Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: Bharat and India will be used interchangeably in NCERT textbooks as is the case in the country’s Constitution, National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani said.
The comments assume significance in the wake of a high-level panel working on the social science curriculum recommending that India should be replaced with Bharat in school textbooks for all classes.
In an interaction with PTI,Saklanisaid both the words will be used in the books and the council has no aversion to either “Bharat” or “India”.
“It is interchangeable….our position is what our Constitution says and we uphold that. We can use Bharat, we can use India, what is the problem? We are not in that debate. Wherever it suits we will use India, wherever it suits we will use Bharat. We have no aversion to either India or Bharat,” he said.
“You can see both being used in our textbooks already and that will continue in new textbooks. This is a useless debate,”Saklani said.
A high-level committee for social sciences, constituted by the NCERT to revise the school curriculum, had last year recommended that “India” should be replaced with “Bharat” in the textbooks for all classes.
Committee chairperson C I Isaac, who was heading the panel, had said they have suggested replacing the name “India” with “Bharat” in the textbooks, introducing “classical history”, instead of “ancient history” in the curriculum, and including the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) in the syllabus for all subjects.
