Rajasthan panels to review school textbooks

Aiming to review the school textbooks of Class 1 to Class 12, the education minister Govind Singh Dotasra passed the orders to constitute review committees on Wednesday.

According to a press release by the education department, the committees of subject experts and educationists will be constituted for all the subjects.

“The orders have been sent out to review the changes made by the previous government. In order to fulfil selfish motives and citing innovations, the previous government made several changes in the textbooks by neglecting the history, culture and great personalities and forced its whims and fancies,” said Dotasra.

The BJP government in Rajasthan in May 2016 dropped Jawaharlal Nehru’s name from Class VIII textbooks in the state, both as the first prime minister and as a prominent leader of freedom struggle. The textbook revisions were carried under the BJP government as part of “curriculum re-structuring” and drew flak for diluting content on Nehru and introducing content on BJP ideologues such as Deen Dayal Upadhyay.

Dotasra said the present state government is against politicising education. “Textbooks should be decided by the subject experts and educationists. Keeping this in view, the government has decided to constitute committees to review the textbooks for class 1 to class 8 and class 9 to class 12,” he added.

The constituted committees report will be presented on February 20. Former vice chancellor of the Mohanlal Sukhadia university, I V Trivedi has been appointed as the coordinator for the committee constituted for textbook review of class 1 to class 8. Other members of the committee include assistant professor G N Ghasiya, Rajiv Bagdia and Ashish Vyas. For the review committee for class 9 to class 12, former president of the Rajasthan Public service commission BL Sharma has been appointed the coordinator.