Textbook revision: NCERT drops some references to Gujarat riots, Babri Masjid

The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has made several changes to the political science textbook for Class 12 for the coming academic year by dropping some references to issues like the Babri Masjid, Gujarat 2002 riots, Hindutva politics, and minorities, according to a report by Hindustan Times.

This is in addition to the host of updates of sensitive topics in the syllabus in the past few years.

NCERT textbooks are used by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) that has almost 30,000 schools in the country affiliated to it. The recent changes in the syllabus were made public by NCERT on its website on Thursday (April 4).

NCERT said the updates in the content were as per “latest developments in politics”.

Changes in political science book

In the chapter titled “Secularism”:

Original: “More than 1,000 persons, mostly Muslims, were massacred during the post Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002”.

Revised: “More than 1,000 persons were massacred during the post Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002”.

In the chapter titled “Gender, Religion, and Caste”:

Original: “Human rights groups in our country have agreed that most of the victims of the communal riots in our country are people from religious minorities and the government should take special steps to protect religious minorities.”

Revised: “Human rights groups have demanded that the government should take special steps to prevent communal riots and protect religious minorities.”

In the chapter titled “Understanding Marginalisation”:

Original: According to 2011 census, Muslims are 14.2 per cent of India’s population and are considered to be a marginalised community in India today because in comparison to other communities, they have over the years been deprived of the benefits of socio-economic development.”

Revised: According to 2011 census, Muslims are 14.2 per cent of India’s population and are considered to be a marginalised community because of their having comparatively lower status of socio-economic development.”

In the chapter titled “Democratic Rights”: A reference to the Gujarat riots was removed in the caption to a news collage.

In the chapter titled “Recent Developments in Indian Politics”: two changes have been made.

· References to the “Ayodhya demolition” have been deleted.

· References to the Babri Masjid and the politics of Hindutva have been removed.

In the chapter titled “Contemporary Centres of Power”: some of the updates have referred more explicitly to China in the portions dealing with border disputes between countries.

Changes in other textbooks

Several changes to the Harappan civilisation, tribals and people’s movements have been made in the history textbook.

Some images of communal riots have been deleted from the sociology textbook.

In the section dealing with the movement around the Sardar Sarovar Dam, the following sentence was removed, “The most recent such example is the series of dams being built on the Narmada, where most of the costs and benefits seem to flow disproportionately to different communities and regions”.