‘Pani’ To ‘Jal’, ‘Abba’ To ‘Baba’: What Is Changing In Bengal School Textbooks?

West Bengal’s government school textbooks may undergo major changes following recommendations from a state-appointed curriculum review committee.

The panel has proposed revisions to Bengali language, history and literature textbooks, with the first edition of the revised books expected by January 2027.

The committee, led by Kalyani University professor Debashish Chatterjee, has recommended replacing words it considers uncommon in everyday Bengali usage.

The proposed changes include replacing ‘pani’, ‘abba’ and ‘ammi’ with ‘jal’, ‘baba’ and ‘ma’, respectively.

The proposed history revisions include recent archaeological findings from Sinauli in Uttar Pradesh and Rakhigarhi in Haryana.

The committee has recommended incorporating these discoveries to present new evidence while teaching theories about the arrival of the Aryans and their civilisation.

The revised curriculum will include a chapter on Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

At the same time, the panel has proposed reducing content related to Mughal rule, British rule and Marxism.

The committee has recommended removing chapters on the Singur land acquisition movement and the Kanyashree scheme, which the previous Mamata Banerjee government had introduced into the curriculum.

In literature, the proposed changes include adding Rabindranath Tagore’s poem ‘Shivaji Utsav’.

The panel has recommended removing a play based on Siraj-ud-Daulah and Tagore’s poem ‘Africa’.

The recommendations form part of a wider review of school textbooks and teaching content in West Bengal.

The proposed revisions will reshape sections of the curriculum if the state government approves them.

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