Rajasthan’s minister of state for higher education Vasudev Devnani has said that major changes are being made in school curriculum to ensure that “no Kanhaiya Kumar is born” in the state’s schools and universities. At one point, he even said that saffronisation will be implemented.
“We have decided that children should read Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Maharana Pratap, Shivaji and Prithviraj Chouhan. They should know about martyrdom of Hemu Kalani, Ashfaq Ullah Khan and Bhagat Singh and the contribution of Veer Savarkar and Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya’s. This would inculcate sense of national pride in them so that no one like Kanhaiya Kumar of JNU is born in any school or university in Rajasthan,” Mr Devnani said.
In a lengthy speech, the minister with RSS background and often accused of implementing Sangh’s agenda in the education system, devoted major part of his speech on virtues of ancient education system and lamented that the present education has roots in British colonialism. Earlier, he had removed works by John Keats, Thomas Hardy, William Blake, T.S. Eliot and Edward Lear from the revised Class VIII English textbooks.
The minister has earlier removed many Western scholars and writers from the text books.
Mr Devnani said that despite repeated recommendations by so many commissions about inclusion of moral education and idea of India, the bureaucracy and those who acquired power after the British ignored this, as a result of which our youth forgot values and culture. “It is because of this we have seen that in JNU and some other universities, instead of Bharat Mata ki Jai, slogans to divide the country were raised,” he said.
Taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi, the minister said that what was more shameful was the conduct of those who claimed to have the ability to run the country.
But it wasn’t just the minister. Earlier, a few BJP legislators in unison raised the JNU matter directly or indirectly. One Babu Singh Rathore even suggested that the university has become a den of drug addicts. He accused “neighbouring countries” of supplying drugs and arms to the students there.
His colleague Pabba Ram accused Leftist historians like Romila Thapar and Bipin Chandra of distorting history.
