Students in Kerala are likely to be taught the portions that the NCERT had deleted from its class 11 and 12 textbooks, including those pertaining to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and the ban on RSS.
The NCERT recently had, in the name of rationalisation of the syllabus, dropped from its class 12 HISTORY textbook certain portions on Mahatma Gandhi and how his pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity “provoked Hindu extremists”. It also left out the portion where the government placed a ban on the RSS after Gandhi’s assassination. The revision of textbooks by obfuscating facts has triggered a row.
The State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT), an autonomous body of the General Education Department, is considering a decision by its curriculum steering committee to include these deleted portions in the state syllabus.
The committee, which met on Tuesday, has entrusted General Education Minister V Sivankutty with taking a final decision on the matter after consulting with the government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Confirming the development, Sivankutty told reporters here that the SCERT and the Curriculum Committee take decisions on the academic affairs of the general education department of the state.
As per an MoU entered with the NCERT, Kerala has been using their 44 textbooks, and of them, there has been a significant change in the content of subjects including history, political science, economics, and Sociology at the higher-secondary level, the minister explained.