Bjp leaders openly comment that hindus should have bulldozers with them and carry

weapons for the bad times that are to come ( can they predict future) but when a sikh
wears a kirpan , which is a part of their religious uniform, he gets arrested for
carrying weapon with him.

E.2.4 Disadvantaged Religious Minorities and their Issues India has many religions,

many of whose constituents have not been able to take advantage of India’s growth

trajectory of the last 20 years. Among them are Muslims, Dalit Christians and

Buddhists. The Swaraj Abhiyan believes that it should act affirmatively to help these

communities, provide them with equal opportunity, and enable them to discover their

true potential. Muslims are not just the largest religious minority of India, they are

also the most discriminated and disadvantaged minority in terms of their educational

status, economic condition and their share in public sector jobs and political

representation. Therefore, there is a need for a comprehensive policy to redress

theirdisadvantage, which must go beyond provision of security from communal

violence and symbolic attention to identity issues. This must consist of:

i. Improved infrastructure and provisions of public and commercial services in areas

of Muslim concentration to bring it at par with the rest.

ii. Allow inclusion of Dalit Muslims within SC and ensure inclusion of backward

Muslim biradaris, an overwhelming majority of Muslims, within the list of OBCs.

iii. Provisions to ensure non-discrimination against M

uslimstudents in school

ad m issio n an d stu d en t aid p ro g ram s in h ig h er ed u catio n ; d eg rees o ffered b y M ad arsa

B o ard s to b e elig ib le fo r ad m issio n in co lleg e an d U n iv ersities. E n co u rag e M ad arsas

to teach th e scien ces alo n g w ith th eir relig io u s teach in g .

iv. Employment and livelihood opportunities: Financial incentives for occupations or

industries in which high proportion of Muslims are engaged; financial support for
skill up-gradation of small enterprises; better access to credit facilities; action against

discrimination by banks.

v. The Swaraj Abhiyan will encourage the formation of local civil society

organisations that will play the role of preventive and curative integration councils.

vi. Encourage and work for mixed neighbourhoods especially in urban areas and

device mechanisms to prevent discrimination in selling/leasing out flats to minorities

in general and Muslims in particular.

vii. Control and management of Waqf properties to be de-bureaucratised and

oriented towards benefits to the community.

EDUCATION

Once we give up this myth of school textbooks as the fountain of truth

and the child as an empty vessel, we can take a more sober view of what
textbooks can and cannot do.
there is an old Indian Railways joke about two passengers quarrelling over
whether to open the glass window or not. One passenger found the open
window freezing, while the other one found it suffocating when closed. A child
who was watching this heated exchange intervened to point out: “lekin uncle
is khidki me to kanch hi nahi hai” [but uncle, there is no windowpane
here].Sometimes I fear that our heated debates about school
textbooks resemble that situation. We all assume that there is a windowpane
out there, that what we write in or delete from the textbooks makes a
difference to the way students think and act. “Textbook wars are outdated.
They assume — wrongly — that school children sit in the classroom in a
vacuum with no other portals available for knowledge construction.” “The Gr.
XII political science textbook is front page news today.politics in india since
independence. This was the much-needed solace after the repeated mutilation
of these textbooks over the last few years.

The brute fact is that if secular textbooks were to shape the public mind, the
BJP should never have come to power.

For an average teacher and student, the textbook is a source of authentication

of facts, should they wish to do fact-checking?. A shoddy or mischievous
textbook can do serious damage by legitimising falsity and prejudices.And yes,
textbooks are official records for future generations, inscriptions for our times.
Let’s not forget that textbooks are often the only set of books in an ordinary
Indian household.

When Professor Palshikar and I accepted the responsibility of writing these

textbooks, our ambition was to make it embarrassing for any future
government to go back to the old style of civics textbook. But of late I have
come to see a silver lining here: textbooks sponsored by the current
government would meet a worse fate. At least for textbooks on politics, it is
not such a bad news. If political authorities that commission textbooks cannot
shape the political opinion of the next generation of citizens, that is reason for
hope rather than despair.

Last month, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) removed selected topics from

school Social Science and History textbooks. Among the topics that were deleted from

textbooks in grades 6 to 12 are the history of the Mughal courts, the communal riots in

Gujarat, the Emergency, Dalit writers, the Naxalite (Maoist) movement, and the fight for

equality, the way BJP is trying to control the content of textbooks is very much similar to

what the dictators of north korea have been doing.

While the CBSE described the exclusion of these topics as a “syllabus rationalization”

exercise, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which

publishes the textbooks followed by CBSE schools, said that the deleted content was

“overlapping” and “irrelevant.”Educationists, however, are not convinced. The revision, he

writes, reveals the government’s vision of how it “imagines” democracy and state-citizen

relations should be.

However, there are more complex motivations behind the BJP government’s agenda to revise

textbooks. It is rewriting India’s history. A look at deleted topics provides some useful

insights.An entire chapter on the contributions of the Mughals (a Muslim dynasty that ruled

during the medieval period) and their manuscripts has been removed from the Grade 12

history textbook.the focus of all the curriculum changes” is based on “what pays maximum

electoral dividends.” Those who revised the textbooks “seem to have only a single-minded

agenda of implementing the regressive and sectarian vision, an exclusivist idea of India,” .n

effect, they are promoting the Hindutva vision of India in school textbooks.

Some of the deletions point to a whitewashing of the record of BJP leaders. Prime Minister

Narendra Modi was Gujarat’s chief minister during the riots in 2002. The deletion of this

topic seems aimed at erasing this inconvenient fact from textbooks.In addition, a critique on

the Emergency that was imposed by former Congress Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and the

excesses that were committed during the 1975-1977 period when it was in force, has been

removed from the Political Science textbooks. This deletion appears to be an attempt to

remove from school curriculums any critical understanding of authoritarianism.for attempting

to “saffronize” history.

A parliamentary committee on education was mandated to “removing references to

unhistorical facts and distortions about our national heroes from textbooks, ensuring equal or

proportionate references to all periods of Indian history, and highlighting the role of great

historic women heroes

Objecting to allegations that NCERT books currently in use are replete with “unhistorical

facts and distortions,” over 100 eminent historians wrote to the parliamentary committee last
year that the exercise of the textbook revision cannot be carried out with the intention

of placating a particular ideology.

The article reviews the textbook politics between 1998 and 2020, focusing in
particular on how the present BJP-led government has appointed Hindutva-minded
scholars to lead education institutions underpinning the message of India being a
Hindu nation. The right wing RSS has been allowed by the Narendra Modi
government to influence the formulation of the National Education Policy 2020 as
well as suggesting changes to textbooks to push the national discourse of citizenship
defined by Hindutva at the Union and State levels. The article adds, theoretically and
substantively, to the specific link ,between education and the current issues of Indian
citizenship as the government tries to change the values of India’s constitution. Not
many in this generation of Indians think this is abnormal, as this reflects what they
have learnt at school and historically been used to shape the hostile mind-set of new
generations vis-à-vis their neighbours.

the diversity of India is a “historical fact,” Habib writes, pointing to the “diverse races,

religions, cultures that descended here over the centuries and got immersed and assimilated

into an Indian identity.” However, Hindutva ideologues have already declared who is Indian

and who is not and it is their version of history that will be taught. Consequently, “the coming

generations will grow up totally unaware of these ‘others’ in their textbooks,” laments Habib.

“Khalistan, Gazwa-e-Hind aur Hindu Rashtra: Bharat ke swadharm par

akraman ke teen mukhaute [Khalistan, Gazwa-e-Hind and Hindu Rashtra:
Three masks for an assault on the idea of India]”. My news peg was Rajasthan
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s statement that those who ask for Hindu
Rashtra are responsible for emboldening the Khalistanis.
UMAR KHALID
Umar Khalid has been arrested because he represents the true voice of
opposition in this country. By arresting him, the regime has sent a brazen
signal to crush dissent in the country. Invoking the draconian anti-terror laws
shows that unsure of its own case, Delhi Police wants to ensure that the trial
itself becomes the punishment. This comes at the time when those who have
on record instigated and threatened violence are roaming free because they
are being shielded by the BJP.

● Delhi Police merely scripting what the BJP led Central Government has
directed

● This attempt to criminalise a democratic protest has dangerous implications

Swaraj India condemns the arrest of youth leader Umar Khalid who has been
booked under the draconian law, UAPA, without any evidence to warrant
this.His arrest is part of a larger design by Delhi Police to somehow link the
anti-CAA protest with the violence in Delhi.