Recent investigative reports ( The Indian Express, June 19-22, 2022) bring to light proposals for deletions and changes to school textbooks across the board. The aim, purportedly, is to reduce the load on school students who have suffered a loss of learning due to extended shutdowns during the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, the changes made in the history textbooks specifically target certain areas of India’s past and will result in an ideological shift in history teaching at the school level.
Curricular changes
The Government is currently undertaking a series of curricular changes. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports recently tabled its Report on the Reforms in Content and Design of School Text books (November 30, 2021). The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is already in the process of formulating the new National Curricular Framework, which will direct the syllabi of central and State educational boards. At the heart of this process is the rewriting of school textbooks. The Report of the Parliamentary Committee notes right at the beginning that, ‘School Textbooks, in our educational system, remain the easiest way of sharing a single narrative across millions of students through the multitude of diversity that defines our country’.
