Renowned political and social scientists Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav have asked to have their names removed from the National Council for Education Research and Training’s (NCERT) political science textbooks in an open letter on Friday, June 9.
The letter was written jointly by Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav since they have been advisors for political science textbooks for the central body. They have released their letter in light of disagreements with controversial changes that the education council recently made to many of its textbooks.
“We were never consulted or even informed of these changes … The frequent and serial deletions do not seem to have any logic except to please the powers that be,” Palshikar and Yadav said in their letter to the NCERT director. Prof. Suhas Palshikar and I have dissociated ourselves from the six NCERT textbooks that we had the honour to put together but that have now been mutilated beyond recognition. We have asked NCERT to remove our names from these books.
While for the regime, the modifications have been justified on the grounds of ‘rationalisation’, we fail to see any pedagogical rationale at work here. We find that the text has been mutilated beyond recognition,” the letter also reads.Among the changes the NCERT made to its political science textbooks earlier this year are removing references to the 2002 Gujarat communal violence from its Class 12 book, chapters titled ‘Democracy and Diversity’, ‘Popular Struggles and Movements’ and ‘Challenges of Democracy’ from its Class 10 book and a section on sedition from its Class 8 book. The NCERT has also removed chapters relating to Mughal history from a Class 12 history textbook, and last year it also summarily deleted chapter on Darwin’s theory of evolution from its Class 10 biology textbook.It justified its decisions as part of a ‘rationalisation’ exercise designed to “reduce the content load” on students following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Palshikar and Yadav were chief advisors for the NCERT’s political science textbooks that were published in 2006 and asked that their names in this capacity be removed from the revised books.”feel embarrassed that our names should be mentioned as chief advisors to these mutilated and academically dysfunctional textbooks,” they said. The text of the letter mah be read here;
Director,
NCERT, New Delhi
director.ncert@nic.in
Subject: Political Science Text Books for classes IX to XII
Dear Professor Dinseh Prasad Saklani,
We, the undersigned, Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, were Chief Advisors for the NCERT text books of political science prepared and originally published in 2006-07 for classes IX to XII. Through a very enriching and valuable collaboration with colleagues across the country, we were able to put together six textbooks as per NCF 2005.
Of late, we have been coming across detailed news reports of the many modifications made to these textbooks. While the modifications have been justified on the grounds of ‘rationalization’, we fail to see any pedagogic rationale at work here. 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. We were never consulted or even informed of these changes. If NCERT did consult other experts for deciding on these cuts and deletions, we explicitly state that we fully disagree with them in this regard.
We believe that any text has an internal logic and such arbitrary cuts and deletions violate the spirit of the text. The frequent and serial deletions do not seem to have any logic except to please the powers that be. Text books cannot and should not be shaped in this blatantly partisan manner and should not quell the spirit of critique and questioning among students of social sciences.These textbooks as they stand now do not serve the purpose of training students of political science both the principles of politics and the broad patterns of political dynamics that have occurred over time.
As academics originally associated with the preparation of these text books, we feel embarrassed that our names should be mentioned as Chief Advisors to these mutilated and academically dysfunctional textbooks. We wish to explicitly record our full disagreement with the entire process of re-shaping the text in the name of rationalization. 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.
We request you to give effect to this request immediately and ensure that our names are not used in the soft copies of the textbooks available at NCERT website as also in the subsequent print editions.
Sincerely,
Suhas Palshikar & Yogendra Yadav