Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala Government has decided to include a few controversial topics dropped by the the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) as supplementary text.
The NCERT had removed lessons on the Gujarat riots, Emergency, Mughal history, and Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, and references to Nathuram Godse from the syllabus for Class12. Remarks that Mahatma Gandhi did not like Hindu nationalists and that extreme proponents of the Hindutva ideology had opposed Gandhi’s concept of Hindu-Muslim harmony were also removed from the text.
These topics will be compiled into a supplementary text and supplied for study by higher secondary students in Kerala in August.
The State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) has begun the process of compiling the text. An eight-member committee will prepare the special textbook.
The parts dropped by the NCERT include subjects of History, Sociology, Political Science, and Economics. The SCERT committee will decide whether to bring them out as four books or not.
For many subjects, the Centre has removed paragraphs or lines from several lessons. Bringing these alone as a separate text pose practical difficulties. Therefore, the attempt of the committee is to convert all the omitted parts into the form of an integrated textbook.
Kerala is thus adopting an alternative way to teach these lessons, while pointing out that the Centre had removed these portions for serving its political interests.
Indian education system is at a crossroads with far-reaching changes being effected in syllabus, courses and several academic practices.
44 NCERT books for higher secondary
The SCERT is printing and supplying to secondary school students in the State 44 textbooks of the NCERT after obtaining their copyrights. Kerala has approved the omissions in Science subjects. Classes up to the 10th Standard will not be affected by the omissions by the Centre since the textbooks for these classes are prepared by the State.