The Fallacy of Debate over NCERT Textbook by the Prophets of Doom - News18

The academic commissars are back again, haunted, apparently by the spectre of saffronisation of the National Council of Educational Research and Training textbooks. From concerned historians, a pseudonym for the old contractors of the history syllabus in India, to journalist-activists eager to peddle the political agenda of the elites of the ancient regime, to the scores of political parties desperate to attain leverage against the incumbent party, everyone has made a synchronised and scripted pitch against the rationalisation measure undertaken by the NCERT to unburden the textbooks from excess and repetitive contents — a move at the heart of pedagogical discourse worldwide. Their template relies upon the same old trope of demonising the ‘Indian Right’ incessantly by employing a pretentious and clichéd volley of semantics: saffronisation, Talibanisation, anti-minorityism, majoritarianism, erasure of history, and sweeping changes, among others. For instance, besides minor changes, 4 out of 11 chapters in Class XI and 3 out of 15 chapters in Class XII have been dropped from history textbooks which pertained to the themes of human evolution, confrontation of cultures, industrial revolution, chronicles of Mughal courts, colonial cities, Gandhi and nationalist movement and partition. However, such analytical modes would be absurd as NCERT textbooks have been framed as a continuum from class VI to class XII wherein themes need to be seen by treating them as one unit to avoid unnecessary repetition and overlaps.