A few days ago, the Rajasthan government announced that it would introduce Bhagwad Gita in all school libraries, Minister of state for primary and secondary education, Vasudev Devnani spoke to Mahim Pratap Singh about the reasons behind this move, the state’s suggestions for the National Education Policy and the Opposition’s allegations regarding ‘saffronisation of education’.

The restructuring of the school curriculum has been criticised by the Opposition as ‘saffronisation of education’. What are you focusing on?

We want the curriculum to focus on three things — it should teach the child about the ‘veer’ and ‘veerangana’ of Rajasthan; make the child proud of Indian culture, and create an ideal citizen and a patriot. So, from Class 1 to 5, the curriculum will have 75 per cent content about Rajasthan and 25 about India. From Class 6 to 8, the ratio would be 50:50 and after that, the child can learn about world history etc.

Does that mean non-Indian authors will be removed from primary and middle school curriculum?

We have not removed anyone, only added Indian scientists and intellectuals.

If I ask you who invented the television, you will name some foreigner. But it was a part of Indian culture long before, when Sanjay narrated a distant war live to King Dhritrashtra (in Mahabharat).

Again, the wall paintings and murals in Ajanta and Ellora caves are still as good as new, which means we knew about chemical engineering back then. All I am saying is we need children to learn about Indian personalities too.

Is the introduction of Bhagwad Gita in school libraries a part of this restructuring?

Yes, we decided six months ago to have Gita in school libraries. But I don’t see why it should be controversial.

Our Prime Minister gifts the Gita to heads of nations during his foreign visits, so what is the problem in having it in our libraries? The Gita is not a religious text. I will go a step further and say Hinduism is not a religion, its a way of life. If Germany and Japan are teaching hymns from Atharva Veda, why should we shy away from teaching students our rich, traditional knowledge?

There have been reports that lessons about Akbar will be replaced by those on Maharana Pratap. Is that not playing with history?

Again, we are not removing anything. Our students have been taught that Akbar was ‘great’. But I say that in this country, Maharana Pratap will be called ‘great’. Akbar will be taught of as a ruler and a historical figure, but without the suffix ‘great’.

Now if we call Mahatma Gandhi ‘great’, can we call England’s Queen Elizabeth also great? So why ‘Akbar the great’? Like Mahatma Gandhi fought against the British, Pratap fought against Akbar, who was a foreign ruler, like the British.

During British rule, Macaulay altered our history and unfortunately, it has continued even after Independence. We are not changing history, only correcting it.

But these decisions have been criticised for imposing a certain political ideology on school education.

Look, education should be above politics. It should aim at building character. If you can teach (students about) Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, why not Veer Savarkar and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee? Did they not contribute to India’s freedom? We don’t object to teaching about Gandhi and Nehru. Why do they object to teaching about other heroes like Savarkar?

Why should students be forced to learn only about members of one family or party?

It is the Congress that practices intellectual untouchability. If our libraries can have biographies of Nehru and Gandhi, then why not of (RSS founder) KB Hedgewar?

What you describe as corrections and reform, the Opposition calls saffronisation and communalisation of education.

Leftist intellectuals have made saffron a dirty word. But the truth is, it has always represented courage and sacrifice which is why it is on the Tricolour too. But why reduce these changes to saffronisation? This is Indianisation, ‘patriotisisation’ of the curriculum. Because we are preparing patriots through education.

We have nothing against any community. India has always welcomed everyone, from all faiths. They are all our brothers. Every year the government sends Muslims to Mecca-Medina, so did the BJP government stop it?

Then why these accusations of communalism? No one will see that we were the first state to celebrate APJ Abdul Kalam’s birthday as Students’ Day across schools in Rajasthan.

What are Rajasthan’s suggestions for the proposed National Education Policy?

This is the first time that the central government has decided to formulate an education policy based on what people say. We have received over 20,000 suggestions from all over Rajasthan and will be sending them to the Centre soon. One major suggestion is to incorporate Yoga, Pranayam and Surya Namaskar in the NEP. Other key suggestions relate to controlling dropout rates and making teachers more inclined to serve in rural areas. One suggestion is about pre-primary education — rural children are enrolled in schools quite late, which causes them to lag behind. Why should a child be at home till he is six? Pre-primary education should be a part of government school system.

The dropout rate in Rajasthan is 8.4 %, much higher than the national average of 4.94%. What are you doing about that?

There have been efforts to address this. Rajasthan is the first state in the country to have separate toilets for girls and boys in every school. We are providing each school with Rs 5,000 per year as sanitation grant for keeping the toilets clean. Then, to prevent girl students from dropping out, we have distributed 5,50,000 bicycles to Class 9 girl students. Besides, strengthening infrastructure, we have tried to get parents involved by calling parent-teacher meetings on Amavasya, since that is a non-working day for most unorganised sector workers.

Some suggestions we have made for the NEP also address dropouts, like (setting up) mobile schools for children from nomadic tribes. We have also proposed having school buses for government schools, to bring children from remote locations.

Government schools in rural areas are consistently suffering from shortage of teachers because they don’t want to be posted in such places. How do you plan to address that?

We will make a 50-day rural internship mandatory for government teachers during training, like it is for doctors, so that teachers know the ground situation before they go into the job. There will also be at least one compulsory annual training linked to increment and promotion, so that they take it seriously.

Do any of your suggestions for NEP also relate to the Right To Education Act?

Yes, currently we have no detention till Class 8. But we believe there should be an eligibility exam, first after Class 5 and then after Class 8. The child will not be failed, but given another opportunity by way of bridge classes for a couple of months and proceed to the next class only when he or she is ready for it. Also, we plan to revamp vocational training in schools, based on the family occupation of the children and on traditional arts and crafts.

The Rajasthan government’s decision to merge schools has been criticised.

We have heralded a new education revolution in Rajasthan with this arrangement. Now, each of the 9,895 gram panchayats in the state has a senior secondary school. Earlier there were only 4,500 such schools. We have added 5,000 more. What is taking time is the rationalisation of the teaching posts. For example, there were schools that had 300 children and 50 teachers. We brought that down to 17 and created new posts in village schools. This transition is working wonders for some schools but is taking time with many others.

When we came to power, there was a 70 per cent shortfall of principals, which is now only 10 per cent. Over the next six months, we will create 61,000 new teaching jobs, including those of 13,000 lecturers and 33,000 school assistants.

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