Deletion of Sikh history from school books;Sukhbir Dares CM to produce class 11 history book to Disprove SAD allegation
Shiromani Akali Dal president and former Punjab Deputy Chief minister Sardar Sukhbir Singh Badal today challenged the Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh to produce before the media copies of the Punjab Education Board’s new book on history for Class 11 today itself to prove his claim that chapters on Sikh history had not been deleted from the syllabus of Class 12 and had merely been shifted to the syllabus of class 11. “I dare the CM to share with everyone the new book containing all the old chapters on Sikh history today itself before his officers tried to deceive the people by getting a new book printed now to hide their mischief in deleting Sikh history from the syllabus.” Mr Badal was referring to Captain Singh’s rejoinder to the allegation of the SAD about deletion of the chapters on Sikh history from the class 12 syllabus for students of the state education board. The Chief minister had claimed that no chapters had been expunged from the Board syllabus and that chapters had been merely been shifted from Class 12 to Class 11 to align the syllabus with the NCERT’s guidelines. Mr Badal described the CM’s denial of the SAD’s allegation as “totally erroneous and misleading”, and said that the Chief Minister should have ordered an inquiry into the issue instead of embarrassing himself with a factually incorrect statement which was fed to him by the very officers who were responsible for the mischief in the first place. Mr Badal asked the Chief Minister to order an inquiry to rule out or defeat a conspiracy to downgrade Sikh history and to erase it for future generations. In a statement here, Mr. Badal said that the Chief Minister should first have called for the old and the new books for the relevant classes and then compared the two before rushing with a statement which is bound to embarrass him now.He said that the chief minister’s claim of shifting Sikh history from class 12 to class 11 is totally erroneous. Mr Badal pointed out that the old syallbus of class 12 had as many as 23 detailed chapters, each focused to the each one of the great gurus individually, and to the Sikh history during the times Banda Bahadur and Maharaj Ranjit Singh. The history of the four Sahibzadas also formed a part of the chapter on the period of the tenth Guru Sri Guru Gobind Singh ji .” Now, the CM says that all the chapters on Sikh history have been shifted from class 12 to class 11 to align these with the syllabus of the NCERT. If this claim were true, then all the 23 chapters should form a part of the new class 11 syallbus. But it does not. Instead, the new class 11 syllabus has only five chapters devoted to Sikh history instead of the 23 in the old class 12 syllabus. Even these five chapters are merely brief overviews of the period and not detailed and focused study of the great Gurus contribution individually, was the case earlier in class 12 syllabus.” Further, In terms of space devoted, the old class 11 syllabus had dedicated as much space to the Sikh history as the present the new syllabus does. But the 23 chapters in class 12 were in addition to the chapters devoted to Sikh history in class 11 have been totally deleted. If the CM’s claim were to be believed, then there should now be at least 28 chapters on Sikh history , that is the total number of chapters combined in the old syllabus from class 11 and class 12,But in fact, now there are a total of six chapters only. Besides, said Mr Badal, everyone knew that the class 12 studies occupied greater emphasis in a student’s career compared with class 11.Therefore, in any case, even if they had really shifted the class 12 studies to class 11 which they have not, it would still have amounted virtually to downgrading their importance. Mr Badal asked Captain Singh, even at this late stage,to call for both the old and the new syllabi of the concerned classes and personally look at how cruelly the Sikh history had been slighted by his officers.”He should have both the old and the new syllabi examined by historians and field experts before issuing a further statement on the issue,” said Mr Badal
