Recently, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has revised high school textbooks, eliminating certain chapters that served to promote Muslim-Hindu unity, indicated the presence of Islam in India, or provided evidence of Hindu extremist violence, which are largely described as “saffronization” of textbooks by critics.
The agenda did not stop at educational manipulation, though, and took a more aggressive measure as a deliberate attack on a Muslim library at Bihar Sharif burned 4,500 Islamic books.
Concerned Indian officials are expressing explicit warning against an organized saffronization move to alter historical facts.
The most recent has been Kerala C.M. Pinarayi Vijayan, who has accused the NCERT of trying to “completely saffronize” academic books by excluding historical facts from the syllabus with a political motive.
The Chief Minister condemned the removal of chapters and portions from NCERT class 12 textbooks, including those related to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and the banning of the RSS.
Vijayan also criticized the omission of portions about the Mughal Empire from the history textbook of the same class.
He alleged that the NCERT is “whitewashing the fake history” created by the Sangh Parivar, which is trying to inculcate the politics of hatred and division into the minds of children. saffronization is defined as the right-wing policy approach that seeks to implement a Hindu nationalist agenda, for example onto school textbooks.
However, the situation is now aggravated with an attempt to wipe Muslim heritage in the country.
Community violence during a Ram Navami festival took away a chunk of Muslim history as an extremist mob driven by the politics of hatred set fire to Azizia Library, destroying as many as 4,500 books on Islamic literature and divinity.
The 110-year-old library is the oldest madrasa in Bihar Sharif. Apparently, Hindutva is evolving into an aggressive policy of educational distortion, censorship and slanted fabrication of the truth, which not only attempts to remove its dark legacy in the past, but also promotes intolerance of any Muslim presence in the country.
