BANGALORE: Lok Sabha Member and former minister A H Vishwanath on Tuesday accused the State government of saffronising the education system by exploiting the situation.
Participating in a discussion on ‘Saffronisation of Syllabus and Anti-Constitutional Scams’ organised by Karnataka Dalit Sangharsha Samiti here on Tuesday, he charged that the government is promoting Hindutva and hidden agendas of RSS through text books. “Primary and Secondary Education Minister Vishveshwar Hegde Kageri had a blue print to change the whole education syllabus within days after he took over the Education Department. As per the Karnataka Textbooks Committee, he should have made the blue print public and should have subjected it to a wide and effective discussion. But he threw all the rules to the winds.”
He further alleged that the BJP government is trying to sow the seeds of Hindutva in the minds of school children and has made an effort to kill the Dravidian culture in the south. “Opposition parties like Congress and JD(S) which claim themselves as secular have not raised any question against this exploitation including the ministers who were elected from graduate and teachers’ constituencies,” he criticised.
Writer Dr K Marulasiddappa the gathering a map of ‘Cultural India’ printed in the Social Science text books and said, “This map conveys that our neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and others were part of cultural India. This carries a wrong information and will damage the harmony maintained with the neighbouring countries”.
He said that this may be cause an international crisis if not attended to. “In text books no where has any information of Karnataka and its culture. Rulers like Hyder Ali, Tipu Sulthan, Mughals, Lodi and others are not mentioned at all,” he observed.
Marulsiddappa and Vishwanath called upon people concerned to launch a protest to check exploitation of the education field by the BJP government. “With these kind of developments, the BJP government will face rout in the coming elections. The political party, which comes to power next must clean up the entire mess created by BJP government especially in the education field”.
Dr C S Dwarakanath, former president, Karnataka State Commission of Backward Classes and Thinker Prof G K Govinda Rao and others were present.