Lack of reference to Nehru in Rajasthan textbook 'an oversight': Co-author

Rajasthan's new Class VIII Social Science textbook will be revised to include India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru after what the convenor of the state panel on school curricula said was "an oversight".

The textbook created a storm all over the country because it made no mention of Nehru as a leader of the freedom struggle and as India's first Prime Minister, and led to fears that the rightwing RSS was rewriting history.

According to Brajmohan Ramdev, convenor of the educational panel and co-author of the textbook, the lack of reference to Nehru was not intentional. He said that the State Institute of Education Research and Training, Udaipur, will be asked to correct the textbook.

"SIERT will be asked to either revise the text books and correct the references to Nehru or make the corrections in the next edition," said Ramdev.

The textbook created a storm on the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, as the Congress and the CPIM accused the BJP of distorting history, according to the Hindustan Times.

Minister of state for parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said: "We want to assure that no icon is being removed or hidden. Those that had been removed are being added."