The Thorat Committee recommendations that some cartoons be removed from NCERT textbooks, if implemented, will mean a return to the bookish way of teaching. The initiatives taken by the NCERT to make textbooks interesting have borne fruit. They have made children interactive. They now think and ask questions. Cartoons are an integral part of this highly effective method.
Shashank Shreshtha,
Patna
Efforts being made to proscribe cartoons in the NCERT textbooks, and the fiat by the Jamaat-e-Islami to the Jammu & Kashmir government that tourists to the State be asked to follow a dress code reflect the pace at which both the erudite and the bigoted are sinking into obscurantism. Rabindranath Tagore’s vision of a nation and society unshackled from the narrow minded world is a dream that is fading fast.
One can sympathise with religious fanatics but the scholarship of the gentry that recommended the removal of cartoons from the political and social science textbooks is worrying.
Anilkumar Kurup,
Bahrain
