After the removal of Jawaharlal Nehru's name from the school textbooks in Rajasthan, the Bharatiya Janata Party regime has deleted a chapter on the Right to Information (RTI) movement from the class VIII social science textbook. The move has led to protests from shocked RTI activists and campaigners here.

The issue has assumed significance since marginalised villagers in remote villagers and a series of people’s movements in the State played a fundamental role in fashioning the Act for the entire country. The deleted chapter described the history of the struggle by farmers and labourers for access to the muster rolls of drought relief work in Devdungari village of Rajsamand district; the movement went on to be the impetus to give the country a unique RTI legislation.

The narrative on the movement, initiated by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) on the issue, is part of curricula the world over, including at the Kennedy School of Governance in Harvard.In a letter Magasaysay award winning social activist Aruna Roy and her colleagues in MKSS to State Chief Secretary C.S. Rajan has demanded to know what was objectionable to warrant blacking out of the chapter from the textbook.

“In the hurry to re-write history and manipulate textbooks for political reasons, the government is hurting the sentiments of ordinary people, burying the truth, and actually attempting to obliterate acknowledgement of a contribution that should be of pride to the whole State,” stated the letter written by Ms. Roy, Nikhil Dey and Shankar Singh.

The activists demanded that the changes to the textbook be put on hold and an open dialogue be conducted to determine if there is any need for amending the books, and if so, what these amendments should be.

Separately, the Suchana Evum Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan has filed an RTI application with the State government’s Education Department seeking information on the amount of money likely to be spent on changes in the syllabus and reprinting of textbooks.