NCERT textbook row: Academics slam name withdrawal ‘spectacle’
New Delhi: Amid the row over substantive revision of the original syllabus of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks, 73 academicians, including vice-chancellors of central universities, has alleged that a ‘false propaganda’ is being spread against the council. In a statement, they said, the ‘spectacle’ created by some ‘arrogant and self-interested’ people regarding the withdrawal of their names over the NCERT textbook row is disrupting the process of updating the curriculum.
A number of academicians as well as political scientists such as Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, who were part of the textbook development committee of the NCERT, had asked the council to drop their names from textbooks over ‘several substantive revisions of the original texts’.
A joint statement issued by 73 academicians on Thursday night alleged that there have been deliberate attempts to malign the NCERT in the last three months and this reflects the ‘intellectual arrogance of academicians who want students to study 17-year-old textbooks’. The signatories to the statement include the vice-chancellors of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Tezpur University, Mahatma Gandhi Central University, The English and Foreign Languages University, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi University, Bangalore University, Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, the NIT Jalandhar director, the chairman of the Board of Governors, IIM Kashipur, the ICSSR secretary and the NIOS chairman.
‘Academicians trying to capture media attention through this name-withdrawal spectacle seem to have forgotten that textbooks are an outcome of collective intellectual engagement and rigorous efforts,’ the statement said.
“The scholars who have suggested the changes in the textbooks have not suggested any epistemic rupture in the existing domain of knowledge, but just rationalised the course content as per contemporary knowledge need,” it said.
“As regards the decision of who decides what is unacceptable and what is desirable it is argued that every new generation has the right to make additions/deletions to the existing knowledge base,” it added.
