NCERT's revision of textbooks part of 'saffronisation' agenda, says Kerala CM

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday strongly condemned the dropping of certain chapters and portions from NCERT class 12 textbooks and alleged that "complete saffronisation" of academic books was the objective behind the move.

Historical facts cannot be denied by just cutting out portions that are inconvenient (to some one) from textbooks, he said in a Facebook post. Excluding certain portions and chapters from the textbooks with a political motive was not only a negation of history but also a condemnable move. It is evident that the objective behind such actions is the "complete saffronisation of textbooks", the CM added.

In the hard-hitting post, Vijayan said it was clear whose interest was being served by the omission of portions about the assassination of the 'Father of the Nation' Mahatma Gandhi and the subsequent banning of the RSS, from the political science textbook of class 12. Portions about the Mughal Empire were also cut down from the history textbook of the same class, he pointed out.

"The medieval history of India, excluding the Mughal Empire, is incomplete," he said, alleging that medieval Indian history had always been an area that the Sangh Parivar had twisted and distorted. The Kerala CM accused the NCERT of "whitewashing the fake history" created by the Sangh Parivar by excluding these portions.

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The Sangh Parivar, through the textbooks, was trying to inculcate the politics of hatred and division into the minds of children, the Marxist veteran further charged. Accusing the NCERT of supporting the distorted methodology of the RSS in writing history, Vijayan said strong protest needs to be registered against such moves which would otherwise undermine the secular education envisaged by the Constitution.

The NCERT recently dropped from its class 12 history textbook certain portions on Mahatma Gandhi and how his pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity "provoked Hindu extremists". It also left out the portion where the government had placed a ban on the RSS after Gandhi's assassination. The revision of textbooks by obfuscating facts has triggered a row.

"Gandhiji's death had a magical effect on communal situation in the country", "Gandhi's pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists" and "Organisations like RSS were banned for some time" are among the portions deleted from the textbook.

Portions referring to the Gujarat riots have also been dropped from the class 11 sociology textbook, months after NCERT removed the reference to the 2002 communal violence in two class 12 textbooks. The Congress has accused the Centre of "whitewashing" and "distorting" history. NCERT Chief Dinesh Saklani said the syllabus was "rationalised" in June last year itself, and there has been no trimming of the curriculum this year.