Dear Madam,
When rabid religious line gets zealously pursued with Who’s Who of the polity religiously spewing vitriol against certain communities and many of whom being associated with deadly riots and pogroms; the society is certainly made to go further and further away from the noble ideal of Secularism.
When criticism against Government gets promptly equated with “attack upon nation” and those who refuse to swim with the “mainstream” and dare to question ideology policies and steps of any outfit get unhesitatingly dubbed as “anti-national”; the liberal concept of Democracy and freedom of expression certainly gets dishonoured most blatantly.
When outfits based on parochial divisive imperialist “philosophy” start dominating in a multi-lingual multi-religious heterogeneous country and dream of a time and society when/where a particular religious group and language would call the shots by relegating all norms of linguistic cultural and religious heterogeneity to oblivion; Diversity is bound to receive least respect possible.
And “respect” towards Federalism gets blatantly exposed when none other than Constitutional safeguards can also be unilaterally abrogated with a state divided into two and demoted to Union Territories without taking the people of the concerned state and their political representatives into confidence!
So it hardly evokes any surprise when noble humanitarian progressive ideas of secularism, democracy, diversity, federalism are specifically found to get deleted from the CBSE syllabus in the name of “reducing the stress” of the students hit by Covid-19 crisis and it’s aftereffects!
Indeed unfortunate is that society where the young impressionable minds get deprived of ideas concepts principles which hold the potential of expanding their mental horizons and liberalise their mindset!
Kajal Chatterjee, Kolkata-114.