New Courses on 'India's Glorious Past' at IITs Soon

Few higher education institutes of the country including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are planning to introduce courses on ‘India's Glorious Past’.

As a preliminary step, IIT-BHU plans to add a course on ‘Vedic Science’, ‘Indian Heritage’, ‘Sanskrit’ and ‘Indian Philosophy’ in the time to come. which will be offered as elective subjects to B.Tech students. However, no final call has been taken yet with regards to the implementation of the same. It is still conducting meetings to discuss possibilities and outcomes.

On the other hand, IGNOU recently launched a new course on India’s cultural heritage - ‘Bharat Bodh’ and conducted a lecture series to discuss modalities.

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Simultaneously, National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) is also considering a proposal to increase the content on the glorious past of India in school textbooks. An official associated with NCERT pointed that the council would borrow some of the material from various textbooks on ‘Knowledge, Tradition, and Practices of India’. Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) prescribed the aforementioned changes to be included in the curriculum of students belonging to Class XI and Class XII student.

Contrary to this, few experts were of the opinion that the existing school textbooks already cover a large amount of India’s contribution to the world of knowledge and there is no necessity to include more content. A professor associated with Jamia Millia Islamia pointed that the existing NCERT textbooks already have a detailed account of achievements made in ancient India

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An official of Delhi University indicated that the universities should be left to decide whether to offer a course on ‘India’s Heritage’ or not.