Academics and authors in Bengaluru have demanded that new textbooks be discontinued

on Jun 09, 2022

Writers and academics assembled in Bengaluru on Wednesday under the auspices of the All India Save Education Committee (AISEC), Karnataka, to urge the abolition of new textbooks. Authors who had recently canceled permission to use their works in textbooks also attended the session. During the seminar, speakers such as Niranjan Aaradhya, GS Siddaramiah, Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy, and A Murgieppa pointed out 'distorted content' in the revised textbooks.

Aaradhya, a scholar, said that the Rohith Chakrathirtha-led committee's mandate was to provide a report on the misleading information in one of the religion chapters in the Class VIII social science textbook.

The committee's mandate was to simply produce a report to a group of academic experts on the textbook's misleading material. Despite the lack of a mandate for revision, the committee revised textbooks from Classes I-X (Kannada), II-IV (environmental science), and VI-X. (social science). Furthermore, the changed content violates the national curriculum structure.

The textbook revision committee, according to Rajashekar VN, vice president of AISE, placed a chapter on Bharatvarsha (Akhanda Bharat) in the Class VIII social science textbook. According to the chapter, countries such as Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh were once part of India. "We were critical when Congress updated the textbooks in 2002 and again in 2012." However, the modification this year has added gasoline to the fire. The textbooks... plainly contradict India's constitutional and democratic norms. The chapter on Bharatvarsha is definitely from the playbook of the Sangh Parivar and the BJP. We need the government to reverse these revisions and restore the textbooks from the previous committee.

According to Rajashekar, the Class VIII social science textbook refers to the Indus Valley civilization as the Hindu Saraswati civilization and links Vedic dharma with Sanatana dharma. He also stated that the section on Mahatma Gandhi's killing by Nathuram Godse had been omitted from the textbook.

"If the state government has dissolved the textbook revision committee, then why are the amended textbooks being distributed?" said SG Siddaramiah, a writer who revoked permission to use his work in the Class X Kannada textbook. With so many false facts about India, it is apparent that the government is incorporating shakha lectures into school curriculum..."

Notably, the existing BJP government agreed on Tuesday to update portions of Class IX textbooks on Basavanna and BR Ambedkar after receiving harsh criticism from academics and authors for 'distortion' of history. However, several disputed sections of the textbooks remain, such as the depiction of Goddess Bhuvaneshwari in the Class VI history textbook holding a saffron flag rather than the Kannada flag.