Version imprimableSTATEMENT BY CONCERNED HISTORIANS
ON THE RECENT CHANGES MADE BY THE NCERT IN SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS
Date: 07.04.2023
The recent decision of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to drop entire chapters from the history textbooks for class 12, as well as from other classes and to delete statements from other textbooks is a matter of deep concern. Using the period of the pandemic-cum-lockdowns to argue that there was a need to lighten the load of the curriculum, the NCERT initiated a contentious process of dropping topics like the history of the Mughal courts, the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, the Emergency, mention of Dalit writers, the Naxalite movement, and the fight for equality from social science, history, and political science textbooks of classes 6 to 12. The new editions of these NCERT books have simply made the deletions the norm even when we are in a post-pandemic context in which school education has limped back to normalcy and is no longer in the online mode.
In this light, it is deeply troubling that a chapter on the Mughals has been deleted from part-II of the history textbook for class 12, while two chapters on modern Indian history have been removed from part-III of the history textbook. There has been no attempt to consult members of the teams that had prepared the textbooks, which included historians and school teachers, apart from members of the NCERT. The books were developed through a process of consultation and wide-ranging discussions. This was valuable not only in terms of content, but also in terms of pedagogy, which ensured an organic unity and a graded development in understanding from the middle to the senior school. The attempt was also to make the textbooks as inclusive as possible, and to provide a sense of the rich diversity of the human past both within the subcontinent and the wider world. As such, removing chapters / sections of chapters is highly problematic not only in terms of depriving learners of valuable content, but also in terms of the pedagogical values required to equip them to meet present and future challenges. While we understand the need for periodic revisions of school textbooks, this can only be done in sync with the consensus of existing historical scholarship. However, the selective deletion in this round of textbook revision reflects the sway of divisive politics over pedagogic concerns.
According to the Director, NCERT, the deletions are part of the rationalisation of the school textbooks, and have been done in order to reduce the burden on students. As per the NCERT, during the pandemic the students faced loss in learning, and in the post-pandemic period the students have been feeling overburdened with the syllabus. According to the NCERT, since some of the chapters were overlapping across subjects and classes, it was rational to reduce the content for the overburdened students. The NCERT authorities have denied any ulterior political motive behind this move of rationalisation.
However, notwithstanding the NCERT Director
