The Karnataka government has decided to drop lessons on RSS founder Hedgewar and Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar from the current curriculum, the Minister for School Education and Literacy Madhu Bangarappa said. The Cabinet has also decided to provide supplementary booklets to all schools instead of printing new textbooks. In 2021, the BJP government had made a list of changes dropping lessons written by Dalit writers and progressive intellectuals against caste hierarchy and instead added essays on right-wing ideologues.
“By the time the new government was formed, the textbooks had already reached the students. We have decided to provide supplementary booklets to all schools,” he said. The Minister said that a committee was formed, which identified 45 changes including the omission of chapters and sentences. “We have only removed the chapters which the previous government added and brought back the chapters which were there previously,” he said. These changes will only be applicable this year according to him.
The minister said only limited changes were made this year so the students are not inconvenienced. He said a committee of five technical experts have suggested the changes after consulting several other scholars, writers and intellectuals. More changes will be made next year after a detailed consultation with the experts.
The Karnataka government has made changes to the Kannada Medium Social Studies textbooks for classes 6 to 10. The chapter on Savithri Phule, a poem on BR Ambedkar and the chapter on Jawaharlal Nehru have been reinstated. The chapters on RSS founder Kesharam Hedgewar and writings by Chakravarthy Sulibele have been removed. The lesson on VD Savarkar has also been removed.
The government will form a committee in the next ten days to undertake the full revision of school textbooks next year.
Last year, during the tenure of the previous BJP government, a chapter on Hedgewar was added to the textbooks, along with several other notable alterations mooted by a committee led by right-wing writer Rohit Chakrathirta. These modifications faced strong opposition from writers, academics, and civil society groups in the state. In response to widespread criticism, the BJP retracted some of the revisions. The writings of Dalit authors and progressive reformist writers, which advocated for gender equality, social justice, and voiced opposition against communalism and caste-based hierarchies, were also omitted. TNM had previously reported on the complete list of changes that were made to the textbooks by the Chakrathirtha Committee.