On Sunday, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant hailed right wing ‘hero’ Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as a ‘glorious patriot’. He also announced that his state government will soon re-print two books authored by Savarkar.
Sawant was speaking at the launch of ‘1957 che Swatantrya Samar’ and said that it was this book that had “ignited the flame of patriotism among many youth and the British regime banned this book. Fortunately, only one copy of this book was saved with a Goan person, and this helped in getting it re-printed.” The other book authored by Savarkar which will be reprinted by the state government is ‘Gomantak’. Both books will then be placed in all libraries in the state.
According to a report in Indian Express, the CM said Savarkar was a “Swatantryaveer” and an “unsung hero, who fought the British regime, faced the most brutal punishment and yet after India’s Independence, a section of people have only spread lies, falsehood and hatred against him… We as Indians have largely failed to acknowledge the life and work of this glorious patriot.” Sawant was speaking at the closing ceremony of the Kumaon Literary Festival (KLF) in Panaji, and praised the book ‘1957 che Swatantrya Samar’, saying it was this that “ignited the flame of patriotism among many youth and the British regime banned this book”. According to the CM, “One copy of this book was saved with a Goan person, and this helped in getting it re-printed.” The CM also released author Vikram Sampath’s book ‘Savarkar (Part 2): A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966.’
The Goa CM launched the Hindi and English editions of Sampath’s book and claimed, “Unfortunately, in our country, the history that has been forced upon us, has been the propaganda of the West and what they thought about us. They thought that we were a land of snake-charmers, they thought that we were a country of the poor. But my question is, did they invade us because we were poor? The answer is definitely no. The first person to challenge this vicious propaganda was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.”
According to Sawant along with the two books by Savarkar, Sampath’s book too will be circulated in libraries of Goa, reported Indian Express. Sampath described Savarkar as a “much-maligned” firebrand revolutionary, a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional genius, who had led a “stormy”, “tempestuous” life and was a complex character who simultaneously meant many things to many people.
Karnataka shows the rightwing way infiltirate books
The Hindutva ideology has now been injected into school curriculum in Karnataka. The state has now included the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar’s speech as in the Class X Kannada (first language, State syllabus) textbook from the 2022-23 academic year, reported The Hindu. The inclusion was recommended by the Textbook Revision Committee headed by writer Rohith Chakrateertha, in March, stated the news report.
Titled “Nijavada Adarsha Purusha Yaraagabeku?” (Who should be the real role model?), it will now be a part of the Kannada prose textbook, being printed. The committee had submitted its final report to the government.
According to The Hindu, Chakrateertha claimed this was not an ideological imposition, and said “There was no pressure from any political party or organisation. This does not amount to imposing any organisation’s ideology on students. We have chosen Hedgewar as a writer and not on the basis of his ideology or organisation.”
P. Lankesh’s “Mruga Mattu Sundari” G. Ramakrishna’s “Bhagat Singh” dropped
According to the news report, some lessons dropped include works by Karnataka’s iconic writer and journalist P. Lankesh, titled “Mruga Mattu Sundari” and another by Leftist thinker G. Ramakrishna’s “Bhagat Singh”. The lessons that ‘replace’ them are works by writer Shivananda Kalave’s “Swadeshi Sutrada Sarala Habba” and M. Govinda Pai’s “Naanu Prasa Bitta Kathe”, reported the Hindu.
The other lessons dropped “in the detailed text are Sara Aboobacker’s “Yuddha”, A.N. Murthy Rao’s “Vyaghra Kathe”, and Shivakotyacharya’s “Sukumara Swamy Kathe”, and the inclusions now made “Vedic scholar the late Bannanje Govindacharya’s “Sukanashana Upadesha” and Shatavadhani R. Ganesh’s “Shrestha Bharatiya Chintanegalu” stated the news report.
In April 2022, the CBSE dropped poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, sections on Non-Alignment Movement, Cold War era, rise of Islamic empires in Afro-Asian territories, chronicles of Mughal courts, and the industrial revolution, from the CBSE’s Class 11 and 12 political science syllabus.
In 2020, The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), had ‘edited’ the Class 12 history syllabus and dropped the chapter ‘The Mughal Court: Reconstructing Histories through Chronicles’. Then the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) decided that high-school students no longer need to learn about “federalism, citizenship, nationalism, and secularism” and dropped the lesson from the political science curriculum of Class 11 along with those on demonetization. However, the ‘deleted’ topics were then restored in the 2021-22 academic session after much debate.
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