-The Hindu In ordering the deletion of certain cartoons and words from a number of social and political science school Textbooks, the committee constituted by the National Council for Educational Research and Training appears to have followed the line of least resistance. First the two cartoons that have generated political controversies were promptly sent to the trash tray; and then, many, many more. With a mandate to review the Textbooks and...

-The Indian Express It is not just 21 cartoons that have been deemed “inappropriate” for NCERT Textbooks. The Thorat Committee has frowned on much more, disapproving of “ too many cartoons of Mrs Indira Gandhi” in the Class XII Textbooks, and objecting to some Amul advertisements. Set up in May following MPs’ objections to political cartoons in Textbooks, the six-member committee headed by ICSSR chairman S K Thorat vetted six Textbooks that...

-The Hindu There is nothing inappropriate in the NCERT social science Textbooks and the tools used are indeed imaginative exercises in critical pedagogy, says M.S.S. Pandian in his note dissenting with the S.K. Thorat panel, which has ordered deletion of several cartoons and words. The six-member committee was constituted in the wake of a controversy over an Ambedkar cartoon in a class XI textbook. “I read all the Textbooks with care, and from...

-The Hindu The six-member panel constituted to review the cartoons used in social sciences Textbooks of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has ordered the deletion of several cartoons and words that it says are either “ambiguous”, negative or show politicians and bureaucrats in an ‘incorrect way. Among the material that gets the chop: an R.K. Laxman cartoon from the 1950s showing Nehru telling France and Portugal (represented as monkeys,...

The dissent note by a member of a government appointed committee reviewing Textbooks of political science avers that the pedagogic intent and methods of the NCERT Textbooks are sound and they encourage critical dialogue among learners.  M.S.S. Pandian (mathiaspandian57@gmail.com) is member, the NCERT Committee for Reviewing the Textbooks of Social Science/Political Science and teaches history at the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.   It...