By Dr. Gyan Pathak
Improving the quality of textbooks for children is a continuous process. All civilizations have been doing this through the ages, and all of us in India too, have grown witnessing changes in our textbooks. Of late, especially after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister of India in 2014, the changes in NCERT textbooks have become frequent and controversial.
Forget about minor changes, NCERT has made three rounds of major changes in the last six years in the textbooks for students in classes 6-12, which shows that changes have not been made after due deliberations but on the basis of whims and fancies of the people in power, as and when it comes to their minds. Moreover, the changes in texts have been made dangerously abaxial in relation to unhindered natural growth of our children living in the 2020s. Not only history, political science, and sociology, but also science texts books are changed triggering controversies.
Children in the 2020s in their formative years have special needs to grow in their existential context. Due to rapid spread of information and technology, it is very difficult to find a child, barring only a few places in remote hinterland where the rays of human civilization are yet to reach, who have been totally isolated from the modern-day changes in our society. The continued changes in all aspects of life since the 1990s have been accelerated, and the changes, one after the other have already configured and reconfigured several times in very short span of time.
Our children have now a multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual mind – a fact, that cannot be denied. It is in this situation, the status of the dominating cultures, religions, or languages play a major role due to their circumstances of births. Additionally, the spread of science has necessitated a pressing need to have a scientific temperament to understand the word differently away from the shackles of tradition, culture, religion et al. They need to develop into analytical and creative persons, and the modern-day education needs to support them in their natural pursuit in this direction.
Modi government that reflects mono-religious and mono-cultural mindset and has been trying to push its own Hindutva agenda in all spheres of life encompassing both adults and children. Adults can adjust to this propaganda or may fight it out, but children have becoming real victims since their mind is innocently multi-cultural and multi-religious, and an education dominated with a particular Hindutva line, may ultimately damage their scientific temperament and engrave conflicting ideas into their mind in respect of non-Hindutva knowledge and behaviour, which would be difficult to remove in later days in their life. Thus, in place of making our children creative, we may end up in creating destructive minds.
It is a real threat in the context of present changes that goes against the principle of helping our children to grow analytical. To have an analytical mind we need scientific temperament, that carries no bias, and that can see the things as they are, objectively as against subjectively. The mindset with which the changes in the NCERT school books have been made carries the subjective bias that would ultimately prevent to have objective analytical mind.
One example here may be useful to understand this. In a major deletion in the science textbooks for classes 9 and 10, NCERT has removed Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Over 1800 scientists have signed an open letter to the NCERT condemning the removal, and demanding bringing it back into the textbooks. The letter was signed even by representatives of notable scientific institutions such as Indian Institute of Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and India Institute of Technology. The scientific community believes that such a deletion is a ‘travesty of education’ and students will be handicapped in their thought process without exposer to fundamental scientific discoveries. They are right, since the basic temperament is developed under 10th standard. Thereafter, it would be very difficult to instil scientific temperament in our students, which would ultimately hamper the growth at individual and national level.
RSS and BJP leaders have a sinister design in bringing textbook changes with political overtones. Hence the political controversy. They have been insisting not only rewriting Indian History with so called national or Hindutva perspective. They don’t question themselves what would become to the neutrality of historical writing if they are to be coloured with a perspective? They also want to teach the rewritten biased history to school children which is even more dangerous. They would have been welcomed had they attempted to correct the errors that have been advertently or inadvertently cropped up into the historical writing. Historical writing with any colour whatsoever is not acceptable in a multi-cultural multi-religious society. Similar is the case with political and sociology textbooks.
The first major review of NCERT textbooks was conducted in 2017. The revision brought in 1334 changes across 182 books. It was done around the idea of the Modi government that emphasized on ancient Indian knowledge, wisdom, and practices, and a focus on ‘nationalist’ icons. Since, for RSS-BJP and right-wing Hindutva forces, nationalist icons are by and large “Hindutva Icons”, it clearly goes against the pluralistic secular philosophy of the country guaranteed by the Constitution of India.
Just a year later, NCERT initiated second round of revisions that they called “textbook rationalization” by reducing “student’s burden”. Thus, 2018 revision removed 20 per cent texts, primarily in social science, while keeping cuts in mathematics and sciences. History textbooks were trimmed by removing texts on clothing, social movements, sports like cricket, and politics of caste, region and community.
Third round of revision was made after the COVID-19 pandemic, and curriculum load was reduced in the name of rationalization of education after the disruption in education through physical classes. In June 2022, the list of changes was made public and books were accordingly printed. From the session 2023-24, the reprinted books are being taught in schools.
Sweeping changes have been made. All references to the 2002 Gujarat riots have been removed. A large amount of texts relating to Moghul period, caste system, protests, and social movements have been cut out. Changes are political in nature that suit the BJP and RSS, but not the children of our country. All these would make children handicapped of comparative knowledge of the present day society and how we have landed where we are now.
Students must not be made victims to politics and whims and fancies of our political leadership. (IPA Service)