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Journalism of Courage
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in a meeting with Jnanpith Awardee Chandrashekar Kambar Tuesday said the government will form a committee to undertake the full revision of school textbooks next year.
The statement comes at a time when the ruling Congress is making efforts to drop certain ‘controversial’ chapters in the school textbooks for Social Science and Kannada. The chapters were introduced during the term of the previous BJP government with Rohith Chakarathirtha at the helm of the textbook revision committee.
According to officials in the school education department, the controversial chapters would be dropped and replaced by old chapters which were recommended by the earlier Baraguru Ramachandrappa textbook revision committee. “Works are already underway to review and drop controversial lessons such as the chapter on RSS founder K B Hedgewar, works of Bannanje Govindacharya, and Chakravarthy Sulibele, among others,” said a source.
The government is likely to issue a government order in this regard soon and then distribute booklets including clarifications in connection to the dropping of the controversial chapters. The schools will be directed to not teach the dropped chapters and not consider them for examination purposes.
Ramachandrappa met with Siddaramaiah a week ago and advised him not to go for a full revision as it was not a practical and viable option. He also recommended that the government can refer to the works of previous textbook revision committees and include some chapters suggested by them.
Textbook revision is one of the many pre-poll promises of the Congress. Textbook revision has been in the news since the erstwhile BJP government appointed Chakrathirtha as the chairman of the textbook revision committee. Chakrathirtha, who was earlier booked for insulting the state anthem, was accused of ‘saffronising’ the textbooks by including works of right-wing ideologues and dropping the works of noted novelists and literary icons like P Lankesh, and Sara Aboobacker, among others.
