Panel says many historical figures and freedom fighters have been wrongly portrayed as criminals
According to a parliamentary panel on education, school textbooks should include “ancient knowledge, wisdom and teachings about life and society from the Vedas and other great Indian texts”. History textbooks should also give more importance to unknown freedom fighters, women heroes, the history of the Deccan kingdoms and the Northeast, and the Sikh and Maratha communities.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports submitted its report to the Rajya Sabha on 30 November to improve the content and design of school textbooks. The panel held consultations with various stakeholders including the state and Central institutions responsible for drafting textbooks and curricula, as well as education experts and civil society representatives.
A large proportion of the panel’s final remarks relate to history textbooks. The Committee, during its interaction, noted that many historical figures and freedom fighters [the] Indian freedom struggle has been wrongly portrayed as criminals. Therefore, the committee is of the view that the wrong portrayal of our heroes of the freedom struggle should be corrected and they should be given due respect in our history textbooks,” it said.
The panel recommended that the education ministry set up a monitoring mechanism to ensure that all privately published books, especially history books, which were recommended for supplementary reading, are published by NCERT to avoid discrepancies. The texts were consistent in structure and content.
Arguing that school textbooks “do not give sufficient coverage to some of the great Indian empires such as Vikramaditya, the Cholas, the Chalukyas, Vijayanagara, Gondwana or Travancore and the Ahoms of the Northeast”, the panel recommended changes to the historiography guidelines. Giving equal importance to different eras. Content production teams need to dig deeper into local sources of knowledge to identify hitherto unknown men and women who influenced Indian history, but also on world history, particularly the relationship between India and Southeast Asia. Needs even more attention. report good.
The panel said that there is a need to highlight the contribution of ancient India in various fields of study and the links between traditional Indian knowledge systems and modern science. It also suggested that some important teachings from the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita and all religious texts be included in the school texts. “It may also be mentioned here that the Upanishads are taught as a subject at Tehran University, Iran, but very few universities in India teach it,” the report said.
The panel recommended that all NCERT textbooks be published in all Eighth Schedule languages, along with local languages and translations not included in the official list, so that all children can access resources in their mother tongue. It also offered suggestions for the development of more digital learning resources, along with more child-friendly textbooks with additional audio-visual and interactive materials.
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