‘This is a factual question. The CM who oversaw the pogrom in 2002 is PM now. Where’s the error @cbseindia29?’

Waquar Hasan 

NEW DELHI – Parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi and some teachers on Thursday differed with the stand taken by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on an exam question on Gujarat’s anti-Muslim riots. Through a tweet on Wednesday, the CBSE said that the exam question was “inappropriate” and “violations” of its guidelines. It also pledged to take “strict action against the responsible persons” for the “error”.

The said question reads: “The unprecedented scale and spread of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 took place under which government?” The options given to answer the multiple-choice question were: “Congress”, “BJP”, “Democratic” and “Republican”.

The Class 12 Board Exam test was held on Wednesday.

In another tweet, the CBSE claimed that the CBSE guidelines are that the question should be “religion-neutral”.

“The CBSE guidelines for paper setters clearly state that they have to ensure the questions should be academic oriented only and should be class, religion neutral and should not touch upon domains that could harm sentiments of people based on social and political choices,” it tweeted.

On Thursday, Owaisi, MP and President of All India Muslim Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), took to Twitter to ask the CBSE as to what is the “error” in the question.

“This is a factual question. The CM who oversaw the pogrom in 2002 is PM now. Where’s the error @cbseindia29?” he asked.

He further said, “Thousands lost their lives in Gujarat. No person of conscience should ever forget such acts of mass violence. If the next generation doesn’t learn from the past; it’ll be “condemned to repeat it”.

Sociology teachers also differed with the CBSE that the question is in violation of CBSE guidelines. They say that the question is very much with the syllabus.

“There should be no controversy about this question. It is a clear fact mentioned in the book, within the context of different instances of communal violence, and students are expected to know this,” said a Sociology teacher who was quoted by The Hindu.

The question of sociology apparently seems to be taken from the chapter “The Nation-State Religion-Related Issues and Identities” of the assigned book “Indian Society” on page number 134 of the book. In the chapter, communal riots happened under Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are being discussed.

“No region has been wholly exempt from communal violence of one kind or another. Every religious community has faced this violence to a greater or lesser degree, although the proportionate impact is far more traumatic for minority communities. To the extent that governments can be held responsible for communal riots, no government or ruling party can claim to be blameless in this regard. In fact, the two most traumatic contemporary instances of communal violence occurred under each of the major political parties. The anti-Sikh riots of Delhi in 1984 took place under a Congress regime. The unprecedented scale and spread of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 took place under a BJP government,” reads the paragraph.