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wrote to the Director, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) asking for their names to be withdrawn from the Political Science textbooks.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.
Continue reading NCERT Textbooks, VCs and Others and ‘Updation’
The uproar over what is being referred to as the ‘Ambedkar cartoon’ in the class XI textbook prepared by NCERT first began over a month ago, that is to say, almost six years after the books have been in circulation, been taught and received high praise for their lively style and a critical pedagogical approach (more on this below). It was a political party – one of the factions of the Republican Party of India – that decided to kick up a ruckus over ‘the issue’ – that is, the ‘affront’ to Dr Ambedkar that the cartoon in question supposedly constitutes, and the resultant ‘hurt sentiments’ that it has caused. Very soon everyone began to fall in line, and practically every member of our august Parliament was vying with one other to prove that they were indeed more hurt than their colleagues. One of them, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan has even demanded that the
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 