Central Government organisation, NCERT clarified that there is "adequate space" in its publication about Northeast India after students from Northeastern states creates Twitter storm.
The students of Northeastern states of India sought more focus on the region in the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) curriculum through the Twitter storm.
On Saturday, NCERT clarified that northeast already finds "adequate space" in its publications after a series of tweets. The statement was made from the NCERT's official handle which reads, "depiction of North East in NCERT's Publication: A book on North East India – People, History and Culture has been brought out back in 2016.
It added that "the Social Science Textbooks of NCERT for classes VI, VII, X and XII have interwoven contents related to North East in a different form."
The Twitter thread from NCERT further read, "At present, contents with regard to North Eastern states finds adequate space in NCERT's publications for its use by students & teachers." The thread tagged the official handles of the Ministry of Education, Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Union Education Minister, among others.
The Twitter storm was triggered by the recent case of Racism towards Northeastern people by Youtuber Paras Singh. The virtual campaign on June 4 had students, as well as public personalities including athlete Hima Das, MP Shashi Tharoor and MP Gaurav Gogoi, who showed their support tweeting with the hashtags #AchapterforNE and #NortheastMatters on Friday.
Advisor of North East Students' Union (NESU), Vadodara and one of the organisers of the Twitter storm, Debonil Baruah, said that while they were aware of and appreciated the supplementary reader published by NCERT in 2016, the demand was of "a mandatory chapter to be included in the main syllabus."
In 2017, the NCERT reportedly published 'North East India — People, History and Culture', which is a supplementary textbook for students from Class 9 to 12. Baruah further asked, "The fact is that it is supplementary and not part of the main curriculum. Publishing the reader is well and good, but what's the point if people are not reading it?"
The organisers of the Twitter storm have now decided now to write a memorandum to the Education Ministry in consultation with professors and intellectuals from the region. "In our memorandum, we will give constructive suggestions. As I said earlier, this kind of racism can be solved only through education. We will also approach MPs from the Northeast for support," the organizer wrote.
On Saturday, Ering wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Dr Nishank which read, "This is my humble request not only as a representative but as a common citizen of Northeast India. This one step can lead to the elimination of frequent cases of racial discrimination against us."
