With just three days left for the meeting to deliberate on whether lessons on Tipu Sultan in school textbooks should be dropped, retained or modified, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has finally roped in subject experts to be a part of this discussion.
The moves come after there was criticism that the committee that would look into these textbooks did not have subject experts. An expert who was part of the social sciences sub-committee that was involved in textbook revision, which was formed when the Congress government was in power, confirmed that he had received an invitation to the deliberation. He said that he and other experts would examine the facts presented by BJP MLA Appachu Ranjan, whose letter to the government to drop lessons on Tipu Sultan from textbooks triggered the controversy.
Sources in the department said that they would also call the experts, who were involved in framing the content of textbooks during the BJP rule. “We want to get opinions of all experts and not be accused of favouring people with a particular political leaning,” said a DPI official.
The controversy was triggered after Mr. Ranjan and other BJP leaders dubbed Tipu Sultan “anti-Hindu”. The Opposition Congress, which had begun Tipu Jayanti celebrations when in power, condemned the move. Many scholars took objection to how decades of history could be erased by doing away with chapters.
Meanwhile, former Minister for Primary and Secondary Education B.K. Chandrashekar has suggested that the government form a group of credible historians representing both views to study them. “The group should have learned historians representing the two polarised positions. The group will then present a simple, comprehensible summary, which should go into the textbook,” he said.
