Textbook Blunders: Hefajat slams critics, defends changes
Hefajat-e-Islam has defended the changes that the government brought in this year's school textbooks and praised the government decision.
Ahmed Shafi, ameer of the Qawmi madrasa-based organisation, in a statement yesterday said the government's policymakers brought “some positive changes” in the textbooks following their longstanding demand and agitation.
He blasted those criticising the changes, terming them “communal” and “objectionable”. “They will be resisted strongly.”
Hefajat also came down hard on the media for running “provocative reports” saying that its demand for bringing changes to textbooks was fulfilled completely.
The statement came at a time when the government is facing widespread criticism from different quarters over some embarrassing blunders in textbooks and dropping of some topics.
Hefajat and Bangladesh Awami Olema League have been demanding exclusion of some of the poems written by “Hindus and atheists”.
Many have alleged that some poems including one "Boi" (book) written by Humayun Azad and prose have been dropped from Bangla textbooks of different classes as per the demand of the two organisations.
Eminent citizens and different organisations strongly condemned the anomalies in textbooks and demanded withdrawal of the “error-ridden textbooks” immediately.
Following criticism, the education ministry made National Curriculum and Textbook Board chief editor Pritish Kumar Sarkar and its senior expert Lana Humayra Khan officers on special duty (OSD), a post with official duties and regarded as a punishment.
Two committees have also been formed to identify the mistakes in textbooks and also those responsible.
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