In its 2014 manifesto, the BJP had committed to “[r]educe burden of books on children without compromising on quality of education”. But this intention had nothing to do with the standout 1993 Yashpal Committee’s exhaustive recommendations to bring about “learning without burden”.
In January 2019, Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar had said, “We have decided to reduce [the NCERT] curriculum by 50%. This year, there will be 10–15% reduction. Next year it will be more. Finally, in 2021, the target will be achieved.” The pointer to the government’s unstudied intent is the sort of historical information it is deleting. Some expunctions are meant to revise historical dynamics by creating holes in longtime narratives to be replaced with contrarian assertions. Others are meant to take radical historical processes out of the educational reckoning entirely.
In March 2019, the NCERT announced its decision to remove three chapters: on clothing and caste conflicts, history of cricket, and the impact of colonial capitalism on peasants and farmers.
The first explored the Channar revolt of lower caste Nadar women in the kingdom of Travancore in 1813–59. The chapter is a bit of an embarrassment to the archconservative saffron dispensation, as it deals with an uprising against the upper caste diktat that lower caste women go bare-chested. This does not gel with BJP’s belief that discussing caste imbalances is counterproductive.
The history of cricket is one of insidious mastery of a sport that defines colonialism. In modern-day India’s self-image, it is the world’s Kricketmeister. Cricket is not only a vehicle of supremacy over Britain but also of vishwaguruttva, or world leadership.
Peasants and farmers have for years been this government’s bugbear. In trying and failing to force three farm laws down the throats of farmers, the Centre has been accused of harbouring an autocolonial impulse in the service of hypercapitalism.
In April 2022, in what it said was an attempt to “rationalise” syllabi, the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) deleted chapters on the Non-Aligned Movement, the Cold War era, the ascendancy of Islamic empires in Afro-Asian territories, chronicles of the Mughal courts, and the Industrial Revolution.
Also expunged were translated poems of the rousing Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, topics such as the impact of globalisation on agriculture, and chapters on poverty and infrastructure (which aimed to provide a bird’s-eye view of the byzantine subcontinental economy).
It’s a no-brainer why. Faiz was a Pakistani citizen and a Marxist, and authored the poem Hum Dekhenge (We Shall See), the anthem of students supporting the anti-CAA [Citizenship (Amendment) Act] protesters at Jamia Millia Islamia in December 2019. Government loyalists called the poem “anti-Hindu”.
Globalisation is not a topic—invested with progressive vs globalitarian disputation—that pro-establishment economists would want students to examine. It can lead to debates of larger political consequence, especially as India is trying to chart a middle course through the rough waters of impositional geopolitics. (It is surprising that the Centre is invalidating the chapter on the Non-Aligned Movement, because India’s stance today is NAM redux—an abiding Nehruvian irony.)
In April 2023, the NCERT carried out its most extensive set of eliminations. In addition to last year’s erasure of Islamic dominions in Afro-Asian countries, it has excised chapters on central Islamic lands—comprising the Jahiliyyah, Muhammad, the Sharia, the Caliphate, the Sultanate, etc., as well as the chronicles of the Mughal courts in the 16th and 17th centuries.
With three more chapters deleted—on the rise of popular movements (which the establishment considers radical, if not radicalised), controversies surrounding Indira Gandhi’s Emergency (which political observers have likened to the state of the country today), and the decades of one-party dominance—much of the Congress’ post-Independence history is to be vapourised. Also excised is the chapter on the industrial revolution, a period crucial to emergent modern Indian history and of the wealth-and-skills extractionary dynamics of British colonialism. With crudely dug holes in its telling, even a basal understanding of this entire period of incredible historical kinesis will be rendered tatty.
Three more chapters to go have to do with the Cold War, ‘US Hegemony in World Politics’, and on the interfacing of Europeans and Americans in the 15th–17th centuries. There go Columbus and Vespucci, and fascinating Central and South American cultures anciennes.
The Indian school studentry is being geofenced. It is being told that not only is India of exclusivist importance, but also that within India, of islandic superiority is what the Right calls a composite but north-oriented ‘Hindu culture’.This circumscribing of information extends its mandate to post-Independence chapters on democracy and diversity, popular struggles and movements, and challenges to democracy.
Borrowing excerpts from the textbooks, the first of the three chapters above seeks—or, rather, sought—to show “how democracy responds to social differences, divisions and inequalities”. The second was a “discussion of how struggles around conflicting demands and pressures shape democracy”, and the resultant “analysis of the different ways and organisations through which ordinary citizen can play a role in democracy”. The third addresses “the fundamental questions of democratic politics: What are the challenges that democracy faces in our country and elsewhere? What can be done to reform democratic politics? How can our democracy become more democratic in its practice and outcomes?”
Which of the chapters in this article can be erased without creating an abyss of information and discussion essential to the furtherance of democracy in the formative minds of the young?
Kajal Basu
Veteran journalist