Chandigarh, December 23
The Punjab Government has declined to prescribe what it describes “saffronised history books” published by the NCERT for school students.
Official sources said today that an official intimation would be sent to the Punjab School Education Board not to include history books published by the NCERT for schools students in the state. The decision has been taken after examining the issue at Education Minister Khushal Bahl’s level.
“We will be happy to prescribe mathematics, science and other books published by the NCERT but as far as history books are concerned, we have reservations”, said a senior officer of the Education Department.
In fact, Mr Bahl has pointed out several flaws and distortions in the history book prescribed for class X by the NCERT. And these distortions have been conveyed in writing to the authorities concerned in the Union Government and the NCERT.
Mr Bahl has conveyed that “the ideological slant is obvious and blatant” in the class X history book.
Mr Bahl has further stated that the book’s “text is crammed with facts and names that are unrelated, several statements are disjointed and unsubstantiated. The illustrations are pathetic, and maps, which figure only in the first chapter, mention incidents and places that find no place in the text. What is a child to make of all this? Do we want to produce robot-like, unthinking individuals?”
Mr Bahl has pointed out the exclusion of several important historical events such as Mahatama Gandhi’s assassination, the historic Karachi session (1931) of the Indian National Congress and the resolutions passed there, the contribution of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to reform Muslim society etc. There is no mention of important events pertaining to world history such as the policies of Hitler and the holocaust. The word “coup” has been used to describe the Russian revolution when the Nazi ideology has been defined as a sort of fusion of German nationalism and Socialism. Mussolini’s fascism has been described as aimed at rescuing Italy from a feeble government.
Mr Bahl has told the NCERT that there is such a ideological slant in the book that “our freedom movement looks as if it was a religious struggle against Christian missionaries and Muslim communalists”. The disintegration of the USSR has been dismissed in one line. Four hundred years of world history have
been reduced to 11 pages.
Though the NCERT has admitted some mistakes but the problems with the book are far too enormous to be corrected at this stage. Ultimately, it is not about the language or facts, it is about the whole tenor of the book. It has to be entirely re-written is the inference drawn by Mr Bahl after examining the issue.
The issue was raised by Mr Bahl at the annual general meeting of the NCERT on December 16 in Delhi where the Education Ministers of 14 states staged a walk out from.
When asked the alternative, Mr Bahl said he would like that the unrevised history books of the NCERT should be prescribed in Punjab. He said that the process of revising the history books was initiated only after the BJP led Government came to power at the Centre.
There were subject experts available with the board and they would be asked to look for the best history books for Punjab students.
