Students of Bengaluru contended the move of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to remove chapters on the Mughal Empire in the post-pandemic era, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
Last week, NCERT was under fire due to the rationalisation of textbooks for Classes VI and XII. In particular, the council's decision to drop chapters from the Mughal Empire, democracy and a Dalit writer has attracted a lot of flak. The reason behind the removal of such information from the textbooks was to lower the course load and adhere to the provisions of the National Education Policy (NEP). But the students called this move unethical and an attempt at distorting history.
Read Also : NCERT director responds to deletion of text on Gandhi, Hindu-Muslim unity from Class XII textbook
“The central government has again demonstrated its unethical and undemocratic stance in implementing the anti-people National Education Policy. The communal and divisive politics of the ruling BJP brought up in NCERT's history, civics, Hindi and political science textbooks are the most reprehensible. The BJP government has done this with its premeditated nefarious intention of distorting history,” said Ajay Kamath, Karnataka State Secretary of the All India Democratic Students Association.
"It is evident that mainly three kinds of things have been deleted or diluted in this latest attention to safronisation. First, the mention of Muslims as an integral part of Indian history, second, the mention of popular socio-political mass movements in this country, and third, the atrocities committed by the RSS and their ideologues," states a statement by All India Students' Association (AISA).
The decision has also gained criticism from various avenues, with educationists, academicians and writers criticising the move.
