NCERT reconstitutes Class 11, 12 Political Science textbook team; four members have RSS links

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has reconstituted its Textbook Development Team for Class 11 and 12 Political Science, with a mandate to incorporate cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems and inclusion. At least four members of the panel have documented direct or indirect links with the RSS and its affiliated organisations or the BJP.

The team has been tasked with developing the Class 11 textbook by November and the Class 12 textbook by July next year. It will be headed by academic and political analyst Sandeep Shastri, vice-president of Karnataka-based Nitte, a deemed university.

Among the members are at least four academics and educationists with documented backgrounds in the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), other RSS-linked institutions or the BJP.

Yadunath Deshpande, currently a senior consultant with the Ministry of Education, has a longstanding organisational association with the ABVP. The organisation's records identify him as its former joint state organising secretary for Maharashtra and later as an organising secretary in its Mumbai-Konkan structure. His LinkedIn profile also describes him as a political consultant for the BJP.

Prashant Divekar has a longstanding association with Pune-based Jnana Prabodhini, an RSS-affiliated institution founded in 1962 by Vinayak Vishwanath, an RSS member and pracharak. In his profile on the National Council for Teacher Education's National Mission for Mentoring portal, Divekar describes his approach as being “rooted in Bhartiya educational philosophy” and says he has contributed to the National Curriculum Framework.

Vandana Mishra, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for Political Studies, is a former national secretary of the ABVP.

Ravi Rameshchandra Shukla, an associate professor at JNU's Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, has served on the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Democratic Governance, published by the Indian Institute of Democratic Leadership-Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini, an RSS-affiliated institution. He has also undertaken research on cultural and spiritual nationalism and is the principal investigator of an ICSSR-funded JNU project titled The Role of Fests in Shaping of Spiritual and Cultural Nationalism of Bharat: A Study of Kumbha and Magh Mela.

The panel also includes Prakash Kandpal of JNU, Needhi Gupta of National Law University, Chetan Singhai of Chanakya University, Sukanshika Vatsa of Delhi University, Satish Kumar of IGNOU, Deevanshu Shrivastava of National University of Study and Research in Law, Pranav Gupta of Jindal Global Law School, Nanda Kishor of Pondicherry University and Swapna Prabhu of Utkal University.

Other members are NCERT's Savita Sagar; M.N. Suresh Kumar of Bengaluru-based Government First Grade College; Diana Isabel of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation School; and N. Bharani of SHVNM Government PU College for Girls.

Vanthangpui Khobung and Subhash Singh of NCERT will serve as the member coordinator and co-coordinator, respectively.

According to the NCERT notification, the team will receive guidance from curricular area groups dealing with social sciences, languages, Indian knowledge systems, environmental education, innovative pedagogy and teaching-learning material. It will also consult other curricular groups to ensure links across grades, interdisciplinarity and the integration of multilingual perspectives.

The notification, issued by NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani, said the textbooks would be reviewed to ensure the integration of cross-cutting themes including cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems, inclusion, educational technology and assessment.
(PTI inputs)