New Delhi: The NCERT has constituted two committees to develop Economics and English Language and Literature textbooks for Classes 11 and 12. The committee members include members of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council and a former national media convenor of the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
The two committees have been formed under the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. Last month, the NCERT announced a committee to develop class 11 and 12 political science textbooks with at least four of the members having direct or indirect links with the RSS.
According to the NCERT’s latest notification on Economics on textbooks, Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PM-EAC) will head the 14 member committee. PM-EAC member Shamika Ravi is also part of the committee.
A second notification for the English Language and Literature Textbooks Committee names Saket Bahuguna, Assistant Professor (Linguistics) at the Central Institute of Hindi, Delhi as a member.
Bahuguna was associated with the ABVP, the student wing of RSS, while he was a student of Delhi University and was the organisation’s Delhi state secretary in 2014.
He later served as ABVP’s national media convener and was one of the organisation’s prominent spokespersons during the 2017 Ramjas College controversy after a seminar featuring then JNU student and Delhi riots larger conspiracy case accused Umar Khalid was cancelled following protests by ABVP members. The clashes that followed at Delhi University triggered a wider debate over free speech and campus politics, with then student Gurmehar Kaur subsequently facing online threats after speaking out against the ABVP.
At the time, Bahuguna defended the ABVP against allegations over the violence at Ramjas and denied that ABVP members were behind the threats.
The textbook committee also includes Trivikrama Kumari Jamwal, a member of the erstwhile Mewar royal family and former Head of English at The Shri Ram School Aravali, Gurugram. In 2017, her brother wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on behalf of the family urging the government to withhold certification and release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati, citing “misrepresentation of heritage”.
The 17-member team will be headed by N Nagaraju, Vice-Chancellor of the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
The committees have been instructed to ensure the new textbooks incorporate cross-cutting themes prescribed by other NCERT Curriculum Area Groups (CAGs), including equity and inclusion, age-appropriate pedagogy, value education, information and communications technology (ICT), Indian knowledge systems and environmental education.
“The textbooks will subsequently undergo a review to ensure the integration of themes such as cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems, inclusion, educational technology and assessment,” said the notification.
The economics committee is expected to complete its work by February 2027 and the language panel by September 2027.
(Edited by Chingkheinganbi Mayengbam)
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