New Delhi: A chapter on the life of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar will be taught as part of the school syllabus in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, state School Education Minister (Independent charge) Inder Singh Parmar said Thursday.
Speaking to media outlets in Bhopal, Parmar said Savarkar faced two spells of life imprisonment and made significant contributions to the Indian freedom struggle. The Hindu Mahasabha leader, he added, was the first to recognise the uprising in 1857 as the First War of Independence.
“We have a committee that will decide on which eminent personality will be included in the syllabus of which class and based on that, books will be commissioned. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is working to include India-centric knowledge and its eminent personalities, including Veer Savarkar, will be added to the syllabus,” Parmar said.
Accusing the Congress of not giving enough space to Indian revolutionaries in textbooks, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said that apart from Savarkar, school students in Madhya Pradesh will be taught about the lives of Vallabhbhai Patel, B.R. Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rajguru, Bhagat Singh and Lokmanya Tilak.
The announcement comes days after the government in neighbouring BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh said state board students will be taught about the lives of 50 great personalities including Savarkar and Jana Sangh leader Deendayal Upadhyay. While Savarkar’s biography will be taught to students of Class 9, that of Upadhyay will be taught in Class 11.
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‘Insult to freedom fighters’: Congress
During his interaction with the media Thursday, Madhya Pradesh minister Parmar also accused the Congress of ‘glorifying foreign invaders’.
“Who will be considered as eminent personalities in India? Will it be Porus (Indian king from the 4th century BCE who fought Alexander the Great), Chandragupta Maurya (founder of the Maurya dynasty) or Sikandar (Alexander)….Congress must answer,” he said.
Referring to the tenure of the Kamal Nath-led Congress government (2018-2020) in the state, Parmar also mentioned an incident from January 2020 when the principal of a state-run school in Ratlam district was suspended, two months after he reportedly allowed an organisation to distribute notebooks carrying pictures of Savarkar to students.
Parmar went further to ask Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath whether they would consider Maharana Pratap great or Akbar — “the thug who fought with him”.
“In MP, Digvijaya Singh was chief minister for 10 years…Why did he glorify Akbar? They glorified Vasco Da Gama and credited him with discovering the sea route, but Indians had travelled to different countries much before that for trade but it was not taught. Instead, Vasco Da Gama was glorified. They taught children that Columbus discovered America, but Indians had gone to America for trade so Indians should be mentioned first,” he claimed, without furnishing any historical evidence to back his claim.
Reacting to the allegations, K.K. Mishra, chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Congress’s media department, told ThePrint the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led state government’s decision to teach school students about the life of Savarkar “is an insult to our freedom fighters”.
“While Savarkar wrote apology letters to the British to get out of prison, freedom fighters like Sukhdev and Bhagat Singh chose the noose,” he added. Mishra urged Parmar to focus instead on the ‘rampant corruption’ in the Madhya Pradesh school education department.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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