‘NCERT functioning as RSS affiliate’: Congress on textbook tweak row – Times of India
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NEW DELHI: Congress on Monday said that NCERT had become an “RSS affiliate” since 2014. It also criticised National Testing Agency over NEET ‘grace marks’ row.
In a post on X, Jairam Ramesh said, “The National Testing Agency has blamed the NCERT for the ‘grace marks’ fiasco in NEET 2024. That is only drawing attention away from the NTA’s own abject failures.”
“However it is true that the NCERT is no longer a professional institution.It has been functioning as an RSS affiliate since 2014″, he added.
NCERT’s director, Dinesh Prasad Saklani, on Sunday said that including discussions of riots in school textbooks could potentially have a negative effect, leading to the creation of individuals who are ‘violent and depressed’. He was referring to the changes made regarding chapters based on Gujarat riots and Babri masjid demolition.
Talking about the tweaks made in textbooks, Ramesh said, “It has just been revealed that its revised Class XI political science textbook criticises the idea of secularism as well as what it considers policies of political parties in this regard. NCERT’s objective is to produce textbooks, not political pamphlets and propaganda”.
“NCERT is mounting an assault on our country’s Constitution in whose Preamble secularism features explicitly as a foundational pillar of the Indian republic. Various Supreme Court judgments have clearly held secularism to be an essential part of the basic structure of the Constitution”, he added.
Raising concerns regarding the quality of textbooks, the grand old party’s spokesperson said, “NCERT needs to remind itself that it the National Council for Educational Research and Training, not the Nagpur or Narendra Council for Educational Research and Training. All of its textbooks are now of dubious quality vastly different from those that shaped me in school.”
The recent updates to the textbooks include removing mentions of BJP’s ‘rath yatra’ from Somnath to Ayodhya in Gujarat, the participation of ‘kar sevaks,’ communal tensions after the Babri Masjid demolition, the imposition of President’s rule in BJP-led states, and the BJP’s expression of regret regarding the Ayodhya events.
In a post on X, Jairam Ramesh said, “The National Testing Agency has blamed the NCERT for the ‘grace marks’ fiasco in NEET 2024. That is only drawing attention away from the NTA’s own abject failures.”
“However it is true that the NCERT is no longer a professional institution.It has been functioning as an RSS affiliate since 2014″, he added.
NCERT’s director, Dinesh Prasad Saklani, on Sunday said that including discussions of riots in school textbooks could potentially have a negative effect, leading to the creation of individuals who are ‘violent and depressed’. He was referring to the changes made regarding chapters based on Gujarat riots and Babri masjid demolition.
Talking about the tweaks made in textbooks, Ramesh said, “It has just been revealed that its revised Class XI political science textbook criticises the idea of secularism as well as what it considers policies of political parties in this regard. NCERT’s objective is to produce textbooks, not political pamphlets and propaganda”.
“NCERT is mounting an assault on our country’s Constitution in whose Preamble secularism features explicitly as a foundational pillar of the Indian republic. Various Supreme Court judgments have clearly held secularism to be an essential part of the basic structure of the Constitution”, he added.
Raising concerns regarding the quality of textbooks, the grand old party’s spokesperson said, “NCERT needs to remind itself that it the National Council for Educational Research and Training, not the Nagpur or Narendra Council for Educational Research and Training. All of its textbooks are now of dubious quality vastly different from those that shaped me in school.”
The recent updates to the textbooks include removing mentions of BJP’s ‘rath yatra’ from Somnath to Ayodhya in Gujarat, the participation of ‘kar sevaks,’ communal tensions after the Babri Masjid demolition, the imposition of President’s rule in BJP-led states, and the BJP’s expression of regret regarding the Ayodhya events.
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