is intolerance, let’s see what they will do, and our party will decide what to do,” he has said.

Asserting that the act of “polluting children’s minds through texts and lessons” cannot be condoned, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday had said, “As the academic year has started, we will discuss and take action so that the education of the children is not disturbed.”

There was a textbook controversy during the previous regime, with demands by opposition Congress and some writers for sacking the then textbook review committee chief Rohith Chakratirtha for allegedly “saffronising” school textbooks by including the speech of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar as a chapter, and omitting chapters on key figures like freedom fighters, social reformers, and the writings of noted literary figures.

There were also allegations of erroneous content on 12th-century social reformer Basavanna and certain factual errors in the textbooks, including accusations of disrespecting ‘Raashtra Kavi’ (national poet) Kuvempu and distortion of the state anthem penned by him. Initially, the allegations were refuted by the BJP government but subsequently was forced to carry out rectifications in some cases.