Trouble over content in textbooks continues in State

So much so that leader of opposition MK Stalin had tweeted, “How to tolerate this atrocity?” which prompted State School Education Minister KA Sengottaiyan to clarify that the wrong information would be removed.

Curiously, this is not the first-time textbooks have landed policy makers in trouble in the State. Barely a month ago, the textbooks were in news after the cover of class XII Tamil book had a saffron turban sporting Subramanya Bharathi. The government had ‘defended’ the alleged saffronisation by arguing that the intention was to use the colour of the national flag on the textbook cover. The same month another textbook faux pas was spotted. This time, a Class V textbook had Rajinikanth being projected as an embodiment of hard work. The textbook bearing the image of the actor had referred to his rise from “bus conductor to superstar” to preach the virtues of hard work.

However, Tamil nationalists like Naam Tamizhar Katchi leader Seeman took exception to the portrayal and wondered why not Kamal Haasan and why only Rajini? Over a couple of years ago, even CBSE textbooks had become a topic of debate after it portrayed a community in bad light by referring to their long-forgotten occupation.

Earlier in the previous 2011-16 AIADMK tenure, thousands of schoolteachers were engaged in the cumbersome process of covering a few pages of the Samacheer Kalvi textbooks, which the then ruling dispensation had not found scholarly for students’ consumption. The blacked-out portions include reference to the beginning of the Tamil month, which was Thai in the DMK regime, but changed to Chithirai in the subsequent AIADMK regime.

Even references to the Anna Centennary library and images of ‘Sun’ were censored in the newly printed textbooks, understandably, to the convenience of the rulers then, forcing a strong political backlash from the DMK and some critics who wondered how would the tutors teach Solar and Lunar eclipse without the image of sun. It was around the same time, NCERT textbooks also whipped up a storm for allegedly projecting students in bad light vis-à-vis the anti-Hindi agitation.