NEW DELHI : Under refugee of reducing the curriculum load and exam stress in view of the prevailing condition of the pandemic among reasons for rationalization, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), has deleted reference to Mahatma Gandhi, his assassin Nathu Ram Godse, post Godhra riot, and references including “Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists” and “Organizations like RSS were banned for some time” from the class 12 political science textbook for the new academic session.
Claiming that no curriculum trimming has taken place this year and the syllabus was rationalized in June, last year, the NCERT, citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant” as reasons, dropped certain portions from the course including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, Emergency, Cold War, Naxalite movement, among others from its textbooks. However, the rationalization note had no mention of excerpts about Mahatma Gandhi.
“The entire rationalization exercise was done last year, there is nothing new which has happened this year,” NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani said. He, however, did not comment on the missing excerpts which went unannounced at the time of rationalization.
“The present edition is a reformatted version after carrying out the changes. The present textbooks are rationalised textbooks. These were rationalised for the session 2022-23 and will continue in 2023-24,” reads a note on NCERT website.