New Delhi, May 20
With the defeat of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, noted academics have urged the next government to desaffronise education, remove RSS men appointed in key posts, put an end to the interference in the functioning of IIMs, and ensure justice to the victims of Gujarat riots.“The government should also make out a case for the trial of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi,” historian D.N. Jha told a press conference, organised by SAHMAT.
Others who spoke were academic Arjun Dev, economist Prabhat Patnaik and film-maker M.K. Raina.
The academics also demanded that the government withdraw the National Curriculum Framework for School Education and set up a committee to consider afresh the questioning of formulating a national curriculum framework.
Among their other demands were:
— To remove from office those heads of the organisations who have brazenly misused their position to convert their organisations into instruments for implementing the BJP’s “communal” agenda, and to initiate proceedings against them for violating norms and rules of conduct governing the offices held by them.
— To immediately order the publications of the ‘Towards Freedom’ volumes prepared under the auspices of ICHR which had been withdrawn at the instance of the BJP-led government.
— To reconstitute and convene the Central Advisory Board of Education which the BJP-led government had declared defunct and had refused to reconstitute in violation of the Supreme Court directions.
— To restore the social science and history syllabuses which were in use till 2001 and all textbooks based on them brought out by NCERT till 2001, particularly all history textbooks, and to immediately bring out their reprint editions. —
UNI
