The National Council of Educational Research and Training purged select content from textbooks of different subjects without consulting the original authors of the books, many of these authors have confirmed to The Telegraph.
The NCERT made the changes after consulting external experts, the majority of them schoolteachers. However, the reasons for deleting the specific contents — for instance, chapters on the Mughals and the Gujarat riots from the Class XII history and political science textbooks, respectively — have not been communicated to the original authors or the public.
This newspaper’s efforts to elicit the specific reasons for the various deletions from the NCERT director and the external experts remained unfruitful, with some declining comment and others failing to respond, seeking time, or giving evasive answers.
The generic reason for the deletions — carried out last year — that the national academic body has given is the need to lighten the academic load on the pupils following the disruptions caused by the pandemic.
However, several academics — including a few of the authors of the textbooks — have objected to the procedure followed by the NCERT to carry out the revisions, with some of them smelling a “political agenda” behind the changes.
“It’s hard to avoid the impression that the so-called committees involved in the revision have rubber-stamped what they were told to do by the powers that be,” Yogendra Yadav, former senior fellow at the Centre for the Studies of Developing Societies (CSDS) and one of the authors of the now-revised political science textbooks for Classes IX to XII, told this newspaper.
Suhas Palshikar, former professor with Pune University who was chief adviser for the political science textbooks for Classes IX to XII along with Yadav, said: “There seems to be arbitrariness and a political agenda behind these deletions.”
A statement issued on Saturday by over 300 eminent academics from history and other disciplines, too, confirmed that the deletions from the NCERT’s history textbooks were carried out without consulting the original authors.
“Guided by a divisive and partisan agenda, the NCERT by selectively deleting several important themes from school textbooks is not only doing great disservice to the composite heritage of the Indian subcontinent but betraying the aspirations of the Indian masses,” the statement said.
The signatories included historians Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, Kumkum Roy, Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan.
The NCERT has dropped content on the Gujarat riots, the ban on the RSS following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, references to Hindu extremists killing Gandhi, the “controversies regarding (the) Emergency”, among others, from the book Politics in India Since Independence, taught in Class XII. However, it has retained text on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
Content on Jawaharlal Nehru, the Mughals, the caste system and social discrimination has been drastically reduced from the textbooks of history, political science and sociology for various classes.
NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani has said that content was shed from all books across classes and subjects, and that this was done “professionally” by subject experts.
This newspaper has scrutinised the replies the government has made in Parliament on the subject, and obtained details of the experts associated with the textbook revision from a reply that junior education minister Annpurna Devi made in the Lok Sabha on July 18 last year. Nationalist Congress Party member Mohammed Faizal had sought details of the experts.
#According to the reply, the external experts consulted for the revision of the history books were Umesh Kadam, professor of history, Centre for Historical Studies (CHS), Jawaharlal Nehru University; Archana Verma, associate professor of history at Hindu College, Delhi University (DU); and three postgraduate teachers from schools. There was one round of consultation.
The history books for Classes VI to VIII and Classes IX to XII were written between 2006 and 2008 by two teams of subject experts with Neeladri Bhattacharya, then professor at CHS, as chief adviser.
The team that wrote the books for Classes VI to VIII included writer and historian Ramachandra Guha, nine university or college teachers, an education activist and three schoolteachers.
The authors’ team for the senior classes had 15 faculty members, a writer, an editor, two activists and three schoolteachers.
#The external experts consulted for the revision of the political science textbooks were Vanthangpui Khobung, assistant professor, political science, Regional Institute of Education, Bhopal (an NCERT constituent); Maneesha Pandey, department of political science, Hindu College, DU; and two postgraduate schoolteachers. There were two rounds of consultations.
The original books, Social and Political Life, for Classes VI to VIII were written by a team of 14 that included faculty members and researchers, a lawyer, and three schoolteachers. Sarada Balagopalan from the CSDS was the chief adviser.
The authors of the political science textbooks for Classes IX to XII included Yogendra Yadav, Palshikar, 15 university and college faculty members, a schoolteacher and an independent researcher.
#For the sociology textbooks, the NCERT held three rounds of consultations with Manju Bhatt, former professor of sociology, NCERT; Achala Pritam Tondon, associate professor, sociology, Hindu College; and two schoolteachers.
The team of authors for the sociology books for Classes XI and XII had 15 faculty members from universities and colleges, with Yogendra Singh, emeritus professor, JNU, as chief adviser.
In addition to the external experts, the NCERT also held consultations with 16 CBSE-nominated schoolteachers from various disciplines, the minister’s reply suggested.
This newspaper on Wednesday wrote to Saklani, the NCERT director, asking on what basis the experts had been selected for the consultations, and why the original writers were not consulted.
Saklani did not respond to these two specific questions but said the expert committees had thoroughly examined the content and recommended removals uniformly (across subjects) “without any selective approach”.
Neshat Quiser, a retired professor of sociology who taught at the Jamia Millia Islamia, told this newspaper: “I don’t know if the NCERT invited the scholars who wrote the sociology books while revising the existing books. It would have been good to have a lively academic discussion with them for a better understanding before the revisions were undertaken.”
Yadav said that when these books were first written, the NCERT had subjected them to multiple layers of scrutiny.
There were chief advisers and a team of authors who were experts either on the subject or on pedagogy. The advisory committee for the textbooks in the social sciences was headed by the late Hari Vasudevan, then professor of history, Calcutta University.
There was a national monitoring committee, co-chaired by eminent academics G.P. Deshpande and Mrinal Miri, that vetted all the textbooks for accuracy and appropriateness.
“Any revision of these books must go through a similar rigorous process,” Yadav said.
While writing and approving the book Politics in India Since Independence, special caution was taken to ensure factual accuracy and political neutrality since it covered sensitive topics, Yadav said.
The book was reviewed by leading scholars in the social sciences such as Sunil Khilnani, Mahesh Rangarajan and Ramachandra Guha before it went to the national monitoring committee.
As for the NCERT giving no explanations for the individual deletions, Yadav contrasted it with the transparent way an expert committee had removed cartoons from a political science textbook a decade ago.
In 2012, after a controversy had broken out over these cartoons — some of them deemed derogatory to Babasaheb Ambedkar --- an expert committee was set up under Sukhadeo Thorat, then chairperson of the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
Yadav said the committee had called the authors of the book, the advisers and a wide range of political scientists and sought their views.
“We were called and gave our views even though Prof. Palshikar and I had already resigned as chief advisers. We disagreed with the committee, but the committee gave reasons for its recommendation for the deletion of certain cartoons,” Yadav said.
“But during the repeated revisions these books underwent since 2014, we were never consulted. As far as I can tell, none of the authors has been involved in this process.
“We don’t know, for example, the reasons for dropping the content on the Gujarat riots while retaining the content on the anti-Sikh riots, or the reasons for dropping facts about the ban on the RSS after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.”
Yadav said that textbooks should be open to correction if they contain factual inaccuracies or anything inappropriate. He wondered what reasons there could be for the latest deletions.
“The best explanation can come from those who decided to delete them,” Palshikar said.
This newspaper contacted some of the experts consulted for the revisions.
Kadam declined comment. “We don’t have the mandate to go out in public, to the press,” he said.
Bhatt, speaking on Saturday afternoon, said: “Call me after three days.”
Khobung and Pandey did not answer phone calls and are yet to respond to emails.
