"Histories Circulated On WhatsApp": Historians On NCERT Textbook Move

A group of historians has raised concerns over the NCERT's move to delete certain topics from history books for CBSE students. In a statement on Friday, they said they were "appalled" by the NCERT's decision to delete the topics, particularly for Class 12, and called the move "a matter of deep concern".

The signatories of the statement include Romila Thapar, Jayati Gosh, Mridula Mukherjee, Apoorvanada, Irfan Habib and Upinder Singh, among others.

"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 the history of the Mughal courts, the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, the Emergency... from social science, history and political science textbooks of classes 6 to 12," the historians said in the statement.

"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," they said.

"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 historians said, alluding to an alleged attempt to insert politics in education.

The NCERT has denied allegations to suppress historical facts. The top advisory body for the centre and state on school education has said it's a professional exercise meant to help students hit by the pandemic and has no ulterior political motive.

"As we explained last year as well, there has been a lot of learning loss due to the Covid pandemic and the students underwent a lot of trauma. To help stressed students, and as a responsibility to society and the nation, it was felt that the content load in textbooks should be reduced," Dinesh Prasad Saklani, Director of NCERT, told NDTV on Tuesday.

Stressing that experts felt some chapters were overlapping across subjects and classes, he said some parts were removed to minimise the content load on students, who he said faced a traumatic pandemic and were under a lot of stress. He denied allegations that the changes were made to suit a particular ideology.