Demanding immediate withdrawal of newly released chapters of Class XII history books of Punjab School Education Board (PSEB), the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Wednesday said that the Board had not only distorted history but had also defamed the Sikh Gurus and the religion.
“The new chapters, which had been released online, had numerous mistakes and factual errors. Even more serious is the sinister attempt to distort historical facts related to the Sikh Gurus and objectionable observations about Sikh dharmic granths,” said the former Education Minister Daljit Singh Cheema while demanding that the state Education Minister OP Soni should be sacked and PSEB chairman Manohar Kant Kalohia should be removed for “these misdemeanours immediately”.
Demanding action against Board officials who had let these distortions be released to children online, Cheema said that the Sikh panth would never allow the Congress Government to play with the history of Sikhism as well as that of the Punjab State.
He said that the chapters should be withdrawn immediately or the SAD would launch an agitation on this issue.
Cheema said that it seemed the Congress Government wanted to deprive the younger generations from their history and culture by putting “misleading and wrong facts about Guru Sahibans and Sikh religion” into their history books.
“There are a horrifying number of wrongs facts and misinformation about the Sikh Guru sahibans in the third and fifth chapters of the modified history book,” he said.
SAD leader added that in a reference, it is written that the tenth Guru Sahib looted a village named Alishan to show displeasure to Bhim Chand. “Even facts about the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev were distorted to give false impression that Guru Sahib was just physically tortured after his punishment was converted into fine and not executed by the Mughal ruler,” he said.
“Apart from this, utter disrespect was shown toward the Gurus by not writing their names in the proper manner. Even cities, connected with Sikh history, have been shown disrespect by deleting suffix ‘Sahib’ from their names,” he added.
The former Education Minister also noted that only one chapter of the Class XI history book had been released online till now even as the examinations were a few months away.
Terming this as criminal negligence, Cheema said that even in the case of Class XII history book, only five chapters had been released and these too contained distortions.