NCERT panel recommends replacing India with Bharat in school textbooks

Srinagar, Oct 25: The seven-member panel from the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has recommended replacing the term ‘India’ with ‘Bharat’ in school textbooks.

The announcement was made by the committee chairman C I Issac, which has sparked debates and discussions across the education landscape in the country.

The NCERT panel also disclosed that it was currently in the process of developing a new syllabus and textbooks and various Curricular Area Groups comprising domain experts have been engaged by the NCERT to offer their input and insights into the proposed changes.

However, the Director Academics of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE), Sudhir Singh told Greater Kashmir that they had not received any official letter or intimation from the NCERT regarding this development.

“We have only come to know about it through the media. Once we receive the official communication, we will present it to our academic committee for review and deliberation,” Singh said.

He said that no official documents from the NCERT had reached their office yet.

Singh said that the JKBOSE has a practice in vogue to use NCERT textbooks as the foundation for their publications.

“We always keep NCERT books as the base of our books and adopt them. Let us see what they (NCERT) keep in their books and how they put it. We always go for local contextualisation. So whatever will be the best, we will go for that,” he said.

Singh said that they would go with what the best stakeholders, committees, and the J&K Board feel good.

“Right now we are going for our own State Curriculum Framework (SCF). Though we are not a state, this is the technical term used for it. NCERT has given us the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) with the freedom to opt for SCF and we do local contextualisation in it,” he said.

He said that they were coming up with SCF with a localised curriculum and the work was going on.

“Let us see what our people decide about it. Whatever our people decide and what best suits our students and context, we will go for that,” he said.