Days after some passages about Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi, radical Hindus, and the 2002 Gujarat riots were taken out of school textbooks, the NCERT declared that minor changes do not need to be notified because they are regular in nature.
According to a statement posted on the council’s website, the deleted portions were not included in the official list of deletions announced last year because “minor deletions” are not notified to avoid confusion among teachers and students.
While the rationalised textbooks were being printed, the rationalisation details for each book were also uploaded to the website, along with the textbook in PDF form.
However, it should be noted that reprinting textbooks in response to stakeholder suggestions is a regular process that occurs every year, the statement continued.
In June 2022, the NCERT made public a list of changes and deletions made in recently reprinted textbooks. However, many deletions, including those involving Mahatma Gandhi, went unnoticed.
The NCERT statement said, “In view of avoiding any confusion at the level of teachers and students, minor deletion or addition if any, are not notified. In the context of rationalisation exercise also some minor deletions (a sentence or a word or a phrase, etc.) were done, which were not included in the details of the notification of the rationalisation, as this was under the regular process of reprinting of textbooks.”
The council further stated that "It firmly stands on its version that nothing has been removed or deleted after rationalisation undertaken in academic session 2022-2023”. The factors cited by the NCERT behind the deletions include content which are “overlapping”, “not relevant or outdated in the present context”, “difficult”,“easily accessible to children and can be learned through self-learning or peer-learning”.
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