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Despite being pulled up by the Bombay High Court last year, Balbharti, the state bureau for textbooks, has goofed up again and misprinted the word ‘Sindh’ as ‘Sindhu’ in the national anthem in the new class III and IV textbooks published recently. The error was pointed out by the Mumbai Geography Teachers Association (MGTA) which has raised an objection and approached the state government to get the error rectified.
While neither the Balbharti officials or the school education secretary were available for comment, Minister of State (MoS) for school education and sports Fauziya Khan said her office had ‘clarified the issue’ and that rectification was ‘in process’.
Last year, while hearing a petition filed by a Mulund resident Dakshata Shet, the division bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and S C Gupte had rebuked the government and principal secretary of the home department asking for an explanation for the mistake of printing ‘Sindhu’ in place of ‘Sindh’ thus changing the original words of the national anthem. In her petition, Shet said the Supreme Court, as well as the Bombay High Court, have ruled that the national anthem should not be amended even if geographical changes take place in India.
Shet’s petition also urged the court to direct the government to reprint new textbooks with the correct national anthem and to register a cognizable offence against the concerned persons for exhibiting disrespect towards the national anthem and towards the nation as a whole.
However once again this the the state bureau for textbooks repeated the mistake.
Prof Vidyadhar Amrute, member of the MGTA, said every year the textbooks printed by the Balbharati and state government are riddled with mistakes and their group used to point it out. “This year the government seems to have forgotten the Bombay high court’s order last year pertaining to the issue of printing Sindhu instead of Sindh in the national anthem and repeated the same mistake in the new text books that have been printed this year,” said Amrute.
Last year around 16.5 lakh textbooks were withdrawn following a serious faux pas after Arunachal Pradesh was missing from one of the maps of India. That error too was pointed out by Amrute.
Amrute said that it was shocking to see that the teaching by the government itself was faulty. “Tomorrow if the student reads or interprets the national anthem wrongly, the blame will lie entirely with the government,” added Amrute.
Fauziya Khan said, “The government of Maharashtra has got a direction from the Central government pertaining to the national anthem and compared it with what has been printed in the textbooks. An explanation has been sought from the officials concerned. And we are are in the process of rectifying the mistake. We have received the correct version of the national anthem and the same will be printed in textbooks henceforth,” said Khan.
dipti.singh@expressindia.com
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