Dear RP Nishank, NCERT is openly disrespecting Ramayan and teaching kids a ‘double-meaning’ poem and there have been no actions

In the last few months, NCERT has consistently been in controversy for the content of the books on history, sociology, political science and economics. Now the low quality and Hinduphobic content in its language textbooks are also being exposed.

A few days ago, a chapter titled ‘Aam ki tokri’ in the Class 1 Hindi textbook was in controversy. The poem uses the slang ‘chokri’ to refer to a girl and almost every line of it is double meaning text.

Awanish Sharan, an IAS officer of the 2009 batch from Chattishgarh cadre tweeted the lines of the poem and since then many people have pointed out that it promotes child labour, has double meaning lines, and is absolutely poor on quality. The poem has been part of the NCERT textbook Rimjhim since 2006.

In its defence, NCERT tweeted, “With reference to inclusion of poems in NCERT textbooks: It is to state that, “in consonance with NCF-2005 perspective and with an objective to provide children an exposure to vocabulary of local languages, these poems were included at that time.”

The organisation also said that the process for the development of a new textbook has been initiated. “In the light of NEP-2020, the process of new NCF has already been initiated. New textbooks will be developed based on the principles of NEP and recommendations of new NCF thereafter,” it said.

However, before this controversy could end, a chapter of the NCERT textbook on Tulsidas came into the limelight. The chapter is so blatantly Hinduphobic that it even questions Bhagwan Ram being called Bhagwan and says that what he did with Sita cannot be justified.

https://twitter.com/THU_Reloaded/status/1395976245175717891

The chapter goes on to question Vibhisan, the treatment of women in literature by Tulsidas, and the beauty of the text itself. The chapter specifically targets the Hindu community and its literature, but still, the aforementioned community has largely been tolerant.

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 outrage 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.

Read More: Like Aurangzeb, NCERT is clueless about Qutub Minar as well. And time has come to investigate and penalise the Distorians

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 and people like Tulsidas are questioned.

In the process of ‘de-saffronisation’, the materials like the aforementioned chapters were inserted in the NCET textbooks. Under the new curriculum framework, the Modi government must remove all the distortions and tell the students the true history of the country.