‘Many Riots in the Country… Selectively Mentioning a Few Not Good’: NCERT Director on Omissions
Ritika Chopra | 17 June 2024 | The Indian Express
NCERT Director DP Saklani Sunday justified the omissions of the Gujarat riots and the violence after the Babri Masjid demolition from the NCERT Class 12 Political Science textbook, telling The Indian Express that an expert committee felt that “mentioning a few selectively is not good”.
Separately, in an interview to news agency PTI, he said: “Why should we teach about riots in school textbooks? We want to create positive citizens, not violent and depressed individuals.”
Saklani also told The Indian Express that the revisions in the Ayodhya section were based on feedback from experts and were carried out to accommodate the Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment on the dispute.
The Ayodhya section has been pruned to from four to two pages in Chapter 8 of the Class 12 book titled ‘Politics in India since Independence.’ As first reported by The Indian Express on Sunday, the revised textbook, which hit the market last week, does not mention the Babri Masjid by name, calling it a “three-domed structure”, and has deleted telling details from the earlier version, including the BJP rath yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya; the role of kar sevaks; communal violence in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992; President’s rule in BJP-ruled states; and the BJP’s expression of “regret over the happenings at Ayodhya.”…