The alterations made to NCERT textbooks are a deliberate effort to “distort and communalize” the study of India’s history, politics, and society, according to Binoy Viswam, CPI, MP. He wrote to Dharmendra Pradhan, education minister, expressing concern that certain sections have been omitted and certain Indian traditions of thought have been disregarded, which suggests an intention to manipulate information about certain periods in Indian history. Some of the changes, he added, strongly suggest an intention to suppress certain aspects of Indian history and thought, according to an official statement.
He alleged that most of these changes were brought in social sciences books, indicating that the government is “trying to curtail critical analysis of our society, polity and history. The NCERT has dropped from its class 12 history textbook certain portions on Mahatma Gandhi and how his pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity “provoked Hindu extremists”, and on a ban on the RSS, triggering a row, with the Congress accusing the Centre of “whitewashing” and “distorting” history, the statement mentioned.
Furthermore, the CPI MP alleged that the removal of passages linking Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination with the RSS appears to dilute Nathuram Godse’s ideological leanings. “Other changes that were made as part of the ‘rationalisation’ exercise are also in nature of either concealing the true history of the country or attempting to distort it. All references to the Gujarat riots of 2002, including former PM A B Vajpayee’s message to then CM Narendra Modi on following a policy of non-discrimination, have been removed,” he alleged.
In his letter, he also said that the removal and reduction of content pertaining to the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire and the works of literature and architecture of that period “prima facie appears to be communally biassed.” References to social movements are also omitted to a great extent, Viswam claimed.
“Our young minds deserve the truth and offering them half-truths, omissions and biases is a grave injustice which is sure to imperil our future. Thus, I urge you to take account of the changes made and take necessary action to rectify the biases from NCERT textbooks to preserve the spirit of critical inquiry and scientific temper in future generations,” he said.
With inputs from PTI.