-The Hindu The petition against the Ambedkar-Nehru cartoon, published in The Hindu (“Humour is by no means exempt from prejudice”, June 8, 2012), makes for sad reading. Sad, because it bears the signatures of some of our best scholars, universally admired for their rigorous scholarship, who nevertheless chose to sign a petition short on facts. The petition asks the NCERT's Textbooks Review Committee to “reconsider the Ambedkar cartoon (and possibly other such...

It relates to the anti-Hindi agitation in the State; politicians say it depicts the student agitators in a poor light Just as the controversy over a cartoon on B.R. Ambedkar in a textbook prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is settling down, another row has erupted over a cartoon in a class XII Political Science text book of the NCERT. The cartoon relates to the anti-Hindi...

-The Hindu A petition submitted to Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, Chairperson, NCERT Textbooks Review Committee, by leading dalit and non-dalit writers, scholars and activists. When NCERT's Class XI Political Science textbook, Indian Constitution at Work , came to the attention of some dalit activists, they objected to the manner in which the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, had been depicted riding a snail representing the Constitution, with...

Highlighting the lack of empathy among the intellectuals towards the “dalit viewpoint”, prominent dalit and non-dalit writers on Thursday submitted a petition to the NCERT textbook review committee to reconsider the “insensitive” cartoon of B R Ambedkar and make necessary changes in the text as well to ensure that the dalit icon finds his due place. Stressing that textbooks can’t be treated as “above criticism” and cartoons as “sacrosanct”, they urged...

Islamapur, Nalanda: One family builds a house that has no walls, no doors, just a bizarre semi-circular curved strip buried in the sand; another builds a thatched house with no approach road so everyone has to sleep by the side of the highway and cook in the open. And 70 other families don’t know what to do because all the plots they got last November — to build their homes...