New Delhi, June 12
As a first step towards decommunalising school syllabus, the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry today constituted a three-member panel of eminent historians to review the history books introduced by the previous regime and suggest how the
distortions in these can be removed.
Historians named for this panel are Prof S.Settar, former chairman of the Indian Council of Historical
Research, Prof J.S.Grewal, former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies at Shimla and Prof Barun De, founder-director of the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata.
An
official release issued here today said that the panel had been set up to undertake a quick review of the controversial history books and suggest what needs to be done in the short-term. It was stated that if it so recommends, the government would direct the NCERT and theCBSE to issue appropriate directions to the teachers to
include the necessary changes as recommended.
“In particular, the recommendations should be for removing distorted and communally biased portions and for inclusion of short passages, which will fill in the gaps that some of these textbooks are supposed to be having,” the release stated.
The HRD Ministry said that though the issue of communalisation of the NCERT’s history textbooks had engaged attention for a long time, it was not practical to withdraw them at this stage as it would inconvenience students.
At the same time, it was felt, children should not be made to learn distorted facts of history. While setting up the three-member panel to suggest short-term measures, the HRD Ministry will also initiate long-term steps in this direction like the reconstitution of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) and undertake a curriculum review.
