While dropping of lessons on Mughal courts from the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) books has sparked a debate across the nation, the top advisory body for Centre and state on school education has clarified that the move aims at helping students hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking about the move, Dinesh Prasad Saklani, Director of NCERT said that some parts were chucked out of the syllabus to ease the load on the students and the move has no political motive.
"As we explained last year as well, there has been a lot of learning loss due to the Covid pandemic and the students underwent a lot of trauma. To help stressed students, and as a responsibility to society and the nation, it was felt that the content load in textbooks should be reduced," NDTV reported quoting Saklani.
The NCERT director also strongly rejected the claims that the changes were made to suit a particular ideology and said, “A process was adopted, which was totally professional."
Notably, the NCERT has removed chapters related to 'Kings and Chronicles; the Mughal Courts (C. 16th and 17th centuries)' from the History book 'Themes of Indian History-Part 2' of Class 12.
Similarly, the council will remove some poems and paragraphs from the Hindi textbooks too.
Along with History and Hindi textbooks, 12th class Civics book has also been revised. Two chapters titled, 'American Hegemony in World Politics' and 'The Cold War Era' have been removed from the book.