Is the Rajasthan government trying to rewrite history? Not if Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey can help it.

The Rajasthan governments is doing its bit yet again on behalf of the traditional political establishment to weaken the Right To Information Act. This time it is by removing any mention of the RTI struggle from text books.

While the passage of the RTI act was hailed as a landmark event in India’s independence, successive governments have since, been doing their best to weaken if not kill it entirely.

The Manmohan Singh led United Progressive Alliance tried several times to amend the act and remove file notings (among other things) from its ambit. This cat-and-mouse game of successive governments attempting to cling to opaqueness and lack of accountability in governance is at odds with expectations of transparency and accountability increasing in a more connected and technologically savvy citizenry.

In a letter written to CS Rajan, chief secretary of the Rajasthan Government, Magsayasay award winner and well known RTI activist Aruna Roy and her associate Nikhil Dey (of the Majdoor Sewa Kisan Sangathan or MKSS) came down heavily on the Bharatiya Janata Party government for attempting to “rewrite history” and obliterate the importance of social movements played in legislating and pushing for Right To Information.

“In the hurry to rewrite history and manipulate textbooks for political reasons, the government is hurting the sentiments of ordinary people, burying the truth, and actually attempting to obliterate acknowledgement of a contribution that should be of pride to the whole state,” Roy and Dey write in their letter.

Almost all mature democracies have provisions like the Freedom Of Information Act to make governance more transparent and accountable. India, after trying to walk down that line with the big boys of the democratic world in the early 2000s, seems to be attempting to become less ‘democratic’ by such actions. This after the ‘biggest democracy in the world’ chest thumping rhetoric is a constant.

The full letter can be read here: