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By Our Staff Reporter
Asserting that there is "no let-up in the assault on history,'' SAHMAT said only "new dimensions'' have been added. In one of the new textbooks for Class XII, Modern India by Satish Chandra Mittal, it said there were several glaring discrepancies. On Page 246, "the former Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, General Dyer" is stated to have been shot dead in 1940 when actually he died of cerebral haemorrhage in 1927. Then it is stated that the formation of the Forward Bloc by Subhas Bose evoked sharp reactions from the Gandhiites leading to his resignation from the presidentship of the Congress when actually Subhas Bose formed the Forward Bloc after he had resigned from the presidentship of the Congress. More surprisingly, while Page 168 states that "the Chepekar brothers were caught deceitfully and hanged by two British officials — Rand and Aryst,'' Page 184 mentions that "the Chepekar brothers ... decided to assassinate the two officers.'' As for the mention of Savarkar, SAHMAT observed that while on Page 185 he is stated to have "engaged himself'' in the activities of Hindu organisations, the book nowhere mentions that he was a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha and presided over its annual session in 1937 where he expounded the two-nation theory. Similarly, the opposition of the Hindu Mahasabha to the Quit India Movement is not mentioned but it is stated that the "role of the Sikh community was similar to that of the Hindu Mahasabha.'' The manipulations, SAHMAT contended, were not confined to this book alone. Another textbook for Class XII, Contemporary World History, which was prepared apparently without a review workshop, "adds a new dimension to NCERT's new history'' and like the others "abounds in factual errors.'' Pointing out how it mentions that "in October, he (Mussolini) organised a "March to Rome" in which hundreds of thousands of "Black Shirts' took part,'' SAHMAT said there was no such march and it was only a fascist-inspired myth. Moreover, it said, "hundreds of thousands'' was the historians' original contribution. Also on Page 144 the book states that "in 1974, the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown'' when in fact Salazar had died four years earlier in 1970! SAHMAT said the authors' geographical knowledge was comparable to Professor Hari Om's who had placed Madagascar in the Arabian Sea as they have sought to mention in Page 117 that the "conjunction of Mexico, a South American state, with Latin American countries in the context noted below has warranted the inclusion of Mexico here.'' This statement was irrelevant as Mexico was both a South American and Latin American state. Stating that the examples are a small sample of the enormity of the distortions of history and disregard for elementary historical facts in which the two books abound, the Trust demanded that these books must not be allowed to be used as school textbooks.
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