NCERT omits Gujarat riots from class 12 Political Science syllabus

New Delhi: The NCERT has omitted content on the Gujarat riots from the syllabus of Class 12 Political Science as a part of a “textbook rationalisation” exercise owing to the Covid—19 pandemic. Apart from the Gujarat riots, Cold War and Mughal courts have also been removed.

As per the note on the rationalised content released by the NCERT released on Thursday, pages 187-189 on the Gujarat riots have been removed from the curriculum.

One of the paragraphs which has been removed states, “Gujarat riots show that the government machinery also becomes susceptible to sectarian passions. Instances, like in Gujarat, alert us to dangers involved in using religious sentiments for political purposes. This poses a threat to democratic politics.”

It also quotes the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s statement, “one message to the Chief Minister (of Gujarat) is that he should follow ‘raj dharma’. “A ruler should not make any discrimination between his subjects on the basis of caste, creed and religion.”

Besides, page 105 of the book which contained the history of the “naxalite movement” and pages 113-117 on “Controversies regarding Emergency” have also been removed.

In a note, NCERT stated that the removals as part of the rationalisation include “overlapping with similar content included in other subject areas in the same class” and “content, which is irrelevant in the present context.”

“In view of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative to reduce content load on students. The National Education Policy-2020 also emphasises the same…In this background, the NCERT has undertaken the exercise to rationalise the textbooks for all classes,” it added.

Moreover, NCERT notified that the content which was already removed under the CBSE’s 2022-23 academic curriculum that was released earlier this year will remain to be omitted.