New Delhi: Last year National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had announced that it will rationalise the curriculum of the textbooks to help school students grasp the syllabus quickly, considering the 'covid-19' pandemic like situation.
Although the NCERT had released a comprehensive list of trimmed content in 2022, however it could not introduce these changes as the academic session had started. Reprinted books with rationalised syllabus are hitting the market recently.
As deletion of Mughals history is still having debates, there are few other events from the Indian history, tweaked by the NCERT.
As reported by the Indian express, Content on the Mughal era and Muslim rulers of India has suffered deep cuts.
Several pages on the Delhi Sultanate, ruled by many dynasties including the Mamluks, Tughlaqs, Khaljis and Lodis, and the Mughal empire have been removed from the Class 7 history textbook, 'Our Pasts – II'.
The Title 'Sultan' removed
The report further reveals, In the class 7 history textbook, a reference in the second chapter to Mahmud Ghazni of Afghanistan, who invaded the subcontinent and raided Somnath temple, has been tweaked. First, the title “Sultan” has been dropped from his name. Second, the sentence “he raided the subcontinent almost every year” has been revised to “he raided the subcontinent 17 times (1000-1025 CE) with a religious motive”.
Instances of emergency scrapped
Even paragraphs that dealt with Emergency’s draconian impact have been pruned too. For instance, the chapter on Emergency in Class 12 political science textbook Politics in India Since Independence has been reduced by five pages.
The deleted content in the chapter titled, 'The Crisis of Democratic Order' pertains to controversies surrounding the decision to impose Emergency and the abuse of power and malpractices committed by the Indira Gandhi government during that time. It lists excesses such as the arrest of political workers, restrictions on the media, torture and custodial deaths and forced sterilisations.
2002 Gujarat riots dropped
From removing instances from medieval history to contemporary, NCERT has sidelined a lot of content in the rationalisation process. The report also says that references of 2002 Gujarat riots from all NCERT social science textbooks have been dropped too. For example, two pages on the riots in the last chapter of the current Class 12 political science textbook titled, 'Politics in India Since Independence' have been deleted.
The first page carries a paragraph on the chronology of events- the train full of karsevaks set on fire followed by violence against Muslims- and refers to the National Human Rights Commission’s criticism of the Gujarat government for failing to control the violence.
Amongst the deleted passages include, “Instances, like in Gujarat, alert us to the dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes. This poses a threat to democratic politics.”
The report further says, this is the third textbook review since 2014. The first one took place in 2017, in which the NCERT made 1,334 changes, including additions, corrections and data updates, in 182 textbooks. The second review was initiated in 2019.
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