This petition is for the immediate removal of the chapter, "The little girl" from class IX's NCERT book "beehive". It contains extremely harmful content which glorifies and normalizes abusive behavior from a parent at a very young age. 

The story revolves around a little seven year old girl who has an extreme fear of her father, because he is scary and calls her names. (Nobody is that scared of their father for those reasons, he probably abused her in the past) In the story, she later ends up destroying her father's speech. (for the innocent reason of creating a gift for him) He then gets very angry and sends her to her room, leaving her to cry alone in the darkness, and then showing up himself to beat her with a ruler. She ends up crying for hours and even wishes that fathers didn't exist at all. 

Verbally and physically abusing a defenseless 7 year old to the point that they wished that their father didn't exist is unacceptable and disgusting, when its literally the father's responsibility to take better care of his belongings. The story later ends up trying to defend and justify his actions by showing how his father actually has a "warmer side" (he just let her sleep next to him because her grandma wasn't home), and then we have questions like this from the book itself:

 
So a seven year old has the obligation to be sympathetic towards their ABUSIVE father? For doing the bare minimum of being a parent one time? What a joke. On the contrary, its the parent's obligation to encourage and nurture sympathy in the child.

I would also like to add that after she was beaten by her father, she hid her hand and turned red whenever she saw her. That's a pretty obvious symptom of trauma.

Yes, you could say that the point of literature is to provoke discussion and critical thinking and that this chapter was reflecting a harsh historical reality, but literature should also foster empathy and understanding and not reinforce violent and outdated views. The chapter makes no effort to point out how the father was in the wrong, and the impact this could have on a 13-14 year old kid, who is at a critical stage of emotional and psychological development is concerning. At this age, they are highly impressionable and can easily internalize harmful messages like this one. Content like this can be stored in their subconscious shaping their views on relationships in negative ways for the rest of their lives. The chapter literally serves no educational purpose other than to depict and justify the abuse of a (reminder: SEVEN year old) child.

One could even argue that this lesson promotes misogyny and harmful gender stereotypes by depicting that a father has the right and authority to abuse his daughter just because he is hardworking and employed. This horrible message has no place in an educational setting, where we should be striving to cultivate values of equal rights and opportunities for all.

I urge the authorities to take immediate action and remove this chapter from the syllabus and replace it with one that aligns with the values of respect, kindness, and non violence.

Thank you for reading. Please sign this petition and spread the message if you agree with the cause.