Several scientists, educators last week raised serious concern about NCERT removing theory of evolution from science syllabus in class X curriculum of CBSE. The letter said, “Understanding the process of evolution is crucial in building scientific temper”. And depriving students of this exposure is ‘ travesty to of education’. Sadly, the list of deleted science topics include, Charles Darwin, molecular Phylogeny, Evolution and tracing evolutionary relationships.
The scientists appealed against exclusion of Evolution from Curriculum and demanded it’s immediate restoration. The signatories include prominent scientists from IITs, IISER, ICAR, TIFR, CSIR and other Central and Universities. Knowledge and understanding of evolutionary biology is important not just for biology, but key to understanding tapestry of life and place of man in the nature surrounding him or her. Evolutionary Biology will help to analyze array of problems we face in daily life in society from human diseases to epidemiology, ecology, environment to drug discovery.
We though do not realize in our busy daily life, Natural selection played a major role in analyzing the genome of recent COVID viral pathogen, it’s gradual evolution and mutation to various strain sub types. These scientific investigations have helped epidemiology in containing further spread of the pandemic. Viral genome evolutionary studies greatly helped to understand the various disease causing genes & enzymes in pathogen that eventually led to discovery of different vaccines that saved millions of human lives.
Our planet is populated with diversity (different species) of animals, plants, microbes. Understanding Biodiversity and existing relationships between different species only helped scientists to hybridize related plants and come out with high yielding, better adopted crops, that helped to increased food production and saved our planet from hunger. Darwin’s theory of Origin of species helped us to understand how different plants and animals gradually transformation to other species for better survival when challenged with threats in the environment. Biology taught us that all living creatures share a common structure of DNA or RNA, metabolism, physiology, inheritance of common genetic code ( programme of life). Genetics , is an area of biology that flourished after Darwin’s epoch making theory of evolution and helped to draw similarities and interrelationships among different animals using Tree of life. Frederic Engels, in an essay on ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” analyzes evolution of man to present civilized stage and lauds role played by human labour in thie process of evolution.
Contrary to the universal understanding of Evolution, Mr. . satyapal, former BJP Union minstefor Human Resources development ( January, 2018) not only challenges Darwin’s theory of evolution, but said, “nobody saw apes turning into man”.Further, said Darwin’s theory (of the evolution of humans) is scientifically wrong. It needs to change in school and college curriculum.” So, today’s exclusion of Darwin’s Evolutionary theory, Euclidian geometry and replacing them with fictious “Dashavatars”, Vedic mathematics From Hindu mythology) and endorsement of theory of Creativity is no surprise in this background. RSS and present regime have been targeting science, rational thinking so as to subvert ‘Critical thinking” and Questioning” from student minds. This is part of a larger design to drag modern India in to dark ages of ignorance, Manusmriti and castism.
That’s why nearly 1800 prominent scientists, educators from IITs, IISER, ICAR, TIFR, CSIR and other Central and Universities appealed against exclusion of Evolution from Curriculum and demanded it’s immediate restoration. The signatories include prominent scientists from. People should join the scientists in demanding the NCERT and Union Ministry of Human Resource Development to immediately restore the excludd content from school syllabus.
Dr. Soma Marla, Principal Scientist & Head, Genomics, Retd., ICAR, New Delhi
