'NCERT should delete reference to Jats'

Instructions will be sent to schools to leave out the objectionable parts till the new books comes, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Oct 23, 2006, 22:56:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The HRD ministry on Monday decided to instruct the National Council for Education, Research and Training (NCERT) to delete objectionable reference to Jats and other communities from its textbooks.

HRD minister Arjun Singh had on Sunday assured a delegation of Jats led by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda that the objectionable remarks against the Jat community in NCERT books would be deleted soon.

Acting the assurance, Singh on Monday evening issued orders for deleting the objectionable references. In the history textbooks, Jat warriors were described as looters and there were some other derogatory remarks against Sikh leaders and Jain community in the textbooks.

HRD ministry officials said that the objectionable references will be deleted or revised with immediate effect. The students will get the revised version of the textbooks soon.

In the meantime, the schools will be instructed to avoid teaching the controversial references to the students till the revised books are made available by NCERT. The Central Board of Secondary Education has been advised accordingly.

While thanking the HRD minister for quick action, Hooda said that necessary guidelines should be issued to the concerned departments to ensure that there is no publication of the references in any textbooks.

In case there were similar objectionable remarks against any other community, these too would be deleted from the books, he said in a statement issued Monday. Hooda had called on Singh to apprise him about resentment in the Jat community against publication of derogatory remarks and urged him to get them expunged from the NCERT books.

Arjun Singh also assured the delegation that care would be taken in future that no such objectionable remarks are printed against any community or section of society in the textbooks, the statement said.

Meanwhile, the ministry has given a month’s extension to Yash Pal committee to submit its report on Hindi textbooks.

Number of MPs in the monsoon session of Parliament had objected to the language used in the NCERT Hindi textbooks.

In first week of September, Singh had constituted a committee under Yash Pal to examine the books and had asked them to submit its recommendations in a month’s time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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