BENGALURU: A day after Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said his government was open to re-revising textbooks, Primary and Secondary Education Minister BC Nagesh has clarified that they would neither stop printing of revised textbooks nor re-print them. He assured there would be no delays in textbooks distribution, and that school education would not be affected because of any re-revision.Minister Nagesh told The New Indian Express on Saturday that following the Friday evening discussions with the Chief Minister post submission of the report on textbooks revision, they decided not to reprint the textbooks.
As only the content on 12th century social reformer Basavanna in class 9 social science textbooks is being considered for re-revision, the textbooks will not be reprinted. When they revise the content, only a separate small booklet of that revised content on Basavanna will be printed and distributed to schools along with the textbooks, Nagesh said.
As of Friday night, 79.70 per cent of the textbooks were printed and 66.98 per cent were distributed to the schools. According to sources in the education department, the printing and distribution process is scheduled to be completed within a fortnight. Reprinting them with the latest re-revision would mean stopping the ongoing printing and affecting the schools.
As the Rohith Chakratirtha-headed Textbooks Revision Committee has been dissolved, Nagesh iterated that no new committee would be constituted to oversee the re-revision of content on Basavanna. Instead, the state government plans to consult a few experts, he said, although refraining from divulging the names of the experts.
Of 14 authors, text of only 7 re-printed: Minister
On the issue of authors withdrawing their permission to include their content in the Chakratirtha-headed committee’s revised textbooks, Nagesh said, “Out of 14 authors who have claimed to have sought withdrawing the permission, the chapters/poems of only seven authors are printed in the revised textbooks. The rest have simply claimed so. But none of these seven authors can legally withdraw permission once they have given their consent. So there is no question of dropping their lessons or re printing textbooks again.”
He said, “When the textbooks are already printed, and that too when they were well aware about the textbook revision committee’s report, which was submitted last year itself, they shouldn’t have done it (seeking withdrawal of permission to publish their content). Yet, while we have already written to litterateur Devanur Mahadeva, we will write to the other six authors, too, out of respect for them.” Meanwhile, CM Bommai rejected the opposition’s demand for removing RSS founder KB Hedgewar lesson from the text books. He said there is nothing wrong in retaining the lesson.
On whether the textbook revision committee was cancelled or dissolved, he said that after its work it has been dissolved and there is no need to form a new committee. He also said the Chakratirtha committee has taken decision based on the reality and not on the pressure exerted by the swamijis, there is no much difference in the texts of Basavanna made by the committee headed by Baraguru Ramachandrappa and the present one, however after studying the new textbook there is a difference in one sentence and it will be rectified. He also said his government is running on Basava Patha and the new textbooks have got good vachanas included and it will be discussed with the seers and stakeholders. Minister Nagesh said although they had plans to revise one chapter in PU-II social science textbook (reportedly chapter 4.2 on ‘Birth of New Religions’) as there were objections to that also, they are planning to drop that idea for now.