04-13-2005, 03:52 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Arjun Singh's detoxification leaves Urdu students bookless</b>Â
Udayan Namboodiri/ New Delhi
HRD Minister Arjun Singh's "detoxification" drive has hit the very people it was meant to protect from the arguable onslaught of "saffronisation" - the Muslims!
Thousands of students in the country's Urdu medium schools have begun the new academic year with empty school bags as the NCERT has failed to roll out <b>"secular" Urdu textbooks for all subjects</b>.
Says Akhtar uz-Zama, principal of the capital's Anglo-Arabic Senior Secondary School: "We have more than 1,200 students in our Urdu medium department. For classes 9-12, we rely on NCERT's textbooks because they are the only ones covering the CBSE syllabus in the language. Our students have no books whether in history or science or mathematics".
At Fathepuri Muslim Boys' Senior Secondary School, a teacher said: "We have never encountered a problem like this before. Imagine the plight of students of Classes X and XII. Every day is valuable to them because there is a huge syllabus to complete. Now we have already lost a fortnight and there is no hope in the horizon because the NCERT is not giving any assurance."
....
But then, Moniuddin is something of a "special case". An old-time CPI activist, his appointment contraries the claim often made by the Leftist politicians that they are dispensing <b>"responsibility without power". </b>
......
While gallivanting across the country attending seminars and workshops, Arjun Singh's secularist brigade forgot about the poor, Urdu-medium school-goers. While waiting for the long-delayed secularist books, they are making to do with the much-thumbed, "saffron" texts from the Rajput era which, <b>thanks to the Indian Muslim's survival instincts</b>, are, somehow, still in circulation.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Udayan Namboodiri/ New Delhi
HRD Minister Arjun Singh's "detoxification" drive has hit the very people it was meant to protect from the arguable onslaught of "saffronisation" - the Muslims!
Thousands of students in the country's Urdu medium schools have begun the new academic year with empty school bags as the NCERT has failed to roll out <b>"secular" Urdu textbooks for all subjects</b>.
Says Akhtar uz-Zama, principal of the capital's Anglo-Arabic Senior Secondary School: "We have more than 1,200 students in our Urdu medium department. For classes 9-12, we rely on NCERT's textbooks because they are the only ones covering the CBSE syllabus in the language. Our students have no books whether in history or science or mathematics".
At Fathepuri Muslim Boys' Senior Secondary School, a teacher said: "We have never encountered a problem like this before. Imagine the plight of students of Classes X and XII. Every day is valuable to them because there is a huge syllabus to complete. Now we have already lost a fortnight and there is no hope in the horizon because the NCERT is not giving any assurance."
....
But then, Moniuddin is something of a "special case". An old-time CPI activist, his appointment contraries the claim often made by the Leftist politicians that they are dispensing <b>"responsibility without power". </b>
......
While gallivanting across the country attending seminars and workshops, Arjun Singh's secularist brigade forgot about the poor, Urdu-medium school-goers. While waiting for the long-delayed secularist books, they are making to do with the much-thumbed, "saffron" texts from the Rajput era which, <b>thanks to the Indian Muslim's survival instincts</b>, are, somehow, still in circulation.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->