New Delhi: Union human resource development minister Prakash Javedekar on Tuesday clarified that the government had no plan to remove Rabindranath Tagore from school textbooks.
Refuting reports appearing in a section of the media during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, the HRD minister said that the government respected Tagore and all others who had contributed to the freedom and literature of the country.
“We hail everybody and nothing will be removed,” he said, responding to the issue raised by Derek O’Brien (TMC).
Seeking clarification on the issue, Mr O’Brien said the HRD ministry had called for suggestions and one of the suggestions from RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas was to remove Tagore’s works and references from the syllabus.
The HRD minister said that for NCERT books, teachers and others had been asked to give suggestions to correct or remove “factual errors” from textbooks. As many as 7,000 suggestions had been received, Mr Javadekar said.
“We will not do anything which will create some problem,” he said.
Naresh Agarwal (SP) said Nyas had also suggested the removal of Urdu words and Mirza Ghalib from textbooks. After the minister’s statement, Mr O’Brien walked up to Mr Javedekar to present to him three books on Tagore for his reading.
