New Delhi: The NCERT has reconstituted the Textbook Development Team for Class 11 and 12 political science with a mandate to integrate cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems and inclusion, with at least four of the members having documented direct or indirect links to the RSS.
The team has been asked to develop the Class 11 textbook by November and the Class 12 book by July next year.
The textbook team will be led by academic and political analyst Sandeep Shastri, vice president of a Karnataka-based deemed university, NITTE.
Among the members with documented links to RSS-affiliated organisations are Yadunath Deshpande, Prashant Divekar, Vandana Mishra and Ravi Rameshchandra Shukla.
Yadunath Deshpande, now a senior consultant with the Ministry of Education, has a longstanding organisational background in the ABVP. The organisation's own records identify him as its joint state organising secretary for Maharashtra in the past. He subsequently served as an organising secretary in the ABVP's Mumbai-Konkan structure. His LinkedIn profile also describes him as a political consultant for the BJP.
Prashant Divekar has a longstanding association with Pune-based Jnana Prabodhini, an RSS-affiliated institution. In his profile on the National Council for Teacher Education's National Mission for Mentoring portal, Divekar describes his approach as being "rooted in Bhartiya educational philosophy" and says he has contributed to the National Curriculum Framework.
Vandana Mishra, professor at JNU's Centre for Political Studies, is a former national secretary of the ABVP.
Ravi Rameshchandra Shukla, Associate Professor at JNU's Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, has been a member of the editorial board of the Indian Journal of Democratic Governance, published by the Indian Institute of Democratic Leadership-Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini, which is an RSS affiliate. Devendra Fadnavis became its president in 2021.
The team also comprises academics and educationists from institutions including JNU, National Law University, Chanakya University, Delhi University, IGNOU, Jindal Global Law School and Pondicherry University, along with NCERT officials and other educators.
Vanthangpui Khobung and Subhash Singh of NCERT will be the member coordinator and co-coordinator, respectively.
According to an NCERT notification, the team will seek guidance from the curricular area group on social science, languages, Indian knowledge systems, environmental education, innovative pedagogy and teaching-learning material.
It will also consult other curricular area groups to ensure linkages with other grades, interdisciplinarity among subjects, and the integration of multilingual perspectives.
"Review of each of the textbooks will take place to oversee the integration of cross-cutting themes, such as cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems, inclusion, educational technology, assessment, etc," the notification issued by NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani said.
