Karnataka Govt Replaces Chapter on Bhagat Singh in 10th Books With RSS Founder's Speech, Student Bodies Agitated

Student organisations are furious at the Karnataka government’s decision to remove a lesson about Bhagat Singh from Class 10 textbook. The prominent reason for their anger is that in place of Bhagat Singh’s lesson, a speech by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar was included in the Class 10 Kannada updated book.

All-India Democratic Students Organisation (AIDSO) and All-India Save Education Committee (AISEC) are two student bodies which have shown resistence against the move by the state government. “The founders of our renaissance movement and many great freedom fighters had hoped for democratic, scientific, and secular education. But all political parties that have ruled so far have been working out their own agendas in textbooks,” the student unions were quoted as saying by The Hindu.

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AIDSO added to its statement that a lesson on Bhagat Singh, the great revolutionary who gave his life at the age of 23, has been excluded from the Kannada textbook, but a speech by the RSS founder, who, the student’s union said, does not unite people but encourages communal hatred, has been added.

Apart from Bhagat Singh’s lesson, their statement claimed that the lesson condemning racial hatred, ‘Mruga Mattu Sundari’ by P. Lankesh, as well as several good teachings such as Sara Abubakar’s ‘Yuddha’ and AN Murthi Rao’s ‘Vyaghra Geethe’ have been excluded.

“Already, people across the state had raised questions about the committee set up for textbook revision by the BJP government and its chairman. It is now proven that the government constituted this committee to include the BJP agenda in education. AIDSO calls upon people and students to resist the government’s propaganda of narrow-minded ideology,” said the students’ union. They have demanded that the texts that were removed be quickly reinstated.

Meanwhile, Karnataka government is considering teaching Hindu scripture Bhagwad Gita in schools. Adding that former president APJ Abdul Kalam had talked about the positive impact of the religious textbook, Nagesh said that there was nothing wrong with people of different faiths listening to the Bhagavad Gita as it guides life.

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