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The Sonbhadra Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA), the highest office in the Education department in the district issued a letter on March 25 directing all government school teachers to take part in Ramayan Pathan or Ramayana reading in all the schools in the district.
The order states that on March 28 and March 29 some teachers of every school must go to the temple and read Akhand Ramayan on both days.
Since the Ayodhya judgement and even before, the influence of Ramayana in the education sector was seen. It was the BJP-run states that pioneered these acts, including Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The UP government had come up with a proposal in 2018 to set up a Ramayana University where students would be taught about Vedas and Hindu religion.
In January this year, Madhya Pradesh government announced that contexts of Gita, Ramcharitmanas and Ramayana will be taught in state government schools. In September 2021, the state government had decided to include Mahabharata and Ramayana in the Engineering syllabus!
In October 2021, Firozabad Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) had asked some teachers to recite verses from Valmiki Ramayan to mark Valmiki Jayanti. One teacher in Etah had told The Tribune, “The Valmiki Ramayan is in Sanskrit and I am a science teacher. I tried to do my best to read Sanskrit, but it was too difficult for me. Only three of four people were present at the venue. I do not understand the aim of issuing such orders”. The order was condemned by Uttar Pradesh Teachers’ Federation as well.
The question however remains, can teachers teaching in government run schools be asked to abide by one particular faith and go to temples to recite religious epics. The values of secularism that are taught in school curriculums then hold no value or become incongruent with what the states are compelling teachers to do. Government run institutions, in this case, schools, ought to be run as per constitutional principles of secularism, equality, liberty, fraternity and so on and such orders run counter to these values which ideally should be taught in schools.
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