An exercise in ‘rationalisation’ should be pivoted on reason. Ironically, when it comes to ‘rationalising’ educational curriculum, the rationale often undermines reason. The latest — the third instance in the last six years — tweaks to textbooks, mostly of history, political science and sociology, by the National Council of Educational Research and Training is a case in point. The sweeping changes have resulted in deletions of references to such critical historical elements as the Mughal rule, the caste system, the ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh after the assassination of M.K. Gandhi, the communal fire in Gujarat in 2002, among others. The NCERT, unsurprisingly, has brought out the proverbial fig leaf to cover its mischief. Students, groaning under the weight of a bloated curriculum, need to be liberated of their burden, especially in the light of the disruptions in learning brought about by the pandemic. Interestingly, only those chapters in history that inconvenience the current regime — the ban on the RSS, for instance — or the epochs that the regime is opposed to ideologically — Mughal rule — seem to have been lopped off.

The motive then is not rationalisation: it is modification and distortion. Such an intervention — encroachment — is not surprising. Independent India has been witness to the formulation of a cosy relationship between politics and pedagogy. The goal, evidently, is to exercise control over thought processes to bring about an ideological transition in a captive audience. In this instance, the Bharatiya Janata Party, forever enchanted with majoritarian impulses, may have in its sight over five crore school students who might form an important political constituency in the future. The losses incurred as a result of such myopic adventurism would be two-fold. First, the resultant epistemic ruptures would lead to students receiving a curated knowledge of history. This might be politically expedient for the BJP’s project of erasing India’s pluralist traditions but it would turn out to be a major obstacle in the nation’s pursuit of a holistic knowledge economy. The second consequence is even more deleterious. A controlled — curbed — curriculum would lead to the stifling of curiosity and questioning. This intellectual retardation has the potential to damage democracy by churning out a generation of passive, unquestioning citizens. Political meddling with curriculum must be resisted from within institutions. India’s new generation must also be encouraged to tap into unprejudiced sources of knowledge — this, after all, is the age of information — to be alert to pedagogical imbalances.