National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) director Dinesh Prasad Saklani has rejected allegations of saffronisation of school curriculum and said the tweaks in text books were part of the annual revision.
Saklani defended the omission of references to Babri Masjid demolition and Gujarat riots in school textbooks, saying teaching about riots "can create violent and depressed citizens."
"Why should we teach about riots in school textbooks? We want to create positive citizens not violent and depressed individuals,” he said in an interview to news agency PTI.
"Should we teach our students in a manner that they become offensive, create hatred in society or become victim of hatred? Is that education's purpose? Should we teach about riots to such young children ... when they grow up, they can learn about it but why school textbooks. Let them understand what happened and why it happened when they grow up. The hue and cry about the changes is irrelevant," he said.
The NCERT has dropped references to Babri Masjid, politics of Hindutva, 2002 Gujarat riots and issues of minorities in its political science textbook for Class 12 students that came into effect from this academic session.
According to reports, the revised textbook does not mention the Babri Masjid but refers to it as a "three-domed structure". It has also pruned the Ayodhya section from four to two pages and deleted details from the earlier version.
"We want to create positive citizens and that's what is the purpose of our textbooks. We cannot have everything in them. The purpose of our education is not to create violent citizens ... depressed citizens. Hatred and violence are not subjects of teaching, they should not be focus of our textbooks," Saklani said.
The board has also deleted references to several other topics like BJP's rath yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya, the role of kar sevaks, the communal violence in the wake of the Babri masjid demolition, President's rule in BJP-ruled states etc.
The NCERT is revising the curriculum of the school textbooks in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
