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CBSE\u2019s\u00a0 latest decision to remove several chapters from the history and political science syllabi of Classes 11 and 12 is in tandem with the trend seen in recent years<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n On 23 April morning, when Tehelka\u2019s editor-in-chief, Charanjit Ahuja, reminded me it\u2019s the World Book Day, I was certain to focus on the freshly published books. But as I got started, collecting updates on the new titles, what struck were hitting news reports on text books, focusing on the CBSE\u2019s (Central Board of Secondary Education) latest decision for the removing several chapters from the history and political science syllabi of Classes 11 and 12, including the Non-Aligned Movement, the Cold War era, the rise of Islamic empires in Afro-Asian territories, the chronicles of Mughal courts and the industrial revolution. And in the class 10 syllabus, the topic “impact of globalisation on agriculture\u201d from a chapter on ‘Food Security’ has been dropped.<\/p>\n Much more, along the off-with- it strain! According to\u00a0 latest news reports, the CBSE 2022-23 curriculum, has removed translated excerpts from two poems in Urdu by Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the \u201cReligion, Communalism and Politics \u2014 Communalism, Secular State\u201d section of NCERT\u2019s Class 10 textbook \u201cDemocratic Politics II\u201d.<\/p>\n Chapters on \u201cdemocracy and diversity\u201d have also been dropped. Also axed is a chapter on \u201cCentral Islamic Lands\u201d from the History course content for Class 11…Social Science themes that have been axed include \u201cimpact of globalisation on agriculture\u201d from a chapter on Food Security in the Class 10 curriculum. A chapter on \u201cCold war era and Non-aligned Movement\u201d has been dropped from the Class 12 Political Science curriculum.<\/p>\n To quote from the news reports: \u201cThe CBSE has also dropped the course content from chapters on ‘democracy and diversity’. The dropped chapter “Central Islamic Lands” in the class 11 history syllabus talks about the rise of Islamic empires in the Afro-Asian territories and its implications for economy and society. The chapter focused on arenas of Islam in reference to its emergence, the rise of the caliphate and empire building\u2026.Similarly, in the class 12 history syllabus, the dropped chapter titled ‘The Mughal Court: Reconstructing Histories through Chronicles’ examined the chronicles of Mughal courts to reconstruct the social, religious and cultural history of the Mughals.\u201d<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n In fact, this latest news on text books comes with backgrounders! As in these recent years, the RSS\u2019s intrusion into the education sphere was more than apparent, when the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, headed by Dina Nath Batra, had sent a list of recommendations to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) demanding a host of changes in its textbooks. Batra had asked the NCERT to remove English, Urdu, and Arabic words, a poem by the revolutionary poet Pash and a couplet by Mirza Ghalib, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore, extracts from painter MF Husain\u2019s autobiography.<\/p>\n Batra\u00a0 had also wanted\u00a0 references to the Mughal Emperors as \u201cbenevolent\u201d, the BJP as a \u201cHindu\u201d party, the National Conference as \u201csecular\u201d, an apology tendered by former prime minister Manmohan Singh over the 1984 riots, and a sentence that \u201cnearly 2,000 Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002\u201d\u00a0 \u2014 \u00a0to be\u00a0 all removed!<\/p>\n News reports also stated that Nyas objected to certain\u00a0 facts\u2014 \u00a0the Class 11 political science textbook mentions\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cthe massive majority of Congress in 1984\u201d but \u201cdoes not present the 1977 election details\u201d \u2026Also, the Class 12 political science textbook, \u201cterms National Conference of J&K a secular organization\u201d, and the Class 10 English textbook \u201cplaces nationalism against other ideals\u201d\u00a0 as \u201can attempt has been made to show a rift between nationality and humanity by citing thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore\u201d\u2026 It also wanted that the Hindi textbooks to mention that the medieval Sufi mystic Amir Khusrau \u201cincreased the rift between Hindus and Muslims.\u201d<\/p>\n Nyas had on earlier occasions demanded the removal of AK Ramanujan\u2019s essay, Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation, from the undergraduate syllabus of the University of Delhi. It also went to court demanding Wendy Doniger\u2019s book, The Hindus, not be sold in India. Mind you, those demands were fulfilled. Ramanujan\u2019s essay was removed from University of Delhi\u2019s reading list. And Penguin India, the publisher of Doniger\u2019s book, pulled it from circulation.<\/p>\n It gets relevant to mention that in 2014, government schools in Gujarat were given six textbooks written by Batra as \u201csupplementary literature\u201d, that claimed cars were invented in ancient India! Also, school children were told to draw an \u2018enlarged nation\u2019 which would include the neighboring countries \u2014 Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Not to overlook the distortion of the very meaning of particular words like \u2018Roza\u2019 (Muslims\u2019 observe Roza or fast during the holy month of Ramzaan), published in text books taught in Gujarat schools. And in the summer of 2017, the ICSE board\u2019s class VI text book \u2018blamed\u2019 mosques and Azaan for causing noise pollution! A chapter on noise pollution, in the text book published by Selina Publishers, focused on the sources that cause noise pollution. Besides images of trains, cars, planes as the usual or regular sources of noise pollution, there was also an image of a man shutting his ears in frustration right in front of a mosque! Relaying that the Azaan is a source of noise pollution!<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n And in these recent years, there have been distortions if not deletion of entire chapters. Together with that, twisted versions of the historical facts. I would call this nothing short of lynching of facts.<\/p>\n Around the autumn of 2016, news-reports had come in of the then Rajasthan government\u2019s plans to remove from the text books the particular chapter on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.<\/p>\n Tell me, why should this generation or future generations sit deprived of details to a statesman like Nehru? After all, \u2018Panditji\u2019, as Jawaharlal\u00a0 Nehru\u00a0 was\u00a0 popularly\u00a0 called, stood\u00a0 for democratic values, for the\u00a0 rights and\u00a0 dignity of the minorities and the disadvantaged. He was looked upon as a saviour. That feeling of security was intact because he was himself secular.<\/p>\n News reports had also stated that under the previous BJP-led sarkar, students in Rajasthan were to be taught incorrect and twisted versions of historical facts:\u00a0 Maharana Pratap defeated the army of Mughal Emperor Akbar in the Battle of Haldighati some 450 years ago. This is incorrect. To quote historians on this: \u201cThis is factually and historically incorrect as historical evidence shows that Maharana Pratap, ruler of the Mewar region, had fled the battlefield, although in the later years he continued his guerilla war against the Mughals.\u201d<\/p>\n And the then BJP-led government in Rajasthan had even renamed the Ajmer Fort \u2014 from Akbar Ka Qila to ‘Ajmer ka Qila and Sangrahalaya’. No expert committee of historians and academics was involved in the decision. Just by the order of the then Rajasthan education minister, Vasudev Devnani, the name of this historical fort was changed. Mind you, this fort built by Akbar in 1570 was left untouched even during the rule of the Rathors, Marathas and the British. The original name of the Ajmer Fort was legally sanctioned by a Gazette notification in December, 1968. It was named as \u2018Akbar ka Qila\u2019 or \u2018Daulat Khana\u2019 and this name continued till, of course, Right-Wing came centre stage.<\/p>\n In fact, Right-Wing government\u2019s dislike for the Mughals could be judged from the fact that not just the very title \u2018Great\u2019 was removed\u00a0 from Mughal Emperor Akbar\u2019s name, but also the relevant focus on him from the text books taught in the state of\u00a0 Rajasthan.<\/p>\n And chief\u00a0 minister of\u00a0 Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath\u2019s aversion for the\u00a0 Mughals and their\u00a0 built monumental wonders was more than apparent, when the annual\u00a0 budget for 2017-2018 made no mention of \u00a0Taj Mahal in the\u00a0 section\u00a0 \u2018Hamari Sanskritik Virasat\u2019 (Our\u00a0 Cultural Heritage) incorporated in the finance minister\u2019s 63-page speech. This attitude for the upkeep of the Taj Mahal! Not to overlook the fact that the Taj Mahal is one of the seven wonders of the world. It is also UNESCO world heritage site that draws thousands of tourists and earns crores in terms of revenue for the government.<\/p>\n On previous occasions, Yogi Adityanath had publicly commented that the Taj Mahal, built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, did not reflect India\u2019s ancient culture. Also, he made it amply clear that no replicas of the Taj Mahal would be presented to the foreign dignitaries visiting Uttar Pradesh; instead copies of the Hindu scriptures would be presented to them.<\/p>\n The Maharashtra government under the earlier BJP rule had almost near-defaced the names of Muslim rulers from its history text books. It planned to omit from the text books, vital details to the Delhi Sultanate and the Suri Empire in India. Without realizing that without those, the very history of India would be incomplete, if not riddled with gaps. As a commentator put across,\u00a0 \u201cWithout\u00a0 focus on the Bijapur Sultanate, Aurangzeb’s rise to power over other contenders to the throne and the invasion by Ahmed Shah Durani, cannot be put in the historical context. Also, one cannot bypass other vital historical facts \u2014 \u00a0In the third battle of Panipat, where the Marathas were defeated by the Durani Empire of Afghanistan, the Marathas sided with Shah Alam II (Shah Alam II was only a puppet under the Marathas) and then led an army to punish the Afghans for their atrocities in 1772. They attacked the fort of Pathargarh and forced the Rohilla Afghans to pay a huge war indemnity\u2026 Muslim rulers hold out much in terms of the historical past. And it would be a folly if not unethical to cut or omit or trim or distort historical facts.\u201d<\/p>\n ******<\/p>\n Verse of Faiz Ahmed Faiz will always hold out. For generations to come. Such\u00a0 intense verse cannot ever be crushed or erased or bypassed.<\/p>\n Leaving you with Faiz\u2019s\u00a0 this particular verse:<\/p>\n Love\u2019s Prisoners<\/p>\n Wearing the hangman\u2019s noose, like a necklace,<\/p>\n The singers kept on singing day and night,<\/p>\n kept jingling the ankle-bells of their fetters<\/p>\n and the dancers jigged on riotously.<\/p>\n We who were neither in this camp nor that<\/p>\n just stood\u00a0 watching\u00a0 them enviously.<\/p>\n shedding silent tears.<\/p>\n Returning, we saw that the crimson<\/p>\n of flowers had turned\u00a0 pale<\/p>\n and on probing within, it seemed<\/p>\n that where the heart once was<\/p>\n now lingered only stabbing pain.<\/p>\n Around our necks the hallucination of a noose<\/p>\n And on our feet the dance of fetters.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CBSE\u2019s\u00a0 latest decision to remove several chapters from the history and political science syllabi of Classes 11 and 12 is in tandem with the trend seen in recent years On 23 April morning, when Tehelka\u2019s editor-in-chief, Charanjit Ahuja, reminded me it\u2019s the World Book Day, I was certain to focus on the freshly published books. 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