Opinion Erasures in NCERT textbooks go against NEP’s mandate to enhance critical thinking

Social scientists often refer to an adage: The past lives in the present. The axiom is particularly salient vis a vis the legacies of momentous events of the recent past — they resonate in political debates, influence policy and leave deep imprints on social and cultural landscapes. That’s why an understanding of contemporary history, especially uncomfortable facts and fraught moments, should be critical to the National Education Policy’s objective of “enhancing critical thinking among students”. This imperative seems to have eluded the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Director DP Saklani has justified the omission of the Gujarat riots and the violence after the Babri Masjid demolitions from the NCERT Class 12 Political Science textbook on the ground that an “expert committee felt that mentioning a few (riots) selectively is not good”. Earlier, Saklani had said to the news agency PTI, “Why should we teach about riots in school textbooks? We want to create positive citizens, not violent and depressed individuals”. His statements are troubling.

The NCERT director’s statements show an overwhelming anxiety to present a picture of a sanitised society and polity by papering over faultlines and events that are constitutive of a nation’s journey and, even, its learning arc. They appear to be of a piece with the premier textbook framing authority’s recent outlook on syllabus revision. The Class 12 political science textbook, which hit the market last week, does not mention the Babri Masjid by name, calling it a “three-domed structure”. The section on the Ayodhya dispute has expunged the part on the BJP’s rath yatra. The role of the kar sevaks and the communal violence that followed the destruction of the Babri Masjid do not find a mention. The parts in the textbook that referred to the President’s rule in the BJP-ruled states after December 6, 1992, have been deleted. So has the passage that took note of the party’s “regret over the happenings in Ayodhya”. Earlier textbook revisions have deleted sections on the poverty and powerlessness of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes, left out key passages on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and omitted parts on the Emergency and protest movements.

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Revision of learning material should, of course, be par for the course in a robust education system. Having said that, in times when young minds are exposed to a glut of information on history, society and culture from a variety of sources, including social media, textbooks hold the key to argumentative engagement with the country’s seminal events, and its democratic processes. That’s why they should keep abreast with the latest research and debates among scholars. Instead of addressing this need, the NCERT’s silences and erasures — and its director’s justifications — end up infantilising the learner.