Calcutta: Heavy outrage in Bengal after a history textbook of class 8 of school had labelled revolutionary freedom fighters as terrorists. The history textbooks for Class 8 describe the activities of freedom fighters like Khudiram Bose, Jatindranath Mukherjee and Prafulla Chaki as ‘extremism and terrorism’.
A history chapter titled “revolutionary terrorism” describes the activities of freedom fighters as “extremism and terrorism”.
Prominent historians have dubbed the move by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education a gross distortion of India’s freedom struggle. Earlier the Trinamool Congress government had decided to scrap chapters on Karl Marx.
A well-known historian Atish Dasgupta said, “Those who are using such terminology for great freedom fighters like Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki are anti-nationals. Would you call Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose a terrorist too? These people are not only distorting facts, but damaging the rich tradition of our freedom movement.”
Another historian Irfan Habib said, “We have this habit of carrying forward the British tradition and it reflects here too.”
Experts said the committee should have been more careful while choosing the right terminology as the matter is quite sensitive in terms of its historical significance. The state government said it was open to any academic discussion on the matter on a condition that it would not be politicised.
The head of the state school education syllabus committee Avik Majumdar said, “History is not only about what happened in the past. It is also about how we look at it. If there was any excess of anything, including Marx, it has to be done away with.”
Bureau Report
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