Textbook revisions will hit lower-income students the hardest

Every day brings further details of deletions from NCERT textbooks that have been ‘rationalised’, it is said, to reduce the academic burden on schoolchildren post-Covid. The rationale of the exercise is unclear. India has the dubious distinction of having had one of the world’s longest school shutdowns during the pandemic – almost two years – during which only a small fraction of students could afford to attend online classes. Despite warnings of the adverse effects of such prolonged lack of access to schooling – particularly on low-income students – little was done to correct matters. It makes equally little sense, now, for the NCERT to offer this reduced syllabus to students after the pandemic is past: when schools were closed, millions of children received no education at all; now that they are open, they are to receive rather less than more of it.

The specific deletions are worrying, too. Much has been written on the removal of an entire chapter dealing with Mughal rule. Other Muslim kings and dynasties occupy similarly reduced space. History is not static by any means; its methods and focus change with every generation. If the NCERT had chosen to replace dynasties with their subjects – with the histories of everyday people – its revisions might have sparked a more useful, even progressive debate. But it isn’t only Muslim kings who are being excised from textbooks, but also chapters on social movements and people’s struggles (including agrarian movements and struggles for the rights of forest dwellers, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the history of the Dalit Panthers, etc.).

The changes in science textbooks are no less troubling. Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution are no longer to be taught in Class 10 textbooks, it seems. This deletion might appear quite arbitrary at first glance. There is a clear pattern that connects other deleted subjects – the Mughals, the role of the RSS in Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, social justice movements, and state excesses like the Emergency or the 2002 Gujarat riots. Such deletions – whether they serve to purge textbooks of ‘anti-Hindu bias’ or imbue them with pro-state feeling – dilute any understanding of citizens’ rights to be informed, protest and demand rather than lie low, applaud and obey.

Deleting the theory of evolution may not seem to fit this larger idea, unless we see it in the context of the many non-scientific (indeed, anti-scientific) assertions that have been made by members of the central government. Some years ago, a BJP chief minister claimed that ancient Indians had invented the internet. With specific regard to evolution, BJP MP Satyapal Singh has questioned and refuted Darwin’s theory more than once, within Parliament no less. It is not hard to miss the upper-caste Hindutva pride that animates Singh’s assertion that ‘according to our culture we are children of rishis’ – not monkeys. The Prime Minister himself has suggested that the skill of plastic surgery might have existed in ancient India.

While the NCERT’s deletions from science textbooks may not have spurred as much debate as its social science deletions, they do appear to have worried schools much more. According to a report in The Print, several schools will continue to teach the deleted syllabus (including proof of the Pythagoras theorem and other concepts fundamental to various scientific disciplines) because their students won’t be able to compete in many entrance examinations otherwise. Reporting more recently on the deletion of the periodic table from the syllabus below Class 11, the Hindustan Times quotes a science teacher in a Delhi school who says they will continue “teaching the periodic table to Class 10 students so that they are well prepared when they get to study chemistry as a full-fledged subject in Class 11”.

As was the case during the Covid pandemic, those who can afford it will continue to receive a good education – their schools will continue to teach them the science they need to get ahead, their homes may well be stocked with books that explore Indian history and society without the blinkers of Hindutva. For the rest, however, the large majority of low-income Indian students for whom education is a vital – sometimes only – way of achieving better lives, the NCERT is reducing both access to knowledge and the ability for critical thought.

There was a time, NCERT textbooks used to tell its readers, when women and shudras were not allowed to study the Vedas. That line has been ‘rationalised’, but the control over education and access to power that it implied appears frighteningly resurgent.

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