People's Democracy

Leading Historians For Immediate

Withdrawal Of Current NCERT History Books

 Dinesh Chandra

EMINENT historians, including Prof Irfan Habib and Prof Vijay Thakur, have urged the panel of historians constituted by the ministry of Human Resource Development to review textbooks published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) that the current books be withdrawn immediately from this academic session itself as they can not be “decommunalised, corrected and deplagiarised” and “there is simply no alternative to their complete withdrawal at the earliest”.

Pointing out that the notification issued by the Ministry while appointing the panel while suggesting what needed to be done in the “short term” referred to reasons that made it “impractical to withdraw these books at this stage and replace them with more appropriate books without causing dislocation in the studies of millions of students”, the historians said the reasons are “exaggerated” and stressed that it is possible to withdraw the texts at this stage and replace them with “more appropriate books without causing too much dislocation”.

In a note submitted to the panel, the historians have said “there would be no practical problems if the existing texts are withdrawn and replaced by the earlier NCERT text books which in use up to 2001-2002” adding that “it is possible to reprint the earlier text books in sufficient number in less than a month’s time.” This, they said, would require restoring the pre-2002 history syllabus up to Class X. “It can even be suggested that for the 2005 Class X examination, the present social science syllabus and text books would continue”.

In a letter to the panel comprising Barun De, J S Grewal and S Settar, Prof Irfan Habib recalled that he  was one of the members of the Committee of the Indian History Congress (IHC) which early in 2003 looked into four of the seven books of the NCERT that deal with History for classes VI to XII. “Our report was published by the IHC under the title, History in the New NCERT Text Books – A Report and Index of Errors, Kolkata, 2003. The remaining three books (for classes VII, X and XII) came out after our report was in print and could not be commented upon by us. But these too received widespread attention in the press, and a good deal of plain plagiarism was detected in them along with various distortions of facts. SAHMAT has also published a collection of relevant material in its Saffronised and Substandard – A Critique of the New NCERT Textbooks, Delhi, 2000.”

Focussing on the conclusions of the IHC committee, Irfan Habib said “With such parochialism and prejudice as the driving force behind these textbooks, it is clear that these cannot be converted into acceptable textbooks by a mere removal of the linguistic and factual errors pointed out in our Index. In many cases the basic arguments in the textbooks are built on these very errors of fact, and so the errors cannot be removed without changing the main ideas behind the textbooks.  These textbooks are therefore beyond the range of salvage and they need to be withdrawn altogether”.

“The suggestion has been made to your Committee (to judge from press reports) that for this session it may compile a list of passages in the textbooks that the schools and CBSE examiners will be advised to ignore, and may also supply fresh compensatory passages which they should refer to. The suggestion may be well intentioned; but I frankly find it impractical.  The errors are so many, the insinuations and omissions so pervasive in these textbooks, that the pupils would be totally confounded while trying to match their NCERT books with the deletions and additions that may be supplied to them, if the object is to cover the bulk of the errors of commission and omission.

“ If, on the other hand, the corrective material is confined to only a limited number of passages, the bulk of the viciously biased contents in the textbooks will continue to be taught and to form the basis for examiners’ questions. In the name of not inconveniencing teachers and pupils, such a large mass of communalised and falsified information would still be passed on to children: how such a situation could be conducive to education is for all to consider. For the same reason the argument that thousands have purchased these noxious textbooks seems to me to have little force: we don’t want children to read these books, whether they have bought them or not.”

Irfan Habib further suggests in his letter that a “reasonable” solution would be that for classes XI and XII, the older textbooks (Ancient India by R.S.  Sharma; Medieval India by Satish Chandra; Modern India by Bipan Chandra and portions of Vol.2 of History of World Civilization by Arjun Dev) may be retained as they “adequately cover the present syllabus and there is no need to ask pupils to read the new toxified NCERT textbooks. The NCERT should immediately bring out fresh editions of older books to enable pupils to read them for the CBSE senior secondary examinations of 2005.”

 “A similar measure should be possible for the books prescribed for class X examination. Since lower class examinations are held in schools and not by CBSE, the NCERT can just withdraw its Social-Science/History textbooks and the CBSE should advise the schools to use other publishers’ textbooks such as are not contaminated by communalism. (I have seen quite passable books of this sort)”, he says.

As suggested by Irfan Habib that the national curriculum framework of 1988 can be revived, Prof Vijay Thakur in a similar letter to the panel says “as for the “National Framework of School Education” (NCFSE) of 2000, the Indian History Congress at its Calcutta session (January 2001) passed a detailed resolution questing its emphasis on spreading “values” through “education in religion”. The NCFSE 2000 became the excuse for bringing out the new textbooks which have rightly drawn forth universal criticism. If your Committee’s terms of reference so permit, I hope the NCFSE’s treatment of History and shift of emphasis from secular values would also receive its attention.” (INN)