Kolkata:
Students in West Bengal government schools will soon have limited exposure to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A committee set up by the Trinamool government to restructure the syllabus for higher secondary students reportedly wants a much reduced emphasis on Marx and Engels in history textbooks.
The syllabus review committee was set up after Mamata Banerjee won a historic victory in the elections last year, ending 34 years of governance by the Left. The committee was asked to modernize the syllabus of schools.
"History syllabus in Bengal gave importance to a particular ideology. History is not only about what happened in the past but it is also about how we look at it. We have tried to give our history syllabus a balanced approach. If there was any excess of anything, including Marx, it has to be done away with," said Avik Majumdar, the head of the school education syllabus committee to the Hindustan Times.
The committee, which has 19 members, will submit its recommendations to the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education next week.
Derek O'Brien, a Rajya Sabha MP from the Trinamool Congress, told NDTV, "History doesn't begin with the Bolsheviks and end with the Basus & Bhattacharyas. History preceded them and will survive them. Marx should be studied as a historical phenomenon but not at the expense of Mahatma and Mandela. Bengal after three decades is redressing balance, not doctoring history."
That said, Mr O'Brien did emphasise that Marx and Engels were not being banished from textbooks. Those who had read textbooks under Left rule, he said, would know how students from class 4 to class 12 would get a big dose of the founding fathers of Communism. The Trinamool government he said was encouraging "a much more balanced and pluralistic view...the children of Bengal will study a balanced history."
Mr O'Brien also pointed out that the panel's recommendations had been posted on the government's website for feedback and it was only incorporating those that the changes were effected. "695 pages of recommendations were made, nine of those were on history, do read those and then start talking about it," the Rajya Sabha MP said.
What the Trinamool calls "correcting an imbalance in history," the Left calls "maligning history." CPI leader Gurudas Das Gupta has slammed the move to teach less Marx. "This is politically motivated and motivated to malign history," he said.
A recent controversy in Bengal centred upon the government's recommendation for what newspapers public libraries should carry - many newspapers have been dropped.