New Delhi: The ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh has decided to include biography of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar as a compulsory subject for state board students. State Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar said the government has decided to include biographies of true heroes and the new syllabus will include Veer Savarkar, Bhagavad Gita Sandesh, Lord Parshuram, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru and others. The minister said that Savarkar was one of those revolutionaries who had to go to jail twice in one life.
He further said that Veer Savarkar was the first writer who called the movement of 1857 as freedom struggle, otherwise people called it Gadar. Parmar said, “Veer Savarkar has an irreplaceable contribution to India’s independence and he should be given respect in the society. But unfortunately, the great revolutionaries of India have not been given a place in the pages of history.”
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Meanwhile, critics of the Congress claim that genuine revolutionaries have not been given enough space in the school curriculum over the past several decades. He claimed, “In 2019, a book based on Veer Savarkar’s biography was distributed in some schools, but the Kamal Nath-led Congress government suspended the school principals.”
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The decision by the BJP government is likely to spark a political row in the poll-bound state of Madhya Pradesh as the Congress has objected to the proposal. Talking to the press on Thursday, Congress MLA Arif Masood said that he will oppose the government’s decision.
Masood said, “It is unfortunate that they want to include Savarkar. They apologized to the British and to include him in the syllabus is an insult to the freedom fighters.”