Michel Danino, one of the three NCERT academics who were earlier banned for life by the Supreme Court over a controversial dismissal from the judiciary, said he “certainly did not expect” the now withdrawn section would spark such a controversy, asserting that its content was “correct” and he stood by it.
French-born Indian scholar Danino, a Padma Shri awardee, was head of the curriculum group tasked with drafting social science textbooks for the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
Two other members of the drafting committee – Subarna Diwakar and Alok Prasanna Kumar – also came under fire alongside Danino after a controversy arising out of a subsection in a now-withdrawn chapter of the Class 8 social science textbook on the role of the judiciary in society.
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Last week, the Supreme Court modified its March 11 order calling for separation of the three academics over the row over the NCERT chapter containing “offensive” contents from the judiciary, leaving it open for the Centre, states, union territories, public universities and institutions receiving funds from the central or state governments to take an independent decision on the issue.
“Disappointed with NCERT”
In an interview with PTI, Danino said the Supreme Court’s March 11 order barring three academics from NCERT had immediate professional consequences for him, including termination of the contract of his guest professorship at the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinagar.
“This contract was terminated immediately after the March 11 order. There were no discussions with me,” he said, adding that the corporation “rushed to the media to announce loud and clear that it no longer has any association with me.”
He also said that the academics involved were disappointed with NCERT’s handling of the issue.
“We were disappointed that they did not explain the entire process to the court,” he said, stressing that the content of the textbook was not finalized by NCERT alone, but by the umbrella committees, namely – the National Subject Teaching Committee (NSTC) and the NCF Oversight Committee (NOC).
He added: “If we, the active members of the committee, had approached the Supreme Court together and said: Allow us to explain the context, and why this is not an affront to the judiciary, then I am quite sure that the order issued on March 11 would not have been deemed necessary.”
In response to the Supreme Court’s persistent observation that the content of the chapter was “wholly objectionable,” Danino said the academics involved “respectfully disagreed” with the court’s assessment in affidavits filed on April 4.
He added: “We do not accept that there is anything fundamentally unacceptable,” but acknowledged that “some of the sentences might have been worded differently.”
“The title of the subsection could have been worded differently,” he said. “But the content was basically correct. We stand by it.”
Danino says the chapter was not written “with derogatory intent.”
Danino emphasized that the chapter relied only on “original sources” and that it was not written with any “derogatory intent.”
Referring to previous debates over textbooks, Danino said disagreements over social science content were not new and had surfaced under different governments since the 1970s.
“I have been monitoring textbooks in India since the 1990s. I have collected a lot of research papers. I can assure you that controversies over social sciences started in India in the 1970s,” he said.
Textbooks published during the Morarji Desai government also generated a lot of controversy, Danino said, adding that such discussions continued as governments and textbooks changed over the years.
“I was expecting some (disagreements) about the history or culture-related classes, but I certainly didn’t expect anything about this particular class,” he said.
Danino also claimed that the now-removed class was intended to encourage critical thinking and discuss “real-life challenges” with students.
He said the class has been prepared in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023.
“The perspective imposed on us by the NEP and NCF-SE was that we should develop the critical mind in students, engage them and stimulate independent thinking starting in sixth grade,” Danino said.
He added that the chapter did not target the judiciary, and similar issues relating to other institutions, including Parliament, were also discussed in the book.
Responding to a question about the need to include the judicial case in textbooks, Danino said: “If you do not provide students with realistic discussions and some of the challenges facing our country and the world today, then you are not doing justice to the NEP 2020, and much more to the students.”
Danino also said that students should be encouraged to discuss “real-life issues” at a “mature age” so that they can become responsible citizens when they grow up.
“It’s as if you’re giving them a sign of trust that we can discuss real issues together, and when they become adults, maybe they can do something about it,” he added.
“Unless we recognize institutional shortcomings, we will never be able to solve them,” Danino added.
