Chapter on farmers' movement deleted from NCERT textbook

Karam Prakash

New Delhi, April 30

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has removed a chapter on the popular movement of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU).

Condemning the move, the BKU said it would meet the Centre over the issue.

Chapter titled ‘Rise of Popular Movements’, which elaborated on the rise of the BKU in the late 1980s and its disciplined agitation of 1988 in New Delhi, has been deleted from the Class XII political science textbook.

One of the deleted lines includes “the BKU was one of the leading organisations in the farmers’ movement of the 1980s”.

Then farmer leader Mahendra Singh Tikait, the father of farmer leader Rakesh Tikait, had founded the BKU.

Some political experts are looking at the deletion in light of the yearlong farmers’ agitation, which was led by the BKU, against the three farm laws at Delhi borders. The farmer agitation ended in December 2021 after three farm laws were revoked.

Though the NCERT claimed that contents were removed last year during the rationalisation of textbooks, students received new textbooks this academic session.

Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait, while talking to The Tribune, said, “We will meet the central government over the issue. The government wants to remove factual history and replace it with their own narrative. We won’t let that happen.”

Tikait further said he had already written to the Union Education Minister and requested him to re-introduce the deleted contents of the BKU in the textbooks.