NEW DELHI: Ahead of the unveiling of the national education policy, a key RSS outfit has suggested that local history should be introduced in the school curriculum. To ensure that schoolchildren draw inspiration from local history, the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana has suggested that the courses should begin from Class I.
The outfit believes that ancient Indian history holds immense importance in contemporary times, and students should be given a hang of things from the lower classes. Presently, history is taught from the upper-primary level.
The outfit has made a representative to the HRD Ministry, which is awaiting the report of a five-member panel that is preparing the draft education policy.
The other aspect of introducing the subject at the formative stage is to help instill patriotism among students, self respect and character building. The outfit is reaching out to local historians to write the history of their region.
HRD Minister Smriti Irani has held some rounds of discussions with the RSS-led education outfit.
Rewriting history books has been one of the key demands of RSS, contending that books have been written by English authors and has failed to capture several aspects of the ancient times.
Not long ago, Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, founded by right wing educationist and former RSS pracharak Dinanath Batra, had sought teaching of Vedic Mathematics in schools. It has also prepared a syllabus for this from Class I to XII.