NCERT textbook falsifies Gujarat riot numbers
Instance
The NCERT Class XI textbook entitled Political Theory in a chapter on Secularism (Chapter 8, page 112), makes the following statement with respect to the Gujarat riots (emphasis added):
Nearly two thousand Muslims were massacred in Gujarat in 2002. The surviving members of many of these families still cannot go back to the villages in which they lived.
The complete textbook can be downloaded from here.
Facts
Perhaps the Gujarat riots probes are the most comprehensive and elaborate investigations conducted in recent memory with various Government agencies being involved in the process. First the NHRC and later, various courts personally oversaw these investigations. At the end of it, on 11 May 2005, the then Minister of State for Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal tabled an official report in the Rajya Sabha which gave the exact number of riot casualties.
According to this official report which is available on public domain a total of 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed in the Gujarat riots.
Thus, while the official number of Muslims killed in the Gujarat riots is 790, the NCERT textbook mentions it as two thousand, which is 1,210 more than the official number. Additionally, the fact that the NCERT textbook chooses not to mention the 254 dead Hindu riot victims raises strong doubts on its objectivity in preparing the textbooks. Also, it is inexplicable that the NCERT which reports to the Government of India’s Education department has failed to rely on the Central Home Ministry’s report tabled in the Rajya Sabha! Indeed, the textbook does not cite any source as to how the figure of 2000 dead Muslim riot victims was arrived at.
Verdict
In the light of the aforementioned facts it is clear that the NCERT Political Theory textbook’s claim that nearly two thousand Muslims were killed in the Gujarat riots is untrue. This also leads us to the inevitable conclusion that NCERT textbooks provide factually incorrect information even about easily verifiable events in recent history.
IndiaFacts verdict: The NCERT’s Class XI Political Theory textbook’s claim that nearly two thousand Muslims were massacred in Gujarat riots is false.
Good catch.
It is true that the statement made in Rajya Sabha by Mr. Sriprakash Jaiswal claims that 790 muslims and 254 hindus were killed in the post Godhra riots. This figure includes the dead in police firing but does not include the victims of Godhra. The statement also said that 919 women were rendered widows and 616 children became orphans. This data was based on figures supplied by Gujarat government as is clear from the minister’s statement. ( Q. No 5209 answered on 11th May 2005).
However it is the Gujarat government’s figures which have consistently changed over the time. At the end of April 2002. the death toll was given as 552 muslims and 168 hindus including the deaths in Godhra and in police firing. This figure was given by Gujarat Police http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2002-04-29/ahmedabad/27123130_1_muslims-hindus-police-bullets . Thus excluding the Godhra deaths and those killed in police firing, the official figures were 31 hindus killed in riots as of end of April 2002. This includes the hindus killed in retaliatory violence by muslims (It has been covered in the book Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy, edited by S.Varadarajan) as also the hindus killed by hindu mobs (Three hindu workers were hacked & burnt to death in Best Bakery in Baroda, GeetaBen was killed for having a muslim husband..).
Then came the statement made in 2005 when Gujarat govt. figures were read out in Rajya Sabha. The death toll as you have noted was 1044. Further revision came in 2009 when after declaring the missing as presumed dead, the Gujarat govt revised the figures from 952 (How did 1044 in 2005 become 952 in 2009 before the missing were added to the dead toll?) to 1180.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/gujarat-riots-missing-people-to-be-declared-dead/429213/0
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-02-16/india/28049815_1_gujarat-riots-sc-appointed-special-investigation-team-official-toll
And about the death toll in police firing –
Who died in Police Firing?
On 2 May, law minister Arun Jaitley told Parliament it was not true Muslims had been targeted by the Gujarat government. At the same time, he refused to provide a religion-wise breakdown of those killed in police firing.
He had good reasons not to do so.
For on the same day, the police in Ahmedabad was admitting it had killed more Muslims than Hindus in its ostensible attempts to stop what was clearly mob violence against Muslims. ‘Of the 184 people who died in police firing since the violence began, 104 are Muslims, says a report drafted by Gujarat Police’, Vinay Menon of Hindustan Times reported (‘Cops admit killing more Muslims’, 3 May 2002).’The statistic substantiates the allegation … that not only did the local police not do anything to stop the Hindu mobs; they actually turned their guns on the helpless Muslim victims’.
For example, on 28 February, 40 men shot dead near the Bapunagar police station in Ahmedabad were all Muslims, most shot in the head and chest. They had been defending themselves from a 3000 – strong mob.(Janyala Sreenivas, ‘Who shot them point blank?’, Indian Express, 9 April 2002).
Though the number of Muslims and Hindus killed in police firing has been collated by the Gujarat government, noted Menon,this has so far not been released. ‘Coming out with the truth would only inflame the situation, it is feared’. The government argues that in the first 72 hours of violence, more Hindus were killed in police firing. State home minister Gorghan Zadaphia told Menon : ‘I have data that shows more Hindus were killed till March 3, but it cannot be disclosed.’
By the third week of May, 75 of the 105 killed by police firing in Ahmedabad were Muslims.’But the real numbers,’ said Raveen Thukral, ‘are probably likely to be far larger : major manipulations are alleged to have been done at the stage of carrying out autopsies.’(‘The missing are dead, Gujarat toll may go up,’ Hindustan Times, 24 May 2002).
(Gujarat — The Making of a Tragedy ed Siddharth Varadarajan, page 182 )
http://gujarat2002news.blogspot.in/2013/04/people-killed-in-police-firing-in.html
Unless this issue is brought out in the legal domain, the contents will languish in the text book. Hope some right minded intellectuals take up the cause and fight this legally and stop this false propaganda.
This is a perfect example where legal activism may help. This ‘expose’ has no value if the chapter continues to be in the books and being fed to the unsuspecting kids. It has to go out of the text book and the ones responsible for that should be punished according to law.