Months after removing reference to 2002 Gujarat communal violence from two class 12 textbooks, NCERT has omitted a section about the Gujarat riots from its Sociology textbook from class 11.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which released the curriculum rationalisation booklet last year, did not mention the deleted paragraph from the class 11 textbook. However, according to NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani, the alteration was accepted during the same process and was mistakenly overlooked when the official announcement was made.
The deleted paragraph from the class 11 sociology textbook “Understanding Society” discussed how class, religion, and ethnicity frequently result in the segregation of residential areas and used the communal unrest in Gujarat in 2002 as an example of how communal unrest contributes to ghettoization.
“Where and how people will live in cities is a question that is also filtered through socio-cultural identities. Residential areas in cities all over the world are almost always segregated by class, and often also by race, ethnicity, religion and other such variables. Tensions between such identities both cause these segregation patterns and are also a consequence,” the now removed paragraph read.
“For example, in India, communal tensions between religious communities, most commonly Hindus and Muslims, results in the conversion of mixed neighbourhoods into single-community ones. This in turn gives a specific spatial pattern to communal violence whenever it erupts, which again furthers the ‘ghettoisation’ process. This has happened in many cities in India, most recently in Gujarat following the riots of 2002,” it added.
The Gujarat riots took place in the aftermath of the bloodcurdling Godhra train burning which resulted in the deaths of 59 Hindus, including women and children. The riots have often been mentioned without providing context about the train burning incident, which acted as a trigger for the ensuing violence that erupted in its wake.
The NCERT eliminated some topics from the course last year as part of its “syllabus rationalisation” effort, citing “overlapping” and “irrelevant” as justifications. These topics included lessons on the Gujarat riots, Mughal Courts, Emergency, Cold War, and Naxalite movement, among others, from its textbooks. The reference to the Gujarat riots was later removed from the Political Science and Sociology textbook for class 12.
In the chapter titled “Politics in India Since Independence,” two pages on the riots have been removed from the political science textbook for students in grades 12. The first page detailed the timeline of events and made reference to the Gujarat government’s censure by the National Human Rights Commission for failing to stop the violence. “Instances, like in Gujarat, alert us to the dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes. This poses a threat to democratic politics,” the deleted portion read.
The second page included a collage of three riot-related newspaper articles and an excerpt from the National Human Rights Commission’s assessment of how the Gujarat government handled the disturbances in its Annual Report for 2001-2002.
In the class 12 sociology textbook, NCERT had purged a paragraph under the section titled “Communalism, Secularism and the Nation-State” which described how communalism “drives people to kill, rape, and loot members of other communities in order to redeem their pride, to protect their home turf”.
Other passages missing from the class 12 Political Science textbook for the new academic year include “Gandhiji’s death has a magical effect on communal situation in the country”, “Gandhiji’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists”, and “Organisations like RSS were banned for some time.”
NCERT director rubbishes claims of dropping Mughals from books
Earlier this week, an unwarranted controversy erupted after NCERT amended content pertaining to Mughals from some of its books. Several media reports had widely speculated that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has amended its publications, notably the 12th-class History book, and removed certain chapters on the Mughal empire. After the rumour gained traction, the director of NCERT Dinesh Prasad Saklani addressed the issue and refuted the claims that were being spread by various news outlets.
The NCERT director told ANI that the chapters on the Mughals had not been removed. He stated that only the overlapping chapters had been dropped, alleviating the additional strain on children’s shoulders.
“It’s a lie. (Chapters on) The Mughals have not been dropped. There was a rationalisation process last year because due to COVID, there was pressure on students everywhere”, he said.
Calling the debate unnecessary, the NCERT director said the expert committee recommended that if the chapter was dropped, it will not affect the knowledge of the children and an unnecessary burden can be removed. “The debate is unnecessary. Those who don’t know can check the textbooks…”, Saklani added.
