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Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi
Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentary spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra went on the offensive on Saturday saying it was his party that spearheaded the deletion of 'offending portions' in the National Council for Educational Research and Training history textbooks prescribed for Class VI students.
The issue had snowballed into a major controversy in the Parliament on Friday, with Rajya Sabha MP and Congress party member Arjun Singh describing the deletion as 'Talibanisation' of education.
The NCERT book written by well-known historian Romila Thapar, as also another book written by Rajendra Lal Mitra contended that beef was served to guests during the Rig Vedic age.
Malhotra said the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government had taken grave exception to Thapar's book.
Malhotra contended that these were 'factual errors' being spread by 'Marxist historians', which was why the Union Human Resources Development ministry had recommended the deletion of the 'offending portions'.
Significantly, a former Delhi University professor Ram Sharan Sharma's book on Ancient India has established that the Rig Vedic society was primarily pastoral and the chief possession of the people during those times was cattle.
As pointed out by Malhotra, the BJP has also taken umbrage to Sharma's reference in the book that archaeological evidence does not support the existence of Rama's Ayodhya in 2000 BC and Krishna between 200 BC and 300 AD.
"These are lies being spread by these historians which is extremely unfortunate," Malhotra pointed out and underscored the government's objection to it.
The government has also deleted a paragraph of Arjun Dev and Indira Arjun Dev's book Modern India for Class XI students which mentions that the Jats founded their kingdom at Bharatpur and plundered regions around Delhi and participated in court intrigues.
According to Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP Somnath Chatterjee, the government does not like the reference in history books that Brahmins during the time of Ashoka benefited from the ritual of killing animals.
But since Ashoka outlawed this practice, the Brahmins objected because they wanted their privileges upheld, he said.
Satish Chandra's book Medieval India for Class XI on Sikhs has also had portions deleted because he mentioned that there was no clash between Sikhs and the Mughals till 1675.
Chandra has provided details regarding the conflict between the Sikhs and Mughals after the execution of Guru Teg Bahadur.
He has mentioned that according to Sikh tradition, the execution was because of the intrigues of some members of his family who wanted to usurp succession.
Chandra wrote in his book: "We are told that Aurangzeb was annoyed because the Guru had converted a few Muslims to Sikhism."
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As underscored by senior Congress leaders Arjun Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad and S Jaipal Reddy, the party will continue its fight against the 'saffronisation of education without any let or hindrance'.
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