Amidst the textbook revision controversy, former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has urged Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to file a sedition case and take necessary legal action against Rohith Chakrathirtha, who headed the textbook revision committee
In a letter to the Chief Minister on Monday, Mr. Siddaramaiah alleged, “It was a mistake that the government appointed persons like Mr. Chakrathirtha as chairman of textbook revision committee, who has insulted our naada geethe (State anthem), which is the official identity and symbol of sovereignty of the State.”
Mr. Siddaramaiah also demanded the resignation of Primary and Secondary Education Minister B.C. Nagesh. .
“The government should immediately stop distributing textbooks which are revised by the dissolved textbook revision committee and get a detailed report from a higher level committee about distortions and insertions of false information by that committee. Already, schools have opened across the State and to help the students, you should distribute textbooks which are revised by Baragur Ramchandrappa-headed textbook revision committee,” he said, adding that re-revision of textbooks should be done from real educationists and some experts should be appointed to the textbook re-revision committee.
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Mr. Siddaramaiah also alleged that the government has not asked any forgiveness for the distortions of texts in the cases of Basavanna, Dr. Ambedkar, Kuvempu and Vivekananda, also for the exclusion of texts like Savithri Bai Phule, Rani Abbakka and others.
“After the outrage of various Lingayat mutts seers, we welcomed the Chief Minister’s decision to suitably alter the text of 12th century philosopher-poet Basavanna. But, he never commented anything about the other text alterations. The textbook committee has dropped words like, ‘samvidhana shilpi (the architect of constitution)’ from the lesson on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. They have also excluded the lesson on Kannada Rajyotsava,” he alleged.
Meanwhile, a protest led by AIDSO Bengaluru District Committee saw students expressing their outrage over the revision of textbooks.
