In an open war, Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar issued a statement late on Saturday evening condemning the circular posted by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on its website about “authorship” and “copyright”, a day after the two had sent out a letter to its director disassociating themselves from the “mutilated” textbooks by the council.
The statement by Yadav and Palshikar, who were chief advisors for the Political Science textbooks for Classes 9-12, originally published in 2006-07 came as a response to NCERT’s clarification posted on its website on Saturday noon, in reaction to the initial letter by the duo (sent to NCERT director on Friday) disassociating themselves from the textbooks in the reprinted, rationalised versions and requesting that their names be dropped from them.
The NCERT had on Saturday posted an official statement on its website, which clearly stated that rationalisation of textbooks is an ongoing exercise and that dropping off the names of those contributing to the development of these books was “out of question”. The statement was not signed.
NCERT director DP Saklani, on being asked for their reaction to the initial letter, had told News18 to check the council’s website for the same.
“Sad to see that NCERT has chosen to respond to Prof @PalshikarSuhas and my letter through an unsigned statement. Even more disappointing that it does not respond to the sole point we had made,” read the statement by Yadav and Palshikar, which they tweeted as well.
The NCERT in its clarification had stated that textbooks at the school level are ‘developed’ based on the state of the knowledge and understanding on a given subject. “Therefore, at no stage individual authorship is claimed, hence the withdrawal of association by anyone is out of question,” it read.
It also stated that the terms of these Textbook Development Committees (TDCs) have ended since the date of their first publication. “However, NCERT acknowledges their academic contribution and only because of this, for the sake of record, publishes names of all TDC members in each of its textbook.”
To this, Yadav and Palshikar in their statement have raised an objection while reiterating their basic demand: “Please remove our names from the textbooks that were once the source of pride for us but are now a source of embarrassment.”
“We have not raised issues of authorship, copyrights and NCERT’s legal authority to modify these textbooks. Our point is very simple: If they can use their legal right to distort and mutilate the text, we must be able to exercise our moral and legal right to dissociate our name from a textbook that we do not endorse,” the statement issued by Yadav and Palshikar read.
Yadav is the founder of Swaraj India while Palshikar is an academician and a social and political scientist.
They further said in their statement that the if the name of the TDC is there to acknowledge their contribution, as the NCERT claims, then they must be free to decline this generosity.
“If the names of this committee are reported as a matter of record, as claimed in this statement, then it must also be recorded that we do not approve of the present version,” it said.
The duo also said the continuation of their names inside the present version of the book creates a false impression of endorsement that they have every right to dissociate with this insinuation.
“Besides, the two of us are clearly the ‘authors’ of the signed letter that introduces each book. How can we be forced to introduce a textbook that we no longer recognise?” they asked.
Surely, if the NCERT can get experts to make changes as desired, it can publish their names, it said. “The NCERT cannot hide behind our names as chief advisors,” the statement read.
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