Now, where has the Court gone wrong? The one obvious area where the Court has gone wrong is not just that it has placed the NCERT in the position of an official body but treated it as a substitute for CABE and federal consultation. This is wholly contrary to its own decision in the NCERT case (1991, 4 SCC 578) in which the Council successfully argued that it was a private body and not state within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution and in respect of fundamental rights. How, then, did the Supreme Court ignore its own the NCERT decision of 1991? It does not matter if the 1991 decision was of two judges? Surely, the NCERT knew its defence of 1991. It should have told the Court that it was a private body. Instead, it went along with the Court making the NCERT the official federal basis of all educational change. In fact, the Court said: "There is nothing in either the Constitution of the NCERT or in any Rule, Regulation or Executive Order to suggest that the NCERT is structurally `subordinate' or inferior to any other body in the field." This is amazing. A body declared to be private in 1991 has been declared to co-equal if not superior to all in 2002 without the earlier ruling being examined. For this reason alone, this judgment of 2002 is wrong and proceeds on the wrong fundamental assumption.

The textbook case judgment responds to the Court's great and genuine concern about the decline in values in `modern' life. But the Court's answer that some version of religion is the answer is an intuition that cannot be exercised so as to run contrary to the secularism of a multicultural society; and in particular Article 28 of the Constitution.

The fifth committee will look at ways and means of integrating cultural education in the school curriculum, with a critical focus on the Hindutva thrust. As opposed to Hindutva, the introduction of issues relating to the pluralist character of Indian nationhood will be examined by this committee.

The sixth committee will explore regulatory mechanisms for what is taught by parallel textbooks outside the government system, e.g., in Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and madrassas. This is in response to a growing concern that certain bodies use schools to propagate communal prejudice.

Our "secularists" are nothing if not original-nal and highly imaginative. They will cry "wolf" even if they see a
rabbit. Even if there is no living thing anywhere, in sight. Crying wolf has become a habit with them. The
slightest move on the part of HRD Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi to set education in India in the right direction and our secularists will see red. Actually, not red but saffron.

Months ago the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) laid down a national curriculum framework for school education. It was a document available to anyone who cared to read it. It was not something secretly drawn up for equally secret implementation.

Actually it is a product of a long, par-ticipatory and democratic process of wide ranging deliberations and
discussion held at multilevel seminars and workshops throughout the country.

The Supreme Court had a limited issue before it to examine whether the National Curricular Framework (NCF) violated the secular character of our constitution or not in the PIL filed by Aruna Roy and others. It has ruled that the NCF proposal on value education does not violate it. The judges, however, have issued a word of caution that the programme be implemented in a spirit of equal respect for all religions. This implies that value education has the danger of being misused for reinforcing sectarianism.

The conflict is unlikely to remain limited to a tussle between secularists, who make up a majority of the population if one goes by social attitude and political choice, and Hindu nationalists represented mainly by the Right-wing religious-sectarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which leads New Delhi's multi-party ruling coalition.

The issue has a federal devolution dimension too. Many Indian states are up in arms over what they see as blatant federal interference in their school curricula without consultation or consent.

The controversy has major implications on the rights of the child to unbiased information,and for the issue of tolerance and respect for difference in the plural, multi-cultural, multi-religious society of 1 billion people in this country.

The Supreme Court today categorically held that there was no attempt to saffronise the school syllabus in the new National Curriculum  framework for Secondary Education (NCFSE) -2002 and directed its immediate implementation. Rejecting a PIL filed by Aruna Roy and other eminent educationists, a three-judge Bench by 2:1 majority held that “non-consultation with the Central Advisory Board for Education (CABE) cannot be  held as the ground for setting aside the national curriculum.”

The three Judges gave separate judgements in which Mr Justices M. B. Shah and D. M. Dharmadhikari concurred.

However, Mr Justice H. K. Sema, though agreed that non-consultation of CABE could not be a ground for setting aside the NCFSE, directed the Central Government to immediately reconstitute CABE and seek its
views on the new curriculum.

Both Mr Justices Shah and Dharmadhikari were categorical in their finding that the teaching of the essence of all religions, as was sought to be done in the NCFSE, could not be equated with the imparting of religious instructions.

Holding CABE to be a non-statutory body and that its consultation for framing the new syllabus was not mandatory, Mr Justice Shah said the court was not to decide why CABE was not reconstituted. “It is for the government and Parliament to decide whether to reconstitute or to do away with the body,” Mr Justice Dharmadhikari said.

Textbooks Education and the Law

The textbook case was heard quickly, amidst great controversy and with volumes of relevant and irrelevant material. It requires reconsideration. The textbook case raised two fundamental issues.

The first is the issue of secularism that Article 28 specifically prohibits the Government from teaching religious education through its schools or those maintained by it or allowing the compulsory teaching of religion by grant-aided schools. What the Government cannot do directly, it cannot do indirectly through its Ministry or the NCERT (the National Council of Educational Research and Training).
The second is the issue of federalism. Education is a Union and State responsibility. State schools and schools in States are to teach these new curricula, syllabi and textbooks. If the Union launches a new education policy, should the States be consulted? How? Through the NCERT — a private body with a public profile — from whose meeting State representatives walked out? Or through the official medium of consultation — CABE (the Central Advisory Board of Education) —which has existed for this purpose since 1926 — at least 1935 — but not recently been re-constituted? Before the Sarkaria Commission (1988), most States wanted CABE as a permanent mechanism of consultation between the Union and the States. This federal issue is made further significant because Justice Cheema dissented in favour of the essentiality of CABE as a mechanism of federal consultation. On this, the majority judges (Justices M.B. Shah and Dharmadhikari) did not agree. Now, where has the Court gone wrong? The one obvious area where the Court has gone wrong is not just that it has placed the NCERT in the position of an official body but treated it as a substitute for CABE and federal consultation. This is wholly contrary to its own decision in the NCERT case (1991, 4 SCC 578) in which the Council successfully argued that it was a private body and not state within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution and in respect of fundamental rights. How, then, did the Supreme Court ignore its own the NCERT decision of 1991? It does not matter if the 1991 decision was of two judges? Surely, the NCERT knew its defence of 1991. It should have told the Court that it was a private body. Instead, it went along with the Court making the NCERT the official federal basis of all educational change.
In fact, the Court said: "There is nothing in either the Constitution of the NCERT or in any Rule, Regulation or Executive Order to suggest that the NCERT is structurally `subordinate' or inferior to any other body in the field." This is amazing. A body declared to be private in 1991 has been declared to co-equal — if not superior — to all in 2002 without the earlier ruling being examined. For this reason alone, this judgment of 2002 is wrong and proceeds on the wrong fundamental assumption.

Already in the eye of a storm for his controversial history books, NCERT di-rector J S Rajput will now face an official in-quiry on charges of financial and administrative irregularities lev-elled by Nilotpal Basu, CPM MP from Rajya Sabha and NCERT staffer.
The HRD ministry on Friday de-cided to institute the inquiry against Rajput which include victimisation of colleagues, appoint-ment of relatives to NCERT, engag-ing consultants without justification, irregular spending of Rs 1 crore in the name of commissioning new textbooks, and another Rs 1 crore on a cul-tural programme.

Detoxification

Along with the Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha, a host of leading edu-cationists and intellectuals have drawn up a Common Minimum Programme on Education (CMPE).The names include former UGC chairman Yashpal, educationist Anil Sadgopal, writer Naamvar Singh, economist Prabhat Patnaik, ...
The entire process should begin with the NCERT, the document suggests: "Constitute a high-pow-ered committee to review NCERT's National Curriculum Framework Closed Chapter
• Stop reprinting, distribution of controversial books
• Review all learning material recently prepared by the National Open School for School Education (2000) and the syllabi and textbooks prepared during the NDA regime with a view to exposing communal, divi-sive and obscurantist ideology" Among other things, the CMPE has  recommended a review of all appointments, promotions and transfers made in the last five years in academic bodies such as NCERT, UGC, ICSSR, ICHR, ICPA and CBSE in violation of norms. If the recommendations of the CMPE are accepted, it could also mean curtains for NGOs close to the Sangh Parivar. "Identify  NGOs related to the Sangh  Parivar being funded by the ministry of HRD and  other ministries for educa-tional  work and take measures to  stop their funding," it says.

- Mission Detoxification, Sakina Yusuf Khan, Times of India, 06/06/2004, N20, /eldoc/n20_/06june04toi1.pdf

The NCFSE 2000 became the blueprint for preparing new syllabi and textbooks with a view to reducing the burden on children. Textbooks authored by prominent historians such as Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra, Bipan Chandra and NCERT historians Arjun Dev and Indira Dev became the casualties.

...Therefore, right from the beginning, the civilisation is referred to as the Harappan, Indus or Indus-Saraswati civilisation. Even while elaborating the geographical spread of the civilisation, nowhere is it mentioned that its two most important sites, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, are located in Pakistan.

On the possible reasons for the decline of this civilization, nowhere is it mentioned that the advent of  the Aryans could have been a factor.

There are some obvious omissions in this chapter, especially in the sections on economic and social life and food habits of the Harappan-Vedic times. Though cattle rearing was the chief occupation, as was pointed out by Jha, the cow was not held sacred then. Beef was a delicacy offered to the guest.  The cow was an important economic resource, a fact that has been conceded by all groups of  historians. But the NCERT historians make the cow a sacred animal in the Vedic period itself, probably to drive home the fact that contemporary Hindu beliefs and practices were an offshoot of Vedic systems. The subsequent deterioration in the status of women, the strong patriarchal order, the rigidity of the Varna order and the dominance of certain castes over others do not find mention anywhere in the book.

... In Unit I, which is the history component of the textbook and which deals with India in the 20th century, the reader is informed that one of the most noteworthy developments of the century was the "coup" in Russia. To write off the October 1917 Revolution as a coup is only to undermine its historical importance and its significance for the working class struggle. Fascism and Nazism are described as dictatorial tendencies.
Communism is also described in the same vein, to have "represented a similar trend in the sense that it stood for the dictatorship of a particular class". Regarding the former two, there is no mention of the Holocaust, the responsibility for the World War and the systematic persecution of certain people in Nazi Germany, including social democrats, trade unionists and socialist and Communist leaders.
 

From Chapter Two to Six, beginning with British policies and ending with the Independence struggle in India, there are innumerable references to the Muslim League and to Muslim communalism, such as: "In short, the Muslim League communalised the country's political situation which, in turn, produced disastrous results." There is no mention of Hindu communalism with particular reference to the Hindu Mahasabha or the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. But statements like the "only political elements who did not support the Quit India Movement were the Indian communists and the followers of Jinnah" abound. The RSS is not perceived as a "political element" here. Interestingly, there is no reference at all to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by a Hindu fanatic.

The debate took a new turn on October 16, when in a show of unanimity, leaders from eight Opposition parties rejected the NCFSE and the new textbooks on Social Science published by the NCERT. The initiative for the meeting was taken by the Communist Party of India (CPI), and the parties who were present included the Congress (I), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Lok Jan Shakti, the All India Forward Bloc and the
Revolutionary Socialist Party. They demanded that the Central government immediately constitute the Central Advisory Board on Education and hold a conference of State Education Ministers as education was a subject under the Concurrent list. The meeting exhorted political parties, including the allies of the NDA, not to implement the NCFSE and to reject the use of the textbooks.

Our "secularists" are nothing if not origi-nal and highly imaginative. They will cry "wolf" even if they see a rabbit. Even if there is no living thing anywhere, in sight. Crying wolf has become a habit with them. The slightest move on the part of HRD Minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi to set education in India in the right direction and our secularists will see red. Actually, not red but saffron.

Months ago the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) laid down a national curriculum framework for school education. It was a document available to anyone who cared to read it. It was not something secretly drawn up for equally secret implementation.

Actually it is a product of a long, par-ticipatory and democratic process of wide ranging deliberations and discussion held at multilevel seminars and workshops throughout the country.

1. The National Executive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) views with concern the attempts of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to tamper with the contents of textbooks published by NCERT, in the name of "detoxification". The very word "detoxification" is a noxious terminology introduced by the Congress-Communist combine in the academic and political debate in the country.

2. The BJP consider this an assault on the education system. The enlightened people of India who are deeply rooted in the cultural values and traditions of their country will not be a mute spectator to this. The UPA's attempts to thrust outdated and distorted versions of Indian History must be resisted. The formation of a committee to "review" the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) books is nothing but an eye wash. Under the Marxist influence the UPA government is unable to take a dispassionate view and
uphold the academic wholesomeness of the textbooks.

1 Eric Hobsbawm has said: "Nationalist historians have often been servants of ideologists".
2 He observed: "History as inspiration and ideology has a built-in tendency to become a self-justifying myth. Nothing is a more dangerous blindfold than this, as the history of modern nations and nationalism demonstrates".
3 In power politics, an ideologically based historiography provides legitimacy to the political leadership. Michael W Apple poses the question: What does ideology do for the people who have it? He writes that it "distorts one's picture of social reality and serves the interest of the dominant classes in the society".
4 I H Qureshi, a leading historian, criticised the policy of cooperation with Hindus that was enunciated by Mughal rulers, especially Akbar, who included Hindus as partners and treated them equally. Akbar is much maligned in the Pakistani historiography and is completely omitted from the school textbooks.
6 He said that the reason for the downfall of the Muslim rule in India was the attempt to create a composite culture.
7 When Akbar and other Mughal rulers adopted the policy of marrying Hindu women, the process of polluting the Muslim culture began,which ultimately led to the disintegration of the Mughal empire.
8 He wrote: "When the Mughal rulers married Hindu women and allowed them to keep their religion and worship according to their religion, it was disaster. As a result of these marriages, Mughal rulers were born from Hindu mothers."
9 Medieval Indian history is not regarded as a part of the Pakistani historiography because the Hindus and the Muslims both shared it. The culture that was produced by both is looked upon as a denial of Muslim separateness.  Pakistani historiography tries to homogenise the culture, traditions, and social and religious life of the people. This suits the political attempts towards centralisation. Any attempt to assert the historical identity of a region is discouraged and condemned. This also affects the non- Muslim religious minorities, who are also excluded from themainstream of history.
Textbook writers are allowed to select only those portions of history, which suit the ruling party in power. Michael W Apple observes: "Selectivity is the point; the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded. 

- History, Ideology and Curriculum, MUBARAK ALI, Economic & Political Weekly, 02/11/2002,  /eldoc/n00_/02nov02EPW.pdf