Let us consider this. The sacrifices of Guru Arjun Dev, Guru Teg Bahadur, Guru Govind Singh and Banda Bahadur are insignificant. The panch pyare, Khalsa panth and Baisakhi are worthless. The greatest ruler, Maharaja Ranjit Singh is not worth mentioning. Guru Teg Bahadur was a robber and the ?glorious? Aurangzeb was justified in having him killed. Harmandir Sahib'sonly specialty is that it was constructed on the land given by Akbar. Khalsa panth was some kind of militancy. Jainism is not a serious religion and there were no 23 tirthankaras before Lord Mahavira. No, the history has not changed itself. These are the few highlights of the school textbooks developed by the State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) and which the Delhi government has ordered for government schools of Delhi.
One wonders how India'sfirst Sikh Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh closed his eyes to it. Describing the books as ?good looking? these books were released by the Union HRD Minister, Arjun Singh, Delhi'sChief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, on May 27. There is also a proposal to replace these ?books? with NCERT books being taught in Central Government-run Central schools.
Showing its total commit-ment to Congress president, Smt. Sonia Gandhi, the Congress government of Delhi has also sought the opinion of VII-class students to find out whether the person of foreign origin who marries an Indian should be given Indian citizenship or not? The question has been asked in the civics book of Class VII, Hamara Rajya Hamara Samaj, page 18. The book also claims that ?the Indians did not have Indian citizenship before 1947?. The Congress had stalled the proceedings of the Parliament on the issue of not mentioning the murder of Gandhiji in the new books of NCERT. But in the new book entitled Bharat ka Itihas, Volume III, prepared for Class VIII, the Congress government totally ?forgot? to even mention the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi or Indira Gandhi. The book even fails to mention V.P. Singh, P.V. Narasimha Rao, I.K. Gujral and Chandrashekhar as Prime Ministers and the name of H.D. Devegowda has been printed as ?Devigauda? and Morarji Desai as ?Murarji Desai?.
Rajiv Gandhi has been mentioned as Prime Minister in 1991 when P.V. Narasimha Rao was the PM. The book also mentions Rakesh Sharma'sjourney to space but is completely silent on the dates of India'snuclear tests.
The books are full of errors. The history book for Class VIII, claims that Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru was Prime Minister from ?1946-64? whereas that fact is that he became PM in 1947. Similarly, Rajiv Gandhi has been mentioned as Prime Minister in 1991 when P.V. Narasimha Rao was the PM. The book also mentions Rakesh Sharma'sjourney to space but is completely silent on the dates of India'snuclear tests.
The Jats have been identified as rebels against the Mughal rulers and when mentioning Rajput rulers there is no mention of Maharana Pratap but the King of Amer, Jai Singh, who supported the Mughals, has been mentioned as the greatest ruler. The text-book is amazingly silent on the glorious achievements of the people of ancient India like Aryabhatta, Bhaskara, Shusruta, Vishnugupta in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathe-matics, medicine, surgery, chemistry and other fields of science. Perhaps they don'twant the future generations to take pride in their own heritage.
The new textbooks of NCERT, published since 2002-03, were based on the highly acclaimed National Curriculum Framework of School Education (NCFSE), which has been upheld by the Supreme Court of India as a truly democratic, secular document. But to the Congress and communists, this is an anathema.
The point-by-point analysis of the text-books by historians reveals that the Dikshit-Singh duo is trying to impose a totally biased, anti-national and distorted perspective of India'shistory on growing children. The textbooks are full of factual errors and are solely aimed at destroying India'sancient glory, falsification of facts, undermining of important events and over-emphasis on trivia. It characterizes that the history texts of West Bengal and Kerala are sought to be introduced in Delhi and the nation as a whole.
Dr Harsh Vardhan, Delhi BJP president, has warned the unholy alliance of Congress-communist. to avoid denigration of Mother India. ?Our children are very sacred to us. We will start a movement to prevent the communists from brainwashing impressionable minds with a twisted version of their country'shistory,? he said. ?It must not be forgotten that Marxist historians had insulted the Sikhs in the old NCERT book also.? He recalled in this context what the Marxist pseudo-historian, Satish Chandra, had written in Class XI textbook, Medieval India: ??In 1675, Guru Teg Bahadur was arrested with five of his followers, brought to Delhi and executed? the Guru, in association with one Hafiz Adam, had resorted to plunder and rapine, laying waste the whole province of the Punjab.?
The BJP has appealed to all nationalist-minded people and groups to rise in unison to protest against the introduction of SCERT textbooks in Delhi'sgovernment schools. The party has also announced its decision to resort to agitation to protect the true history of India. ?Vote-bank history? will be resisted by the people in every nook and corner of the country. ?We will use every form of protest to ensure the continuance of the NCERT textbooks which, in the opinion of all Indians, give the right projection of India'shistory,? Dr Harsh Vardhan added. He also invited the Congress-communist alliance to defend the SCERT books, if they can.
(FOC)
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