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Journalism of Courage
Reacting to objections from two former chief advisers who wanted their names removed from political science textbooks due to “irrational cuts and large deletions,” the NCERT has emphasised its right to make changes based on copyright ownership and stated that the “withdrawal of association by any one member is out of the question”, given that the textbooks are the product of a collective effort.
Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav, who were chief advisers for political science books for classes 9 to 12 initially published in 2006-07, on Saturday expressed disappointment with the development and, in a statement, said that if NCERT has legal authority to “distort and mutilate” educational material, they should also be able to exercise their “moral and legal right” to disassociate themselves from books they do not endorse.
The row began on Friday after Palshikar and Yadav expressed their concerns in a letter to NCERT director D S Saklani. The academics stated that they were unable to find any pedagogic justification for the textbook rationalisation exercise and expressed embarrassment at being associated with “mutilated and academically dysfunctional” books.
Responding to this, NCERT released a public statement on Friday night, highlighting that the textbook development committees — of which Yadav and Palshikar were members — ceased to exist once the books were published. It said copyright of the educational materials has since remained with NCERT, independent of the committee.
It also stated that all members of the textbook development committee had agreed to this arrangement in writing. “The roles of members of the Textbook Development Committees in various capacities…were limited to advising on how to design and develop the textbooks or contributing to the development of their contents and not beyond this. Textbooks at the school level are ‘developed’ based on the state of our knowledge and understanding of a given subject. Therefore, at no stage is individual authorship claimed, hence the withdrawal of association by any one member is out of the question,” NCERT stated.
In their statement on Saturday, Palshikar and Yadav noted: “The continuation of our names inside the present version of the book creates a false impression of endorsement, and we have every right to dissociate with this insinuation. Besides, the two of us are clearly the ‘authors’ of the signed letter that introduces each book. How can we be forced to introduce a textbook that we no longer recognise?”
Yadav and Palshikar also called NCERT’s defence “ridiculously technical” and stated, “If the name of the Textbook Development Committee is there to acknowledge our contribution, as NCERT claims, then we must be free to decline this generosity…”
