The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has revised a chapter in its Class XII political science textbook to drop a paragraph on separatist politics in Jammu and Kashmir.
The NCERT has revised the chapter in the textbook “Politics in India since Independence” for the academic session 2020-21. While the topic “Separatism and Beyond” has been deleted from the chapter, the scrapping of Article 370, which gave the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir special status, has been included under the topic “Regional Aspirations”.
On August 5 last year, the Centre had scrapped the state’s special status and divided it into union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. “One strand of separatists who want a separate Kashmiri nation, independent of India and Pakistan.
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The revised portion, where the chapter talks about Jammu and Kashmir, says, “Jammu and Kashmir had a special status under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. However, in spite of it, the region witnessed violence, cross-border terrorism and political instability with internal and external ramifications”. “The Article resulted in the loss of many lives, including that of innocent civilians, security personnel and militants.
The revised textbook takes into account the developments that took place in Jammu and Kashmir from 2002 onward. Earlier this month, a controversy had erupted over the reduction of syllabus by the CBSE due to the COVID-19 situation, with the Opposition alleging that chapters on India’s democracy and plurality are being “dropped” to propagate a particular ideology.
