Even as a hue and cry over a cartoon depicting Dr B R Ambedkar in an NCERT textbook died down, a fresh controversy has been raked up, this one over a cartoon depicting anti-Hindi agitation by Tamils.
Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) chief Vaiko has written a letter to union human resources development minister Kapil Sibal, seeking to have the cartoon, published in the NCERT's 12th standard political science textbook, removed. He said the cartoon distorted history and hurt the sentiments of people of Tamil Nadu.
In his letter to Sibal and NCERT ((National Council of Education Research and Training) director Prof Parvin Sinclair, Vaiko said, "The cartoon depicts Tamil students in poor light."
Eight people in Tamil Nadu committed self-immolation, sacrificing their lives during an agitation in the 1960s to oppose the imposition of the Hindi language.
"The anti-Hindi agitation is a glorious chapter in Tamil Nadu's political history. But the cartoon in the textbook depicts students (of Tamil Nadu) as if they were ignorant and merely indulging in violence. This is a total distortion of history and hurts the sentiments of the people of Tamil Nadu, maligning the historic Dravidian movement," Vaiko said.
Last month, a 'dalit' party the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, a UPA ally, and the Tamil Nadu unit of the CPM kicked up a furore over a cartoon in the NCERT's political science text book showing Jawaharlal Nehru "whipping" Ambedkar over the slow progress of the framing of the Constitution after Independence. The cartoon was first published in 1949 and reproduced in school textbooks. It whipped up a storm in Parliament with Tamil Nadu and opposition members disrupting proceedings and demanding that the cartoon be removed from textbooks. Two NCERT advisers N Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar resigned over the issue.
The anti-Hindi agitation played a significant role in the Dravidian movement and was one of the reasons for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) capturing power in 1967, Vaiko said. Nehru had assured that Hindi would not be imposed. "But, Nehru's assurance has been thrown to the winds and Hindi was thrust as the sole official language of India in 1965," Vaiko said. Imposition of Hindi resulted in discrimination against non-Hindi-speaking people and therefore Tamil scholars and people launched an agitation against its imposition, even from the 1930s, he said.