By Bisheshwar Mishra /New Delhi
The Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar today set to rest the controversy about Rabindranath Tagore and Urdu by clarifying that government had no plan to remove the noted poet’s name from the NCERT books and had no intention to disturb status of Urdu language as had been charged by Trinamul Congress MP Derek O’Brien and some others.
Responding to the issue raised by O’Brien during the Zero Hour, the Minister said 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. “With regard to NCERT books, teachers and others have been asked to give suggestions to correct or remove “any factual errors” in textbooks.
At this point Samajwadi Party MP, Naresh Agarwal said the RSS affiliated Shiksa Sanskriti Utthan Nyas had also suggested the removal of Urdu words and Mirza Ghalib from the NCERT textbooks. Minister Javadekar however insisted,”We will not do anything which will create some problem.”
The Trinamul MP neverthless insisted that the HRD ministry had called for suggestions and one of the suggestions from RSS-affiliated Nyas was to remove Tagore’s works and references from the syllabus.
“Rabindranath Tagore does not need a certificate from anybody,” he said and asked the minister to disassociate from the Nyas. The deputy chairman P J Kurean intervened saying that Derek had raised the issue yesterday also. To this the Trinamul MP pointed out that the minister was not present in the House yesterday hence he was raising it again.
During the zero hour CPI MP D Raja also raised the issue of thousands of college and university teachers staging a demonstration in the national capital to protest the government “apathy” regarding the education sector. “UGC and AICTE are under a cloud of uncertainty and there are fears that these institutions are being dismantled and replaced,” he said. There is an attempt to “bureaucratise, centralise and commercialise education”. He demanded an increase in the budget allocation to education to 10-15 per cent of the GDP.
Mr Javedkar said, “We are not dismantling anything. We are reforming the regulator and giving more autonomy to the institutions,” and in this endeavour his ministry was engaged with constant consultation with teachers and academics.