BENGALURU: Siddaramaiah on Saturday slammed the Sangh Parivar for secretly acting behind the scene to “poison the impressionable minds of young children’’ in the name of textbook revision. The government has acted irresponsibly by justifying the mistakes of textbook revision committee chief Rohit Chakrathirtha. An expert committee should be constituted to look into the issue, he said.
“Deletion of texts advocating principles of social justice, gender equality and regional inclusiveness from textbooks is inexcusable. In September last year, the BJP government had asked Chakrathirtha, who is not related to the field of education, to head the textbook committee. Several experts say this revision is unconstitutional and in violation of the spirit of the Constitution,” the former CM added.
He said, “The Mudambaditthaya Committee textbooks were revised by our government under the chairmanship of Baragur Ramachandrappa because it had flouted suggestions of the Education Commission. We had requested the Baragur Ramachandrappa Committee to revise the textbooks for the 21st century keeping in mind the spirit of the Constitution and Education Commission.”
He said in the latest revision, the writings of 21 Shudra, six Dalit and eight Lingayat poets and writers have been omitted from Kannada language textbooks, while texts by 28 people have been included. He alleged that 95 per cent of these authors are Brahmins. “Textbooks include lessons from those who hate Shudras, Dalits and minorities, and majority belong to RSS. Most of them are spokesmen for the Manuvadi agenda,” the Badami MLA charged.
When introducing Kuvempu, instead of saying ‘Rashtrakavi Kuvempu’, it is written the second Rashtrakavi Kuvempu (the first being Govinda Pai). Kuvempu’s photo has been removed from the lesson on the unification movement in the 7th standard Kannada textbook and replaced with the portrait of Govinda Pai. Lessons on Nadaprabhu Kempegowda have been left out, he said. comprehensive account of Mysore Wadiyars was included by the Baragur committee, but the Chakrathirtha panel has removed major achievements of Wadiyars, Sir M Visvesvaraya and Sir Mirza Ismail in the 7th standard social science textbook.
“It is clear that the anti-Shudra mentality has worked behind abandoning their lessons. Why has the Chakrathirtha committee removed details of Shivakumara Swamiji of Siddaganga Mutt and Balagangadharanatha Swamiji of Adichunchanagiri Mutt,” he asked.