Front Page

No withdrawal of textbook: Baby

M.A. Baby says the government has an open mind on the issue.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Education Minister M.A. Baby on Tuesday rejected the Opposition demand for the withdrawal of the seventh standard social sciences textbook, but agreed to have its disputed portions examined by an expert committee.

He rejected the demand while replying to a discussion on an adjournment motion moved by Kerala Congress (M) leader K.M. Mani in the Assembly. Not happy with the Minister’s reply, Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy led his colleagues out of the House.

Mr. Baby told the Assembly that the government had an open mind on the issue, although there was no doubt in his mind about the ‘fallacy’ of the Opposition charge that the textbook contained ‘derogatory observations’ about religions. Nor was there any substance in the charge that the textbook was meant to ‘inject Communist ideas in the impressionable minds of the children,’ he said.

Reading out the disputed portions in the new textbook and similar remarks in school textbooks of earlier years, including the years when the United Democratic Front controlled the government, Mr. Baby said: “These are by no means any different from the progressive secular ideas included in earlier textbooks for school students in the State.”

Seventeen members from either side participated in the discussion on the adjournment motion, disputing whether a conversation between the father of a boy named Jeevan and the headmaster of a school, included in one of the lessons in the textbook, reflected secularist ideas or anti-religious and anti-God sentiments.

Jeevan, who was to be newly admitted to school, had inter-religious parents. When the headmaster asked the father to state his son’s religion, the father remarked that Jeevan had no religion as of then. The father went on to say that the boy could very well choose his own religion when he grew up.

Referring to an incident in Malappuram on Tuesday, when a truck-load of textbooks meant for distribution to schools in the area was put to fire by a group of people agitating for the withdrawal of the disputed textbook, Mr. Baby asked how anyone could justify such violent reaction to a ‘non-issue.’

Certain school managements had threatened that they would choose their own textbook if the government did not relent to their demand for the withdrawal of the disputed textbook. “The government will decide which textbook should be taught in the schools, not the school managements,” Mr. Baby said.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu