The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is an important organisation in India. It is a body whose published books are studied by millions of children in India at schools and in fact, NCERT books are used in all CBSE schools of the country. So, it is safe to say that the body has an uncomfortable monopoly over the young and impressionable minds of children. Already, NCERT books’ content, particularly the history curriculum of the council, has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Now, a shameless NCERT has decided to go fully ‘woke’ in order to morally deracinate Indian civilisation as a whole.

Hindus have been awaiting with bated breath for seven long years, in the hope that the distorted history currently being taught in our schools to impressionable young minds will be changed. Hopes were raised, albeit misleadingly, after the New Education Policy (NEP) was finally introduced last year and plans were initiated for a new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for school education.

The new NCF was expected to be ready by March 2021, post which National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) was expected to make changes in the textbooks in accordance with the new NCF. The NCF has been revised previously in 1975, 1988, 2000 and 2005.

However, as per a September 22, 2021 Hindustan Times article, the Union education ministry has just constituted a 12-member steering committee to develop the new national curriculum framework (NCF). The committee will be headed by ISRO scientist K Kasturirangan, who had also led the NEP 2020 drafting committee. Officials at the education ministry said the timeline for the development of new framework is three years. No explanation has been provided on why a task that was initially targeted for completion in 9 months, has now been delayed for a further 3 years.

Meanwhile, academics at NCERT have moved ahead with lightening speed on their priority: addressing “gender disparities in education”. They just released a new publication titled Inclusion of Transgender Children in School Education: Concerns and Roadmap. The project was coordinated by Dr Poonam Agrawal, Professor and former Head, Department of Gender Studies, NCERT. Yes, we now have a separate Department for Gender Studies within NCERT.

The NCERT opened a can of worms recently after it published a training manual for teachers with the objective of sensitizing “teachers and teacher educators regarding aspects of gender diversity keeping gender-nonconforming and transgender children at centre stage.” The document espoused numerous ‘woke’ ideas, which was not taken kindly by people on the internet.

Since then, the document has been pulled down from the NCERT website but the controversy surrounding it has still not died. One of the major figures in this controversy has been an individual called Vikramaditya Sahai (or Vqueeram, preferred pronouns are They/Them). This journalist discovered that Sahai, who was on the NCERT team that produced the training manual, was sharing semi-nude photographs of themself on Instagram.

The ideological inclinations of Vikramaditya Sahai

Since then, videos have emerged where Vqueeram can be seen making extremely controversial comments. In one video from the past, the activist could be heard making extremely derogatory comments about the Hindu community. They said that there was nothing proud in being a Hindu or in being a man.

In another video, Vikramaditya Sahai speaks of Rohit Vemula’s “beautiful suicide note”.

Vqueeram also appears to have rather problematic opinions on gender. According to them, gender is the “root cause” of all trouble. Gender is also violence, apparently.

Given that Vikramaditya Sahai has such an ideological predisposition, it is fair to ask if such a person should play any role in the education of our children. It is also completely fair to ask if a person who posts semi-nude photographs of themself on social media should influence the education curriculum in our country.

Needless to say, such criticism has nothing to do with the person’s gender but their own conduct. People wouldn’t want, and with good reason, someone who harbours such problematic opinions about a religious community and gender to have any say in children’s education.

Nonetheless, LGBT activists made the criticism all about the person’s gender and accused this journalist of perpetrating a “brutal attack” against the activist. A Twitter handle, Dalit Camera, with over forty thousand followers on the platform, claimed that this journalist indulged in “body shaming” and “trolling Vqueeram’s politics against caste and gender-based violence”.

Source: Twitter

The accusations are quite perplexing as all this journalist did was point out that people who post semi-nude photographs of themself on social media, and harbour ostensibly hateful opinions about Hindus, should not have a say in the education of children. But that was twisted to claim that @YearOfTheKraken indulged in a transphobic attack against Vqueeram.

Since then, NCERT has pulled down the training manual from its website after the NCPCR took cognizance of the matter. One senior Ministry of Education official under the condition of anonymity told Hindustan Times, “The NCERT has informed the ministry that the document was still under process and it was inadvertently uploaded on the website. The council will provide the required response to the NCPCR. The manual has been drafted by the department of gender studies at the NCERT with all due considerations.”

The training manual which Vikramaditya helped develop

The objective of the training manual is the “sensitization of teachers and teacher educators regarding aspects of gender diversity keeping gender-nonconforming and transgender children at centre stage”. In this brazen document, the NCERT has also advocated for the use of gender-neutral infrastructure in schools, in order to prevent children from growing up with normalised gender stereotypes. The document says, “The use of toilet, an infrastructural facility, is used to condition children into binary gender; female children are conditioned to use the toilets labelled ‘girls’ and male children are to use the toilet marked for ‘boys’, ”.

It adds, “Therefore, presence of binaries in infrastructure also creates conflicts for gender nonconforming children who find it difficult to make a choice; at such a young age, it is an emotionally charged decision that additionally burdens them”. Among its many suggestions to turn India into a gender nonconforming circus is this recommendation: “Discontinuance of Binary practices in school, classrooms, activities, sports etc – Separate rows for boys and girls during assembly, school functions, seating arrangements in classrooms; gender wise separate uniforms, working groups for assignments, excursions, etc., should be discontinued. Mixed groups should be allowed, gender neutral uniforms can be introduced, etc.”. Meanwhile, stigma against the transgender community is blamed on ‘caste patriarchy’ by NCERT.

Roadmap snippets

Here is a link to the full report. Some snippets, courtesy @vedic_revival:

“The use of toilet, an infrastructural facility, is used to condition children into binary gender.”
Gender auditing of schools to discourage things like separate uniforms, separate rows for boys and girls in assembly, separate sports for boys and girls
“Suggestion for teachers: Talk to students about puberty blockers. Convey that these are available and accessible for those experiencing gender dysphoria, who may later identify as transgender”

There is even a suggestion of how history curriculum can be modified to highlight the ‘important role’ eunuchs played in the Mughal empire – 

This is subtle indoctrination of children that Mughals were more ‘tolerant’ of transgenders than Hindu emperors or even current Hindu society. As pointed out by netizens, such recommendations manipulate the history of slavery and castration during Mughal tyranny, during which it was standard practice to castrate young boys for the sake of trading them as eunuchs to the imperial regime.

These boys were forcibly castrated, with their genitals cut off by a knife and many died out of such injuries. Also, eunuchs were considered loyal innermost guards by the emperor only because they were incapable of having affairs with the hundreds of concubines in the emperor’s harem. Since eunuchs did not have descendants/family, they had strong loyalty to their masters.

Allegations level by Gaysi Family regarding Vqueeram

After the Hindustan Times report apprising readers of the latest development in the matter, Gaysi Family, a media platform that describes itself as a “safe space for Desi Queers to share their stories”, launched another set of allegations against this journalist.

Gaysi Family wrote in a post, which at the time of writing this report received over 2,500 ‘likes’ on Instagram, “One troll, whose handle is @YearOfTheKraken, was particularly committed to the smear campaign against Vqueeram. @YearOfTheKraken, who, of course, is enjoying the immunity by being a nameless and faceless figure on social media, is using “shame” and “respectability” politics to vilify and question Vqueeram’s work by posting pictures from the latter’s Instagram account.”

The allegations of a ‘smear campaign’ against Sahai are especially stunning since all this journalist did was share photographs on Twitter that Sahai had themself shared on their public profile (made private since then) on Instagram. The videos of Sahai that this journalist brought attention to are of statements that the activist has themself made to the media.

Quite clearly, the real problem appears to be that the activist is receiving criticism for his public conduct and not much else. It is bizarre that even legitimate criticism is being slandered by attaching baseless sinister motivations to it. In fact, the way the community pages have gone all guns blazing against this journalist, it appears more like a smear campaign against him for bringing to light what is the uncomfortable truth.

The real objective: Shut down criticism of Vikramaditya Sahai because Vqueeram is transgender

Vikramaditya Sahai is a public figure. They is an associated the Centre for Law and Policy Research. Formerly, they has been a faculty at the Gender Studies Department of Ambedkar University. They was also an external team member of the NCERT team that produced the training manual for teachers.

As a public figure, journalists have every right to criticise their conduct in public. The allegations of ‘transphobia’ are being used to shut down criticism of the individual on very legitimate grounds. People have every right to question the NCERT for appointing a person with extremely problematic opinions to a team that would decide the education of children.

It is not transphobic to assert that people who post semi-nude photographs of themself should not be influencing the education of students. It is not transphobic to say that an individual with palpable animosity towards Hindus and men should not have an influence over the education curriculum.

All such allegations are merely a ruse to shut down all criticism. And they will be resisted accordingly.

References:

tfipost.com - by Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra
hindupost.in - Hindu Post Desk
opindia.com - K Bhattacharjee