The Students Federation of India (SFI) organised a countrywide protest on Tuesday, April 18, opposing the removal of Mughal history and the contribution of India’s first Education Minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad from the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) syllabus. The Chennai unit of the organisation conducted a protest outside Panagal Maaligai at Saidapet. Slogans accusing the incumbent BJP-led Union government of implementing the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) agenda were raised at the protest.
“While it is a good thing that the NCERT wants to reduce students’ course load, the portion they want to remove is questionable. The agenda hidden behind this move is not welcome. This is a small step they are taking before erasing our history. Students are impressionable, they are going to study this and when they become 25-30 years old they are still going to be under this impression,” Pugazh Selvi, member of SFI’s state secretariat, told TNM.
The protest further highlighted that the inclusion of Savarkar’s contribution and deletion of Gujarat riots under the Modi government from the textbooks indicate the death of secularism in India.
“The Nazis started by burning history books. Where books burn, people burn. But here, they are not burning history books, they are erasing history. Even a small child knows that Gandhiji was assassinated by Godse. RSS is an organisation that was banned thrice. If RSS agenda is propagated through our history textbooks, soon they will read that India was founded in 2014 when BJP came to power,” SFI central committee member Mirdhula said while addressing the gathering.
The new edition of Class 12 NCERT History textbook has removed a few chapters about the Mughal Empire. According to a report by The Hindu, a reference to Jammu and Kashmir's conditional accession is also found to be missing from the Class 11 NCERT History textbook. While the board has justified removal of certain portions as an effort to reduce the study load on students, several historians including Romila Thappar have condemned the topics that have been chosen to be deleted.