By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
Thiruvanathapuram (Kerala): The Kerala government has revised the controversial Social Sciences textbook of Std. VII. All the changes made in the textbooks have been decided by the Curriculum Committee of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) on the recommendations in the interim report of the K. N. Panikkar Committee.
Among the prominent changes in effect in the revised version of the textbook is the title of the controversial section of the Second Chapter which has been changed from Mathamillatha Jivan (Jivan Without Religion) to Vishwasa Sathantriyam (Freedom of Belief).
Even the names of the characters of this section are changed. The names Jivan, Lakshmikutty and Anwar Rasheed – the boy who comes to take admission, his mother and his father respectively – have given way to the ‘boy’ and ‘parents’.
The last part of Nehru’s Will, which allegedly glorified atheism, has been replaced with a portion of his speech on secularism in 1961.
TwoCircles.net talked to Fazal Ghafoor who is the president of Muslim Education Society (MES), a member of the Muslim Co-ordination Committee (MCM) and also a member of the High Power Committee on the Revision of the Textbooks.
Dr. Ghafoor pointed out that almost all the constituents of the MCM like MES, the Wahabi group, Jamaat-e-Islami, and others are satisfied with the revision brought in the textbook and hence withdrew from the agitation.
Muslim Coordination Committee (MCM) is a group of Muslim organizations which was formed in the wake of the introduction of the controversial textbook of Social Sciences of Std. VII which the, Committee alleged, encouraged and glorified a non-religious community.
Only the Muslim League and its affiliates are still trying to do politics on this issue because it is part of the opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).
At the very outset Dr. Ghafoor pointed out that although “we are satisfied with the changes brought by the government but the way the sensitive issue of religion and caste was dealt with in the textbook showed its “wrong approach towards secularism”.
He said that first of all “we felt that there is no need to deal with the sensitive issues like religion so simplistically and then teach these to the children of Std. VII who are usually not so “intellectual” in their approach.”
Although the state may say that it protects one’s right to convert but the problem arises when it says that it encourages people to convert into other faiths, but no parent would like her children to convert. That is why there was so much protest.
That is why he said that “in our (MCM) representations to the government we made it very clear that the content of the controversial textbook was not anti-Islamic as such but anti-social.”