New Delhi: A Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor and member secretary of the government’s Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), who is also linked to an RSS-backed organisation involved in the field of history.
A Delhi University professor who writes for an online magazine on higher education matters that seeks to balance the “artificially controlled tilt in favour of Left liberals” in academia with the perspectives of “nationalists”.
Teachers from Kendriya Vidyalaya.
These are among the external experts who contributed to the controversial syllabus rationalisation exercise involving NCERT Class 6-12 history and political science textbooks for 2023-24.
Internal experts from the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) make up for a large share of the experts behind the exercise.
The controversy over the rationalised syllabus of NCERT history and political science textbooks refuses to die down, with new deletions being discovered every day since they first came to light on 5 April.
Among the major deletions from the history books were portions on Mughals, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nathuram Godse.
Portions on Emergency and Cold War have been axed from political science textbooks.
At the heart of the row is the fact that while the changes made as part of the rationalisation exercise were declared publicly through online booklets, some of these controversial deletions weren’t mentioned in them. This has led to allegations about a bid to delete these portions surreptitiously.
The NCERT has described the omissions as a possible oversight, but refused to undo the deletions, saying they were based on the recommendations of experts. It has also said the textbooks are anyway headed for a revision in 2024 when the National Curriculum Framework kicks in.
In an earlier interview, the NCERT refused to answer any questions related to the committee members and how their selection was done.
An email has also been sent in this regard to secretary, school education, Sanjay Kumar and NCERT director Dinesh Saklani but no response received. This report will be updated when there is a response.
While the NCERT has said the exercise was based entirely on the recommendations of an “expert panel”, some of the experts told ThePrint that they did offer suggestions, but the final call on accepting them was the council’s.
Also Read: Deleting history from NCERT textbooks is lying to children. It’s also betraying parents
Meet the experts
According to one of the experts, there was no one panel per se that recommended the changes, but a group of experts making suggestions for different subjects.
These groups mostly constituted one or two college professors, while the rest were school teachers.
These include Professor Umesh Ashok Kadam of JNU’s Centre for Historical Studies, who is also a member secretary at the ICHR and a member of the RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana. He worked on the rationalisation of history syllabus.
Speaking to ThePrint he said, “We were consulted by NCERT for listing out content that is repetitive or has appeared in other classes, in other textbooks. We were told that this syllabus will be included in the QR Code [to access the whole syllabus]. That was our mandate and that is where our work ended.”
About the deletion of Mughal history [which was mentioned in the booklets] from the textbooks, he said that everyone’s contributions in history are different and they should be covered that way.
Another expert involved in the rationalistion of the history syllabus is Archana Verma, an associate professor in the Department of History at DU’s Hindu College. She confirmed to ThePrint that she was part of the exercise, but refused to comment any further.
Other external experts included two history teachers from Kendriya Vidyalayas, and the head of the history department at Delhi Public School.
The NCERT experts in the exercise include Gouri Srivastava, professor and head at the council’s Department of Education in Social Sciences, and others from the department.
Another member from the history group, who spoke to ThePrint anonymously, said they were called in twice for consultations and were never called an “expert committee” formally. Their term of reference was to help the council with identifying repetitions and hand them in a list to the NCERT.
“What they did with our suggestions after we gave them is not known to us. What they have deleted and what they have kept in the books was their prerogative and had nothing to do with our suggestions,” the expert said. “We were not told what they were going to remove from the books.”
The political science experts
Those involved in the political science rationalisation exercise included Maneesha Pandey, associate professor in the Department of Political Science at DU’s Hindu College. Pandey writes for Parisar Drishti, a website that describes itself as “an honest attempt to balance this artificially controlled tilt in favor of Left liberals [in academia], created by them with centuries of investment of their ideas, thoughts, strategies, time and money”.
A teacher of political science, she completed a PhD in “Environmental Policies and issues in South Asia: Comparative study of India, Nepal and Bangladesh”.
Pandey refused to offer any comment when ThePrint reached her over the phone.
The other experts included M.V.S.V. Prasad, assistant professor, political science, in the NCERT’s Department of Curriculum Studies. He specialises in international studies, India’s foreign policy, and regional cooperation in South and Southeast Asia. Shankar Sharan, a professor in the NCERT’s Department of Education in Social Sciences, was also involved in the exercise, as were two other NCERT experts along with school teachers.
ThePrint reached all the NCERT faculty members mentioned in the report via email for a comment. This article will be updated when a response is received.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)