TMC MP points out omission of Tagore’s works from UP text books
The Statesman | 21 August 2025
Trinamul Congress MP Ritabrata Banerjee, who has been consistently asking questions on West Bengal and subjects related to the culture of the state in the Parliament, had asked about omission of works of Rabindranath Tagore by Uttar Pradesh Board text books in the Class XII syllabus to the ministry of education.
The Rajya Sabha Trinamul Congress MP, who is also a trade union leader, had earlier asked questions on the plans by the Centre on installing Tagore’s statue at Jallianwala Bagh memorial in Punjab.
The question this time by the TMC MP was regarding Tagore’s works being removed from the UP government.
The department of school education and literacy answering the unstarred question replied on Wednesday. The minister of state in the ministry of education, Jayant Chaudhary said that the onus of choosing the syllabus lies with the state government.
The letter mentioned: “The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, and the subsequent National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE), 2023, prepared by NCERT, provide broad guiding principles for curricula and textbooks at the national level. The NEP, 2020 in its para 4.32 states that, ‘States will prepare their own curricula (which may be based on the NCFSE prepared by NCERT to the extent possible) and prepare textbooks (which may be based on the NCERT textbook materials) to be used in their schools, incorporating State flavour and materials as needed. However, as education is a subject in the Concurrent List of the Constitution, the preparation of curricula, development of school textbooks and selection of supplementary reading material are in the domain of state governments…”
Ritabrata Banerjee said: “The reply is very ambiguous. They have said the onus of choosing the syllabus lies with the state. But, in UP they have a BJP government. Tagore was famously referred to by the British as ‘polymath’. Tagore was the advocate of cultural freedom and universalisation. Ami prithibir kobi ( I belong to the world). He is a national pride and writer of the National Anthem. The fact is BJP fears Tagore and has declared a war against the world poet. The UP govt has excluded Tagore’s ‘Homecoming’ from the Class XII syllabus. But Let me tell you, Tagore will stay till India will exist.”
Earlier, the MP had criticised the Left government in Kerala, where the draft textbooks in the state mentioned that Subhas Chandra Bose ‘fled to Germany in fear of British’.
The MP said, “The CPI-M must tender an unconditional apology for insulting one of the greatest heroes of our freedom struggle. Netaji had taken an alias, Md Ziauddin, an LIC agent to hoodwink the British govt in India then. I have my doubts if the leaders in Kerala know the story why Netaji left India.”