Savarkar in, Nehru excluded from '50 great leaders' list in Uttar Pradesh syllabus
BJP, in its Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra released for 2022 Legislative Assembly elections, had promised to include biographies of great men in the syllabus
LUCKNOW/PRAYAGRAJ: From the new session in July, the U.P. Board will teach its students about the life and times of 50 great men of India. The Board has included the biographies of 50 great personalities, including Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyay and others, in its syllabus. But Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has been left out.
Defending the decision to exclude Nehru, secondary education minister (independent charge) Gulab Devi said, “Nehru ne desh ke liye apne prano ki aahuti nahi di thi (Nehru had not made the supreme sacrifice for the country). “ Hence, Nehru was excluded from the list of 50 biographies of great men, she said.
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On inclusion of Savarkar, minister said, “If we don’t teach students about our great leaders like Savarkar and Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyay, what do we teach them? Are we supposed to tell our kids about terrorists instead of making them aware of the life and times of great personalities of India?”
Biographies of Mahavir Swami, Bharat Ratna Mahamana Madan Mohan Malviya, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sarojini Naidu and Nana Saheb will also be taught to students.
“This subject is compulsory for all students and it is necessary to pass it. But, the marks will not be included in the high school and intermediate exams marksheet,” said UP Board secretary Dibyakant Shukla.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, in its Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra released for the 2022 Legislative Assembly elections, had promised to include the life stories of great men and freedom fighters in the educational curriculum.
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The exercise was going on for a long time in the UP Board. Finally, a consensus was reached regarding the names of the great men, said an official said who did not wish to be identified.
In class 9, students will study the life story of Chandrashekhar Azad, Birsa Munda, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Veer Kunwar Singh, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Gautam Buddha, Jyotiba Phule, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Vinoba Bhave, Srinivasa Ramanujan and Jagadish Chandra Bose.
In class 10, students will learn about Mangal Pandey, Roshan Singh, Sukhdev, Lokmanya Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mahatma Gandhi, Khudi Ram Bose and Swami Vivekananda.
Students of class 11 will study about Ram Prasad Bismal, Bhagat Singh, Bhimrao Ambedkar, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay, Mahabir Jain, Mahamana Madan Mohan Malviya, Arvind Ghosh, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sarojini Naidu, Nana Saheb, Maharishi Patanjali, surgeon Sushruta and Homi Jehangir Bhabha.
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In class 12, students would study the life stories of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Rajguru, Rabindranath Tagore, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Maharana Pratap, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Adi Shankaracharya, Guru Nanak Dev, APJ Abdul Kalam, Ramanujacharya, Panini, Aryabhatta and CV Raman.
