MUMBAI: The recently released SSC textbooks offer several new topics to students: surrogacy, sperm banks, gender equality, RTI, social health, GST and mutual funds, among others. However, a few topics in the
History and Political Science textbook have not gone down well with the
Congress and the
CPM, with the latter planning to take up the issue before the
state education board soon.
Twice in the book, students have been asked to ponder over “family monopoly in politics”. Under the topic, “Challenges in conducting free and fair elections”, students are asked to think about “ow political parties suffer due to family monopoly in the party”. In the second instance, a passage under the topic of corruption reads: “Family monopoly in politics is a major problem before democracy in India. Monopoly of just one family in politics reduces democratic space. Common people cannot participate in the public sector.”
In another place, the book says CPI and CPM parted ways because of a difference of opinion over which “foreign leadership” to accept. Speaking to TOI, Ajit Abhyankar, Maharashtra state secretariat member of CPM, differed on the terms of his party’s split with CPI. “This is absolute falsehood. The differences between CPI and CPM had nothing to do with accepting any foreign leadership. It has always been about internal national policy matters. Our party will take up this matter and make a representation before the state board soon.”
Pune youth Congress president Vikas Landge said this was not the first time that the present government was trying to transform textbooks into its own “political campaign advertisements”. “However, these new lows that the government is hitting should be highlighted, so that the general public knows how the RSS version of imaginary facts and history is being taught to our children and youth. Nothing can be more disheartening than seeing a government play blame-game politics after failing to deliver on its promises. Now, it is not sparing even the education of the future India from its wrath,” he said.
Sunil Magar, director of
Balbharati (Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production & Curriculum Research), said, “None of the books are politically motivated. Those who have a problem should give a letter stating the concerns and reasons justifying them. We will send the concerns to the academic division.” The book also mentions about Naxalite groups using “violent measures” to oppose government policy and attack police forces.
An official from the academic committee said, “There were no political motivations while writing any of the books. What we have written about Left extremism is essentially based on the latest annual report of the home ministry. The names of political parties have been taken from the Election Commission notification. The description of party ideology is based on what the parties have officially said.” He admitted that the textbooks toe the government line. “Not just the present government, even the previous one had talked about Naxalism being the biggest internal threat in its annual home ministry report. The marginalization of farmers’ causes is the change that has happened in the Naxalite movement. The original Naxalism was anti-feudal. Subsequently, that ideological element was lost and that is what has been written.”
“Political overtones and influences can hardly be done away with in textbooks,” said Vasant Kalpande, educationist and former Balbharati head. “When we were studying for BSc and MSc, we would get books translated from Russian. Even in Physics and Chemistry books, the last chapters would be about Marxism and Leninism. Political parties trying to influence textbooks is an old tradition. Also, interpretation of a sentence can be different. Lastly, authors should make sure there are no factual errors.”
