Javadekar says no plans for now to remove Tagore from school books

NEW DELHI: The government has no plan to remove Ravi nd ran a th Tagore from school textbooks, Union human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar told Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

Responding to the issue raised by Derek O’Brien (TMC) during the zero hour, the minister said the government respected Tagore and others who had contributed to the freedom and literature of the country. “We hail everybody and nothing will be removed,” he said.

Javadekar teachers and others have been asked to give suggestions to correct or remove “any factual errors” in NCERT textbooks.

As many as 7,000 suggestions have been received, Javadekar said. “We will not do anything which will create some problem.”

Raising the issue, O’Brien said one of the suggestions from RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas was to remove Tagore’s works and references from the syllabus.