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Kamla Bora in Jaipur
The Rajasthan police have taken into custody the publisher of a school textbook that describes the Congress party as a corrupt party, which ignores Hindu, Hindutva and Hinduvaad, and propagates family rule.
The police took the publisher of Maya Prakashan, Rajendra Jasoria (62), into custody on Tuesday.
He has been booked for violating the terms of contract, for printing and publishing Political Science textbooks for class XII students.
Two other partners of the publishing firm - Jasoria's son and daughter in law - were absconding, the police said.
The police took the action on a case filed by the Rajasthan State Education Board last week, after the local media reported that a 'saffron' book was being used in the Congress ruled state.
The book, purportedly approved by the board, put the Ashok Gehlot government in a spot as it taught students that the history of the Congress was replete with internal bickering, conflicts, crises and conspiracies.
The book also alleged that the Congress ignored Hindus, Hindutva and Hinduvad.
It accused every Congress government since independence of corruption and said the regimes of Rajiv Gandhi and P V Narsimha Rao were marked by huge scams.
Attacking the Vansh Parampara (tradition of family rule) in the party, the authors of the book wrote that Sonia Gandhi was engaged in promoting Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in politics.
Praising the Bhartiya Janata Party, the text book said the BJP prepared the groundwork for extending its sphere of influence in the 1980s and the Ekatmata Abhiyan (unity movement), the Dharm Parivartan Virodhi Abhiyan (anti-conversion movement) and the Rath Yatra (by Lal Kishenchand Advani for construction of temple in Ayodhya) helped it formulate its character.
Board sources said the book was compiled during the previous BJP government in 1998, and despite the board ordering removal of the objectionable portions the publisher reprinted the book this year.
The board has now withdrawn the disputed book from syllabus.
However, questions are being raised even in Congress circles as to how the book continued to be taught in government schools during the last two and half years under its own rule.
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