‘Many riots in the country… selectively mentioning a few not good’: NCERT director on omissions

Saklani also told The Indian Express that the revisions in the Ayodhya section were based on feedback from experts and were carried out to accommodate the Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment on the dispute.

The Ayodhya section has been pruned to from four to two pages in Chapter 8 of the Class 12 book titled ‘Politics in India since Independence.’ As first reported by The Indian Express on Sunday, the revised textbook, which hit the market last week, does not mention the Babri Masjid by name, calling it a “three-domed structure”, and has deleted telling details from the earlier version, including the BJP rath yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya; the role of kar sevaks; communal violence in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992; President’s rule in BJP-ruled states; and the BJP’s expression of “regret over the happenings at Ayodhya.”

On the omission of content on communal violence in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition as well as the 2002 Gujarat riots, he said: “There have been many communal riots in our country. The expert committee felt that mentioning a few selectively is not good and that history was taught in schools to give out facts, and not to make it a battleground.”

He said that the revision of school textbooks with latest developments is a “global practice”. “Textbooks are revised everywhere. It’s a global practice. Since the Supreme Court has pronounced its judgement on the Ayodhya issue, the experts felt that this should be added to the learning material on Ayodhya,” he said.

Asked why other details on events leading up to the Babri Masjid demolition and its aftermath were left out, he said: “That could have been left out to make space for the new content (on the SC judgement) that had to be introduced.”

Asked about the experts roped in for revision of Political Science textbooks, Saklani could not recall the names. “There are many subjects and each department ropes in experts for their textbooks. At this moment, it is difficult for me to recall who was asked to help with the Political Science textbooks. But I can say that we do not interfere in the academic exercise and go with expert opinion.”

This is the fourth round of revisions of NCERT textbooks since 2014.

In the first round, in 2017, NCERT cited the need to reflect recent events. In 2018, it initiated revisions to reduce the “syllabus burden”. And, less than three years later, it carried out a third round to reduce curriculum load and help students recover from learning disruptions caused by Covid-19.