MADURAI
The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday disposed of a petition which sought a direction to reintroduce the life history of Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar in the Tamil textbook of school syllabus after the State, in its counter, said a chapter would be reintroduced from 2019-20.
A Division Bench of Justices K.K. Sasidharan and P.D. Audikesavalu took cognisance of the report filed by the Chief Educational Officer of Madurai stating that following syllabus revision the biography of Muthuramalinga Thevar would be introduced for Class VII students under the State Board syllabus. Earlier, there was a prose lesson on Thevar for Class VI students, the counter said.
The court was hearing the plea of M. Sangili of Madurai, a member of the All India Forward Bloc, who sought a direction to reintroduce the life history of Thevar in the Tamil textbook for Class VI students.
He said Muthuramalinga Thevar had played an important role in the freedom struggle and dedicated his life to people’s welfare. In honouring the leader’s memory, a chapter on his life history was introduced in Class VI textbook in 1978-79, he added.
However, the chapter was removed in 2018-19, the petitioner said. He claimed that a lesson on the leader was important as students essentially had to learn about his contributions to society.
