Why NCERT removed chapters on Mughals from History books? NCERT Director clarifies.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) revised its books, especially the class 12 History book by removing chapters on the Mughal Empire, last year. The move has not been taken positively by few sections of the society and they are criticizing it in the last few days.

Reportedly, the changes will be applied to all the schools that follow NCERT in the country. Apparently, the chapters related to Kings and Chronicles; the Mughal Courts (C. 16^th and 17^th centuries) have been removed from the History book, ‘Themes of Indian History-Part 2.’

As per NCERT, all the changes will be implemented from the current academic session, i.e., 2023-2024.

Along with History books, NCERT had made changes in the Hindi Textbooks like removing poems and paragraphs and changes in the class 12 Civics book like two chapters titled, ‘American Hegemony in World in World Politics’ and ‘The Cold War Era’ have been removed from the book.

Similarly, two chapters namely, 'Rise of Popular Movements' and 'Era of One Party Dominance' from the Class 12th textbook 'Indian Politics after Independence' have also been removed.

Changes have also been made in class 10^th and 11^th textbooks as well.

However, in regards to the removing of chapters on Mughals, the NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani on Tuesday clarified that the dropping of chapters on Mughals is a lie. He said, there was a rationalization process and that due to COVID 19, last year, there was pressure on the students everywhere as to how will they finish off such a vast syllabus in a short span of time, hence, they decided to decrease the work load of the students.

Saklani said, rationalization process is not new, it has been there whenever required.

He further said, committees of experts were made and they examined the books from class 6 to 12 and the experts after discussion, recommended that if this chapter is dropped, it won’t affect the knowledge of the Children and the unnecessary burden will be ended and there is no need for repetition.

Speaking specifically on the chapter on Mughal era courts being dropped from the syllabus, the NCERT director said, “There were two chapters on this subject of 16th and 17th century Mughals. The larger chapter, which is more inclusive, has been kept and that was also the recommendation of the expert committee."

Saklani further said people who still doubt and have no idea about it can go check the textbook which can be accessed in their official website.

He said people who are criticizing and discussing over the issue is doing it unnecessarily and this controversy is not required

On asking him why the chapter was not brought back, the NCERT Director said as because new textbooks were under process.

“We are starting work on NEP (National Education Policy) 2020, so we didn’t want to carry out another exercise just for a small period. Our NCF (National Curriculum Framework) for school syllabus is almost ready. Based on that, new textbooks will be written. Those books will take care of the syllabus from Classes 3 to 12. For this small period, the whole exercise could not be repeated," he said.

(With inputs from ANI)