NCERT drops content on Gujarat riots, Cold War from Class 12 textbook

The NCERT team has also dropped pages on the history of the Naxalite movement and "Controversies during Emergency" as part of a rationalisation exercise

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has dropped content on Gujarat riots, Cold War and Mughal courts from the Class 12 Political Science curriculum, news reports said. 

 

As part of a textbook rationalisation exercise for the current academic session, the NCERT has also dropped content on the industrial revolution from a Class 11 textbook and references to some Dalit writers from a Class 7 textbook. 

  

One para on Gujarat riots removed from the Class 12 read, "Gujarat riots show that the government machinery also becomes susceptible to sectarian passions. Instances, like in Gujarat, alert us to dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes. This poses a threat to democratic politics," The Indian Express reported. The content on the Gujarat riots was featured in chapter 9, titled "Recent Developments in Indian Politics."

 

The curriculum for Classes 6 to 12 was rationalised to reduce the load of content on students in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to NCERT officials, nearly 30 per cent of the syllabi was reduced for the current academic session. "There was no selective omission of topics," a senior NCERT official told the Hindustan Times. 

 

The rationalisation process, now concluded, was started last December for the 2022-23 academic session by a team of subject experts from NCERT.

 

The NCERT team has also dropped pages on the history of the "Naxalite movement" and "Controversies during Emergency."

 

The content was removed as part of the rationalisation as it overlapped with similar content included in other subject areas in the same class and "content, which is irrelevant in the present context", the NCERT team said. 

 

Other removed content includes entire chapters on Mughal Courts, a poem on 'The Dalit Movement' and a chapter on the Cold War from Class 12 textbooks. Chapters titled "Central Islamic lands" and "the Industrial Revolution" have been dropped from class 12 textbooks as well.

 

From textbooks for Classes 7 and 8, references to Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki were removed. From a textbook for Class 7, pages titled "Mughal Emperors: Major campaigns and events" were dropped.