Author:
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date:
URL: Newindpress.com
The State Government had taken measures
to counteract saffronisation of history and social sciences textbooks in
schools long before Congress President Sonia Gandhi's recent fiat to the
14 Congress chief ministers in the country to carry out such an exercise.
Seen by political analysts as a
step by Sonia to woo minority votes, the directive comes on the eve of
elections due in some of those states.
In Karnataka, the polls are due
in only October 2004, which is more than a year away. But the S M Krishna
Government took action even before the Shimla brainstorming session of
the party where saffronisation of education was one of the main issues
discussed.
The suave and articulate Prof. B
K Chandrashekhar, Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, told this
website's newspaper, "When we received representations from about 20 minority
institutions, we set up an expert committee with Bangalore University History
Professor, S Chandrashekhar, well-known educationists T K Jayalakshmi,
Dr. Mumtaz Ali Khan, Prof. Aveline D'Souza, and C G Krishnaswamy _ who
is Professor of Economics and Director of Gandhian Studies at Bangalore
University _ as members."
The committee went into the state
syllabus textbooks and deleted portions which it found objectionable. Some
other minor modifications were also done to make the lessons acceptable
to everyone. For example, when a sentence said that the Vedas were the
sacred books of India, it was changed to read that they were the sacred
books of the Hindus. Prof. S Chandrashekhar, who headed the committee,
told this website's newspaper that it was asked to look into the representations
and complaints by various individuals and organisations that distortions
had crept into the textbooks.
"We have only substituted certain
words and effected some modifications, besides emphasising the need for
a thorough revision of all textbooks, especially the social sciences textbook,"
Chandrashekar said. For example:
* Some textbooks referred to the
Muslims as "Turkas" as some of them hail from Turkey. Since the word Turkas
has acquired an offensive connotation in usage, it was deleted.
* Sanskrit was described as the
link language of ancient India. As this is only a belief and not a proven
fact, it was deleted from the textbooks.
* Similarly, the description of
the cow as a sacred animal was also omitted. "More people seem to worship
snakes than cows," a member of the expert panel pointed out.
* A reference in one book to Islam
driving Buddhism out of India was also deleted. One book mentioned that
Nalanda University was burnt by the Turkas and that the university library
was burning for months. These references were deleted as there was no historical
evidence for them.
