New Delhi: Students of CBSE and state boards following the NCERT curriculum will now be taught that in India, political parties “give priority to the interests of a minority group” with an eye on “vote bank politics”, which leads to “minority appeasement”.
This marks a complete shift from what was taught until the 2023-24 academic session — that if students “think hard”, they will find there is “little evidence” to suggest that vote bank politics favours the minorities in the country.
In its official records, seen by ThePrint, the NCERT has said that these major revisions, brought in the chapter on secularism in the Class XI political science textbook, were necessary to introduce students to a “relevant criticism of Indian secularism”.
Without these revisions, the chapter came across as a “justification of vote bank politics”, said the NCERT, which is an autonomous body under the Union Ministry of Education. The revised paragraphs are on pages 124-125 — dealing with vote bank politics and secularism — of the book.
Till the last academic session, the chapter on secularism in the Class XI political science textbook of the NCERT said vote bank politics should be considered wrong only if it gives birth to injustice of any form.
“What if the interests of the majority are undermined by these secular politicians? Then a new injustice is born. But can you think of such examples? Not one or two but a whole lot of them such that you can claim that the whole system is skewed in favour of minorities? If you think hard, you might find that there is little evidence that this has happened in India,” the chapter noted.
“In short, there is nothing wrong with vote bank politics as such, but only with a form of vote bank politics that generates injustice. The mere fact that secular parties utilise vote banks is not troublesome. All parties do so in relation to some special group,” it further read.
These lines have undergone a major revision in the textbook that will be taught in classrooms from the academic year 2024-25. It now underlines the impact vote bank politics may have on voting patterns, development, and “social divisions”.
Now, it states that while “in theory, there may not be anything wrong with vote bank politics but only when vote bank politics leads to the mobilisation of a social group to vote en masse for a particular candidate or political party during elections, this distorts electoral politics”.
“Here, the important feature is that the whole group works as a single monolithic unit during voting. Despite the diversity within the unit, the party or leader pursuing such vote bank politics tries to artificially construct a belief that the interest of the group is one. In effect, by doing this, the political parties prioritise short-term electoral gains over the long-term development and governance needs of society,” the revised paragraphs read.
“In India it has been observed that political parties neglecting substantive issues have focused on emotive issues for electoral gains, neglecting genuine problems faced by the community. Competitive vote bank politics has the potential to exacerbate social division by portraying different groups as rivals vying for limited resources. In India, vote bank politics is also associated with minority appeasement. This means that the political parties disregard the principles of equality of all citizens and give priority to the interests of a minority group,” they further state.
The revised paragraphs go on to state that such form of politics leads to “further alienation and marginalisation of the minority group” and prevents social reforms.
“As vote bank politics fails to acknowledge diversity within the minority group, taking up issues of social reform within these groups has also proved difficult,” states the new NCERT textbook.
The NCERT justified the changes saying that the section on vote bank politics in the previous version of the book “failed” to define the phenomenon.
“This section only intends to justify vote bank politics. Therefore, new added text elaborates the points, which are criticism of Indian Secularism. The rewritten section addresses these anomalies and makes this section (vote bank politics) a relevant criticism of Indian Secularism,” according to the NCERT’s official records on the revisions.
These changes are not related to the ongoing work to completely revise the NCERT curriculum and textbooks based on inputs from states, constitutional bodies and expert groups. That process, which was set in motion in September 2021, is still not complete as the textbook development committees have not yet completed their tasks.
Once that exercise is over, an entirely new set of textbooks will hit the markets. For now, it appears that the new textbooks will be taught only from the 2025-26 academic session.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)