Maulana Azad, J&K Autonomy References Deleted, List of Controversial Omissions by NCERT Grows

New Delhi: India’s first Education Minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, has lost a place in the revised Class 11 political science textbook published by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

According to a report published in The Hindu, the authors of the revised Class 11 textbook have also deleted the fact that Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) had acceded to India based on a promise that the State would remain autonomous.

These omissions are a series unearthed after the NCERT has ‘rationalised’ the school syllabus to compensate for time lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the autonomous organisation had reported some of these omissions and deletions, it had kept others under wraps. These included dropping content on the Mughals, the 2002 Gujarat riots from the Class XII history books, and certain portions on Mahatma Gandhi. NCERT director Dinesh Saklani had denied allegations that certain portions about Mahatma Gandhi were surreptitiously deleted from Class 12 textbooks and had called them a ‘possible oversight’ with no ‘ill intention’. However,  he also said the changes would not be rolled back.

The Hindu reports that the decision to remove the reference to Azad from the first chapter of the old Class 11 political science textbook “Indian Constitution at Work” and J&K’s autonomous status, mentioned in chapter 10 of the same textbook, was also kept out of the public domain.

In the old Class 11 NCERT political science textbook, ‘Indian Constitution at Work’, Azad’s reference appeared in the first chapter, ‘Constitution — Why and How?’. A paragraph in the chapter read, “The Constituent Assembly had eight major Committees on different subjects. Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad or Ambedkar chaired these Committees. These were not men who agreed with each other on many things. Ambedkar had been a bitter critic of the Congress and Gandhi, accusing them of not doing enough for the upliftment of Scheduled Castes. Patel and Nehru disagreed on many issues. Nevertheless, they all worked together.”

However, the revised textbook paragraph reads, ‘Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or B.R. Ambedkar chaired these Committees.’

This change omitted the significant contribution of Maulana Azad to India’s constitution drafting process.

Similarly, in the 10th chapter of the same textbook, titled “The Philosophy of the Constitution”, the reference to Jammu and Kashmir’s conditional accession has also been deleted. The paragraph about J&K said: “For example, the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to the Indian union was based on a commitment to safeguard its autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution.” Article 370 was diluted, and the BJP-led Union government revoked J&K’s special status in August 2019. The state was also bifurcated into two Union Territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

These are the latest in a spate of controversial deletions from the new NCERT textbook. Earlier, NCERT dropped chapters on the Mughal empire, the 2002 Gujarat riots and popular movements from the class 12 History book.

Chapters under the sub-head ‘Themes of Indian History: Part 2’ of the Class 12 history textbook related to ‘Kings and Chronicles; the Mughal Courts (C. 16th and 17th centuries)’ have been removed. Chapters titled ‘Central Islamic Lands,’ ‘Clash of Cultures,’ and ‘Industrial Revolution’ have been removed from the Class 11 book Themes in World History.

In the class 12 political science textbook, pages on the topic ‘Gujarat Riots’ have been excluded from the chapter titled ‘Recent Developments in Indian Politics’.