‘NCERT threw us under the bus’: Academic Michel Danino after Supreme Court order

Q. When you first read the order directing institutions to “disassociate” themselves from you and your co-authors, what was your reaction?

Regarding this ban, yes, in its practical application it was very much a surprise. First of all, because it is a completely unprecedented step. There is no precedent of academics being inflicted such a punishment which the bench itself accepted later was a “harsh” punishment. It was effectively a blanket and lifelong ban because almost no institution in India receiving even one rupee of public funding would have touched us. IIT Gandhinagar terminated my contract of guest professor as a direct consequence of the Supreme Court order. My two colleagues also suffered consequences.

What was especially surprising was that the order was passed without hearing us. As we mentioned in our affidavits, it was not according to due process. There seemed to be a haste to find the “culprits”, to identify those responsible for the chapter and punish them. Even people accused of very serious crimes are ordinarily given a hearing before being sentenced. Nevertheless, we were confident that our lawyers would be able to present our side before the court and the order would be altered.

Q. Why were you “confident” that the Supreme Court would eventually revisit the order?

We were confident mainly because the NCERT affidavit basically misrepresented the situation. There was nothing false in what it stated. But what was wrong is what it did not state. There is a way to present part of a situation where you select what you want to portray and ignore all the rest. We were confident that once the bench had the full picture, it would realise that we did not deserve this punishment.

Secondly, there were several articles by legal luminaries, senior counsels and advocates analysing the Supreme Court order in depth. So we were confident that the bench would realise that this required a recall. And we are thankful to the bench that this ban, which amounted to permanent lifelong academic ostracisation, was removed.

Q. Were you disappointed with how NCERT handled the issue?

Yes and no. I was disappointed, yes, that they threw us under the bus. But I was not finally so surprised because in India, institutions always try to save their skin. They will not own responsibility and they will not hesitate to sacrifice people who work for them. That is not a good set of ethical values, definitely not, but that is how the system works.

At the same time, I was hoping that NCERT would try to explain how these textbooks were conceived. I thought they would tell the court: please allow us to explain the broader perspective behind these textbooks.

Because the main point was forgotten. NCERT is not responsible for the content. NCERT is the publisher of the textbook. As we explained in our affidavits, the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee was mandated to prepare and finalise the textbooks. Also, we were absolutely not consulted before the affidavit was presented in court. That was disappointing.

Q. When you were working on the textbook, did you anticipate this kind of controversy?

Absolutely not. Some feedback received from NCERT did say this would create controversy. But we receive such feedback so often for many chapters. NCERT was always flagging potential controversies which either never happened or, even if they happened, could be discussed.

You cannot avoid controversies in social science. In mathematics perhaps you can, in physics perhaps you can. Social science by definition will lend itself to controversy. I have always been saying that we should not be afraid of controversies because we should be mature enough to discuss any contentious aspect. This happens worldwide and not just in India. Textbooks of history and political science have created controversies in many countries.

In India, this is even more so because we are a very complex society with enormous diversity. Questions of identity — social identity, historical identity, cultural identity — will naturally arise.

I remember a workshop in Gandhinagar before the work on the textbooks started. The NCERT director, Professor Manjul Bhargava and several officials were present. I told them there’s only one certainty with our work: that we are going to get loads of brickbats. But I hoped we would get more or less equal amounts of brickbats from every side.

So controversies are unavoidable and there is nothing wrong with them. However, we did not expect specifically any significant controversy about this chapter. We did not see anything wrong in it. And certainly there was never an intention to defame any institution, something that the Supreme Court bench, to its credit, has accepted.

Q. But when NCERT repeatedly flagged concerns, you still did not think the chapter could trigger a backlash?

NCERT, and maybe that is part of its job, was flagging this controversy danger mark again and again from Grade 6 onward.

Sometimes we did take their suggestions into account and modify the content. Many of their suggestions were accepted. But if we had accepted all the warning flags about supposedly controversial aspects, then the textbook would have become totally bland and boring, which would have gone completely against the spirit of the National Education Policy.

As we explained in our affidavits, we were not creating textbooks in a void. We were creating textbooks under a very specific mandate defined by the National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education. That mandate includes preparing students to be active participants, responsible citizens, and citizens capable of addressing the challenges India is going to face in the 21st century.

Now, is 21st century India a rosy place without any problem at all? Or is it a place full of complexity and challenges? Are we supposing students are such fools that they cannot make out the difficulties this country faces?

NEP 2020 repeatedly says we have to develop the critical mind of the student. So this was one major area of disagreement with the Supreme Court’s observation that Grade 8 students were at an “impressionable age”. We respectfully disagreed with this assertion from the court in our affidavits. Impressionable age does not mean much in child psychology. Even adults are impressionable.
The global consensus today is that you have to start engaging students in critical discussions from the age of 11. That is Grade 6 in India and that is exactly what the NEP says.

We also respectfully disagreed because there was nothing disrespectful in the chapter. We are categorical on this. We were using mostly the voices of the judiciary themselves — past and present judges — and showing how judges themselves try to address these challenges.

Right from Grade 6 onward, we showed that institutions face challenges. When we discussed Parliament, we said there is a substantial proportion of MPs with criminal cases. Should you say that to children or not? They will know these things anyway. The point is to bring these discussions into the classroom in the proper way instead of pretending everything is perfect.

An Indian friend of mine who is no more used to tell me: “What the world knows, we need not hide.” Let’s not pretend that all is well. Let’s not produce sanitized textbooks where you present only the theoretical part of how institutions are expected to work.

If we do only that, then we will never create a critical mind in the student. Then we go back to the old pedagogy of regarding the student as a totally passive sponge that is supposed to absorb whatever we tell him or her. And that is precisely what the NEP 2020 was trying to move away from.

Q. Looking back now, would you change anything in the chapter?

First of all, I did not write the chapter. But I completely accepted my responsibility in it. After the February 26 order, when we showed the chapter to advocates and many people we consulted, the unanimous response was that they did not see anything controversial in it.

We were convinced that the chapter presented the judiciary overall in a positive light while also discussing certain challenges. However, the one thing that I thought in hindsight could perhaps have been avoided was the title of the subsection “Corruption in the judiciary”. We could have had a different title.

Professor Manjul Bhargava, who also went through the final version, had no problem with it. But with hindsight, perhaps we could have found a better title and maybe tweaked one or two sentences in that subsection. But I stand by the chapter.

Q. What effect would this controversy have on textbook writers and academics?

The Supreme Court’s February 26 order and the subsequent proceedings certainly had a chilling effect on academics and textbook writers. This has been pointed out in our affidavits and also in several media articles.

The court had said it had no intention of encroaching on academic freedom. But the consequences still had an effect. People will definitely think twice before bringing controversies into classrooms for discussion. And that, I think, will be a loss.

There will be a tendency, consciously or subconsciously, to go back to older ways of writing fairly bland textbooks that cannot lend themselves to controversy. But if you write a social science textbook that cannot lend itself to any controversy whatsoever, then you are not at all within the vision of the NEP 2020.

Q. You mentioned earlier that NCERT frequently flagged possible controversies in social science textbooks. Can you give an example?

Yes. We had prepared a chapter on the Indus or Harappan civilisation in Grade 6. We had put the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro on the opening page because we wanted one iconic image introducing the chapter.

Then NCERT objected and said this would become controversial because the figurine is nude. Frankly, we had never even thought about it. We consulted teachers and one of them told us: “I teach the Dancing Girl in Grade 6 in a private school and it has never been an issue.”

I even told NCERT that if the Dancing Girl is not age-appropriate, then perhaps children of that age should not be allowed into the National Museum either because the figurine is displayed there. Initially I resisted strongly. But ultimately I partly relented. We shifted the image to an inside page and reduced its size.

This is just to show that if you constantly think in terms of what controversies a chapter might trigger, then you are following the wrong track. That is not the way to handle a textbook where you want to engage students into thinking about the material being presented to them.

Q. After everything that has happened, would you still want to remain involved in textbook preparation?

Personally, no. In fact, I had already been trying to pull out of textbook preparation for more than a year because I wanted to return to my own work. But I was repeatedly persuaded to continue.

The responsibility in textbook writing is huge. And the responsibility is never towards the government, towards NCERT, or towards any institution. It is towards the student and the student alone. That, I think, people do not always understand.

So personally, I would not go back to this work. In any case, there is now no chance because NCERT immediately excluded us without even contacting or informing us. We were removed from all the committees. Still, out of a sense of honour, I formally tendered my resignation. It was, in a way, a post-dismissal resignation, you could say, but I felt it was important to do so.

I remain grateful to the Supreme Court bench that it removed the ban and some of its remarks. I still have to study the final order closely because I think some observations from the initial order may remain, but that is a detail to be worked out.

Every experience is a learning experience. As I said in my affidavit, my own philosophy is Nishkamakarma, and that is what guides me. I do not care for praise or condemnation. I will continue my work come what may. I am not disheartened, and I learned a great deal even through these proceedings.