Citing Content Overlap, NCERT Drops References To Gujarat Riots, Cold War, Mughal Courts From Textbooks

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on Thursday (June 16) dropped several topics from textbooks of Classes 6 to 12, including references to the 2002 Gujarat riots, Cold War and Mughal courts.

As part of new rationalised syllabi for the current academic session, portions on Gujarat riots, Cold War and Mughal courts have been dropped from a Class 12 textbook, whereas references to the industrial revolution and some Dalit writers have been removed from Class 11 and Class 7 textbooks respectively.

Curriculum Rationalised To Reduce Content Load On Students

The syllabus rationalisation process is done to ease the load on students in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was started off in December last year, and the process has now been completed with a team of subject experts, India Today reported.

As per NCERT officials, around 30 per cent of the syllabi was reduced for this academic session, and there was no selective omission of topics.

Curriculum documents showed that in Class 12 Political Science textbook pages 187-189 on the topic "'Gujarat Riots" will be excluded from Chapter Nine, titled "Recent Developments in Indian Politics" for 2022.

An online version of the book on the NCERT website showed the pages mentioning the 2002 riots, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) report on the violence, and a quote from then Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee on "raj dharma", Hindustan Times reported.

Other topics removed from the Class 12 syllabus are entire chapters on Mughal Courts in History, a poem on 'The Dalit Movement' and a chapter on the Cold War from the political science textbook. In the Class 11 history textbook, chapters titled "Central Islamic lands" and the Industrial Revolution were also dropped for 2022.

In the social science textbook of Classes 7 and 8, references to Dalit writer Omprakash Valmiki were removed. In the Class 7 textbook titled "Our Pasts-2" pages 48 and 49 were excluded. These pages mentioned "Mughal Emperors: major campaigns and events" and showed online versions of the books on the NCERT website.

Content Dropped To Avoid Overlapping Of Topics

According to a note released by NCERT, the content was dropped in case of "overlapping" of similar topics, included in other subject areas in the same class, or similar content included in the lower or higher class in the same subject, or based on "difficulty level", or if the content was "irrelevant" in the present context.

NCERT officials maintained that the topics might be taught in earlier or later classes.

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