Journalism of Courage
After intense political and personal rivalry,several rounds of legal wrangling and postponement,and finally a reluctant administrative nod,over a crore school students of Tamil Nadu have finally got their new textbooks,the subject of a controversy that the courts have eventually managed to put a lid on.
Yet the books come with portions blocked and pages torn out,with the J Jayalalithaa government having found the content objectionable. The books had been prepared under the previous DMK government. Among the parts that have been blocked out,one is reportedly a picture of the sun and a solar eclipse,simply because the rising sun is the DMKs electoral symbol.
This is the one of many instances,in fact the very first,of the new administration overturning a major decision of the previous government headed by M Karunanidhi. Other recent decisions have included the conversion of Karunanidhis pet project,the new Assembly-Secretariat complex,into a government-run hospital and medical college. The government has also reversed a change that had been made to the Tamil calendar the former government had started the New Year in the month of Thai (the date falls in January) but this has been shifted back to Chithirai,the date falling in April.
The new textbooks had been prepared under a revamped school education system initiated by the previous regime. The new government,objecting to portions that it saw as being propagandist and substandard,tried to repeal not just the textbooks but the whole Uniform System of School Education. The court,however,struck this down and the government agreed to distribute the same textbooks,with corrections.
According to a note prepared by the school education department,there are 41 places where corrections were needed in the textbooks,meant for classes up to X. One such portion is the anthem Karunanidhi had written for the World Classical Tamil Conference. The anthem appears in the books for all classes except those for I and VI these two classes were covered in the first phase for the new system; the anthem was introduced in books printed in later phases. Now,after the sanitising ordered by the new government,a green,opaque sticker covers the entire page that carries the anthem.
The Tamil conference was Karunanidhis brainchild and many of its elements had found their way into the books. Now,pictures from the event have been removed completely with the page torn out; while a permanent marker has blacked out references to Karunanidhis efforts at getting Tamil the status of a classical language,and paragraphs where teachers were to read out their experiences while attending it.
Karunanidhi is not the only one to face the scissors,the sticker or the permanent marker. In the social science textbook,both Tamil and English,for IV,there is a paragraph and pictures on the Tamil folk festival,Chennai Sangamam,an event that is associated with his now-jailed daughter Kanimozhi. Though her name is not mentioned,the portion eulogises the festival,enough for the AIADMK to block it out.
For class V,there was an exercise where students were to discuss the growth of Tamil Nadu under the leadership of our Chief Minister Dr M Karunanidhi; a picture of the new Secretariat building that the new government has since converted,and a description of the old Secretariat from which the new government has resumed functioning as a historical monument rather than the administrative headquarters. All of this has gone.
So have mentions of various welfare measures initiated by the previous government,including the Kalaignar life insurance scheme,and of 108 ambulance services for which the state government claimed credited though it is a national scheme that receive support from the Centre,besides repeated references to the DMK in a class X textbook,and an exercise to translate a newspaper report on the 1,000-year celebration of the Big Temple in Thanjavur.
In this exorcism of the DMK and Karunanidhi,there has been a collateral damage in the form of removal of the names of Tamil scholars and playwrights. The list includes even C N Annadurai,founder of the DMK,as the paragraph that refers to him mentions Karunanidhis name among the pantheon of Tamil scholars who have made significant contributions to the language,art and Tamil society. Also going under the black ink or the sticker was a picture of Tamil saint Thiruvalluvar the image had been used in the World Classical Tamil Conference logo.
Karunanidhi does,Jayalalithaa undoes
Textbooks: The previous government had introduced a new syllabus with textbooks with content that the new one found offensive. Having failed to ban the books,the government has censored them. Even a reference to C Annadurai (page left) has been blocked out because Karunanidhi is mentioned in the same breath.
Secretariat: M Karunanidhis dream project,the multicrore Assembly-Secretariat complex (above),being turned into a hospital and medical college. The Jayalalithaa government,which has returned to the old secretariat,says the multi super-specialty hospital will be comparable to AIIMS and will cater particularly to the poor.
New Year: Three years ago,DMK regime had announced that the Tamil New Year would be celebrated in the month of Thai (the first date falls in January). The government has moved it back to Chithirai (the date is in April) on the ground that this has been the tradition for centuries. The Bill on this was moved in the Assembly on Tuesday.
