The central government is looking to create a school education board that will focus on teaching students the Vedas alongside “modern education”, Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar said in a recorded video message that was shown to the audience at the inauguration of a residential school in Baruipur on Saturday.

Javadekar said the spread of the Vedic education was “very necessary”.

“We want to a create a board that imparts education with a mix of knowledge from the Vedas and modern education. We are working towards creating a board that can do this,” the minister said.

Seated on the dais was yoga evangelist Ramdev, who expressed his disappointment at how the country had moved away from the Vedas. “Only a handful of people have read the Vedas,” he said.

Javadekar said the Centre had already made CBSE Class XI and XII books thinner while focusing on “knowledge, tradition and practices of India”.

“This course teaches students about the tradition of Indian knowledge, Indian architecture, mathematics, economics and metallurgy among others,” he said.

He and Ramdev delivered the message at the inauguration of a residential school where students will receive seven years of Vedic education.

A teacher said students at the Vedic Pathsala in Baruli Gobindapur, near Baruipur, would be taught in a manner that would equip them to spread Vedic knowledge across the world.

Ramdev said only a portion of the four Vedas — Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda — had survived and efforts should be made to learn these.

The Vedas are considered to be the oldest form of literature in Sanskrit.

IIT Kharagpur has started a course on the history of science and technology in ancient India. The course offered by the department of humanities and social sciences aims to teach how science in ancient India contributed to the development of science and technology in the modern era.

The Baruipur school is starting its journey with 55 students and six teachers. It is affiliated to the Sandipani Ved Vidya Pratishthan, Ujjain, which works for the preservation of Vedic studies under the Union ministry of human resource development.