School syllabus to include India’s military valour of past 75 years

Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan spoke at an event organised to felicitate 25 winners of the “Veer Gatha” contest of the Ministry of Defence

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh poses for a group photo with winners of ‘Project Veergatha’ during a felicitation ceremony, in New Delhi, Friday, Aug. 12, 2022. | Photo Credit: PTI

In order to inculcate patriotism among students from an early age, the government will develop a syllabus which will include the country’s military valour in the past 75 years since Independence, Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan said on Friday.

“In order to inculcate love towards the country, and the feeling of sacrifice, the Defence Forces must develop a repository on the wars since Independence, and we will share this through a website with all the students. In the days to come this will not just be an extra-curricular activity, but will be part of a course. The work is on a new syllabus under the New Education Policy, and I urge the Defence Minister to guide us. I take up the responsibility to introduce our military valour in the past 75 years in school syllabus,” Mr. Pradhan said at an event.

“Today when we are bringing the Agneepath scheme and envisioning agniveer, at such a time the new generation [should know] about the past 75 years during which we haven’t lost a single war barring one, which was a conspiracy of China,” the Minister added.

The Minister was speaking at an event organised to felicitate 25 winners of the “Veer Gatha” contest of the Ministry of Defence. It included essay, poem and drawing competitions on the sacrifices of the Armed Forces.

Elevating status of competition

The Minister said that he will bring a scheme to “elevate” the status of the competition by ensuring that its winners earn credits in their school syllabus. This will be done to “permanently institutionalise” the competition programme, he said

The Defence Ministry announced the competition to motivate students to do projects based on gallantry award winners. The contest was held between October 21 and November 20, 2021. As many as 5000 schools and 8 lakh students participated in it and a total of 25 students were selected as winners.

The Education Minister said that the competition would be taken to all schools to ensure participation of 1 crore students.