India: 33 academicians demand removal of names from 'rationalised' NCERT textbooks

A group of 33 academicians, who were part of the development committee of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks, have expressed concerns about the significant changes made to the original texts. They have requested the council to remove their names from the current textbooks. This request follows the recent dissociation of two former NCERT advisors, Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, from the revised political science textbooks.

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In a letter addressed to the NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani, the 33 political scientists, who were members of the textbook development committee in 2006-07, expressed dissatisfaction with the recent rationalisation exercise conducted by NCERT. They stated that these changes have undermined their collective effort and raised concerns about the lack of transparency and academic contestation in the decision-making process.

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“NCERT is now making changes to the textbooks. These involve deletions of sentences and removal of some sections (even chapters) considered unacceptable with emphasis given to others considered desirable. The decision of who decides what is unacceptable and what is desirable has been kept rather opaque, violating the core principles of transparency and contestation that, we believe, underlies academic knowledge production.” read the letter.

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The academicians found it difficult to associate their names with the revised textbooks, as the substantive revisions have allegedly transformed them into different books. They emphasised that these revisions have “jeopardised their creative collective effort” of the original texts, making it challenging for them to claim ownership of the revised versions.

“Since there are several substantive revisions of the original texts, making them thereby different books, we find it difficult to claim that these are the books we produced and to associate our names with them,” the academicians added.

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The signatories of the letter include notable figures such as Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice-chancellor of Ashoka University, Radhika Menon from Delhi University, Nivedita Menon from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Kanti Prasad Bajpai, Vice-Dean of the National University Singapore, and Rajeev Bhargava, former professor at JNU.

Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar had previously written to NCERT, accusing the rationalisation exercise of mutilating the textbooks beyond recognition and rendering them academically dysfunctional.

The controversy surrounding the removal of various topics from the syllabus in 2022, including references to the theory of evolution, the Cold War, the industrial revolution, the 2002 Gujarat riots, the contribution of agriculture to the Indian economy, the Mughal courts, and challenges to democracy, further fueled their concerns.

In response, NCERT stated that the council has the right to make changes based on copyright ownership and rejected the possibility of any member withdrawing their association. NCERT clarified that textbook development committees were dissolved once the textbooks were published, and the copyright remained with NCERT, independent of the committee.

The 33 academicians sought clarification on the issue of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), accepting that NCERT has the IPR on the textbooks. However, they argued that while NCERT could publish the original texts as many times as it wished, it was not at liberty to make substantive changes, minor or major, and still attribute the revised texts to the same contributors and chief advisors.

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