The Hindu : Front Page : Committee to make 'quick review' of history textbooks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 13, 2004

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Front Page

Committee to make 'quick review' of history textbooks

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JUNE 12. The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry today decided not to withdraw the history textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) as of now and has, instead, set up a three-member committee of eminent historians to do a "quick review'' of the books.

Late this evening, the Ministry announced that since "these textbooks have been mostly printed for the current year and in a substantial number of schools teaching has already started based on these books," it would be "impractical to withdraw these books at this stage and replace them with more appropriate books without causing dislocation in the studies of millions of students.''

Still, working on the premise that this "impracticability'' should not result in children "learning either communal views or distorted facts of history," the Ministry decided to order a quick review of the books by a panel of "eminent historians of impeccable credentials." Their brief will be to suggest what needs to be done in the short term and "if they so recommend'', the Government will direct NCERT and the Central Board of Secondary Education to issue appropriate directions to the teachers to "transact the curriculum as per those recommendations."

The Ministry also defined the broad parameters of the kind of recommendations that can be accommodated at this juncture. "The recommendations should be for removing distorted and communally-biased portions and for inclusion of short passages which will fill in the gaps that some of these books are supposed to be having or could develop after the removal'' of the objectionable passages.

The three historians shortlisted for the task are the former Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, S. Settar, the former Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies at Shimla, J. S. Grewal, and founder director of the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata, Barun De.

While Prof. Settar is an authority on ancient India, Prof. Grewal's area of specialisation is Sikh history and Prof. De is an eminent historian of modern India.

This apart, the Ministry has also set in motion the process of constituting the Central Advisory Board of Education and initiated the process of reviewing the curriculum framework.

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