All India Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday said the removal of all references to the 2002 Gujarat riots from NCERT books will “make our kids intellectually poorer and susceptible to hate.” Owaisi said that teaching the youth about the Gujarat riots would have made them “learn from the mistakes of their elders.”
The removal of texts from new class 12 NCERT textbooks, including Mahatma Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity irking the extremists and the ban on the RSS for some time, has sparked a political row.
“Truth is that Godse belonged to Sangh & was a close “friend” of Savarkar. RSS was banned & Savarkar was implicated in Gandhi’s murder. The day isn’t far when books will justify Godse & say ‘we should hear both sides’,” Owaisi said in a tweet. “Who knows, ‘Why I Killed Gandhi’ may even become a lesson in moral science.”
In June last year, the NCERT rationalized the syllabi of Classes 6 to 12 to reduce the burden on students. Among the changes made was the removal of all references to the 2002 Gujarat riots, Cold War, and Mughal courts, industrial revolution. Some Dalit writers were also dropped from a Class 7 textbook.
“Teaching youth about Gujarat 2002 pogrom was important so that they learn from the mistakes of their elders. Removing it from syllabus will make our kids intellectually poorer & susceptible to hate,” Owaisi added.
In the Class 12 History textbook titled “Themes in Indian History-3”, a paragraph has been revised in the chapter “Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement.”
The revised paragraph reads, “At his daily prayer meeting on the evening of 30 January, Gandhiji was shot dead by a young man. The assassin, who surrendered afterwards, was Nathuram Godse.”
Earlier, it read: “Gandhiji was shot dead by a young man. The assassin, who surrendered afterwards, was a Brahmin from Pune named Nathuram Godse, the editor of an extremist Hindu newspaper who had denounced Gandhiji as an appeaser of Muslims.”
In the new Class 12 political science textbook, a reference to how Gandhi’s “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate Gandhiji” has been deleted. That Gandhi was “particularly disliked by those who wanted Hindus to take revenge or who wanted India to become a country for the Hindus, just as Pakistan was for Muslims” has also been deleted.
The Indian Express was the first to report the deletions from the revised textbooks published for the academic year 2023-24.
Source- Hindustan Times.
