Lessons Of Past: Paragraphs On Gujarat Pogrom, 1975 Emergency, Mughal Rule Removed From NCERT Textbooks.

Contents on the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, the Mughal rule in India, and the nationwide emergency imposed in 1975 are among the texts dropped by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) from its textbooks, reported The Indian Express. 

The NCERT, in a note released on Thursday, said that the revision was part of “rationalization of contents in textbooks”. Changes have been made to textbooks for sixth standard to twelfth standard.

A reference to the Gujarat pogrom from the chapter “Recent Developments in Indian Politics” has been removed from twelfth standard’s Political Science curriculum, quoting the NCERT note The Indian Express reported.

“Gujarat riots show that the government machinery also becomes susceptible to sectarian passions,” a paragraph from the removed chapter stated, according to The Indian Express. “Instances, like in Gujarat, alert us to dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes. This poses a threat to democratic politics.”

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An entire chapter titled “Kings and Chronicles: the Mughal Courts (C. Sixteen-Seventeenth Centuries)” has also been dropped from the twelfth standard’s History syllabus.

From the Political Science textbook, one page on the history of the Naxal movement, and four pages on “Controversies regarding Emergency” have also been dropped, according to The Indian Express.

Other content removed from the twelfth standard’s syllabus include excerpts on the Cold War and “US Hegemony in World Politics”.

From the eleventh standard’s History textbook, a chapter titled “Central Islamic lands” and another named “The Industrial Revolution” have been dropped.

In its note, as per the report, the NCERT said that the changes were made due to the coronavirus pandemic and the National Education Policy 2020.

“In view of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative to reduce content load on students,” it said. “The National Education Policy 2020, also emphasizes reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with creative mindset.”

The other reasons cited are overlapping with similar text, irrelevant content and difficulty level. The revision came two months after excerpts of two of Faiz’s poems were removed from tenth standard’s Social Science textbook in the 2022-’23 curriculum of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), reads the report.