Gujarat riots, Emergency, cold war, Naxalite movement and more dropped from NCERT books

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has removed portions about the 2002 Gujarat riots, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement and Mughal courts from its Class XII textbooks as part of its “syllabus rationalisation” exercise.

They cited “overlapping” and “irrelevant” as reasons for dropping these sections from the syllabus, as stated in a report by PTI. In fact, many of these changes were announced earlier this year (2022) when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) rationalised its syllabus. In addition to schools under CBSE, several state schools also use NCERT textbooks.

Listing the changes, the NCERT, in a note, said, "The content of the textbooks has been rationalised for various reasons, including overlapping with similar content in other subject areas in the same class, similar content included in the lower or higher classes on the same subject.” It also stated that based on the difficulty level, content that is easily accessible to students without much intervention from teachers and that can be learnt by self or peer-learning and content which is irrelevant in the present context have been removed.

The pages on the topic 'Gujarat Riots' will be excluded from the chapter titled Recent Developments in Indian Politics in the Class XII Political Science textbook. Additionally, the mention of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) report on the 2002 violence and the "raj dharma" remark by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has been dropped from the textbook. The chapters on Mughal courts in a history textbook, a poem on the Dalit movement and a chapter on the Cold War, are some of the exclusions from the political science textbook.

The verses of poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the 'Religion, Communalism and Politics Communalism, Secular State' section of the textbook 'Democratic Politics II' are excluded in Class X books. Additionally, chapters titled Democracy and Diversity, Popular Struggle and Movements and Challenges to Democracy have been dropped.

In the Social Science textbook of Classes VII and VIII, references to Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki were removed. In the Class VII textbook titled Our Pasts-2, the topic 'Emperors: Major Campaigns and Events' has been removed.