‘Our hopes that they would be forward-looking are belied’

Are you happy with the results?
The results are far from satisfactory. Teachers were hoping that at the beginning of a new millennium, the document would be forward-looking, in tune with changing times. We were hoping that it would help the students develop a discriminating mind and instill in them a rational, scientific and critical habit of thinking. But our hopes have been belied.

What is wrong with the textbooks?
The books are packaged nicely but the meat is missing. For the social sciences books, renowned authors like Romila Thapar have been replaced by obscure names. The three streams of social sciences — history, geography and civics — have been thrown together in a clumsy effort to reduce three books to one. The books are full of grammatical and factual errors, the text is disjointed as whole chunks of history have been edited out.

The way in which the document has been hastily pushed through without any meaningful dialogue or debate with either the teachers or CABE (the advisory body of NCERT) points to a definite agenda.

And what is this agenda?
There are telling omissions and imbalances in the history section. The chapter on religions omits Islam and Sikhism but includes Judaism and Buddhism. The medieval and Mughal periods have been projected as times of strife with no mention of the contributions of liberals like Akbar. There has been an attempt to introduce obscurantist courses like vedic astrology.

What will be the impact on students?
The books deprive the students of a wider perspective of history. They fail to present a holistic picture of the past and are more a compilation of facts, necessitating learning by rote.

Is it a must for CBSE schools to prescribe these books?
We will probably have our teachers study the books and decide. Till then, we will stick to the old NCERT books.

(Interviewed by Nivedita Garg)