Delete Tagore, Urdu words, sentence on Gujarat riots: RSS ideologue Dina Nath Batra to NCERT

RSS ideologue Dina Nath Batra wants the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to remove Tagore, Urdu words and a sentence on Gujarat riots, among other things from school textbooks.

The RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, headed by Dina Nath Batra, made the recommendation to NCERT which had sought suggestions from the public on reviewing school textbooks, reported Indian Express.

Dina Nath Batra, a former head of the RSS education wing Vidya Bharati, in a five-page letter to NCERT also attached pages from several textbooks, with the portions that it wants removed marked and underlined.

Remove English, Urdu and Arabic words, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore, an apology tendered by former prime minister Manmohan Singh over the 1984 riots, and a sentence that “nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002,” the recommendations state.

“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?," Atul Kothari, secretary of the Nyas and a veteran RSS Pracharak, told the daily.

The report also said that the letter expressed objection to the fact that the Class XI political science textbook mentions the 'massive majority of Congress in 1984' but 'does not present the 1977 election details.'