K'taka's decision to remove chapter on Savarkar will have opposite effect

The decision of the Congress government in Karnataka to drop a chapter on Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar from school textbooks will have a reverse effect, said his grandson Ranjit Savarkar on Friday.

Talking to PTI on the sidelines of an event in Goa, Ranjit Savarkar said the Congress may think that by deleting the chapter they might deprive students of the opportunity to learn about Savarkar but students are very sharp.

A lot of material on Savarkar is available on social media. The Savarkar Smarak has published his literature on their website. We are publishing them even in Kannada, he said.

Ranjit Savarkar said it won't make any difference if the chapter is deleted.

In fact, I will say that if you suppress more, it will rebound more. That is a natural reaction. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, he said.

The Congress-led Karnataka government on Thursday approved the revision of Kannada and Social Science textbooks of Classes 6 to 10 in the state for this academic year by removing the chapters on RSS founder K B Hedgewar and Savarkar among others, drawing criticism from the BJP.