Dinanath Batra, the founder of Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, Hindu right-wing educational activist organisation, has put forth a number of suggestions to National Council Education Research and Training (NCERT) who had urged the public to put in suggestions on reviewing school textbooks for all classes. Doing away with English, Urdu and Arabic words, Mirza Ghalib’s couplets and references made to the Mughal emperors were some of the many things that the organisation has suggested.
The group has also recommended that the apology made by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the 1984 riots and a line in the letter “nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002” be removed. He also wants Rabindranath Tagore’s thoughts deleted from the school textbooks. Apart from this, the education wing has also attached the pages from several other textbooks and underlined the lines they wanted to be deleted.
Atul Kothari, general secretary of the Nyas said that the some of the things mentioned in the textbook are “objectionable” and “biased” adding that some of the things are also an insult to a certain community.
“Several things (in these books) are baseless, biased. There is an attempt to insult members of a community. There is also an appeasement… how can you inspire children by teaching them about riots? The history of valour, of great personalities like Shivaji, Maharana Pratap, Vivekananda and Subhas Chandra Bose find no place,” Kothari told a leading daily.
Elaborating further on the reasons why such recommendations were made, Kothari said that a Class 10 English textbook “places nationalism against other ideals” as “an attempt has been made to show a rift between nationality and humanity by citing thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore”.
The group also wants NCERT to remove a paragraph that says that the Ram temple movement was “linked with the growth of BJP and politics of Hindutva”.
–Source: Indian Express
