Indian History gives way to Marx, Hitler in Tripura textbooks

The only national icon that figures in the history book of Class 9 students in Tripura is Mahatma Gandhi, not for his contribution to India`s freedom movement but for his views on cricket.

Agartala: After former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was dropped from Class 8 social science textbooks in BJP-ruled Rajasthan, government schools run by the Tripura Left Front state government will teach Class 9 students the history of Hitler, the Nazis, and the French and Russian revolutions in their history books, while omitting the Indian history of freedom-fighting.

The only national icon that figures in the book is Mahatma Gandhi, not for his contribution to India`s freedom movement but for his views on cricket.

The book penned by Kalyan Chaudhuri, former head of history department in Kolkata`s Maharaja Manindra Chandra College, features the Russian and French revolutions.

It also devotes pages to the birth of cricket in England and IPL, Nazism and the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the history of agriculture.

There is also a chapter on the Santhal, Munda and Alluri rebellion and deprivation of forest-dependent tribals during the British rule.

Speaking on the content of the new history text books of TBSE designed as per the prescribed syllabus of CBSE, Sukanta Chakraborty, a history teacher said, "Forest society and the Colonial Rule, this is the Indian part and there is history of sport, the story of cricket - the Indian and European part. In the Indian history the forest society and the colonial part consists of Santhal revolt, Munda revolt. The foreign history consists of rise of Hitler, rise of Mussolini, Nazism and fascism and the Russian revolt."

Meantime, a top official of Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) denied any role or pressured from the communist government under Manik Sarkar in the content of the book which has been designed according to the new history syllabus under NCERT guidelines.

"Indian freedom struggle, Gandhiji`s movement, all other significant political movements of India, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, INA, all of these are covered in the class ten book syllabus of Tripura. It will be the same thing if you look at the CBSE syllabus of class nine, you will not find the Indian history there....they have kept it for class ten," said TBSE president Mihir Deb.

"Things kept for class ten, you should not search it in class nine and if you do not find it in class nine (book) then should not blame that we have vanished Indian history."

However, Tripura BJP spokesperson Subrata Charkabory smells a long term conspiracy in removing the role of great leaders of Indian freedom movement while including Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler in the text book.

He viewed that this has been done intentionally in the process of brainwashing students with Marx and communism and keeping them unaware about the Indian history.According to him it is the reflection of the process of painting everything red, including the educational institutions, by the ruling CPI(M)-led Left Front government in Tripura.