Parliamentary panel spars over history textbooks
January 13, 2021
Opposition objects to RSS-backed outfit suggesting changes in textbooks A meeting of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education on Wednesday witnessed heated debate between the Opposition and the ruling coalition members over the agenda of “removing references to unhistorical facts and distortions about national heroes from text books”. The argument started over the presence of members from Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal (BSM), an RSS-affiliated organisation of teachers, in the meeting.
The representatives of the BSM made a presentation before the panel that history should be taught as a continuum and the divisions like ancient, medieval and modern are not sustainable parameters. “They started by supporting inclusiveness and its importance in education. They wanted mythological texts to be considered as history, which we opposed. We questioned their presence and their