The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has removed references to freedom fighter and India’s first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad from the NCERT Class 11 Political Science textbook. In its move to rationalize its syllabus last year, the NCERT has been removing some parts from its syllabus citing them as overlapping and irrelevant. The topics taken out of NCERT syllabus include Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, RSS ban etc.
Importantly, the revision in the Class 11 Political Science textbooks was not mentioned in the NCERT’s rationalization note. However, NCERT has said that no new changes are being incorporated this year, and all the updates being done in the NCERT syllabus were prepared last year itself.
Speaking on the development, news agency PTI quoted NCERT director Dinesh Saklani as saying, “Not mentioning some changes in the Rational Content book could be a ‘mistake’.”
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Notably, the changes made in the NCERT Class 11 Political Science textbooks also included amendments in the first chapter titled ‘The Constitution – Why and How’, wherein a line was amended to remove Azad’s name from the Constituent Assembly committee meetings. Has been done After amendment, the line now reads: “Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or BR Ambedkar presided over these committees.”
The reference to the conditional accession of Jammu and Kashmir has also been removed from the tenth chapter “The Philosophy of the Constitution” of the same book. The paragraph that has been removed from the chapter read: “”For example, the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to the Indian Union was based on a commitment to protect its autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution.”
Significantly, the Ministry of Minority Affairs had closed the Maulana Azad Fellowship last year. Initiated in 2009, the objective of the fellowship was to provide financial assistance to students belonging to six notified minorities for a period of five years.
In the past few days, NCERT has reported that “Gandhi’s death had a magical effect on the communal situation in the country”, “Gandhi’s quest for Hindu-Muslim unity incited Hindu extremists” and “Organizations like the RSS were banned for some time”. The texts have also been removed. From the new NCERT Class 12 textbook.
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