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Yogendra Yadav, Suhas Palshikar want their names taken off NCERT books. ‘Mutilated beyond recognition’

New Delhi: Objecting to the recent “process of re-shaping text in the name of rationalisation” in the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books, Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, who were chief advisors of class 9 to 12 political science textbooks, have requested that their names be removed from them.

In a letter addressed to the NCERT director Dinesh Saklani, Yadav and Palshikar have asked the Council to drop their names as “chief advisors” from all six books originally published in 2006-07. Both were part of The Textbook Development Committee constituted in 2005 to develop the syllabus according to the National Curriculum Framework (NCF).

“Both of us would like to to dissociate ourselves from these textbooks and request the NCERT to drop our names as chief advisors’ from all Political Science Textbooks of classes IX, X, XI and XII mentioned in the Letter to the Students’ and also in the list of Textbook Development Team at the beginning of each textbook,” they said in the letter posted on Twitter Friday.

They also said that they feel “embarrassed” that their names are mentioned as the chief advisors.

ThePrint reached NCERT director over texts but there was no response.

This year, the NCERT, as part of “rationalisation”, removed some parts of syllabus from textbooks of class 6 to 12 — portions on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from political science textbooks — which created a controversy. The entire exercise was carried out based on an expert committee’s report that came out in June last year.

Though the NCERT said that the rationalisation was done in order to reduce the syllabus burden on children in the wake of Covid pandemic, questions were raised on the nature of chapters deleted.

In April, the NCERT director had said that the deletions might have been part of a “possible oversight” and there was “no ill-intention”, adding that the changes won’t be restored.

Academics had said that they were not consulted for the syllabus rationalisation exercise.

Meanwhile, Yadav and Palshikar said that the cuts and deletion in the latest version of the books have mutilated the content beyond recognition. “We find that the text has been mutilated beyond recognition. There are innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions, often without any attempt to fill the gaps thus created,” the letter reads.

The duo said that they were “never consulted or even informed of these changes” and further added that if the NCERT did consult other experts for deciding on these cuts and deletions, they “fully disagree with them in this regard”.

Terming the entire rationalisation process to be “blatantly partisan”, they said that “frequent and serial deletions do not seem to have any logic except to please the powers that be.”

Both asked the Council to “give effect to their request immediately” and not use their names in the soft copy version of the books as well.

(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)


Also Read: NCERT removes ‘Khalistan’ references from Class 12 political science text after SGPC objection


Source: The Print

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