Arjun Singh

New Delhi, Nov. 20: Human resource development minister Arjun Singh has asked his officials to speed up plans to introduce a central panel armed with legal powers to question publishers and schools on textbooks alleged to be spreading communal hatred.

The National Textbook Council will specifically target books used at schools run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates, top government officials said. The RSS runs a network of schools called Saraswati Shishu Mandirs across the country.

But the powers of the council, the officials conceded, would be extremely limited, effectively making it only a political tool in an election season rather than an agent to curb books that spread hatred. Six states are in the middle of conducting elections. The Lok Sabha polls are scheduled for 2009.

While it can call publishers and schools to question contents of a textbook, the council cannot order any action against them if it finds the textbooks are indeed spreading disharmony. “The council can only counsel, not act against the publisher or school,” a source said.

Arjun’s prod follows a letter to him and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from chemicals and fertilisers minister Ram Vilas Paswan last week, urgently seeking their intervention in preventing textbooks used in RSS schools from “fabricating history”.

The HRD minister’s hurry to form the council, articulated to his officials earlier this week, also indicates a possible return to the “desaffronisation” agenda that he followed four years ago, sources said.

The textbook council was first proposed by a sub-committee of the Central Advisory Board on Education in 2006, and the HRD ministry started working on a draft law to create it.

But the government appeared to lose its initial interest in pushing through the council bill quickly, a source said, adding: “That interest has now been reactivated.”

The HRD ministry has received comments from all ministries on the proposed bill. It may move a note before the cabinet “now that the political signal has come”, the source said.

The bill makes it clear that the council is aimed at textbooks that promote religious intolerance or hatred for certain religions.

According to its mandate under the bill, the council cannot, however, address any other form of intolerance — for instance, along the lines of caste, race or gender — that may allegedly be spread through textbooks.

It also cannot intervene in cases of factual inaccuracy, or instances where the content of a textbook is unsubstantiated and challenges traditional culture and practice, sources said.

They cited the example of a primary school textbook that said a family of four would always be happier than a family of eight as it would have more to eat and better clothes to wear.

An MP had complained to the HRD ministry that the lesson would breed a generation of people who would dump their parents once they started their own families, the sources said.