Rajasthan mulls removing DeMo from school textbooks

The Rajasthan government is reportedly planning to remove all references about demonetisation, as well as editing the profile of RSS icon Vinayak Savarkar, from textbooks of the state board to be published for the academic session 2019-2020.

The changes are understood to have been recommended by two review committees of educationists set by the Congress government in February this year to review changes made by the previous BJP regime.

State Education Minister Govind Singh Dotasara, while not specifically confirming the changes, told IANS that "demonetisation introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought in no benefit to the nation".

"It was the most unsuccessful experiment; this is what my perception is. Now whether it should be accommodated or not in syllabus, in which form it should be presented or if it should be modified is the concern of a committee we have formed to review the current syllabus," he said.

On the other hand, his predecessor Vasudev Devnani said that there is no need to remove such chapters on one's own perception. "In fact, they can make students aware about its pros and cons. But why remove anything substantial which has happened in the nation," he asked.

"Congress, since years, have been politicising education. They have never added stories of freedom fighters, but have removed chapters on Subhas Chandra Bose and many others. They have been crediting one family for country's independence which is wrong," he added.

Devnani also questioned the suggested removal of pictures from "'jauhar' (ritual mass self-immolation), which forms the part of valour stories of Rajput women". "Now the minister doesn't know the difference between sati and jauhar which is surprising," he said.

On the other hand, Surendra Saharan of the state Rajasthan Senior Teachers Association lamented that Rajasthan is the only state in the entire country where the syllabus gets changed after every five years with a change in the government.

"In my last 15 years of working, I have seen Vedic Maths being introduced by the BJP government and the Congress government removing it. Same is the case with history and other subjects. The students go confused with this frequent change of syllabus and similar is the plight of teachers."

--IANS

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