Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba

Bhopal, Jan. 31: If Kasturba was Gandhiji’s mother, pray who was his wife? And whenever did he go to South Africa via Nepal, and not Natal?

Ask the Madhya Pradesh education department.

A model question bank the department has prepared to help teachers set test papers for Class VIII students has — believe it or not — claimed these for facts.

The Congress today kicked up a ruckus over the howlers, forcing a sheepish state education minister Narottam Mishra to claim they were simply typographical errors.

“Yes, there are some typo errors in the model question bank. I have ordered an inquiry and stopped distribution of the model question bank,” he said.

But the Congress refused to buy his statement. It insisted it had information that most of the 1,000-odd copies of the question bank had already been circulated and only 60 had been withdrawn.

“We will launch a public agitation if these errors are not corrected shortly,” the Madhya Pradesh Congress committee spokesman, Manak Aggarwal, said.

The question bank also fails to provide the correct name of Gandhiji’s mother in another section dealing with “fill in the blanks”. But it mentions Putlibai as one of the possible answer options in a multiple-choice questionnaire.

Although the errors are not restricted to Gandhiji alone — page 3 of the question bank mentions the state’s quaint tourist spot, Mandu, as the “Pink City” instead of Jaipur — they have fuelled the buzz that the Gandhian legacy is fading fast from BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.

Yesterday, when the nation observed the 59th year of Gandhiji’s martyrdom, the customary 11 am siren blown to mark his death was not heard. So, thousands who would have stopped work and observed a two-minute silence did not do so.

Bhopal superintendent of police Anant Kumar Singh and collector S.K. Mishra feigned ignorance about the lapse, claiming they had been out of town.

Last evening, Madhya Pradesh governor Balram Jakhar expressed disappointment at the poor turnout for an all-faith meeting to mark Gandhiji’s martyrdom.

Gandhian Mushahid Ali said he was not surprised at the growing indifference to the Gandhian legacy. “It is the wheel of time doing the trick. Our government too is trying hard to confine his legacy for ceremonial purposes.”