Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday criticized the government for deleting references to India’s first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad from the new NCERT Class 11 Political Science textbook, calling it a “disgrace”.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has removed the reference to freedom fighter and India’s first education minister Azad from the new Class 11 Political Science textbook.
Tagging a media report on this, former Minister of State for HRD Tharoor tweeted, “What a disgrace. I don’t mind adding neglected figures to the historical narrative, but deleting people, especially for the wrong reasons, It is unworthy of our diverse democracy and its proud history.” Last year, as part of its “syllabus rationalisation” exercise, the NCERT removed certain sections from the syllabus citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant” reasons, including Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement But the lessons were included. Other than its textbooks.
There was no mention of any change in the Class 11 Political Science textbook in the rationalization note.
However, NCERT has claimed that there has been no reduction in the syllabus this year and the syllabus was rationalized in June last year.
NCERT director Dinesh Saklani reiterated, “Not finding mention of some changes in the Rational Content book could be an ‘oversight’.”
The first chapter of the Class 11 Political Science textbook, titled ‘Constitution – Why and How’, has a line amended to remove Azad’s name from the Constituent Assembly committee meetings.
The amended line now reads, “Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or BR Ambedkar presided over these committees.” P