NCERT forms new political science textbook team with several RSS-affiliated academics
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has reconstituted the textbook development team for political science for Classes 11 and 12. The new team, led by academic and political analyst Sandeep Shastri, has been given a mandate to integrate cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems, and inclusion into the textbooks. According to an NCERT notification, the team is expected to develop the Class 11 textbook by November and the Class 12 book by July next year.
Among the members of the textbook development team, at least four have documented backgrounds connected to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) through its affiliate organisations, including the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These affiliations are noted in publicly available records.
Yadunath Deshpande, currently 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 founded in 1962 by Vinayak Vishwanath, an RSS member and pracharak. In his profile on the National Council for Teacher Education's National Mission for Mentoring portal, Mr. 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 Jawaharlal Nehru University's (JNU) 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 RSS-affiliated Indian Institute of Democratic Leadership-Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini. Prof. Shukla has also undertaken research centred on cultural and spiritual nationalism. He is the principal investigator of an ICSSR-funded JNU project titled "The Role of Fests in Shaping of Spiritual and Cultural Nationalism of Bharat: A Study of Kumbha and Magh Mela."
The team also comprises academics from various institutions, including Prakash Kandpal (JNU), Needhi Gupta (National Law University), Chetan Singhai (Chanakya University), Sukanshika Vatsa (Delhi University), Satish Kumar (IGNOU), Deevanshu Shrivastava (National University of Study and Research in Law), Pranav Gupta (Jindal Global Law School), and Nanda Kishor (Pondicherry University). Other members include NCERT's Savita Sagar, M.N. Suresh Kumar from Bengaluru-based Government First Grade College, Diana Isabel from Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation School, and N. Bharani from SHVNM Government PU College for Girls. Vanthangpui Khobung and Subhash Singh of NCERT will serve as member coordinator and co-coordinator, respectively.
According to the 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. The notification, issued by NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani, adds that each textbook will be reviewed to oversee the integration of cross-cutting themes such as cultural rootedness, Indian knowledge systems, inclusion, educational technology, and assessment.
