The Hindu : National : 'Conspiracy to distort our past during NDA regime'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 30, 2004

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National

'Conspiracy to distort our past during NDA regime'

By Our Special Correspondent

BAREILLY (U.P.), DEC. 29. The Preamble to the Constitution represents the quintessence of Mahatma Gandhi's vision of India "where justice is to reign and the poor and the weak are to prosper,'' the Human Resource Development Minister, Arjun Singh said here today. "Those who reject this vision have long nursed a conspiracy against it'' before illustrating "how far the conspiracy had gone,'' he added.

Mr. Singh was not present at the 65th Indian History Congress — which began at the M.J.P. Rohilkhand University here on Tuesday — owing to the national mourning following the death of the former Prime Minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao. His inaugural address was read out.

Mr. Singh said during the erstwhile Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance regime, the Preamble was removed from the NCERT textbooks which had been printed on the first page for years.

"Our children were thus to be prevented from hearing the words `socialist, secular and democratic' by a decision which — so characteristic of a conspiracy! — no one actually owns responsibility for.''

Another aspect of this conspiracy, Mr. Singh said, was the decision not to mention Gandhi's assassination in the NCERT textbook on modern Indian history. "Can one imagine a textbook on the history of modern India, which looks into every petty detail, but does not regard Gandhi's assassination as important enough to deserve mention? When such a textbook was officially released by the NCERT in 2002, and there were protests, the Director, NCERT, and the then HRD Minister in the Chair, announced that it was `pedagogically' unsuitable to identify Gandhiji's assassin as a Hindu fundamentalist,'' he said.

Mr. Singh said "the conspiracy to conceal the national vision had as its other side a conspiracy to distort and misrepresent our past in the grossest possible manner.''

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