JAIPUR: Drawing the ire of Muslim organisations in the state, the Class XII political science textbook of the Rajasthan government claims that some experts believe “Islamic terrorism as a strand of Islam”.
The textbook, published in 2018 under the former BJP government, has a chapter on ‘Terrorism, Criminalization of Politics and Corruption’. Here it quotes anonymous experts stating that “commitment to a particular religion is the main trend of Islamic terrorism”, under the heading ‘Fanaticism and Terrorism’.
The text explains Islamic terrorism as martyrdom, perpetrating unlimited barbarism, forcibly amassing wealth and killing and committing atrocities.
Acting on a complaint by the Rajasthan Muslim Forum, an apex body of Muslims in the state, Lal Kothi police filed an FIR late on Wednesday night against the Rajasthan State Textbook Board and Sanjiv Passbook for the objectionable content. The body had earlier held two meetings with police commissioner Anand Srivastava.
Quoting anonymous experts, the chapter also says that “in Islamic terrorism the terrorist has excessive devotion to Islam rather than any faction or a group”. It also says that "it is also believed that Islam, is not a violent or inhuman”. The chapter also projected Islam as essentially a political ideology. The writer’s comments begin only after the anonymous expert’s comments end.
The writer explains Islamic terrorism as "martyrdom, perpetrating unlimited barbarism, forcibly amassing wealth and killing and committing atrocities on innocent people ruthlessly in a most ghastly manner in the name of Allah are some of the features of Islamic terrorism".
It goes on to say that "this form of Islam has killed and intimidated more Muslims than other people”.
In a section, ‘Nature of Terrorism in India,’ it uses terms like Sikh terrorist and Muslim terrorist in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir demanding a separate state on religious grounds. In the latter part of the section, it says, “In these horrendous attacks there was a direct role of Muslim fundamentalist, the hard-core terrorist, smugglers, and foreign agencies" while describing those behind the Bombay blast in 1993, along with ISI.
On Kashmir, it says Islamic terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir comes under the category of religious separatism. The textbook claims that "Pakistan has been quite successful in fomenting religious discontent discord in the mindset of Kashmir and orienting them towards the tendency of excessive devotion to Islam".
Bansilal Jakhad, former principal of government school, Jodhpur, was one of the three-member committee who authored and translated the chapter into Hindi. “I didn’t deal with this section and was not aware until it was published,” Jakhad told TOI.
Convenor of the book Bhanwar Singh Rathore, who was an associate professor at a government college in Jodhpur and wrote this portion, died in September 2020.
The present state government has replaced the state textbooks with NCERT textbooks from the 2021 academic session.