by Meetu Jain

New Delhi: The so-called renaming of India to ‘Bharat’ for National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) school textbooks was recommended by the focus group set up by the Trust for social sciences, one of 25 groups whose inputs went into the final “National Curriculum Framework”, a blueprint for school syllabi across India.

Kerala is the first state to have plainly rebuffed moves to change textbooks on a whim, especially on a major subject like the name of a country. The state’s education minister, V. Sivankutty, told the media on Thursday, “Citizens have the right to use India or Bharat as said in the constitution. That they are now saying only Bharat should be used as a country’s name is a narrow politics. Kerala cannot accept this.”

He termed it another move by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government to distort historical facts.

“Earlier, after NCERT had removed certain portions, we included them in the syllabus taught in the state through additional textbooks,” he said.

Education was a state subject before being put in the concurrent list, in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. But school education is still an area with considerable say of state governments.

Professor C.I. Issac, head of the sub-committee at NCERT whose recommendation that India be renamed Bharat has stirred up a controversy, while reacting to the fact that NCERT had not included his committee’s recommendations told The Wire, NCERT is nowadays led by “JNU products, who have preconceptions about everything”. He said, “You know the nature of the bureaucracy nowadays.”

Issac added, “The seven-member committee unanimously agreed on it. One member was from NCERT and he did not object either in any of the three or four meetings.”

He expressed surprise that the recommendations did not make their way into the final report. “Our recommendation was not added in the final copy and was submitted to the minister. It is the responsibility of the minister. It is not my responsibility. Minister never called us, never cross verified. Whatever was given, he signed it.”

This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here .