The Department of Primary and Secondary Education has decided to form a new committee that will deliberate on whether chapters in school textbooks related to Mysuru king Tipu Sultan should be dropped, retained or modified.
Speaking on the sidelines of a phone-in-programme on Saturday, Primary and Secondary Education Minister S. Suresh Kumar said the department will soon finalise the members of the committee. He denied allegations that the BJP-ruled State government was trying to politicise the issue ahead of the byelections to 15 Assembly constituencies scheduled on December 5.
The committee’s meeting has been scheduled for November 7. “We want to include people who are neutral and that there are subject experts on the committee,” Mr. Suresh Kumar said. Currently, textbooks of three grades have lessons on Tipu Sultan.
The decision comes a day after The Hindu reported that the Karnataka Textbook Society-empowered committee, which was earlier tasked to decide the fate of Tipu in the history textbooks, had no subject experts.
S.R. Umashankar, Principal Secretary of the department, said: “Currently, the Karnataka Textbook Society does not have a panel of subject experts. We have experts only when textbooks need to be framed or revised,” he said.
Meanwhile, BJP MLA Appachu Ranjan, whose letter to the government to drop Tipu from textbooks triggered the controversy, has been invited to the committee’s meeting on November 7. None of the officials of the Department of Public Instruction have received the notice for the meeting.
Writer Baraguru Ramachandrappa, who was the chairman of the textbook revision committee formed when the Congress was in power, said subject experts who revised textbooks and experts who framed them when the BJP government was in power should part of the committee.
The political controversy was triggered by BJP leaders who dubbed Tipu Sultan “anti-Hindu”.
The Opposition Congress, which had begun Tipu Jayanti celebrations when in power, strongly condemned the move. Many scholars also questioned on how decades of history can be erased by doing away with chapters. The present BJP government also the suspended jayanti celebrations.
‘Study issue thoroughly’
JD(S) leader and former Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Basavaraj Horatti said the State government should not take any decision in haste on removing lessons on Tipu from textbooks. He said the decision should be based on thorough study and report of experts.
