Vidya Bharati
Kolkata: Every district, municipality and panchayat in the state should host a school by Vidya Bharati, the education wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), CM Suvendu Adhikari said on Thursday and set a target of establishing at least 1,000 such institutions in Bengal within the next year. Later the minority affairs department sent a separate file for felicitating 27 Muslim students. I have already felicitated 20 students and they include Muslims, Jaina, Buddhists,” he said.
You keep watching,” he said and added that the previous govt had polluted the state’s education environment and Vidya Bharati’s “help will be needed to come out of this”. Adhikari said Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s call of ‘ek desh, ek bidhan, ek nishan, ek pradhan’ would apply to education as well. “We will not allow an arrangement where the higher education department will look after all universities while another department will look after Aliah University,” he said. I said we will stop funds. I told the education secretary that they will have to sing ‘tomari murti gori mandir e mandir e’ (we build your idols in temples),” he said.
The CM invited the Vidya Bharati leadership to meet the entire education department at the state secretariat and added that Vidya Bharati must take responsibility for imparting nationalistic learning. Adhikari was speaking at an event to mark the 74th year of Vidya Bharati at Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark. Adhikari also signalled the merger of state’s four education departments — school education, higher education, technical and minority education — to establish a single department. “Our belief is to have a single education department. There will be no madrassa education department and others. The CM accused the previous Trinamool govt of deliberately and strategically twisting the Bengali syllabus in schools to divide Bengali-speaking people. “Mother was referred to as ‘amma’ and not ‘ma’. Similarly, the sky was referred to as ‘asman’ and not ‘akash’. Bengali language was distorted in a planned manner. The syllabus was created in such a way that Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s or Swami Vivekananda’s lessons remained neglected. Division was created in the minds of children through such distortion of language,” he alleged. Aliah University is managed by Bengal govt’s minority affairs department. “I felicitated the board toppers. I asked why? Students do not have religion. Adhikari added that he had seen a video where a student, who wore a tilak on his head, was forced to wipe it off in school. He did not name the school. He added that the govt knew how to overcome opposition to singing Vande Mataram in schools. “Some were saying they will not sing it. Then they agreed to sing. Still they were not moving their lips.