Jaipur: Rajasthan state government has revised their schools’ History syllabus, removing the content highlighting the RTI act. Earlier, they had axed all data referring to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru from the textbooks. The recently removed content about RTI act, which was earlier part of Social Science textbook for Class VII, had highlighted the struggle behind getting the RTI act in place.
The RTI Act was the result of a nationwide movement led, among others, by Aruna Roy and Nikhil De of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI). Significantly, people of Rajasthan had played a large role in the RTI movement.
Roy and De, along with other members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), the organisation they lead, have written to the Rajasthan chief secretary and will soon write to Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje demanding an “immediate” halt to such changes.
“Removing a chapter on an Act — a movement which is a matter of pride for the entire nation — appears to have been done with malafide intentions. While the RTI movement and Act are being included in curricula across the world, it has been removed from the textbooks of Rajasthan…. The poor and deprived people of Rajasthan played a major part in the RTI struggle,” issued by MKSS.
According to the organisation, besides the RTI Act, “important historical events of the state and nation” have also been removed, “which is very serious”.