Express Investigation — Part 4 | At table reworking school curriculum: 24 with RSS links | Express Exclusive News,The Indian Express
From a national co-convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Manch to the chief of Vidya Bharati, 24 members with RSS links, some of them serving functionaries, figure in at least 17 of 25 NCF national focus groups working on curriculum changes, an investigation by The Indian Express has found.
When the National Education Policy (NEP) was launched in 2020, it didn’t elicit much partisan attack. Largely insulated from ideological pull and push, it set the roadmap for reforms, some of which were rolled out recently: from a common entrance for admissions to universities to four-year undergraduate programmes.
In one area, though, a place for politics has been marked at the table: restructuring of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for schools — the first such exercise since the Modi Government came to power in 2014 and the fifth since Independence.
From a national co-convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Manch to the chief of Vidya Bharati, 24 members with RSS links, some of them serving functionaries, figure in at least 17 of 25 NCF national focus groups working on curriculum changes, an investigation by The Indian Express has found.
The investigation also revealed, over the past three days, key deletions in social science textbooks, including references to Gujarat riots and the caste system, Mughals and contemporary protest movements, in a separate rationalisation exercise by the NCERT.
The NCF curriculum revision, meanwhile, is being led by a 12-member steering committee headed by former ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan and appointed by the Union Ministry of Education.
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