'Sanitised history': Historians from Indian, foreign universities on NCERT textbook revision

NEW DELHI: Over 200 academics, historians and subject experts from Indian and foreign universities have jointly issued a statement against the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbook revision for Class 12.

Academics from top universities like Delhi University and its affiliated colleges, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Hyderabad and from foreign universities including professors from University of Toronto, University Munich, University of Vermont, University of Copenhagen, New York University, Columbia University among others have raised concerns about the deletion of history chapters from the school textbooks.

Demanding to immediately withdraw the decision of removal of history chapters, they said that the move “goes against the constitutional ethos and composite culture of the Indian subcontinent”.

Using the period of the pandemic-cum-lockdowns to argue that there was a need to lighten the load of the curriculum, the NCERT initiated a “contentious process of dropping topics” like dropped certain portions from the course including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement from social science, history, and political science textbooks of Classes 6 to 12, the statement read.

“The new editions of these NCERT books have simply made the deletions the norm even when we are in a post-pandemic context in which school education has limped back to normalcy and is no longer in the online mode.”

On the deletion of chapters on the Mughals from part-II of the Class 12 history textbook and modern Indian history from part-III, the academicians said: “There has been no attempt to consult members of the teams that had prepared the textbooks, which included historians and school teachers, apart from members of the NCERT. The books were developed through a process of consultation and wide-ranging discussions.”

“This was valuable not only in terms of content, but also in terms of pedagogy, which ensured an organic unity and a graded development in understanding from the middle to the senior school. The attempt was also to make the textbooks as inclusive as possible, and to provide a sense of the rich diversity of the human past both within the subcontinent and the wider world,” it said.

Stating how the deletion of chapters is highly problematic in terms of depriving learners of valuable content and pedagogical values required to equip them to meet present and future challenges, the subject experts said: “While we understand the need for periodic revisions of school textbooks, this can only be done in sync with the consensus of existing historical scholarship. However, the selective deletion in this round of textbook revision reflects the sway of divisive politics over pedagogic concerns.”

According to the NCERT director, the deletions are part of the rationalisation of the school textbooks, and have been done in order to reduce the burden on students. As per the NCERT, during the pandemic the students faced loss in learning, and in the post-pandemic period the students have been feeling overburdened with the syllabus. Denying the political motive behind the revision, the NCERT had defended its move by saying that “as some of the chapters were overlapping across subjects and classes, it was rational to reduce the content for the overburdened students”.

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“However, notwithstanding the NCERT Director’s denial, the selective dropping of NCERT book chapters which do not fit into the larger ideological orientation of the present ruling dispensation exposes the non-academic, partisan agenda of the regime in pushing through amendments to school textbooks,” the joint statement by the historians read.

“This becomes abundantly clear when one critically analyses the removal of selective themes in the textbooks in the backdrop of the present central government’s larger ideological agenda of misconstruing the history of the people of the Indian subcontinent as a product of a hegemonic singular (Hindu) tradition,” it said.

Deletion of chapter on Mughals from NCERT textbooks

The chapter titled ‘Kings and Chronicles: The Mughal Courts (c. sixteenth-seventeenth centuries) has been deleted from part-II of the history textbook. “This is despite the fact that the Mughals ruled several parts of the subcontinent for a substantial period; making the history of these times an inseparable part of the subcontinent's history. In medieval times, the Mughal empire and the Vijayanagara empire were two of the most important empires in the Indian subcontinent, both of which were discussed in the previous textbooks,” they said.

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In the revised version, while the chapter on the Mughals has been deleted, the chapter on the Vijayanagara Empire has been retained. “The exclusion exposes the wider communal undertones, based on an inaccurate assumption about India’s past -- that the religion of the rulers was the dominant religion of the times. This leads to the deeply problematic idea of a ‘Hindu’ era, ‘Muslim’ era, etc. These categories are uncritically imposed on what has historically been a very diverse social fabric,” it said.

Moreover, two very important chapters have been deleted from part-III on Modern India, namely, ‘Colonial Cities: Urbanisation, Planning and Architecture’ and ‘Understanding Partition: Politics, Memories, Experiences’.

“Also significant is the deletion of any mention of the role of Hindu extremists in the killing of Gandhi. For example, in the chapter titled ‘Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement’ in part-III of the history textbook the reference to Nathuram Godse being “the editor of an extremist Hindu newspaper” has been expunged,” the experts pointed out.

The professors alleged that “the chapters deleted from the history textbook are precisely those which do not fit into the pseudo-historical schema of the ruling dispensation. Excising any period from the study of the past would make students unable to comprehend the connecting thread of the past with the present times, and would deprive students of an opportunity to connect, compare and contrast the past and the present, and would disrupt the organic inter-connectedness of the subject-matter of the discipline”.

Furthermore, removing entire periods of history from history textbooks would not only perpetuate misconceptions and misunderstandings, but would serve to further the divisive communal and casteist agenda of the ruling elites.

“The sequence of the chapters was designed to teach students about the craft of history, and to develop critical thinking about the past. The composite heritage of the Indian subcontinent and historical genealogies of the present times were the main focus of the old NCERT syllabus from which chapters have now been strategically excised,” it added.

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Chapters removed from Class 11 NCERT textbooks

The experts noted that there are several deletions from the history textbook of Class 11, which includes very essential themes like the industrial revolution, inter alia. There are also deletions from the textbook for political science, which includes sections on the rise of popular movements, the 2002 Gujarat Riots, and the mention of the report of the National Human Rights Commission. Similarly, the reference to the 2002 Gujarat Riots has been dropped from the Class 11 sociology textbook ‘Understanding Society’.

“Guided by a divisive and partisan agenda, the NCERT by selectively deleting several important themes from school textbooks is not only doing great disservice to the composite heritage of the Indian subcontinent, but betraying the aspirations of the Indian masses.”

‘Overlooks regional diversity’

“Ultimately, all these deletions present the students with a sanitized history of a homogenous ‘Hindu’ society in the Indian subcontinent. History of this variety has a disturbing preoccupation with the narrative surrounding kings and the wars they waged,” they said.

“It reduces state formations, empire-building, and transformations of the medieval period to an unsubstantiated, perennial contest between an allegedly homogenous ‘Hindu’ society and ‘Islamic’ invaders and rulers,” they added.

Further, the revision also projects the idea of presumably widespread social harmony in India’s past which “conceals the exploitation and oppression of populations under different state formations along the axes of gender, caste, and class etc”.

“It also overlooks regional diversity. By reducing the study of history to such monolithic accounts, the ground is being prepared for pseudo-histories, especially of a communal and casteist variety, to hold sway. In any case, such ‘histories’ are widely circulated today through WhatsApp and other social media applications,” the academicians said.