ABSTRACT
Educational theorist Michael W Apple calls education a “site of conflict about the kind of knowledge that is and should be taught” (2009, vii). Textbook creation, therefore, is as much a form of gatekeeping as it is a means of education. In April 2023, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in India announced that it would remove chapters on Mughal rulers from Class XII history textbooks. While the decision comes as a form of “syllabus rationalisation” in order to remove additional “load” on students after the pandemic (Hindustan Times 2023), it has been commended by members of the incumbent government as it aligns with their political beliefs. Over the years, textbooks have remained a conflicted political battleground—a space where ideology meets education and manifests itself in what stays and what is removed from the curriculum.
The concept of “hidden curriculum,” first developed by Philip Jackson in 1968 (Life in Classrooms), investigates the ideology entrenched within the curriculum beyond the stated goals and aims of the textbook. In this chapter, I build on this concept and argue that it is not only “hidden” curriculum but also “erased” curriculum that we need to look out for in textbooks, to discern which chapters have been removed over the years, and what that implies about the intended political or social messaging of the textbook. The methodology used in this presentation will be a combination of document analysis of NCERT Hindi textbooks and ethnographic interviews with Hindi teachers from New Delhi. Are Hindi textbooks teaching more than just language and grammar in the classroom? What goes into selecting the materials for these textbooks in order to create the “ideal” student? Why does it matter what remains in and what gets erased from a Hindi-language textbook in particular?
