The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday accused the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political wing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of attempting to “saffronise” India’s education curriculum.
During a Press conference on this issue, senior leader of the party and advisor to Deputy CM on education Atishi Marlena said, “The RSS-BJP’s interventions and discourse on education starts and ends with religion. Their understanding of education reform is limited to changing India’s history textbooks to suit their narrative. Their interest in school education is to the extent that they can further their political agendas through it. No attention is given to the crumbling education infrastructure of India’s schools and the falling learning levels across the board. The focus is on imposing their worldview on India’s children.”.
Terming Dinanath Batra’s, who was a former head of Vidya Bharati, the education wing of the RSS, recommendations bizarre, Marlena said the modifications are clearly aimed at “cleansing” textbooks of any reference to India’s secular identity that includes Urdu and Arabic words and non-Hindu works of literature.
“As per the recommendations, the RSS wants to remove all the text from books which mentions poet Mirza Ghalib, Mughal king Akbar among other things. The RSS-BJP’s interventions and discourse on education starts and ends with religion,” Marlena said.
Marlena said the BJP-ruled States are performing badly when it comes to education. She said as per Annual Status of the Education Report (ASER) survey on learning levels, class 5 students cannot even read Class 2 level Hindi text in the BJP ruled States.
“In Haryana 46 per cent of Class 5 students cannot read Hindi. Similarly in Gujarat it is 48 per cent, in Madhya Pradesh it is 70 per cent, while in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh it is 38 per cent and 77 per cent respectively,” Marlena further added.