Why the NCERT needs a change?

Why the NCERT needs a change?

The National Council of Educational Research and Training(NCERT) is an autonomous organization set up in 1961 by the Government of India to assist and advise the Central and State Governments on policies and programmes for improvement in school education.

We all know NCERT as it is the major source of information for our school studies and examination point of view.

However with the freely flowing nature of time,everything needs a change.With the case of books it is about how and what information should be presented and taught to children studying in the Indian System of Education.

Lemme give you an example:

All of us know who Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was,some of us are really into this topic(including me) and we know about the Maratha Empire as a general topic of Indian History.

However in the curriculum of India’s education system, we are taught as follows

Class 6th:Ancient Indian History-Kings like Kanishka,Harshavardhana etc.

Class 7th:Would include kings like Cholas,Cheras,Pandyas and information from the 12th century till the advent of Britishers with the advent of Britishers being a small insight as the last topic.This class majorly includes the details about Delhi Sultanate and Mughals.

Class 8th:Since the advent of Britishers till how the left in a nutshell not including the biggest details about the biggest details of every movement

Class 9th:Mostly about European history with the topics being French,Russian Revolution and Nazism.

Class 10th:Includes most of the topics like Nationalism in Europe,Freedom struggles in India,Print Culture and Industrialisation.

So perhaps we saw that from 6-8 we are mostly told about Indian History(pre-British)

Now see this data:

As per the NCERT of Class 7(2021-22)

The following words arrive the given number of times

Tughluq:31

Khalji:22

Mughals:48

Babur:14

Akbar:58

Humayun:11

Shah Jahan:22

Aurangzeb:21

Peshwa:3

Shivaji:11

Sambhaji:0

Maharana Pratap:1

Vijayanagara:5

Ranjit Singh:3

Some one of them are repetitive usage of the same words in a paragraph and 1-2 of all are used in the Credits page.

So let’s just ignore that for sometime and see that there are two separate chapters allotted to Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals whereas Marathas are given 1-2 pages and Jats not even 1.

The number of words was just an example of how NCERT has been biased towards Mughals and rulers of the Sultanate and against Indian rulers who fought against them.

So,for a normal student who is not pursuing future studies in History will only know that the Maratha Kingdom existed and was not very important in the framing of history.

A popular argument against this is that history is written according to timelines and each timeline considers a different part of History as more important.But then what is the point for such a History book for India where Indian rulers are not highlighted!!

Let us now see what the history book of Class 10 says:

MK Gandhi:68

SC Bose:3

JL Nehru:13

Vallabhai Patel:1

Sarojini Naidu:0

Lal Bahadur Shastri:0

We all know that whatever be our political ideologies,Gandhiji played a very important role in the freedom movements and struggles which may be considered good by some and not by others.But he was the face of the struggle without any doubt.

However with no counter arguments can someone say that the other freedom fighters were this less important.

The entire book mentions Sardar Vallabhai Patel just once even though he was the one of the major people behind the unification of India.

One of the major reasons being that the book stops after giving the details of independence struggles.It doesn’t consist of how the princely states were convinced to join the Union.

The reason a person like me knows about these is because I am particularly interested in quizzes.But for a student studying from his textbook.He/She wouldn’t have much idea about these things leading to him/her not knowing about his/her own country.

One of the positive changes is that NCERT is slowly getting amended and because of YouTube creators,people are getting to know about this.

Here are some additional points to consider:

• The NCERT textbooks should be more balanced in their coverage of different periods of Indian history.

• The textbooks should give more attention to the contributions of Indian rulers who were not part of the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughal Empire.

    For Part 2 click on here: