NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to respond to a bunch of petitions seeking deletion of certain "objectionable portions" in the history books for classes VIII, XI and XII published by the Council.

A Division Bench, comprising Justice Vijender Jain and Justice Rekha Sharma, asked counsel for the Council to file a detailed reply to the plea within four weeks.

The matter will now come up on December 7 for further hearing.

When the Bench asked the Council's counsel why NCERT did not delete the portions which the petitioners called `objectionable' from these books, the counsel said: "It is being considered at the highest level by the Council.''

When Shyamdev Prasad Arya, a freedom-fighter and one of the petitioners in the matter, drew the attention of the Court to the description of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai as terrorists, the Bench said: "We should not assess our freedom fighters from the eyes of the Britishers."

Citing the example of 1857 Revolt, the Bench said: "We see this uprising as the First War of Independence while the British historians termed it as a mutiny and rising by the feudal lords to protect their kingdoms."

The other petitioners in the matter are the Jat Sabha and Mahesh Chandra Sharma, one of the leaders of the Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

While Mahesh Chandra Sharma and Devnath Batra, another petitioner in the matter, urged the Court to direct NCERT to delete the portions from Ancient India written by Prof. R.S. Sharma and prescribed for senior secondary students where it had been written that Brahmins ate beef in the Vedic Age, Jat Sabha sought deletion of alleged derogatory remarks against the Jats in Medieval India written by Prof Satish Chandra and prescribed for students of senior secondary classes.

Shyamdev Prasad Arya sought deletion of those portions from the NCERT book prescribed for class VIII where the above-mentioned freedom fighters had been depicted as terrorists.

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