NEW DELHI: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has recently sparked a controversy by opting to provide Hindi titles in Roman script to several English-medium books, including those intended to teach English language. This is a deviation from the conventional practice of textbook titles matching the medium of instruction.
This modification comes amidst ongoing discussions about the Centre’s three-language policy, with states like Tamil Nadu voicing strong objections to what they see as the imposition of Hindi in regions where it is not widely spoken.
In the past, NCERT has provided different titles for textbooks in various languages; for instance, the Class 6 Mathematics textbook was titled ‘Mathematics’ in English, ‘Ganit’ in Hindi, and ‘Riyazi’ in Urdu. The new approach sees both English and Hindi versions of the same textbook uniformly titled ‘Ganita Prakash’.
Notably, the foreword to the Class 6 English volume, written by NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani, fails to address the reason why the new title in Hindi was chosen. Doubts have also been expressed by a retired linguist about mispronunciation difficulties arising from using Roman script to write Hindi titles.
NCERT started rolling out these changes in 2023, as per the National Education Policy 2020 guidelines, with subsequent releases to be made for other classes.
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