NCERT drops texts on Gandhi, RSS ban from Class 12 book

Gandhiji’s death had magical effect on communal situation in the country”, “Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists” and “Organisations like RSS were banned for some time” are among the texts missing from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), however, claims that no curriculum trimming has taken place this year and the syllabus was rationalised in June, last year. As part of its “syllabus rationalisation” exercise last year, the NCERT, citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant” as reasons, dropped certain portions from the course including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, among others from its textbooks. The rationalisation note had no mention of excerpts about Mahatma Gandhi. “The entire rationalisation exercise was done last year, there is nothing new which has happened this year,” NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani said. He, however, did not comment on the missing excerpts which went unannounced at the time of rationalisation. A note by NCERT on its website reads, “in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was felt imperative to reduce content load on students. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also emphasises reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with creative mindset. In this background, the NCERT had undertaken the exercise to rationalise the textbooks across all classes and all subjects”.