The West Bengal government under Mamta Banerjee, feisty and bold in her actions , has issued a show cause notice to 125 schools, many of them linked to the BJP's ideological mentor RSS over suspicions that they were promoting religious intolerance. NDTV reports that in response to a CPI-M MLA drawing attention of the State Assembly to over 300 schools being run by outfits backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in the state, accusing them of giving students religio-political lessons and not just the curriculum prescribed by government authorities.
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State Education Minister Partha Chatterjee minister promised to act on the lawmaker's complaint. "If these claims are true then these activities will be stopped. Nobody will be allowed to teach religious doctrines in schools," Mr Chatterjee told reporters on Friday, March 10.
Schools run by private trusts like Sarada Shishu Tirtha, Saraswati Shishu Mandir and Vivekanada Vidya Vikas Parishad are now under the scanner of the education department.
"This is a genuine complaint and the school education department is inquiring into the charges against those schools. There are 125 schools out of which 96 have not obtained any NOC (No Objection Certificate) from the government. They are running these schools without the NOC. These schools will be taken to task and we have issued show cause notices," Mr Chatterjee told reporters.
The BJP has hit back at the Trinamool Congress. State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said instead of targeting the Sangh Parivar schools, the government should be monitoring madrasas and Christian missionary schools."How can they issue a show cause notice? The schools run with the government's permission. The Sangh Parivar is increasing its activities and obviously the West Bengal government is trying to stop us from doing so," Dilip Ghosh told NDTV.
The majoritarian and supremacist outfits involved in education and culture under the RSS have been periodically issued warnings by central and state agencies. A NCERT Committee that studies the kind of supplementary curricula being taught in these schools actually found that the foundational principles militate against India's Constitutional Values.
Breeding Bigotry
Communalism Combat carried an NCERT Committee report in October 1999. It is a frightening exposure and analysis of how young minds in India, within the RSS schools, are poisoned. We bring our readers this report that has relevance today
The NCERT’s National Steering Committee on text-book evaluation found that the RSS-run Vidya Bharati schools are being clearly used for the dissemination of blatantly communal ideas
Extracts from National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation, Recommendation and Report II, NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training) may be read here