Trinamool Congress MP and historian Sugata Bose asked the Union government to celebrate the centenary of Rabindranath Tagore’s book “Nationalism” this year, in the prevailing atmosphere that has seen the rise of incidents of mob lynchings in the country.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha, Mr. Bose read out a passage from the book that warned that a narrow definition of nationalism should not be allowed to prevail over human values. “Rabindranath Tagore’s idea of nationalism must be celebrated when ‘engines of coercion are snuffing out lives of people’,” he said, quoting the book in reference to mob lynching.
“I welcome the Minister for Human Resource Development’s assurance that the government had no plans to remove the writings of Rabindranath Tagore from school textbooks. In fact, I would urge him to increase the number of Tagore’s works in school books,” he said.
Mr. Bose’s reference was to a news report that the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas headed by Dina Nath Batra had, in its recommendations to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) suggested the removal of Rabindranath Tagore’s works from school textbooks. The Lok Sabha has also been agitating for a discussion on mob lynching for the past week.