New Textbook Controversy in India

In the first half of May 2012, a new textbook controversy broke out in India, this time not around history textbooks. Instead, it has been triggered off around a cartoon of 1949 depicting Ambedkar and Nehru and mocking the slow pace of framing of the Indian Constitution in a political Science textbook.
The concerned textbook “Indian Constitution at Work – Textbook for Political Sciences for Class XI” published in 2006 as a book belonging to the new series of “Social Sciences” by the National Council of Educational Research and Training(NCERT) New Delhi, the Central apex body of Indian School Education, which is responsible for preparing the national curriculum and model textbooks. The new series of textbooks, especially the ones belonging to history and political science, for the first time in Indian history, contain cartoons, which the pupils should consider as historical sources and should learn to interpret the content. But these skills seem to be missing grossly among the politicians of India.
According to the cartoon, the pace of work of the Constituent Assembly, that Dr. Ambedkar led, was very slow (Ambedkar riding a snail) – too slow for the Prime Minister Nehru (in the cartoon he is trying to drive the snail with a whip). This presentation – Ambedkar on snail threatened by Nehru with the whip – is said to have amused both who were portrayed in the cartoon, but has been taken as a grave insult by some of today's politicians who perceived it disrespectful to Ambedkar ( a Dalit himself, who is respected highly as a fighter against untouchability) by Nehru (belonging to a higher caste). This dimension, how baseless it might be, made the situation extremely sensitive.
One day before the 60th Anniversay of the Indian Parliament, Members (MPs) of both the Houses,the Lok Sabha (Lower) and the Rajya Sabha (Upper), especially of regional parties cutting across party lines, demanded immediate deletion of the cartoon from the NCERT book. The Minister for Human Resource Development (MHRD to which NCERT is affiliated), Kapil Sibal, instead of supporting the editors/authors, apologised in the Parliament and ordered to remove that cartoon from the book without delay. He hurriedly established a commission to examine all the books to look into "vulgar content". Consultants of the books “resigned”. Some local politicians mobilized their supporters and physically attacked one of the consultants and ransacked his office. Such incident leads one to remember the incident of reactions to the Muhammad cartoons.
However, this primitive interpretation of the cartoon is not shared by all. Ambedkar's grandson, for example, did not find the cartoon as a potential offence and urged all through public media to be calm. The Academicia, who definitely were not part of that instant anger and fury of the MPs, responded to this debate through media articles. As the pedagogical aspect of learning with cartoons had been totally ignored in the political discussion and the learning goals were not understood, some of the academics brought out a petition against the political interference, which poses a hindrance to the new educational orientation of the Indian social science teaching.
There are many Blogs, actively participated by young and old, on the present debate in which one can also feel the political calculations present behind this political drama. This debate illustrates anew the different potentials of textbooks, which not only fulfill a function in the classroom, but are used as tools for political discourses in India and elsewhere.

                                                                                  Georg Stöber & Basabi Khan Banerjee

Information:
http://www.indianexpress.com
http://www.epw.in/special-themes/quality-constraints-education.html
http://www.epw.in/special-themes/constitution-cartoons-and-controversies.html
http://www.epw.in/special-themes/politics-and-pedagogy.html
http://www.thehindu.com
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120615291103600.htm

Petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/in-defence-of-critical-pedagogy-4
http://www.dandc.eu/articles/220552/index.en.shtml