Introducing the North-east in the NCERT School Curriculum

The careless and derogatory remarks made by Paras Singh, a YouTuber from Punjab against the people of Arunachal Pradesh has received widespread attention among the people of the North-east and rest of India. This also put the YouTuber to police custody.

Such developments pose certain evaluative questions--is it not too late for a 22-year-old to know about the north-eastern part of his own country? Is the requirement to teach him about a part of his own country inside a police station a repercussion of sheer neglect that the history and geography of the north-east faces in the curriculum of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which enjoys the hegemony among all the provincial curriculums of the state boards in mainly the urban spaces of the states?

The case of Paras Singh therefore gives us the opportunity to move deeper into the ground realities of how the mutually coexisting Central and State Boards of education operate in our country. Also, the inherent loopholes of the Centrally sponsored curriculum, that are often neglected with a notion of “as the way it has been” needs a detailed address now. That is why, Paras Singh is a case that neither exists in vacuum nor untouched by the socio-cultural nuances and loopholes of our education system that are seldom taken care of.

To move directly to the point, North-eastern India does not get an adequate representation in the school curriculum of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). It is even plausible to opine that the lessons are imparted to the students particularly from the lens of the Lutyens' Delhi.

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To directly cite from an Opinion piece by Pradeep Chakravarty published in The Hindu on September 4, 2020, “Scanning through the CBSE Class 7 textbook, a north-south divide is evident. Students in India are required to study the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal empire, and six out of 12 chapters are dedicated to them. For the rest of the country, there is just about half a chapter on the Vijayanagara empire…. Northeast is completely ignored...” He concludes the article with a call to revise the CBSE syllabus.

A bird’s eye view on the National Council of Education, Research & Training (NCERT) textbooks of CBSE on history from class 6 to 12 shows that the syllabus begins with chapters on Harappan civilization, growth of Janapadas and Mahajanapadas of mainland India and then moves to the rule of Ashoka and the Gupta Empire in class 6, with no reference to the context of the North-east. Moving to the syllabus of class 7, under the chapter “New Kings and Kingdoms”, the hope of finding some mentions of early kingdoms of the north-eastern region diminishes as the exclusive focus lies on kingdoms from North to South India, i.e., from Chamanas of Rajasthan to Cholas of Tamil Nadu. On chapter 7, that deals with tribal kingdoms of India, however, a small paragraph with a subheading “The Ahoms” on page no. 99 can be located, which ultimately set a misrepresentation of North-east India exclusively as a tribal region and as being completely ruled under the Ahom dynasty. Later, the class 8 incorporates colonialism in India, then Class 9, Class 10 and 11 deals with world history, and lastly, Class 12 makes a massive attempt to cover the entire course of history from Indus Valley civilization to India’s independence from the British crown. It is undoubtedly evident how inadequate the representation of a region as diverse as the north-eastern India in the centrally sponsored syllabus.

The demand for an inclusion of a chapter specifically for the Northeastern region in the school curriculum is genuine and justified for several factors. The region apart from being racially and linguistically the most diverse region of India also includes linguistically most diverse states of India, Nagaland, and Arunachal Pradesh. Also, the story of annexation of the northeastern region into India has always been problematic and the region is troubled with series of secessionist demands. It was imperative that a region with such racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity needed separate provision to have even a basic understanding among the students.

Moreover, it is undisputed that there is no national history of India as such prior to the emergence of Indian nationalism in the late 19th century. The history of Indian subcontinent varies from region to region. And it is well-perceived that the syllabus of history is written by keeping Delhi at its centre. It is therefore unsurprising for a person from mainland India, like YouTuber Paras Singh in today’s consideration, to be unaware of the basic history of the North-east and its complicated and diverse geographical characteristics.

Closing the chapter on Paras Singh here, let us shift the context to our own society.

The mandate on the CBSE as the preferred board against the Board of the State among the people in the urban spaces of Assam is due to the sorry state of affairs of the latter and the perceived opportunities of studying in the former. Also, the preoccupation with a flawed notion that learning in the medium of English (even before learning to read and write one’s own native language) helps in making oneself fit for an economically and socially honoured position in the society looms large in the society across the social stratum.

The validation of inadequate representation comes from the excuses on the possible vastness of the syllabus if attempts are made to facilitate a balanced representation of diverse regional histories of India in the school curriculum. However, the problem could have been addressed by- 1) a systematic attempt towards state-wise formulation of curriculum, 2) installing branches of the central board in the states to cater to the specific academic requirements of the students of diverse societies, and most importantly, 3) addressing the condition of the State boards, their administrative inefficiency and lack of backing from the intelligentsia of the respective regions for spearheading a structural change to encourage enrolment in State boards regardless of socioeconomic hierarchy.

Moreover, the private educational institutions which follow the CBSE curriculum do not adequately address the need of installing the local language as the medium of instruction, even at the primary level. As a result, with the passage of time, along with the quantitative decline of the share of Assamese speakers in Assam from 61% in 1951 to 48.38% in 2011 due to demographic factors, there has also been a qualitative decline of the same, primarily due to insufficient introduction of the language in the school curriculum in favour of English that is widely perceived as relatively more rewarding in multiple aspects of social life.

Gunjan Das

( Gunjan Das is a student of BA (Hons.) Political Science, 2nd Year, Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, University of Delhi. Views expressed are the author’s own. He can be reached [email protected] )

References

Chakravarty, Pradeep. 2020. "Towards inclusive syllabi." The Hindu, September 04.

Goswami, Sanjib. 2016. "Situating English in the Language Politics of Assam." Langlit 2, no. 4 34-42.

N. Tamna Singha, Fancy Chutia, Rushika Chetia, Lakhya Jyoti Das,. 2020. "Assamese Language As a Medium of Education: A Brief Analysis of Past, Present and Future Aspects of the Social Condition of Assamese." INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 9, ISSUE 03,

Upadhyaya, Amar. 2017. "Medium of Instruction in the Schools of Assam." Issues and Ideas in Education 115-126.