Chandigarh, February 24

Henceforth, Gayatri Mantra will be part of the morning prayers in Haryana government schools. Describing the mantra as “a gift by our saints and sages to the world”, Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma today said a decision to this effect was taken during his meeting with senior Education Department officials and a notification would be issued in a day or two.

However, a senior department functionary said he was not aware of any such meeting. The Opposition parties and the academia see this as yet another step towards saffronisation of education. Former minister and Congress leader Aftab Ahmed called it a BJP tactic to divert people’s attention from the real issues.

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“The government should rather focus on core issues of governance — education, health and agriculture — and leave religious matters to the people,” he said.

Vehemently opposing the move, Dr Mahabir Jaglan of Kurukshetra University said the compulsory recitation of Gayatri Mantra by schoolchildren was against the “culture, ethos and the country’s Constitution that guarantees secularism”.

“Ever since the Khattar-led BJP government came to power in Haryana, its obsession with ‘Gau, Gita and Sarasvati’ has been all too obvious,” he added.

In 2015, too, when the BJP government had decided to introduce shlokas from the Bhagavad Gita in the school curriculum, there was a hue and cry and the move was put on hold till June 2016. — TNS