Skip to main content

Updating NCERT syllabus is undemocratic, autocratic, smacks of toxic communalism

Statement issued by Prof Tarun Kanti Naskar, General secretary, All India Save Education Committee, condemning NCERT's recent updating of the school curriculum:
***
The so called 'updated' curriculum of NCERT has deleted many important chapters from Classes 10th, 11th and 12th text books of History, Civics, Political Science and Hindi. The chapters and lessons deleted indicates a communally motivated political act rather than an academic exercise. AISEC vehemently condemns this step and demands restoration of the deleted chapters forthwith.
During the COVID- 19 induced lockdown also, the NCERT, at the dictate of the BJP-led Central government removed many a chapter from History, Civics and Science text books on the plea of 'rationalisation' of syllabus. Now, in the name of updating the curriculum, the axe has fallen on the entire Mughal Period in the History text books.
Similarly, chapters such as 'Rise of Popular Movements' and 'Era of One Party Dominance' have been removed from the Class 12th 'Politics in India since Independence' textbook. In addition to all these, chapters like 'US hegemony in world politics' and 'The Cold War Era' have been removed from the Civics syllabus also.
The whole exercise of updating the curriculum is not only blatantly undemocratic and highly autocratic marred, but smacks of a toxic communal outlook. While implementing the disastrous NEP-2020 in an unprecedented haste, the Modi government is unable to digest whatever secular, scientific and democratic content is still left in the curriculum. As the government is adopting out and out anti-people policies in all spheres on one hand and trying to silence and suppress discontent brewing among people on the other, it does not want uncomfortable lessons like 'Democracy and Diversity', 'Popular Struggles and Movements', and 'Challenges to Democracy' to remain in the syllabus. So these chapters have been dropped from the Class 10 'Democratic Politics-II' textbook.
Through such curriculum changes, the rulers want to indoctrinate the young minds with communal-oriented thinking and plant seeds of disunity among the people so that no united, democratic movement can be developed against their unjust rule. This is a fascistic design and it must be opposed and resisted tooth and nail by all democratic and secular forces of our country.

Comments

TRENDING

Beyond the 'silent relocation' narrative in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts

By Dr. Mohammad Asaduzzaman*  In recent years, a narrative has emerged from the rugged and forested terrain of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), portraying the region as the site of a “silent relocation” — a mass forced migration of Bangladesh’s non-Muslim ethnic communities into neighboring India and Myanmar.

Ram, Bam and Bengal: Memories of a Left turn toward the Right

By Rajiv Shah   The BJP ’s massive electoral win in West Bengal is being interpreted across political persuasions — except, of course, by the BJP itself — as the result of the alleged deletion of around 90 lakh voters from the electoral rolls during the controversial intensive revision process. This may well be true, given my own experience in Gujarat regarding the shoddy manner in which electoral revisions have often been conducted. In West Bengal, there also appeared to be a political angle to the exercise. But I am not interested in discussing that here, as enough has already appeared in the media on the subject.

The farmer's burden: How oil, war, and climate are rewriting the price of food

By Vikas Meshram   The scorching flames of the Middle East conflict are now slowly reaching the kitchens of ordinary people. The true price of this war is paid in daily markets, vegetable shops, and in the shattered minds of farmers. Expensive crude oil, skyrocketing fertilizer prices, and rising agricultural costs are together creating the conditions for global food inflation — and this crisis is directly tied to what people eat and drink every day.