Congress Govt in Karnataka re-introduces the lessons of Periyar, Girish Karnad, etc. in the school curriculum

Bengaluru (Karnataka) – The Congress Government in Karnataka has given final shape to the revision of textbooks from I-X Class. Significant changes have been made to introduce the inclusion of writings of authors based on ‘Sanatan Dharma’ besides the syllabus. Works of authors such as P Lankesh, Savitribai Phule, Girish Karnad, Periyar, Devanur Mahadeva, Thirunakudu Chinnaswamy, Nagesh Hegde, and others are also being re-introduced.

Under the chairmanship of Prof. Manjunath Hegde, the textbook review committee has submitted its report to the Karnataka Government. The committee has recommended the re-inclusion of topics related to progressive authors like Savitribai Phule and Periyar. However, the committee has not recommended the re-inclusion of topics related to Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali. These topics were removed by the BJP Government.

These textbooks include new chapters providing clarification on Jainism and Buddhism. In this context, the term ‘Dharma’ has been replaced with ‘Religion’.

Earlier, in June 2023, the Karnataka Textbook Society had made some changes in the textbooks. In this, the chapter on RSS founder P Hedgewar was removed and instead, the chapter on ‘Sukumar Swami Kathe’ by Shivkotyacharya was included. In the tenth-grade Kannada textbook, R Ganesh’s ‘Shreshtha Bharatiya Chintanegalu’ was replaced with ‘Yuddha’ by Sara Abubakar.

The Congress Government aims to create lawlessness, chaos, and destabilization – BJP

BJP MLA and former Higher Education Minister Aswath Narayan has opposed this decision of the Karnataka Government. He said that the Congress does not respect the Constitution and the faith of the people of Karnataka. The Government wants to create chaos, confusion and polarization. Government does not respect Sanatan Dharma. So they are trying to unite people who are against Sanatan Dharma. This is against our faith. We condemn this. We will create public awareness to expose the Congress Government. We will strongly oppose this course and try not to allow it to be included.