There is no mention anymore of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India’s first education minister, in the revised political science textbook for Class 11 published by the National Council for Educational Research and Training, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.
A paragraph stating that Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to India on the condition that it would remain autonomous has also been deleted, according to the newspaper.
The omissions are the latest ones to have come to light in the controversy over a slew of changes made in NCERT textbooks, which are part of the syllabus in most government-run and Central Board of Secondary Education schools.
The decision to purge the paragraphs on Azad and Kashmir had not been mentioned when the NCERT released a “list of rationalised content” in June, The Hindu reported.
Last week, it was reported that paragraphs on attempts by Hindu extremists to assassinate Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the ban imposed on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh after his killing have been dropped in a similar manner.
The omissions that the NCERT had notified last year were about content related to the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Mughal rule in India and the nationwide Emergency imposed in 1975. No NCERT textbook now has any reference to the Gujarat riots.
Azad dropped from Class 11 book
The paragraph about Azad that has been dropped featured in the first chapter of the Class 11 political science textbook titled “Constitution – Why and How?”
In the earlier editions of the textbook, the paragraph read: “The Constituent Assembly had eight major Committees on different subjects. Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad or Ambedkar chaired these Committees.”
The new version of the textbook has revised the second line of the paragraph as: “Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or BR Ambedkar chaired these Committees”, The Hindu reported.
In another chapter “The Philosophy of the Constitution”, in the same textbook, a reference to the fact that Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to India on condition of autonomy has been done away with.
The paragraph that has been omitted read: “For example, the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to the Indian union was based on a commitment to safeguard its autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government had scrapped statehood and special status under Article 370 for Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 2019. The erstwhile state was split into two Union Territories.
The Centre had also repealed Article 35A, which ensured special rights and privileges to people defined as “permanent residents” of Jammu and Kashmir. Since then, the region has been under central rule.
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