NCERT book aims to connect with north-east

In order to sensitise students about north-east India, its history, culture and war heroes, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), for the first time, has come up with a comprehensive book.

The talking point for this proposal came after a 20-year-old student from Arunachal Pradesh, Nido Tania, was allegedly killed in a racial attack in 2014. After more such attacks, there was a discussion that these attacks are happening because people in other parts of the country are not sentitised about north-east India.

The book, 'North East India — People, History and Culture', talks about the eight states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim in detail and for the first time the freedom fighters from the region have been written about in great detail.

The book talks about important movements in history like the 1904 women's struggle in Manipur against the British. North-east states have played an important role in the struggle for freedom, which don't find a place in our history books. This book attempts to capture that too.

The NCERT used to include information on north-east in its Social Science books but there was no such book where everything was explained at one place and in great detail. This is the reason that this book has been released.

"There were incidents of discrimination with students from the north-east and it was felt that it is because of lack of information on the states and its people. Hence it was decided by the government that we should come up with comprehensive material of the northeastern part of India," said Neeraja Rashmi, head, department of education in social sciences, NCERT.

"We started working on this book last year and it took us around one year to come up with it. A team of eight people who were associated with the northeast region in some or the other way worked on this book," Prof Rashmi, who worked on the book, added.

"The other book in the series will be Women of North East India. The names of the women have not been decided so far, but it will be on women who are doing some good work in the region," she added.

The book is meant as a supplementary reading for students from Class 9 to 12, but is also suggested for teachers.