Congress toolkit, says BJP on writers’ protest over revised textbooks

MYSURU/BELAGAVI: With the textbook revision row hotting up, and writers demanding that their chapters be dropped, Mysuru-Kodagu MP Pratap Simha said it is all part of the “Congress toolkit”.

He told reporters here on Wednesday that when PM Narendra Modi had assumed power, a few writers had returned their awards and spoken about intolerance. Now, a few of them are demanding that their writings be dropped from school textbooks. “This is all a part of the Congress toolkit.

Chapters and poems of several writers, including Bolwar Muhammad Kunhi, have been already removed during the revision of textbooks, but still they have written to us to drop their chapters,” he said. Taking a jibe at Nadoja Hampa Nagarajaiah, who resigned from Kuvempu Pratishtana,  he asked why his wife Kamala Hampana had not resigned from her post too.

He also said that most of the writers, including Baraguru Ramachandrappa, have not made any significant contribution to the field of literature since the past one or two decades. Expressing anger against writer Devanuru Mahadeva for demanding that his works be dropped, he said, “Youngsters have read Devanuru for many years, let them read new ones.”

In Belagavi, BJP MLA P Rajeev echoed Simha, saying the Congress was misleading people through its “toolkit terrorism”, by provoking them, misleading litterateurs and creating disturbances in society. He told reporters that “Congress had always adopted a hit-and-run stance. It picks up issues like Bitcoin, review of textbooks, etc., but never sticks to its stand,” he said. He slammed the Congress for spreading baseless propaganda among seers and intellectuals and said the party’s claim that the government was trying to saffronise school textbooks was false.