The Kerala government has decided to distribute new supplementary textbooks to restore the deleted chapters from the National Council of Educational Training and Research (NCERT) textbooks for Classes XI and XII. The deletions include Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the 2002 Gujarat riots and the period of emergency.
State General Education Minister V Sivankutty informed that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the book distribution programme at Cotton Hill School in Thiruvananthapuram on August 23. He added that the state has taken up this discussion by placing national and academic interests first, as per a report by ANI.
“It’s a time when the process of curriculum reform has started at the national and state levels. At the national level, under NCERT's leadership, many sections were deleted from the textbooks of Classes VI to XII. Kerala has quickly and academically responded to this. The exclusions have been made in the name of reducing the academic load due to COVID. However, anyone who examines these books will understand that the cuts are not to reduce the academic load but to protect some vested interests,” V Sivankutty said.
“Textbooks for Classes I to X are produced by Kerala. So the changes made by NCERT for Classes VI to X at the national level do not significantly affect Kerala. But NCERT textbooks are used for Classes XI and XII,” he explained, adding that the academic community could not accept the extensive exclusion made in History, Political Science, Economics and Sociology textbooks.
The minister further stated that through these deletions, there were attempts to hide the basics of the Constitution, the history of the country, and the fundamental problems in the country. He added that avoiding subjects, especially those related to humanities, by labelling them unsuitable for the era, was politically motivated. "That is why Kerala has decided to release additional textbooks in humanities subjects," Sivankutty said.
The minister clarified that the new books would not be limited to additional reading materials. “They will be a proper part of the syllabus and not just complementary readings. Students will have to study them for their exams, because only then would they find the drive to read and understand their history,” he explained.
“We can never change the history of the country, the spirit of the freedom struggle and the Constitutional values in the name of the curriculum and textbooks should be updated with the times. Whatever the reason, Kerala will always oppose the removal of such parts,” Minister V Sivankutty said in a statement, as per ANI.
