Rajasthan’s Congress government rewrites school textbooks, removes ‘veer’ from Savarkar’s name 

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.

New Delhi: The Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in Rajasthan has made several changes to school textbooks for students following the state board in relation to historical events and personalities. This comes within six months of the party being in power. The changes related to decisions taken by the BJP-led NDA government in its first term were also made.

The changes were made following the recommendations made by the textbook review committee, set up on February 13, 2019, to study whether the earlier changes to school textbooks were made to fulfil political interests and distort history.

For instance, earlier in the old Class XI History book, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was prefixed with “veer” (brave) in the chapter on freedom movement. He was extensively discussed as a contributor in India’s Independence movement. In the new book, however, the “veer” prefix in his name has been removed and his mention is limited to the occurrences during the freedom movement.

Meanwhile, in the Class XII’s new Political Science book, the word “jihad” is omitted from the chapter “India’s relations with its neighbours”.

Now, the freshly-printed books for the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education have been distributed in the market by the Rajasthan State Textbook Board.

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