Gujarat school textbook says Sita was abducted by Lord Ram

Gujarat school textbook says Sita was abducted by Lord Ram

Class XII Sanskrit textbook of the Gujarat board says Sita was abducted by Lord Ram, and not Ravana.

Page 106 of the textbook ‘Introduction to Sanskrit Literature’ reads, “Here the poet has brought out a beautiful picture of the character of Rama with his original thought and thinking. There is a very heart-touching description of the message conveyed by Laxman to Ram when Sita was abducted by Rama (sic).” This chapter has a lot of spelling errors too. Interestingly, only English-medium students are reading this incorrect version. The Gujarati textbook, on the other hand, has got this paragraph in ‘Raguvansham’, an epic by Sanskrit poet Kalidas, correct.

GSSTB executive president Nitin Pethani claimed that the word ‘tyag’ has been translated and printed as “abducted” instead of “abandoned” by those who were given the task of translation and proof-reading.

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“It should have been printed as ‘when Sita was abandoned by Lord Rama’. But, due to a translation mistake, it got printed as ‘when Sita was abducted by Rama’.

“The word abandoned was replaced with abducted. This is a translation mistake, which is not there in the Gujarati textbooks,” said Mr Pethani.

“We will conduct an inquiry into the matter. If found guilty, we will blacklist the contractors who were given the task of translation as well as proof-reading. We will inform the school teachers to correct this mistake while teaching that chapter,” he added.