Savarkar in, Nehru kept out from list of great leaders in UP syllabus

From the new session in July, the Uttar Pradesh Board will teach its students about the life and times of 50 great leadersof India. The Board has included the life stories of personalities such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. But among the notable exceptions is Jawaharlal Nehru. Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Bhimrao Ambedkar, and Lal Bahadur Shahstri, however, make the cut.

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 has not made the supreme sacrifice for the country). Hence, Nehru was excluded, she reasoned.

To be sure, not all of the 50, from across domains, died for the cause. Commenting on the inclusion of Savarkar, the minister said, “If we don’t teach students about our great leaders like Savarkar and Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, then 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?”

“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 mark sheet,” said UP Board secretary Dibyakant Shukla.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had promised to include the life stories of great men and freedom fighters in the educational curriculum in its manifesto released ahead of the 2022 state election.

The controversy in Uttar Pradesh comes in the wake of two recent ones — both concerning NCERT text books. One was about NCERT’s decision to delete passages on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and the ban on the RSS that followed; another was about NCERT’s move to rationalise curricula by removing some topics from lower classes and moving them to higher ones.

It took time for a consensus to be reached, said an official who asked not to be named, detailing the personalities who will be covered across classes.

Director general, school education, Vijay Kiran Anand said that an expert committee approved the new syllabus.

Congress’ media co-ordinator in the state Anshu Awasthi criticised the inclusion of Savarkar: “The inclusion of Savarkar in the syllabus by the BJP government is very unfortunate.... Pandit Nehru was jailed for almost nine years in the freedom struggle but UP Board ignored him... included Savarkar who stood with the British, opposed India’s freedom, wrote an apology letter and called himself the most obedient servant of the British.”

A representative of the teachers’ union was not amused by the controversy. “Syllabus should be designed by experts and there is no room for political gimmicks,” said RP Mishra, state vice president of UP Madhyamik Shikshak Sangh.