This suggestion has been made by the 2022 Social Science committee, and will be implemented from next academic year, the committee's chairman Prof C.I. Issac (Retd) said.
The committee for revising the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has suggested that ‘India’ should be called as ‘Bharat’ in all Social Science textbooks upto Class 12.
This suggestion has been made by the 2022 Social Science committee, and “we are hoping it will be implemented from next academic year, but it all depends on NCERT,” the committee’s chairman Prof C.I. Issac told indianexpress.com. Issac is a historian and Padma Shri awardee.
He also added that the Committee has proposed that Indian victories should be a big part of the curriculum. “Currently there is no mention of post independence history in NCERT books, so we have suggested that historical events that took place from 1947 till now should also be introduced, and the number of hours allocated for pre-independence can be reduced,” he added.
The Committee has also suggested replacing the ‘ancient history’ with ‘classical period of Indian history’. He also added that the Committee has agreed to add more about Indian Knowledge System in the curriculum to teach more about achievements, history and culture of the country.
The proposed change in NCERT books comes a little after the country witnessed a debate that began in September after the Union government used “President of Bharat” instead of “President of India” in the invites sent out for G20 dinner hosted.
Reacting to the uproar that followed this news, NCERT said it is “too premature” to comment on this issue as this is a suggestion by the Committee for which experts are being consulted. “NCERT states that since the development of new syllabus and textbooks is in the process and for that purpose various Curricular Area Groups of domain experts are being notified by the NCERT. So, it is too premature to comment on the news being flashed in the media on the concerned issue,” NCERT tweeted on ‘X’.
Meanwhile, NCERT also initiated the final phase of developing new textbooks by establishing a 19-member committee responsible for aligning “school syllabus, textbooks, teaching and learning materials” with the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for Classes 3-12.
Some of the members of this committee are field medallist Manjul Bhargava, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to PM Bibek Debroy, founding member of the RSS-affiliated Samskrita Bharati Chamu Krishna Shastry, philanthropist Sudha Murty, and singer Shankar Mahadeva.