An Expert Committee of Private Schools Association of Jammu and Kashmir that was tasked to check the content of schools books in Kashmir has recommended banning two Urdu books for class 5 and class 3, after finding objectionable content in the book, the association said in a press release.
The Expert Committee while presenting its findings before the Association flagged the books titled Mehboob Urdu published by Franklin International, New Delhi as having objectionable content. The Association was formed by the committee after the recent controversy regarding objectionable content in a particular book came to fore.
“We have started an exercise to check the content of all books that are prescribed for children for various classes in Kashmir. During this exercise we found that two Urdu books titled Mehboob Urdu are having objectionable content in them. These books have various caricatures that are not allowed in Islam. Such things hurt the sentiments of people. We have recommended immediate removal of such books from the syllabus,” said Khurshid Bismil, Chairman of the Expert Committee.
After receiving the report from the Expert Committee, PSAJK has issued an advisory asking all the schools that had prescribed the particular books in their syllabus to remove the same immediately. The Schools have been asked to collect each and every copy of such books from their stock and from every student too. All the copies of such books should be destroyed, the Association advised the schools. Furthermore the book dealers in Kashmir are also asked to remove the stock of the said books from their collection.