The Hindu: Jaipur: Tuesday, May 17,
2016.
After the
removal of Jawaharlal Nehru's name from the school textbooks in Rajasthan, the
Bharatiya Janata Party regime has deleted a chapter on the Right to Information
(RTI) movement from the class VIII social science textbook. The move has led to
protests from shocked RTI activists and campaigners here.
The issue has
assumed significance since marginalised villagers in remote villagers and a
series of people’s movements in the State played a fundamental role in
fashioning the Act for the entire country. The deleted chapter described the
history of the struggle by farmers and labourers for access to the muster rolls
of drought relief work in Devdungari village of Rajsamand district; the
movement went on to be the impetus to give the country a unique RTI
legislation.
The narrative
on the movement, initiated by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) on the
issue, is part of curricula the world over, including at the Kennedy School of
Governance in Harvard.In a letter Magasaysay award winning social activist
Aruna Roy and her colleagues in MKSS to State Chief Secretary C.S. Rajan has
demanded to know what was objectionable to warrant blacking out of the chapter
from the textbook.
“In the hurry
to re-write history and manipulate textbooks for political reasons, the
government is hurting the sentiments of ordinary people, burying the truth, and
actually attempting to obliterate acknowledgement of a contribution that should
be of pride to the whole State,” stated the letter written by Ms. Roy, Nikhil
Dey and Shankar Singh.
Discuss
changes: activists
The activists
demanded that the changes to the textbook be put on hold and an open dialogue
be conducted to determine if there is any need for amending the books, and if
so, what these amendments should be.
Separately,
the Suchana Evum Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan has filed an RTI application with the
State government’s Education Department seeking information on the amount of
money likely to be spent on changes in the syllabus and reprinting of
textbooks.
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