Recently, 33 political scientists wrote to the Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) asking for their names to be withdrawn from the Political Science textbooks. This letter followed an earlier one by Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar where they had similarly asked that their names be removed from the textbooks as chief advisors. Ours was actually a very simple and straightforward demand: since the changes have been made unilaterally without consultation with the authors whose names appear on the textbooks, we would like our names to be removed because both this arbitrary way and the substantive changes make the text books into something other than what a large community of political scientists had produced, through a prolonged collective process.

We understand that the current NCERT wants to make changes, for whatever reasons but surely this demand for dissociation from the textbooks was the most reasonable and logical.

But what was the response? NCERT initially responded to the letter by Yadav and Palshikar (without directly addressing the writers of the letter) to the effect that the authors had no copyright and the texts belonged to NCERT. To this we had responded in our letter of 33, that copyright law pertains to the product as it is and does not allow NCERT to mutilate the texts and still claim that they are authored by us. Our colleague Peter de Souza also made this point in his article in The Indian Express. Apart from this indirect response, there hasn’t yet been any other from the NCERT.

What we have indeed is a response from a few Vice Chancellors, and some other academics – 105 in all. They have responsed not just to the political scientists but to all the others, including historians and 1800 scientists, who had protested over the removal of Darwinian theory of Evolution from science textbooks of classes 9 and 10. However, the immediate trigger seems to have been the political scientists’ letter as the statement, at the very outset, refers to “academicians trying to capture media attention through this name-withdrawal spectacle.” We are actually asking that our names NOT appear on the textbooks that generations of students see – but that is apparently an attempt to “capture media attention”. Media attention, we know, is reserved for only one set of people these days, so that may have been what really sent the signatories into a tizzy.

So what does the statement say? In what my colleague Suhas Palshikar called “a sad and comic” intervention, the statement “begins with a title and first sentence taking recourse to imputing motives”. The very title is telling: “Statement by Academicians on the False Propaganda against the NCERT…”.

The very opening sentence says that these academicians (who are trying to capture media attention) “seem to have forgotten that the textbooks are the outcome collective intellectual engagements and rigorous efforts.” This claim is further repeated in point 3, where they claim that “the process of selection of scholars for this task was thoroughly liberal, democratic and humanistic”. Further: “Unlike the selection process of authors in the previous times, the selection process this time was far more transparent and ethically justified.”

So liberal, democratic and humanist; so transparent and ethically justified, was the process that, to borrow from Suhas Palshikar once again, NCERT does not seem to want to give them credit for making the changes. Why insist on giving credit to academics who don’t want it and were, moreover, “selected in earlier times” under some ostensibly illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-humanist and opaque process?

I do not intend to engage with the signatories of the letter as our letter was addressed to the NCERT Director and none of the signatories are either linked to NCERT, nor have had anything to do with the production of textbooks or with school education. Why they have decided to take up cudgels on behalf of NCERT will, of course, not be a mystery to anyone observant of what has been going on for the last nine years. It may be recalled that when accomplished writers and artistes started returning their awards, pained by the increasing incidents of orchestrated mass lynching of Muslims and the government’s silence on the matter, they were attacked in equally harsh and intemperate language, largely by people unconnected with the creative world. They were called the ‘Award Wapasi Gang”, let us recall. Indeed, the current UGC Chairperson, M Jagadesh Kumar, another person with no connection with either the NCERT or production of school textbooks or with school teaching, joined the fray, almost on cue. In a report in the Indian Express on 17 June, he is reported to have said that these “attacks” are unwarranted and claimed that “the reasons behind the ‘hue and cry’ seem to be other than academic reasons.” Saying that we want our names removed is apparently raising a “hue and cry” and constitute “attacks” on the NCERT, according to the UGC Chairperson.

However, for setting the record straight, let us say this clearly. First, we hadn’t raised any questions about who did the changes and whether they were qualified to do so or not. Hence, it is a trifle funny that these signatories should offer clarification on behalf of the NCERT regarding the “rigorous”, “transparent” and “liberal, democratic and humanist” process of selecting the scholars. Second, NCERT itself hasn’t publicly stated anything about the scholars who carried out the changes and the “rigorous” (etc etc) process of their selection. Are the signatories privy to some confidential communication from the NCERT Director?

In point 6 of the statement, the signatories say: “Through misinformation, rumours, and false allegations, they want to derail the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) and disrupt the updation of NCERT textbooks.” Now innuendo pure and simple, of course, cannot elicit any response from us but we do want to clarify to the public that we have said nothing about the NEP 2020 in this letter, though of course, some of us may have very serious criticisms of that policy. The assumption that the 33 political scientists who signed that statement all agree on everything is actually utterly baseless and it in fact strengthens our point that despite disagreeing on so many other matters, we decided to put our signatures to the letter.

However, since the statement also accuses us of “misinformation, rumours and false allegations”, I have reproduced one page from the political science text book of class 12 above that concerns Gandhi. The encircled parts of the text have been deleted. What is truly remarkable about this set of deletions is best understood in the following words of a report from India Today:

“All these deletions are not part of the officially released booklet on rationalisation of syllabus, which is available on the NCERT website. Over there, the political science curriculum deletion started from Page Number 41, whereas the deleted lines on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination were mentioned in a box on page 12.”

That is to say, it is the NCERT itself that is indulging in misleading and false information regarding the deletions. With all the rigorous and above-board, “liberal, democratic and humanist” process that it has followed, it does not have the courage to put things up publicly and defend them. If you see the deletions on this page alone, it is evident that they pertain to those Hindus who wanted to take revenge and wanted India to become a state for Hindus only and who accused Gandhiji of acting in the interests of Muslims and Pakistan in once case; and a direct reference to the Government of India cracking down – after Gandhi’s assassination, on organizations that were spreading communal hatred, in the other. In particular, there is mention of “organizations like the RSS” being banned for some time. So yes, there is an agenda that is really “other than academic” to borrow a phrase from the UGC Chairperson.

Finally, it is point 7 of the statement that takes the cake. Here is what it says: “Their demand that students continue to study from 17 year old textbooks rather than updated textbooks in sync with contemporary developments and pedagogical advancement reveals intellectual arrogance. In their quest to further their political agenda, they are ready to endanger the future of crores of children across the country.”

I will not comment on the continued use of abuse and invective but let us just pause and think for a moment. It does sound great that students’ knowledge should be updated and they should not be reading outdated stuff – for that truly amounts to “endangering the future of crores of children across the country.”

So what does this panel of highly rigorously selected scholars find to be outdated? In political science, it is very simple. Any reference to Gandhi has to be diluted and be made minimalist. All references to the Gujarat 2002 killings and other such matters must be expunged. That apart

“In Class 10, full chapters of ‘Democracy and Diversity’, ‘Popular Struggles and Movements’ and ‘Challenges to Democracy’ have been done away with. Sections of Class 12 topics that have been removed include ‘The Story of Indian Democracy’, ‘Social Movements’, and ‘Patterns of Social Inequality’.” says an India Today report.

Wholesale deletions apparently count as updating. It really means that students studying these textbooks will no longer read about all these themes. Updating, for lesser scholars was all about incorporating the latest knowledge generated by new research NOT just removing entire themes. We have already heard and read a lot about how this new and up-to-date knowledge has played out in History. You will now no longer need to read anything about Mughal rule. Thus, says the same report cited above, “In the Class 7 textbook, Our Pasts-II, a two-page table detailing achievements of Mughal emperors such as Humayun, Shah Jahan, Akbar, Jahangir and Aurangzeb has been removed.”

Apparently, the highly qualified and rigorously selected scholars who made these changes in the textbooks have state-of-the-art information that both Darwin’s theory of Evolution and Periodic Tables are passé and need to be dropped. Mind you, this is what the esteemed Vice Chancellors and their co-signatories call “updation” of knowledge. It is not supersession of old knowledge by new knowledge but what is called censorship (in plain language) that they propose.