Savarkar on bulbul’s wings: Karnataka state textbook creates another controversy
A fresh controversy has hit Karnataka state school textbooks. A passage from a class 8 textbook in Kannada, meant for those studying the language as a second language, says that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, while imprisoned at the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, would sit on the wings of bulbul birds and “fly out to visit the motherland every day”.
The full passage, when translated, reads thus:
“In the room where Savarkar was jailed, there was not even a small keyhole. However, bulbul birds would visit the room from somewhere, on whose wings Savarkar would sit and fly out to visit the motherland every day.”
Predictably, the passage whipped up a storm as soon as it started spreading on social media, considering the highly divisive figure of Savarkar being the person of concern.
The chapter where this particular passage occurs is an extract from a travelogue by KT Gatti, derived from the author’s visit to Cellular Jail to meet Savarkar, is one among the several new ones added to the textbooks of the state board, as suggested by the Karnataka Textbook Revision Committee, chaired by Rohith Chakratirtha.
The committee has since been dissolved after allegations of “omissions and commissions in chapters” raised by writers, academics, religious leaders and opposition parties, as mentioned in an Indian Express report.
The committee had been constituted last year “after Hindu groups and political outfits alleged that textbooks currently in circulation in the state contained offensive content on Brahmins, glorified Tipu Sultan, played down Mysore Wadiyar’s contributions, among others”.
The “omissions and commissions” include leaving out mention of Basavanna’s, the founding saint of Lingayatism (with the Lingayat community forming nearly 17 per cent of the state’s population and forming an important vote bank, now being seen as with the ruling BJP), rebelling against Hindu practices and references to Ambedkar’s heading of the Constituent Assembly that framed the Constitution and of his rebellion against the caste system; “writings of eminent Kannada writers such as P Lankesh, Sara Abubacker and AN Murthy Rao”; and chapters on Bhakti and Sufi saints like “Purandaradasa, Kanakadasa, and Shishunala Sharif”, and several others.
While the passage in question had attracted oral objections earlier, directed at the now-dissolved textbook revision committee, according to a report in The Hindu, it has become widely known only after tweets on it went viral very recently.
While a report by the news portal, News Minute quotes Chakratirtha as justifying the passage, saying it is only a “figure of speech”, implying a metaphor, several teachers The Hindu spoke to said the tone of the writing is such that it’s difficult to consider it a metaphor and Savarkar’s flying home to his motherland on the wings of bulbuls is stated as if it is a literal fact.
This is just another example of the saffronisation of education in BJP-ruled Karnataka, an allegation growing louder by the day.
