New Delhi: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has made a key revision this year in its Class 12 political science textbook by removing a political cartoon that depicted the challenges and uncertainties of coalition governments in India, including those led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The cartoon, which posed questions about the survival and effectiveness of democracy under coalition rule, has been replaced with a text box emphasising India’s success as a democracy compared to other nations, ThePrint has learnt.
The NCERT, which made a slew of changes in its latest version of the textbooks, has said in an official document that it removed the political cartoon because it cast India “in a negative light”. The revised textbooks are now available in the market and are being used in schools, teachers confirmed.
The revision was made to chapter eight of the textbook, titled ‘Politics in India since Independence’, in which students explore the impact of coalition era-politics on Indian democracy, post-1989.
Until last year, this particular chapter, titled “Recent Developments in Indian Politics”, featured a striking political cartoon that depicted six prime ministers of India.
It caricatured the prime minister of each coalition government between 1990 and 1998, starting from the V.P. Singh-led government that lasted for less than a year between December 1989 and November 1990. The last sketch used an Indian map as a stand-in for the 2000 government, led by Vajpayee, and posed the question: “Will India survive?”
The cartoon also included the Chandra Shekhar-led minority government, formed with the outside support of Congress, which lasted less than a year, from November 1990 to June 1991. It then mentioned P.V. Narasimha Rao’s government, which survived for five years until 1996. This was followed by two consecutive governments led by H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral, neither of which lasted a year and governed between 1996 to 1998. The political cartoon also highlighted Vajpayee’s term as prime minister from 1998 to 2000, with his re-election in 2000, while questioning the future stability of the government.
“Through this cartoon, we illustrated to the students the short tenure of the prime ministers under the fragile coalition governments and how the country had become politically unstable. This was also the era where Congress could not get a majority on its own and also led to the rise of regional parties,” a political science teacher at a CBSE-affiliated school in Delhi, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint.
Additionally, based on this cartoon, the textbook included an illustration of two students questioning whether democracy would survive or offer meaningful political choices. These elements were also removed from the new edition.
The NCERT has now replaced the cartoon with a box that says, “As you know around the time of India’s independence, many other countries also became independent and adopted democracy. However, even though India emerged as a mature democracy playing a great role in promoting social equality and national development, the same has not been the case in some of those countries. Discuss amongst yourselves the factors that have enabled democracy to thrive in India.”
An official NCERT document, accessed by ThePrint, explained the rationale behind the move. “It (cartoon) shows India in a negative light. Therefore, replaced with a box item activity in view of the post-2014 scenario,” the document said.
NCERT officials, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint that the changes had been made in the textbooks before the formation of the new coalition government under Narendra Modi.
When contacted, NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani declined to comment on the change.
However, another political science teacher at a Delhi-based school said that the cartoon might have been dropped because of the question — “Will India survive?” — since it is irrelevant in the present political context. “This question is now irrelevant. Because after 2000, we have had stable coalition-led governments. The country has witnessed political stability under various prime ministers post 2000. Also, a question mark on the stability of any nation makes it look weak,” the teacher said.
These changes in the textbooks are not part of the ongoing exercise to revise the entire NCERT curriculum based on the new National Curriculum Framework under the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020. The NCERT has only released new textbooks for classes 3 and 6 under NEP 2020 this year, while it is still working on the textbooks for other classes.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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