The State government is likely to bring back, for the most part, the textbooks approved by writer Baragur Ramachandrappa-headed School Textbooks Revision Committee, which had made changes to textbooks during the previous Congress regime.
The Cabinet on Thursday approved the revision of textbooks introduced between 2018 and 2023 by the BJP government, by a committee headed by Rohit Chakratirtha. A source confirmed that the government would re-introduce almost all content dropped by the committee headed by Mr. Chakratirtha and omit material introduced by it, most of it related to Hindutva ideology.
On Thursday, Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Madhu Bangarappa said that lessons on RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar, among others, would be dropped. Dropping such content textbooks was one of the poll promises of the Congress.
The changes were approved by Mr. Ramachandrappa again, with T.R. Chandrashekar, Rajappa Dalwoy, Ravish Kumar, Ashwathnarayan, and Rajesh as members of the committee.
A source said the Mr. Chakratirtha-headed committee had dropped most of the progressive content and revised information on various historical events, persons, and places.
Prof. Chandrashekar told The Hindu, “We did not make drastic changes in the textbooks, but we recommended changes in parts which were toxic for students. We revisited all the textbooks from Class VI to Class X and submitted the report to Mr. Ramachandrappa. He reviewed it and submitted the recommendations to the government.”
