Over 33 academics from various prestigious institutions, who are members of the NCERT's Textbook Development Committee for political textbooks have written to the curriculum body asking for their names to be dropped because of the revisions made to the books.
“Since there are several substantive revisions of the original texts, making them thereby different books, we find it difficult to claim that these are the books we produced and to associate our names with them,” the academics have said.
Among the signatories are Pratap Bhanu Mehta from the Center for Policy Research, Jawaharlal Nehru’s Nivedita Menon, Dwaipayan Bhattacharya and Niraja Gopal Jayal, Sandeep Shastri from Bengaluru’s Nitte Meenakshi Institute of Technology, Muzaffar H Assadi of University of Mysore, Rajeev Bhargava from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and Navnita Chadha Behera from the University of Delhi.
In the letter marked to NCERT chief Dinesh Prasad Saklani, the academics said that there is a growing concern and increasing alarm about the curriculum body’s attempts to modify and revise textbooks.
“The political scientists came from multiple perspectives and had varied ideological positions. Yet, we were able to work together. We now believe that our creative collective effort is in jeopardy. NCERT is now making changes to the textbooks. It involves deletions of sentences and removal of some sections (even chapters) considered unacceptable with emphasis given to others considered desirable. The decision of who decides what is unacceptable and what is desirable has been kept rather opaque, violating the core principles of transparency and contestation that, we believe, underlies academic knowledge production,” the letter states.
The academics asked the NCERT for clarifications on the question of Intellectual Property Rights as the political science textbooks were produced after considerable deliberation between contributors and political scientists from colleges, universities, and schools, from across India, who devoted considerable professional time to this end. “Drafts of texts produced were sent to the Chief Advisors who, after review, sent them back to contributors to consider the suggestions and make revisions if they felt them to be necessary. This consultative protocol was at the core of the process because it underscored the academic autonomy and freedom of the scholars who were involved,” the letter states.
The academics said that while the NCERT can publish the textbooks as they were produced under the guidance of the Chief Advisors, it is not at liberty to make substantive changes, either minor or major, and “then claim that the same set of contributors and Chief Advisors continue to be responsible for the revised text”.
Calling the turn of events “regretful, the academics said that the names should be removed.