‘Brainwashed Republic’, a book by educationist Neeraj Atri on how the children of the country are being brainwashed through books, gained much traction because it was the first attempt to expose the leftist propaganda in NCERT textbooks. An RTI reply from NCERT further exposes the propaganda by secularists, Marxist and leftists. The NCERT history textbook for class 12, titled ‘Themes of Indian History’, claims in one of the paragraphs, “All Mughal emperors gave grants to support the building and maintenance of places of worship. Even when temples were destroyed during the war, grants were later issued for their repair – as we know from the reigns of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb.”
However, when an RTI was filed by a person named Shivank Verma, on what is the source of the paragraph that glorifies Aurangzeb, NCERT – the educational body that develops books for school students replied, “The Information is not available on the files of the department.”
https://twitter.com/MNageswarRaoIPS/status/1349407283990564870
Such a reply by the NCERT has created an outrage on Twitter. The material being taught to the students for more than a decade, is actually not backed by historical sources, but merely an opinion of the writers. The last National Curriculum framework was developed in 2005.
The aforementioned paragraph which glorifies Mughal rulers like Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb is in chapter 9 of the book ‘Themes of Indian History’, titled ‘Kings and chronicles (The Mughal Courts)’. As per the NCERT website, the chapter is written by Najaf Haider, Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
This is not the first time that the distortion and manipulation of the history in the NCERT textbooks have been caught but Professor Atri has a whole book describing how school children have been taught factually incorrect history over the years. In the last six and a half years, the Modi government has not been able to do much about the change in the curriculum of the NCERT textbooks because it was waiting for the National Education Policy.
With the National Education Policy in place in 2020, the government is now focusing on revising the syllabus and seeks to end the distortions inserted by the British Imperialists, Nehruvian socialists, Marxists and leftists in NCERT textbooks. The government has targeted 2022 as the cut-off year for the National Curriculum Framework, which will replace the 2005’s NCF.
The NCF has been revised four times to date- in 1975, 1988, 2000, and 2005. In the year 2000, the Vajpayee government had made far-reaching changes to Indianise the school education curriculum.
The then HRD Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi had introduced ideas for the NCERT books that are abhorred by Marxist historians and the pseudo-seculars. This included highlighting India’s contribution to world wisdom- ensuring that students read about Indian pioneers like Aryabhatta, teaching yoga and yogic practices, placing greater emphasis on India’s cultural space and heritage, and finally introducing Vedic mathematics, astronomy and palmistry.
The entire left-liberal cabal was up in arms and even dragged the matter to the apex court. The Supreme Court, however, held that the Vajpayee government was not ‘saffronising’ education.
However the lobby continued outraging and when the UPA government came into power the National Curriculum was revised again- merely five years after the National Curriculum Framework for Secondary Education (NCFSE) was introduced in 2000 and bring-in significant changes in the NCERT textbooks.
Arjun Singh, who was then the HRD Minister in the UPA government, presided over the exercise in 2005. The curriculum was revised all over again and all the changes made by the NCFSE in 2000 were undone. The avowed purpose of the exercise was ‘de-saffronisation’ and as a result, tyrants like Aurangzeb are glorified in NCERT textbooks.
In the process of ‘de-saffronisation’, the materials like the aforementioned paragraphs were inserted in the NCET textbooks. The Modi government must remove all the distortions and tell the students of India ‘true’ history of the country.