The Committee for Resisting Saffronisation of Textbooks (CRST) has expressed concern about the ‘right wing ideology’ being circulated in textbooks prepared by the present “secular” government.
Issuing a statement on behalf of the 14-member committee, convener Suresh Bhat Bakrabail said that this was “causing immeasurable damage to secular spirit in education”. Mr. Bakrabail released a copy of the committee’s report on the textbooks for classes 7 and 10 which states that the instances of saffronisation violated the National Curriculum Framework 2005 and reflected the government’s reluctance to bring macro changes in textbooks. According to the report, the chapter on folk history in the Social Science textbook for class 10 this year blames the westerners for following the linear model of time while highlighting the Indian traditional method of Kalachakra.
The report quotes from the textbook: “History is narrated as tretayuga, dwaparayuga etc. In such circumstances, many new incidents, events or avatars may merge.” The report explains that the non-Vedic concept of time has been ignored.
The report says that the History and Civics textbook for class 7 mentions ‘crusades’, ‘immoral behaviour of Catholic Church’, ‘invasions of Muslims’ repeatedly, the purpose of which could be none other than to permeate negative stereotypes.
Incidents left out The report objects to the sensitive information in the textbooks. The chapter on ‘First War of Indian Independence’ speaks about how missionaries converted Indians and how the British used to call Indians ‘black people’ and ‘pigs’ and how European hotels denied entry to ‘Indians and dogs’.
“What is the need to provide such sensitive details to class 7 students?” the report asks. While glorifying oppression by Europeans, the texts have concealed the oppression of Dalits by the ‘upper caste’. The textbook referred to six major terrorist attacks but makes no reference of ‘saffron terrorism’ such as the Samjhauta Express blast in February 2007.
The failure to explain non-inclusion of non-vegetarian food, the link between caste system and untouchability, and the failure of Indian writers in chronicling the history of the country, are also referred to in the report. The committee consists of retired teacher C.H. Krishna Shastri Balila, Nigel Pereira, former president of Catholic Sabha, Mangalore, and Francis D’Souza, research associate in Kuvempu University.
