A National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) committee recommendation to change the name of the country from India to Bharat in school textbooks is not acceptable, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.
A high-level panel set up by the NCERT to revise the social sciences curriculum for schools has mooted that India be replaced with Bharat in school textbooks.
The Chief Minister on Thursday said the Constitution defined the country as India and Bharat. The politics behind removing the name India was evident. The Sangh Parivar feared the politics of inclusivity represented by the idea of India. This was the reason for its hatred of the word.
The new recommendations by the NCERT were an extension of the unilateral removal of Mughal history and portions related to the ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi from school textbooks, he alleged.
The NCERT had consistently taken a stand favourable to the Sangh Parivar’s attempts to distort history. The textbook committee was keenly engaging in a bid to whitewash false history spread by the Sangh Parivar. The parivar was always against the idea of India based on plurality and co-existence. The new NCERT panel recommendations were the latest examples of this, the Chief Minister said calling for society to come forward against the recommendations in the NCERT position paper that went against Constitutional values.
Meanwhile, Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty said in Kollam that the State rejected the recommendations of the NCERT panel.
Article 1 of the Constitution laid down that India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. The Constitution also said that every citizen had the right to use ‘India’ or ‘Bharat’ anywhere. To say that only Bharat could be used in textbooks from hereon was intended to serve narrow political interests. This was unacceptable.
The State also refused to accept attempts to distort history and saffronise school textbooks. What was happening in the name of curriculum revision at the national level was contrary to democratic values. The last time there had been such a move, the State had brought out additional textbooks in some subjects for Classes XI and XII. This time too, it would adopt the same stance. Of the 124 textbooks used in these two classes, 44 were by the NCERT. The State curriculum committee would be convened to discuss preparation of these 44 textbooks by the State itself, he said.
Mr. Sivankutty also pointed out that as education was on the concurrent list, the State could take decisions on it and implement them.
