NCERT now removes Maulana Azad's reference from Class 11 textbook

Mumbai: NCERT, in its deleting history spur, has now removed the reference to Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad's name from a Class XI political science text. The latest in the list of deletions, Azad was not only a freedom fighter but was the first education minister in Independent India and has contributed to education in India by laying the foundation for the Indian Institute of Technology.

There are also reports that authors of the revised Class 11 political science textbook have also deleted references related to Jammu and Kashmir's conditional accession with the Union of India I947. J&K acceded to India on the basis of a promise that the state would remain autonomous.

"…the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to the Indian Union was based on a commitment to safeguarding its autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution," the old text reads.

In Azad's case, a paragraph 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, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad or Ambedkar chaired these Committees."

But the new textbook has omitted Maulana Azad's name, and the same sentence reads: 'Usually, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel or B.R. Ambedkar chaired these committees.

Protests on the fresh topic have joined the ongoing clamour against the BJP's history deletion game, intervening in the school curriculum, which is seen as an attempt to rework India's history suiting to a certain ideology. This includes adding pseudo-history through social media as well, alleging a section of historians, including Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alleged that BJP deleted Bharat Ratna, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad because he is a Muslim.

Alleging a systematic conspiracy and pointing out how last year the Minority Affairs Ministry had abruptly discontinued the 'Maulana Azad Fellowship', NCP justified its statement.

The fellowship 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.

NCP demanded that NCERT must clarify why Azad's name was deleted from fresh editions of their school textbooks.