The new textbooks also don’t mention Gandhi’s assassination by Nathuram Godse.
Jawaharlal Nehru. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Students of Class VIII in Rajasthan will no longer read about the first prime minister of India in their social science textbooks.
According to a report in The Indian Express, all references to Jawaharlal Nehru have been dropped from the textbooks, thanks to “curriculum restructuring” efforts by the State Institute of Education Research and Training (SIERT), Udaipur.
The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse also finds no mention in the new textbooks.
References to Nehru have been removed from two chapters in the revised textbook, which will be introduced from the beginning of this academic year for schools affiliated to the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education.
Although the revised textbooks cannot yet be bought, a copy has been uploaded on the website of the Rajasthan State Textbook Board, the publisher.
School Education Minister for the state, Vasudev Devnani told The Sunday Express: “The government and I have nothing to do with it. I am yet to see the new textbooks. The syllabus is created by an autonomous body and the government does not interfere in it at all.”
However, as the Indian Express report states, Devnani has recently claimed that the state government was re-designing textbooks to ensure that “no Kanhaiya Kumar is born in the state.”
Rameshwar Dudi, Leader of Opposition in Rajasthan Assembly, told PTI that the BJP-led government in Rajasthan “…is carrying out its agenda and touching a new low by omitting references to the freedom fighter and the first prime minister of India.”
(with inputs from PTI)