New Delhi, Apr 13 (PTI) The CPI(M) Thursday hit out at the government over the removal of references to India's first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in the new NCERT class 11 political science textbook, alleging that such "vengeful rewriting of history" is aimed at creating a false narrative to further the RSS' "ideological projects".

As part of its "syllabus rationalisation" exercise last year, the NCERT dropped certain portions from the course, including lessons on Gujarat riots, Mughal courts, the Emergency, Cold War and Naxalite movement among others, citing "overlapping" and "irrelevant" as reasons.

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The rationalisation note had no mention of any changes in the class 11 political science textbook.

"Outrageous to delete any reference to Maulana Azad from school textbooks. Such vengeful rewriting of history to create a false narrative to further the RSS fascistic ideological project destroys the foundations of modern India, inevitably negating all civilisational advances," CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury tweeted.

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"Atrocious. Unacceptable. Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad was a preeminent freedom fighter. Netaji's INA had an ‘Azad Brigade' of guerrilla fighters. Served as India's first education minister laying the foundations that produced some of the world's finest minds," he said in another tweet.

The NCERT has, however, claimed that no curriculum trimming has taken place this year and the syllabus was rationalised in June, last year.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)