Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of attempting to ‘erase’ the name of India’s first Education Minister and Bharat Ratna, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, from history because he was a Muslim.
The NCP spokesperson, Clyde Crasto, said that the BJP-led government at the Centre is using the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) to wipe out Maulana Azad’s identity and his glorious contributions from India’s education system. Citing instances, he said a para in the first chapter of the old Class XI NCERT political science textbook said: “The Constituent Assembly had eight major Committees on different subjects. Usually, Jawahar-lal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad or Ambedkar chaired these Committees.”
“However, in the new version of the same text-book by NCERT, the name of Maulana Azad has been omitted and the same sentence now reads: ‘Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or B.R. Ambedkar chaired these committees’. This is truly unfortunate,” Crasto said.
Suspecting a systematic conspiracy to delete Maulana Azad from history, the NCP leader pointed out how last year the Minority Affairs Ministry had abruptly discontinued the ‘Maulana Azad Fellow-ship’, which was started in 2009 (by the former UPA government) to provide financial help to students from six notified minorities for a period of five years.—KMS
