Thiruvananthapuram, (Samajweekly) Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday said that the recent proposal by the National Council of Educational Research and Training to replace ‘India’ with ‘Bharat’ in textbooks is unacceptable, but Governor Arif Mohammed Khan said that is not an issue.
Vijayan, in a statement issued here on Thursday night, said as per the decision of NCERT’s Committee on Social Science, the word ‘India’ should be changed to ‘Bharat’ in the textbooks of the academic branch.
“The Constitution refers to our nation as both India and Bharat. The politics behind avoiding India in it is as clear as daylight. The Sangh Parivar fears the inclusive politics represented by the phenomenon called India. The hatred against the word India is part of this,” he said.
While Khan using the same argument said there is nothing wrong in it as the Constitution mentions both India and Bharat and hence it’s fine.
However Vijayan goes on to add that the latest directives should be perceived as an extension of the previous instances of bigoted omissions from educational materials, which encompass the chapters concerning Mughal history and the ban on RSS in the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination.
“The NCERT is continually supporting efforts by the Sangh Parivar to distort history. The Textbook Committee has been eager to promote the fake narratives of history that the Parivar has been peddling,” pointed out Vijayan.
“The Sangh Parivar has always been opposed to the idea of an ‘India’ based on pluralism and coexistence. The NCERT’s new proposal is the latest example,” he added and urged democratic forces in the country to oppose the unconstitutional proposals in the NCERT committee’s position paper.
