An education body affiliated to ruling BJP's ideological parent RSS wants to "sanitise" NCERT's Class 1-12 Hindi textbooks by removing Urdu and Persian words. The Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, under RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra, also wants to remove verses of Mirza Ghalib and other Urdu poets from the books.
With the NCERT revising its textbooks, the Nyas has written to the government to "clean" Hindi books of words such as Eeman, Rujhan, Shiddat and Taaqat.
The organisation has come up with a booklet, a copy of which is with DNA, in which it has mentioned various examples from the books. One of the examples is a verse of Ghalib, which is taught to students in one of the Hindi chapters. The verse, from Jamun Ka Ped, reads: "Hum ne mana ki tagaful na karoge lekin khak ho jayenge ham tum ko khabar hone taq." Dinanath Batra, who is often criticised for "saffronising" education, has in the past also written to the government to change content in texts, specially History ones.
He has been advocating that the use of foreign languages in schools should be banned. In his suggestions to the government on the New Education Policy, he had written that Hindi should be made the medium of instruction, instead of English.
"I have read all Hindi textbooks from Class 1 to 12 and found a number of errors. The usage of Urdu, Persian and even English words in Hindi books has made the language very heavy and created a challenge for students. Instead of being a source of entertainment and learning, Hindi chapters have become uninteresting for students," Batra told DNA.
"We have approached the HRD Ministry and have also been taking up this issue with NCERT that they should remove all non-Hindi words from their Hindi textbooks. Now that they are revising their textbooks, we have demanded that these changes should be made," he added.
He said that his earlier suggestions of changes in History textbooks were considered but it's the changes in Hindi that the council is not ready to change.
NCERT officials refused to comment on the issue.
