Bangladesh: Demands of Islamic groups met in textbooks

It was little changes that alarmed Bangladesh intellectuals to have a closer look at the national textbooks. They noticed the removal of 17 rather "atheistic" poems, the replacement of a travel report to the Nile in Egypt instead of the Hindu-dominated north of India or the exclusion of the word "period" from parts of girls' physical development classes.

Furthermore, first graders in primary classes will learn the letter O by the example of the "orna", a scarf that has to be worn by Muslim girls instead of "Ol", a sort of vegetable.
Among these changes there were more demands from conservative Islamic scholars that the Bangladesh education ministry gave in to.

The fact that religious groups have the influence to directly change the textbook contents concerns activists such as Rasheda K. Choudhury, a former adviser to the education ministry. “Nobody knew about it. Nobody is taking responsibility”, she said.

On one hand, there are big groups of Islamist Bangladeshis and, on the other hand, there is the government with secularism as the basic principle. In order to close this gap and to integrate the conservative groups, the education ministry had to agree on many compromises, including concessions about textbooks and its subject matters.

Redaktion (sz)

Sources

Photo credit: Graphic by TUBS / CC BY-SA 3.0
Information source: nytimes.com