Sanghikaran by Nagpur Coterie for Educational Rewriting and Trouble-making: Cong on NCERT panel with RSS links

Notably, the Congress on Thursday slammed the administration over NCERT's inclusion of four members with RSS links in the reconstituted Textbook Development Team for Class 11 and 12 political science, calling the move "sanghikaran by Nagpur Coterie for Educational Rewriting and Trouble-making".

Key points

• Other members include NCERT's Savita Sagar, M N Suresh Kumar from Bengaluru- based Administration First Grade College, Diana Isabel from Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation School, N.
• Kharge 'hurt' over Congress leaders' silence on Haldwani 'purification' row In 2021, Devendra Fadnavis became its president.
• The team has been asked to develop the class 11 textbook by November and the class 12 book by July next year.
• In an op-ed, Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi had remarked the education system suffers from 3Cs – centralisation, commercialisation and communalisation, he stated.
• Ramesh slammed the NCERT and remarked it now stands for "Nagpur Coterie for Educational Re-writing and Troublemaking".

According to The opposition party additionally, on one hand, the BJP-RSS are doing "shuddhikaran (purification) which is a sin and on the other hand they are doing sanghikaran of textbooks which is a curse".

Notably, the NCERT has reconstituted the Textbook Development Team for class 11 and 12 political science with a mandate to integrate cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems and inclusion, with at least four of the members having direct or indirect links with the RSS.

In practice, the team has been asked to develop the class 11 textbook by November and the class 12 book by July next year.

Asked regarding the problem, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh noted to journalists, "In his presentation in Kota, Rahul Gandhi identified three ills of the Indian education system – privatisation, centralisation and sanghification."

"What the NCERT has done has been happening over last 12 years whether the education minister is Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank', Dhramendra Pradhan or Pralhad Joshi, " Ramesh remarked, adding that the mastermind has been the RSS.

"On one hand, they are doing 'shuddhikaran' which is a sin and on the other hand they are doing 'sanghikaran' of textbooks which is a curse, " Ramesh remarked, referring to the row over a group carrying out 'shuddhikaran' in Haldwani after an event of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

Revised NCERT textbook: Congress position on partition tweaked; continued Savarkar claim, dropped Hitler reference The Congress has alleged that those who carried out the 'purification' at the event site belonged to the BJP-RSS ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the textbook team will be led by academic and political analyst Sandeep Shastri, vice president of Karnataka-based deemed university Nitte.

Among the members of the textbook development team are at least four academics and educationists with direct or indirect documented backgrounds in the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the BJP.

Yadunath Deshpande, now a senior consultant with the Ministry of Education, has a longstanding organisational background in the ABVP. The organisation's own records identify him as its joint state organising secretary for Maharashtra previously. He subsequently served as an organising secretary in the ABVP's Mumbai-Konkan structure. His LinkedIn profile additionally describes him as a political consultant for the BJP.

Prashant Divekar has a longstanding association with Pune-based Jnana Prabodhini, an RSS-affiliated institution. It was founded in 1962 by Vinayak Vishwanath, an RSS member and pracharak.

In his profile on the National Council for Teacher Education's National Mission for Mentoring portal, Divekar describes his approach as being "rooted in Bhartiya educational philosophy' and says he has contributed to the National Curriculum Framework."

Vandana Mishra, professor at JNU's Centre for Political Studies, is a former national secretary of the ABVP.

Ravi Rameshchandra Shukla, Associate Professor at JNU's Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, has been a member of the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Democratic Governance, published by the Indian Institute of Democratic Leadership-Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini. It is an RSS affiliate.

Kharge 'hurt' over Congress leaders' silence on Haldwani 'purification' row In 2021, Devendra Fadnavis became its president. Shukla has additionally undertaken research centred on cultural and spiritual nationalism. He is the principal investigator of an ICSSR-funded JNU project titled "The Role of Fests in Shaping of Spiritual and Cultural Nationalism of Bharat: A Study of Kumbha and Magh Mela".

In practice, the team additionally comprises Prakash Kandpal from JNU, Needhi Gupta from National Law University, Chetan Singhai from Chanakya University, Sukanshika Vatsa from Delhi University, Satish Kumar from IGNOU, Deevanshu Shrivastava from National University of Study and Research in Law, Pranav Gupta from Jindal Global Law School, Nanda Kishor from Pondicherry University and Swapna Prabhu from Utkal University.

Other members include NCERT's Savita Sagar, M N Suresh Kumar from Bengaluru- based Administration First Grade College, Diana Isabel from Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation School, N. Bharani from SHVNM Administration PU College for Girls.

Vanthangpui Khobung and Subhash Singh of NCERT will be member coordinator and co-coordinator, respectively.

According to an NCERT notification, the team will seek guidance from the curricular area group on social science, languages, Indian knowledge systems, environmental education, innovative pedagogy and teaching-learning material.

It will additionally consult other curricular area groups to ensure linkages with other grades, interdisciplinarity among subjects, and the integration of multilingual perspectives.

In short, sanghikaran by Nagpur Coterie for Educational Rewriting and Trouble-making: Cong on NCERT is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.