Multiple student organisations have announced State-wide protests against the recent revision of textbooks for Class I-X. A coalition of student organisations, parents, and other progressive groups that met in the city on Monday have announced the protest and black flag demonstration against textbook revision which they term as an effort at “saffronisation” by the ruling BJP.
A protest will also be held at Freedom Park on May 31 demanding that the State government immediately abolish the Rohith Chakrathirtha-led textbook revision committee and restore the old textbooks.
“The lessons dropped and those included clearly show that BJP is trying to hurt the future of the students and push its hidden agenda. Instead of fostering diversity, the texts introduced clearly betray an attempt at homogenising our culture in favour of one religion and ideology,” said a statement issued by a coalition of student organisations. “Not only are the new revised textbooks dangerous, but they have also held up distribution of textbooks to students weeks after the classes have begun. We demand the government revert back to old textbooks and distribute them immediately to all students,” said Sarovar Benkikere of Karnataka Vidyarthi Sanghatane.
A coalition of progressive student organisations, including Students Federation of India (SFI), All India Students Federation (AISF), National Students Union of India (NSUI), and Karnataka Vidyarthi Sanghatane (KVS) met here on Monday to chalk out the strategy for protests.
Twitter campaign
Meanwhile, a Twitter campaign calling people to reject “RSS textbooks” and “Brahminical textbooks” attracted traction. Many pointed out that most of the members of the textbook revision committee were from one community and most of the texts newly added were also by authors from the same community, while those dropped were mostly by progressive writers and those from oppressed communities.
Many tweets also questioned the qualification of textbook revision committee chairperson Mr. Chakrathirtha.
