BJP-RSS for 'attempting to saffronise' education: AAP

AAP leader Marlena alleged that Batra's recommendations were "bizarre and brazenly bigoted" and clearly aimed at "cleansing" the textbooks of any reference to India's secular identity.

New Delhi, Jul 24: Accusing the BJP-RSS for "attempting to saffronise" the curriculum in schools and colleges, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday advised them to first address the fundamental problems of the sector.

Referring to a news report which claimed that the RSS- affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyasthe Nyas, headed by Dina Nath Batra, had written to the NCERT, seeking changes in the contents of textbooks, it alleged that India's composite culture was under an attack from the Sangh Parivar.

"The multicultural, multilingual identity of our country is being attacked by the Sangh Parivar as it tries to homogenise the society by meddling with education," said Atishi Marlena, AAP leader and adviser to Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia.

She alleged that Batra's recommendations were "bizarre and brazenly bigoted" and clearly aimed at "cleansing" the textbooks of any reference to India's secular identity, Urdu and Arabic words and non-Hindu works of literature.

"The RSS-BJP's interventions and discourse on education start and end with religion. Their understanding of education reforms is limited to changing India's history textbooks to suit their narrative," said Marlena.

On the other hand, she alleged that "no attention" was being paid to the "crumbling" infrastructure of the country's schools and the falling education standards across the board.

PTI