Opposition parties have condemned the deletion of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s name from a revised political science textbook published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
As The Hindu had reported on April 13, the reference to Maulana Azad, in the context of committee heads in the Constituent Assembly, had been dropped from a Class 11 NCERT textbook titled Indian Constitution at Work.
“Maulana Azad was India’s first Education Minister and it is unfortunate that the BJP-led central government is erasing his name from our education system,” said Clyde Crasto, national spokesperson of the Nationalist Congress Party. Noting that the NCERT is a part of the government of India and the government at the Centre is currently led by the BJP, Mr. Crasto said, “The NCERT must clarify and answer the citizens of India why they have deleted the name of Maulana Azad in the new textbook when it was clearly mentioned in the old Class 11 NCERT political science textbook.” He added that the Minority Affairs Ministry had last year discontinued the Maulana Azad Fellowship, which was started in 2009 and provided financial help to students from six notified minorities for a period of five years..
Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury tweeted, “Outrageous to delete any reference to Maulana Azad from school textbooks. Such vengeful rewriting of history to create a false narrative...destroys the foundations of modern India inevitably negating all civilisational advances.” He added, “Maulana Azad was a pre-eminent freedom fighter... Served as India’s first education minister laying foundations that produced some of the world’s finest minds.”
