TEXTBOOKS ARE GOING HAYWIRE: ROMILA THAPAR 

MUMBAI: As Haryana is set to become the second state after Gujarat to introduce books on moral education by RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra, historian Romila Thapar on Monday described the trend as a “major problem” and spoke of “the need to shout and scream though not in a chaotic fashion”. 

 

“Textbooks are going haywire. The problem is the civil society is being very lazy,” said Thapar, who delivered a public lecture at KC College, Churchgate.

Recounting an episode in 2004 when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance came to power, Thapar said many including her wrote to the Ministry of Human Resources (MHRD) and in the media that institutions, councils and academies must be made autonomous and out of government control. 

 

“But no one paid notice. We weren’t aware of the dangers of government control like we are now,” said Thapar. “We need to form committees in every major city and make a list of what inappropriate in the textbooks, and send the list to the MHRD and the media. We need to make noise that textbooks used today are inappropriate and must not be used.” 

 

In the midst of tight police security, Thapar delivered a public lecture ‘Indian Society and the Secular’ in the memory of Dr Asghar Ali Engineer organised by the Centre for Society and Secularism. 

 

“Uniform civil code does not mean doing away with the personal laws of any single religious code. It means reconsidering jointly the civil laws of all religious codes and caste codes and arriving at a common secular civil code,” said Thapar.

Source | Hindustan Times | 27 October 2015