The Centre on Tuesday said the writings of Rabindranath Tagore will not be removed from school textbooks, PTI reported, a day after the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas asked the National Council of Educational Research and Training made a recommendation to drop them.

Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien’s brought up the subject during zero hour in the Rajya Sabha and asked Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar to disassociate from the Nyas. “Rabindranath Tagore does not need a certificate from anybody,” he said, while handing him three books on Tagore to read.

Javadekar said, “We hail everybody and nothing will be removed.” The Union minister said teachers and others were asked to give suggestions to correct or remove any factual errors there might be in textbooks. The NCERT had received more than 7,000 suggestions, he said.

When Samajwadi Party MP Naresh Agarwal said said that the Nyas had suggested removal of Urdu words, Javadekar said, “We will not do anything that will create some problem.”

The Nyas – headed by former chief of RSS’ education wing Dina Nath Batra – had also alleged that the Class 11 political science textbook talks about the “massive majority of Congress in 1984”, but gives no details of the 1977 elections.