The Karnataka wing of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) has demanded that the state government bring back old textbooks and discard the changes made by the textbook review committee and retain all the old lessons. Addressing a press conference on June 10, AISA members objected to the changes made in the school textbooks meant to be used for the present academic year. “If you look at what has been discarded from the textbooks, you will see that a lot of these texts are from Dalit authors and poets. The committee's members were predominantly Brahmins. They have replaced the old committee with a new one headed by Rohith Chakrathirtha, and to this day, we are not made aware of his qualifications and expertise in the matter of drafting a curriculum. The public has not been made aware of what has been changed and added in the textbook curriculum. This lack of transparency needs to be both questioned and protested,” said state convener, Kishan.
Reacting to Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai dissolving the textbook committee and promising review of the newly added content, Kishan said, “The Chief Minister’s statement comes at a time when the damage has already been done, 79% of the printing of the textbooks has been completed and 68% of the textbooks have already been distributed. Moreover, the CM’s clarifications do not address how these changes would be implemented at all. The CM wanted to placate and mislead the people, who had raised serious concerns over the saffronisation of education, given that the textbooks with lies and false claims to peddle the communal agenda, have already been printed and distributed to the students.”
AISA questioned as to why there was no clarification provided about the now-disbanded Textbook review committee Chairman Rohith Chakrathirtha's allegations and insults meted out to the state poet, Kuvempu. They further questioned why the Chief Minister has provided no explanation as to why the texts of P Lankesh, G Ramakrishna, Sara Aboobacker, AN Murthy Rao, among others had been removed and why a speech by RSS founder KB Hedgewar had been added to a language textbook. "None of these issues have been addressed by the Chief Minister and this discloses the farce being propagated in the name of the press statement,” claimed AISA.
“They (BJP) speak of an Akhanda Bharata, of becoming a Vishwaguru. Meanwhile India ranks 101 on the Global Hunger Index. Their goal is to construct a Manuvadi patriarchal society. They are afraid of those who can critically challenge them, and the textbook saffronisation is clearly an attempt to obstruct any critical and scientific thinking whatsoever, preventing students from challenging the misgivings of their ideology,” said Sharad, an AISA member.
The organisation alleged that the saffronisation of education was in tow with the National Education Policy - 2020, which was designed to make education exclusionary, and unaffordable. AISA member Aratrika Dey questioned the notion of Indian culture and traditions mooted by NEP. “Given the kind of diverse culture that we are residing in, it is obvious what their idea of mainstream so-called Indian culture is. In the larger picture, our secondary demand is the rolling back of the NEP. This saffronisation of textbooks is simply a by-product of the NEP, and this is bound to be carried forward to other states. With Karnataka, the implementation of the NEP was done without any consolidation of the student-teacher stakeholders and we believe the NEP needs to be taken back so that the same does not happen to the rest of the nation,” Dey said.
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