The Karnataka government is facing increasing pressure to sack a Sangh parivar co-traveller assigned to revise school textbooks, with several writers quitting government literary organisations in protest against the “attack on the educational and cultural spheres”.
A prominent seer has also joined the chorus for the removal of Rohith Chakrathirtha, appointed chairman of the school textbook revision committee last September.
The committee led by Chakrathirtha has dropped works of several progressive writers and lessons on social reformers Sree Narayana Guru and Periyar from school textbooks. A speech by RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar has been included in the Class X Kannada language textbook.
Days after two Kannada authors, Devanur Mahadeva and G. Ramakrishna, revoked permission to include their works in the school textbooks in protest against these changes, five other well-known writers have resigned from their posts at two literary bodies.
The president of the Rashtrakavi Dr G.S. Shivarudrappa Prathishtana, S.G. Siddaramaiah, and senior office-bearers H.S. Raghavendra Rao, Nataraja Budalu and Chandrashekara Nagli have written to BJP chief minister Basavaraj Bommai about their resignation.
They expressed concern at the “attack on the educational and cultural spheres” and the communalisation of politics. “We are concerned at the lack of action and total silence by the government on those who are openly inviting communal hatred which would undermine the federal structure of the country,” they wrote in the letter.
An old social media post by Chakrathirtha has added more fuel to the fire. In the 2017 Facebook post, Chakrathirtha had shared a parody of the state anthem “Jaya Bharatiya Jananiya Thanujathe”, penned by Jnanpith awardee Kuvempu. The parody had accused the Congress of appeasing Muslims.
In a letter to the chief minister on Monday, Nirmalananda Swamy of the Adichunchunagiri Mutt equated the insult to the state anthem with an insult of the national anthem and the nation itself.
“If anyone is distorting the state anthem and disrespecting it, it is tantamount to disrespecting the national anthem and this a violation of the law of the land,” the seer wrote.
Bommai immediately dispatched primary and secondary education minister B.C. Nagesh to meet Nirmalananda Swamy to explain the government’s stand.
“There was an FIR against Chakrathirtha over that Facebook post. But a ‘B’ report (closure report) was filed when the Congress was in power as he had only shared something he received on WhatsApp,” Nagesh said.
But the minister’s explanation did not stop veteran writer and scholar Hampa Nagarajaiah from resigning as president of the Rashtrakavi Kuvempu Pratishtana. In a letter addressed to the chief minister, Nagarajaiah cautioned that lack of disciplinary action against those who had insulted Kuvempu would send a wrong message to the people.
Chakrathirtha said: “The alleged insult of Kuvempu has nothing to do with the textbook society. Their only point of discussion is caste. They are trying to break the society by targeting Brahmins, assuming the rest of the castes would join hands.”
None from the government has so far commented on the resignations by the litterateurs.
Various Dalit and progressive organisations held at least two major protests in Mysore and Bangalore on Tuesday against the “saffronisation” of textbooks and the insult to the state anthem.
Scholar and Dalit activist Mahesh Chandra Guru, who was among those who participated in the protests in Mysore, told The Telegraph that the government must sack Chakrathirtha. “Firstly, he is not a scholar. One doesn’t qualify to head a textbook revision committee by teaching at an IIT,” he said, alluding to the state government’s contention that Chakrathirtha used to teach at the premier institution.
“The BJP government is playing with fire by insulting our literary and cultural icons to project their fascism and communal agenda. They are literally poisoning young minds with such content in school textbooks,” he said.
