Palshikar, Yogendra write to NCERT chief: We’ll sue if you don’t remove our names from textbook

The letter was written a day after it was reported that the revised version of the class 12 political science textbooks carried a pruned section on the Ayodhya dispute. 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.”

“Besides the earlier practice of selective deletions, the NCERT has resorted to significant additions and rewriting that are out of sync with the spirit of the original textbooks… The NCERT has no moral or legal right to distort these textbooks without consulting any of us and yet publish these under our names despite our explicit refusal. There can be arguments and debates about someone’s claims to authorship of any given work. But it is bizarre that authors and editors are forced to associate their names with a work they no longer identify as their own,” the letter states.

“Both of us do not want the NCERT to hide behind our names to pass on to students such textbooks of political science that we find politically biased, academically indefensible and pedagogically dysfunctional… The new editions of these books that have been published with our names should be withdrawn from the market forthwith… If the NCERT fails to take immediate corrective action, we may be forced to take legal recourse,” the letter adds.

Last year, when Yadav and Palshikar had first disassociated with the textbook, the NCERT had 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.