The debate over the rewriting of textbooks must be joined again. Not to revive those wearisome and righteous oppositions: left versus right, secular versus non-secular, saffron versus red and/or pink. Not simply because the Supreme Court’s September 12 verdict has left many questions unanswered: just where must one draw the fine line between the ‘education about religions’ that the National Curriculum Framework promises and the court approves of, and the ‘religious instruction’ that Article 28 (1) of the Indian Constitution prohibits? Is ‘education about religions’ the only way to instil ‘value education’? And shouldn’t this whole discussion also be about the ways in which the syllabus is taught instead of confining itself to what it says? No, the debate over the rewriting of school textbooks must be joined yet again to ask another fundamental question that has not figured often enough in the general handwringing so far: what is the quality of the new textbooks that have been framed for our children? Do they make the grade? All indications are they don’t. As some school teachers have already gone public to point out, they are riddled with errors, of omission and commission, induced by unmistakable prejudice in some cases and by plain old ignorance in others. What else can one say about a textbook that unblinkingly situates the Madagascar island in the Arabian Sea? Or one that stoutly refuses to spell out that Gandhi was assassinated by one Nathuram Godse? What can one say about a history text that contradicts itself, in the space of a few chapters, on the precise dating of the zero? Or about one that justifies Fascism and Nazism as nothing more than a ‘sort of a counterpart of the dictatorship of the proletariat. imposed. by Stalin’? Obviously, the framers of the texts have not observed even the minimal standards of professionalism. They have evidently been guided by criteria other than those of academic rigour. And the victims are our children. It is good that the court has not been allowed to have the last word on this particular controversy. The onus is on us. The education of children, the nurturing of young minds, is a matter that demands abiding vigilance and our enduring concern.
