It is not just the chapters on the Mughals that have been tossed out of school textbooks under the NCERT’s new controversial ‘curriculum rationalisation’ initiative, other topics have also met a similar fate.
For example, teachers are no longer required to teach the chapter on Understanding Partition: Politics, Memories, Experiences, or the ones on either the Cold War or US Hegemony in World Politics in Contemporary World Politics. (Click here to see the comprehensive list of deletions from Classes 6 to 12 textbooks on NCERT’s website.)
While one can understand why the present dispensation would not particularly want school students to learn about the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 and has thus done away with the pages on the ‘Gujarat Riots’ in the chapter Recent Development in Indian Politics (or for that matter, the entire chapter on the Rise of Popular Movements), one is at a loss to understand why entire chapters such as Reproduction in Organisms and Strategies for Enhancement in Food Production in science textbooks have also been removed. Also, at a time when glaciers are melting at an alarming rate and global warming has crossed acceptable levels, why has NCERT seen fit to do away with the entire chapter on Environmental Issues?
Believe it or not, the Periodic Table of Elements also no longer has a place in the NCERT Class 10 Science textbook! One sincerely hopes and prays that the time-honoured Periodic Table will not be replaced with something less scientific, such as the following visualisation by ‘Amrit Kaal Productions’…
