Remove Savarkar reference from textbook: SFI

CHENNAI: CPI (M) ’s students wing SFI has urged the school education department to remove reference to VD Savarkar from its class eight social science textbook.

“The social science textbook released by the state government in 2019 mentioned Savarkar, who has betrayed the country’s freedom struggle by writing apology letters, as a historian. We strongly condemn it, ” SFI state president K Aravindsami and state secretary K Nirupan Chakkravathi said.

They said that the union government in the name of the National Education Policy trying to rewrite history and saffronise the textbooks. Karnataka school textbook had a passage that Savarkar who was incarcerated in Andaman used to sit on bulbul bird wings and fly out. Using the previous AIADMK government in the state, such saffronisation of the textbooks had happened, ” they said.

Even one year after the DMK government, it is totally unacceptable not removing the reference from the textbook, SFI said, asking whether Savarakar's reference could be retained in the textbook in the social justice government.

“The state government should not allow the reference of Savarkar who had written five apology letters and got a pension of Rs 60 from the British government and spread communal hatred, ” they said, demanding that the state government should immediately review the textbooks of the Tamil Nadu Text Book and Educational Services Corporation and take action to remove the mistakes in the history textbook.