January 18, 1982, Forty Years Ago: NSA against strikers

Three days after she had secured the Maharashtra Congress-I Legislature Party’s authorisation to name A R Antulay’s successor as chief minister, the Congress-I president Indira Gandhi has failed to find a person either from the legislature party or from outside who would be acceptable to the defiant supporters of the ousted chief minister as well as his opponents. Till Sunday night, there was no official word on when she would take a decision.

Textbook change

History and language textbooks for schools all over India will soon be revised radically. In a collaboration with various state governments, the Ministry of Education has begun a phased programme to weed out “undesirable textbooks” and remove matter prejudicial to national integration and unity. The criteria for evaluating history textbooks, laid down by the NCERT, is, however, bound to lead to a bigger controversy than the one which took place when texts written by well-known historians such as Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra and R S Sharma were removed from certain courses.