New Delhi: The recent curriculum revisions undertaken by the NCERT for school textbooks, including changes to sections on Mahatma Gandhi’s death, omitting the consequent ban on the RSS, and the reduction of Mughal history, were met with fierce criticism from US-based non-profit PEN America.
The changes, PEN America alleges, are to suit the “ruling party’s worldview.” The non-profit promotes free expression in the US and globally, according to its website.
ThePrint had reported that the changes to the curriculum are part of a syllabus pruning exercise that was undertaken to reduce stress and pressure on school students. The modifications were also due to the impact of Covid on the academic calendar. Further, these are also in line with the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020.
The changes in school textbooks were brought in by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) for the 2023-24 academic year beginning Monday.
In India, over 250 historians, including Romila Thapar, had issued a public statement Friday, condemning the NCERT’s move and demanding that the deletions be withdrawn. They also alleged that the changes were against India’s constitutional ethos.
“The Modi government’s educational censorship via the rewriting of school textbooks is alarming,” Nadine Farid Johnson, Managing Director of PEN America Washington and Free Expression Programs said Friday.
“Coming on the heels of Modi’s banning of a BBC documentary implicating him in the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat riots, this scrubbing from textbooks of demonstrable facts that the government finds unpalatable bodes poorly for India’s ailing democracy,” she added.
Describing the curriculum change as “bowdlerized accounts of history,” PEN America stated that such changes “rob students of the complexity and nuance essential for critically appraising their societies and appreciating their duties of democratic citizenship.”
PEN America argues that such attempts of alleged historical revision have also been attempted in the US via legislative tools. These historical revisions, it states, are used by governments in America to restrict open intellectual debate and discourse in schools and colleges.
“These actions in India and the United States restrict educational freedom and undermine democracy around the world,” PEN American adds.
NCERT director Dinesh Saklani had told ThePrint that there was a “possible oversight, no ill intention” in relation to the textbook changes. He had denied allegations that certain portions about Mahatma Gandhi were surreptitiously deleted from Class 12 textbooks.
The changes to textbooks were based on recommendations from an expert committee that was released in June 2022, he had said.
The changes were released in an online class-wise list by the NCERT. Based on an expert committee’s report that came out in June last year, the changes were subsequently detailed in a class-wise list released by the NCERT online.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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