'Mutilated beyond recognition...remove our names': Experts to NCERT on textbook revision

Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar whose names were mentioned in the NCERT textbooks of Political Science as chief advisors wrote to the NCERT authorities urging to drop their names as the textbooks, they said, were "mutilated beyond recognition". "We feel embarrassed that our names should be mentioned as chief advisors to these mutilated and academically dysfunctional textbooks. We wish to explicitly record our full disagreement with the entire process of re-shaping the text in the name of rationalisation," the joint letter written by Yogendra Yadav and Suhas read.

"Both of us would like to dissociate ourselves from these textbooks," they said requesting the NCERY to drop their names from the Political Science books of classes 9 to 12.

"These textbooks as they stand now do not serve the purpose of training students of political science both the principles of politics and the broad pattern of political dynamics that have occurred over time," the letter read.

The dup said that they were never consulted for the changes. "If NCERT did consult other experts for deciding on these cuts and deletions, we explicitly state that we fully disagree with them in this regard," the letter read.

"These deletions are mostly indiscriminate, academically indefensible and defeating the logic of the original text books. We do not want to be parties to a blatant partisan agenda lacking in academic standards. Therefore we dissociate from these textbooks and ask that our names should not be used as Chief Advisors," Suhas Palshikar tweeted.

Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar were the chief advisors of the books originally published in 2006-07. Last year, the NCERY made some revisions which were called rationalisation because of the Covid pandemic in which the all references to the 2002 Gujarat riots were removed, content pertaining to the Mughal era was also reduced.