At first glance, the whole episode looked like a storm in a teacup. But if you look a little more closely, the uproar over a brief reference to corruption in the judiciary in an NCERT textbook points to a deeper challenge confronting our democratic system. The real question is not who hatched a conspiracy to defame the judiciary and why. The real question is what happened under the cover of stopping the alleged conspiracy.

The story itself was rather ordinary. After a gap of nearly twenty years, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the body that publishes textbooks for CBSE schools — has started releasing a new set of textbooks.

One of these is the Class VIII Social Science textbook. In the second part of the book, which introduces students to the country’s political system, there is a chapter on the judiciary. After providing a general overview, the chapter includes a small section on the problems associated with it. One page carries the subheading ‘Corruption in the Judiciary’. The entire controversy revolves around this page.

The interesting thing is that there is nothing in this section that could reasonably be called controversial. I’m not enamoured of the NCERT’s new textbooks. But I see nothing objectionable in this portion — no sweeping claim that the entire judiciary is corrupt, no sensational tales of wrongdoing in the courts.

The book simply notes, in a stiff official tone, that like all democratic........

© National Herald