Bengal textbook calls BJP communal

TEXT ROW: Textbook meant for higher secondary classes in West Bengal describes BJP as communal.

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New Delhi: A textbook approved for higher secondary classes in schools affiliated to West Bengal Higher Secondary Council has sparked off a row for describing the Bharatiya Janata Party as "communal".

Activists of the BJP's youth wing, Yuva Morcha, were out on the streets in Kolkata on Tuesday in protest against the contentious textbook. The Yuva Morcha activists even ransacked the office of the book's publisher, Chhaya Prakashani, and threw rotten eggs and tomatoes at the office of the publishing house.

The textbook, titled Rashtro Biganner Ruprekha (Outlines of political science) is written by certain Nimai Pramanik and it has been approved by the West Bengal Higher Secondary Council.

Angry over the textbook, state BJP general secretary Rahul Sinha on Tuesday said the Left Front government, which often accused the BJP-led governments in states of saffronising education, was itself indoctrinating students with Marxist ideology.

It was regrettable that the state's HS council had no qualms in approving the book, which referred to the BJP as "communal party," he said.

In one of its chapters, the book says: "The parties which have been formed on the basis of religion or uses the religion as a weapon are called communal parties and BJP is one of such parties."

Sinha threatened to sue the publisher unless such comments were deleted from the book. When contacted, a publishing house spokesman confirmed the incident, but did not make any comment.