NCERT revisions betray ideological motive: Historians

NEW DELHI: Around 250 historians, in a statement, have criticised the move to delete several content from NCERT textbooks. They said that the “new editions of these NCERT books have simply made the deletions the norm even when we are in a post pandemic context in which school education has limped back to normalcy and is no longer in the online mode. ”
They added: “There has been no attempt to consult members of the teams that had prepared the textbooks, which included historians and school teachers, apart from members of the NCERT. The books were developed through a process of consultation and wide-ranging discussions. This was valuable not only in terms of content, but also in terms of pedagogy. ”
Alleging the rationalisation of the syllabus as an ideological agenda, the historians said: “However, notwithstanding the NCERT director’s denial, the selective dropping of NCERT book chapters which do not fit into the larger ideological orientation of the present ruling dispensation exposes the non-academic, partisan agenda of the regime in pushing through amendments to school textbooks.
This becomes clear when one analyses the removal of selective themes in the textbooks against the backdrop of the present central government’s larger ideological agenda of misconstruing the history of the people of the Indian subcontinent as a product of a hegemonic singular (Hindu) tradition. ”