BHOPAL: The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government has decided to include chapters on Hindutva’s controversial icon Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the school curriculum of Madhya Pradesh.
“The National Education Policy-2020 focuses on imparting India-centric education, which is why we’re including chapters on the lives of real Indian heroes in the new syllabus, which will be fully based on the NEP-2020. As directed by the chief minister, we’re going to include in the NEP-2020 based new syllabus, the chapters on the lives of true Indian revolutionaries, including Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru and Veer Savarkar,” MP’s Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar said on Thursday.
“The CM has also directed to include in the new set up and books, chapters on the basic theme and message of Bhagavad Gita and Lord Parashurama,” the minister said.
While defending the move to include chapters on Savarkar in the new syllabus and textbooks of schools in the state in this poll year, the minister said, “Veer Savarkar is among our great revolutionaries, who was sentenced to double life imprisonment in a single life. He was the first writer to term the 1857 revolution (which was otherwise termed as mutiny) as the war for the country’s independence, owing to which his contribution to India’s war for freedom from British rule is unparalleled. Unfortunately, successive Congress governments in the past neglected our own great revolutionaries, but glorified foreign invaders. It’s time to correct it and to ensure that our school children come to know about the inspiring lives of our own revolutionaries that this move is being made.”
Opposing the move to include a chapter on Savarkar’s life in MP’s school curriculum, opposition Congress’s MLA from Bhopal Arif Masood said, “It’s unfortunate that they (the BJP government in the state) want to include Savarkar. He apologized to the British and including him in the syllabus is an insult to freedom fighters.”
Tweeting over the same issue, state Congress’s media wing head KK Mishra, while terming the move of including Savarkar in the MP schools’ curriculum an insult to the freedom fighters, further questioned, “Will the government also teach the school students, the ten-part Savarkar Samagra penned by Savarkar, particularly it's a seventh part, which advocates Gau Palan and not Gau Pujan (cow farming, but not cow worship).”