Bhopal: While the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) had raised a few eyebrows recently for incorporating certain changes in the textbooks, its latest amendment has kicked off another row. This time the council terms BJP a party with ‘Hindutva agenda’.
A section in the revised textbook for class XII, Swatantra Bharat mein Rajneeti (Politics in Independent India), claims that Bharatiya Janata Party began propagating the Hindutva agenda in 1980 after the Jan Sangh disintegrated and was repackaged as the BJP.
The book also mentions the Godhra riots and subsequent communal flare up in Gujarat. Interestingly, the NCERT had replaced the term ‘anti-Muslim riots’ to just ‘Gujarat riots’ in the Class XII political science textbooks in March this year.
Changes had been incorporated in the last chapter of the textbook titled ‘Recent Developments in Indian Politics’ to tweak the chapter name. However, the 1984 riots were described as anti-Sikh, triggering criticism from the Opposition.
Overturning the previous amendment, a section of the NCERT textbook goes on to claim that then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had preached ‘Rajdharma’ to the state government following the Godhara riots.
The National Human Rights Commission, too, had flayed the Gujarat government over the clashes, the book states.
Claiming that most of the political parties were not in support of the Hindutva agenda, the book says that BJP, thus, converted it into their election issue.
The book further states that Congress took a lead in almost every election following Independence.
“The Grand Old Party dominated the Indian politics for a long time and factionalism of the party proved to be a strength rather than being a weakness,” the book mentions.
Congress took a lead in almost every election following Independence, the book claimed.
Reacting to the content of the book, School Education Minister Deepak Joshi told News18, “Imparting such details to the children is not appropriate and we would write to the Centre to change these inclusions. It’s done by the previous governments. It’s wrong to dub BJP as Hindutva party and we won’t include this book into Madhya Pradesh Board curriculum.”
The council had earlier made changes to introduce a fresh set of nationalist icons in the textbook. Many of the mentioned leaders, BJP and right organisations claimed, were “deliberately sidelined in the country’s collective memory”.
Spiritual leaders Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda, freedom fighters Lala Lajpat Rai and Vallabhbhai Patel, Peshwa and Maratha general Bajirao Ballal, Jat king Suraj Mal, Rajput icon Maharana Pratap and Chhatrapati Shivaji, founder of the Maratha empire, were either introduced or were given more space in the new History textbooks.
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