E-Paper
Activists seek ouster of Karnataka minister Nagesh
The group, who identify themselves as Bhavuta Karnataka (a forum for justice, harmony and solidarity), has demanded that minister BC Nagesh be removed from the cabinet and disqualified as a legislator. The date of these allegations is from August 4, 2021, till June 14, according to a statement from the group.
Activists in Bengaluru on Tuesday released a “public charge sheet” against Karnataka’s primary and secondary education minister BC Nagesh, and demanded his removal from the state cabinet.
The group, who identify themselves as Bhavuta Karnataka (a forum for justice, harmony and solidarity), has demanded that the minister be removed from the cabinet and disqualified as a legislator. The date of these allegations is from August 4, 2021, till June 14, according to a statement from the group.
“We condemn his mishandling of the state’s education during the Covid-19 crisis, failure to address malnutrition and his complicity in weaponising education to enforce a Brahmanical order. Failure to respond to the impact of Covid on education Bahutva Karnataka asserts that Mr BC Nagesh has failed to address the learning gap that arose during the Covid-19 pandemic,” the forum alleged in a statement on Tuesday.
The defending of the Karnataka school textbook revision committee by the minister and the allegations of ‘saffronisation’ of school education as well as distortion of history have been the bone of contention between the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government and the political opposition as well as eminent writers and activists in the state.
“The unprofessional, unscientific and casteist textbook revision process is violative of Section 29 of the Right to Education Act. The National Curriculum Framework of 2005 also states explicitly that India is a multicultural society made up of numerous regional and local cultures, that all the groups have equal rights to co-exist and flourish, and that the education system needs to respond to the cultural pluralism inherent in our society. By removing the works of Dalit Authors, P.Lankesh, and Sara Aboobacker and by distorting the historical facts related to Dr Ambedkar and Basavanna, the textbook revision process violates the NCF and the RTE act,” the forum alleged.
On June 3, the government was forced to disband the Rohit Chakratheertha-led revision committee after several influential seers from dominant communities, including Lingayats, threatened to agitate if the textbooks were not recalled.
The group added that the pandemic has also resulted in large-scale student dropout and increasing learning gaps, which the government has not been able to fill out.
“As per the government’s data, out of 46,000 children who dropped out, only 35% had rejoined school. Despite this, the government has not launched any special program to bring back all children to school. According to NHFS 5 data, 35.7% of the children who dropped out of school said they had no interest in pursuing studies. The government has not undertaken any special effort to instil confidence in children to continue studies RTE prescribed norms for teacher deployment in schools are flouted,” according to the statement.
The group has also alleged that the education department had failed to address child malnutrition by removing eggs from mid-day meals.
Reacting to statements made by historians Romila Thapar, Aditya Mukherjee and Ram Puniyani on the textbook row, Nagesh on Tuesday said: “We are a country with thousands of years of history. We want to teach this to our children. There was knowledge and it was imparting before the British. We are a country that stressed on knowledge. JNU and ‘Tukde Tukde’ gang is attempting this and they are failing. There is a big gang which is working to break the Hindu society and it has been proved.”
