Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb has said that his government will soon introduce syllabus prescribed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to rid the schools of propaganda that the Left government spread using the Tripura Board of Secondary Education, The Indian Express reports.
“When I say education, I mean quality education and not just numbers. The Communists only wanted the people of Tripura to study Mao (Zedong) and forget our Hindu kings. They removed Mahatma Gandhi from textbooks in government-run schools. I am going to implement NCERT syllabus in all these schools which will also have chapters on Tripura’s history,” he said while talking to the daily at the first NITI Aayog meet organised for Northeast India.
“Students were being taught Karl Marx and Hitler but nothing about Indian freedom fighters,” he noted, adding that the textbooks of Class IX and XII have chapters devoted to the Russian and French revolutions and the rise of Hitler while missing references to Rani Laxmibai and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
“When I moved into the CM’s office where Manik Sarkar sat for so many years, I was amazed that his table had no National Flag. I got the Tricolour on that table for the first time,” the Chief Minister said.