NCERT Includes 1975 Emergency in Class 9 Textbooks as a ‘Major Challenge to Indian Democracy’

NCERT: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has added the topic of the Emergency period of 1975-77 to its Class 9 Social Science textbook. This move has come in light of changes that have been undertaken by NCERT in keeping with the new educational policies set out in NEP 2020.

Until now the topic of Emergency had been limited to political science books at the senior secondary level and specifically Class 12. Now, the topic has been added to chapter 6 of the Class 9 social science textbook named “Understanding Society: India and Beyond (Part 1)”.

NCERT’s Added Section Named 'Emergency'

In the sixth chapter of the new book the topic is “Democracy and its Challenges”. There is a section that talks about emergency, which states that the emergency of 1975-77 was a challenge that democracy faced in India.

According to the book, emergency was declared in June 1975 in view of growing dissatisfaction, rising unemployment, inflation, and misgovernment in the government of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The book states that at that time fundamental rights were suspended and the press was censored. Many political leaders and activists were arrested.

The chapter also talks about the masses movement organized by Jayaprakash Narayan. The book stresses the fact that a lot of people including students actively participated in such movements in states such as Bihar and Gujarat. The emergency was lifted in 1977 resulting in general elections where the people could exercise their right to vote.

According to NCERT the objective of this chapter is to fill the gap that exists between the content of the book and the socio-political experience of the students. By introducing this new section into a chapter that is both historically and politically significant, such as the Emergency, NCERT has made an attempt to combine the history of democracy and citizen participation into one pedagogy.