Express Investigation — Part 2: Key deletions on caste, minorities in revised school textbooks | Express Exclusive News,The Indian Express
Removed: ‘women, shudras not allowed to study Vedas’; impact of numerical majority winning political power
? “A Dalit is likely to be confined to traditional occupations such as agricultural labour, scavenging, or leather work…”
? Minorities “must face the risk that the majority community will capture political power and use the state machinery to suppress their religious or cultural institutions…”
These sentences are among the several on the caste system and discrimination that have now been pruned from school textbooks by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). These redactions are part of the most sweeping set of changes in textbooks in the past eight years since the BJP-led NDA came to power.
The Indian Express scrutinised 21 current history, political science and sociology textbooks for Classes 6 to 12 and matched their content with tables circulated within NCERT on the changes. It found that the cuts included several examples of discrimination faced by lower castes and minorities, which were introduced in 2007 to “build a sense of a just society”.
According to NCERT, the latest “rationalisation” exercise aims to reduce the curriculum load to help students make a “speedy recovery” from learning setbacks suffered during Covid. However, the Council has been in the eye of the storm in the past over its content on caste.
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