India News | NCERT Panel's Recommendation to Replace India with Bharat in Textbooks Reflects RSS Agenda: CPIM Leader

Kolkata, Oct 25 (PTI) West Bengal CPI(M) secretary Md Salim on Wednesday said the recommendation by an NCERT-formed committee to replace "India" with "Bharat" in school textbooks reflects RSS and BJP's agenda of a Hindu rashtra".

Salim said addressing 'Gurudev' as Rabindranath Tagore or Rabindranath Thakur "won't change the great poet, or the visionary's philosophy about life, or one's love for his volume of works. And similar is the situation whether someone describes the country as India or Bharat, he observed.

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"India" should be replaced with "Bharat" in the school textbooks for all classes, a high-level committee for social sciences, constituted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to revise the school curriculum, has recommended.

Talking to reporters, Salim asked whether one should go by the Constitution that has given sanctity to the name India or follow the "BJP government sponsored committee's suggestion."

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"The recommendations the NCERT panel is in sync with the agenda of the RSS and the BJP. The BJP wants to see the country as a Hindu rashtra, They don't believe in the spirit of 'Sare Jaha Se Achha Hindustan Hamara,'" he said.

NCERT chairman Dinesh Saklani, however, said no decision has been taken yet on the panel's recommendations.

On the issue of CBI and ED probes against people allegedly close to senior Trinamool leaders, Salim said, "Leaders of both TMC and BJP had been caught on camera accepting bribes in the past but no action had been taken against them."

Salim was referring to the Narada sting operation where several top TMC leaders and a current BJP leader were caught on camera for allegedly accepting bribes. The case is still being probed by the CBI.

On the Mohua Moitra issue, he said the silence of the TMC government proves that "the party will stand only by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee and desert others in times of crisis."

(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)