Left embarrassed, officials of the Gujarat State School Textbook Board (GSSTB), the publisher of the textbook, have rectified the blunder in the online version of the book available on their website and removed the controversial word.
Assuring an internal inquiry, GSSTB Executive President Nitin Pethani said it was a "printing mistake".
The controversial reference appears on page 16, which is in the chapter titled "Teacher-student relationship in Indian culture".
"The textbook has depicted our God in a bad light. We condemn the word used for Jesus Christ. It has hurt our religious sentiments. We want the government to withdraw the book immediately," an agitator said.
Though GSSTB has removed the word from the online version of the textbook, they said it will not be possible to withdraw the textbooks as they were already distributed to students across the state.
"This was nothing but a printing mistake. Instead of word 'Bhagwan', the word 'haivaan' got printed. We have already made the correction in the online version. Since books have already been distributed among students, it is not possible to withdraw them now," Pethani said.
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