Following the controversy of removing Bhagat Singh’s lessons in class 10 Kannada textbooks and replacing them with the speeches of RSS ideologue KB Hegdewar, the Karnataka Textbook Society (KTBS) on Tuesday issued a statement saying that the Kannada textbooks are still in the printing stage and Bhagat Singh’s lessons have not been dropped and replaced with Hegdewar’s. However, according to the revised textbook, the class 10 standard Kannada textbooks do have lessons about Hedgewar. Madegowda, managing director of KTBS said, “Although Bhagat Singh’s lessons have not been dropped, the updated Kananda textbooks for 10th standard will have lessons of Hegdewar. Only 70% of the textbooks have been printed so far and we hope to finish printing the rest soon.” A committee led by writer Rohith Chakravarthy was also formed to examine the social science textbooks of classes 6-10 and the Kannada textbooks of classes 1-10. Recently, the All India Democratic Student’s Organisation (AIDSO) in Karnataka organised a protest condemning the dropping of Bhagat Singh’s lessons. Ajay Kamath, state secretary of the organisation said, “It is good news that the lessons of our real freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh have not been dropped. However, we oppose the inclusion of Hegdewar’s chapters in the Kannada textbook. We believe that Hegdewar is not an icon who we look up to in this country. RSS was against the freedom movement on many occasions and this is evident in the writings of many RSS leaders who wanted Indians to not waste time in fighting the British. Moreover, the revised textbook that is uploaded in the public domain includes a lot of changes in Swami Vivekananda’s chapter where a lot of his humanity lessons are excluded and are replaced with religious sentiments. Our demand is to make education secular.” AIDSO is now organising statewide protests in Karnataka demanding the removal of Hegdewar’s lessons and restoring the human values and lessons of Swami Vivekananda in the 10th standard Kannada textbooks.
