Hundreds, if not thousands, teachers took to streets in Delhi on Tuesday protesting against the saffronisation of the education system by the ruling BJP government at the centre. They demanded for ‘a free and affordable education and dignified employment’ and to reserve the ‘rights of education for everyone’.
The Indian Express quoted Delhi University professor Najma Rehmani: “The government is slowly destroying the public education system, and giving preference to private education. The government schools in states are not getting money and aid from the Centre, and it’s a big jolt to federal structure of India, which is the current government destroying slowly…
The school syllabus is designed in a way to destroy the components of secularism. The government is giving preferences to Hindu ideology in the school books and prayers which is harming the idea of India at the end.”
The teachers came from different parts of the country for the protest march organised by Joint Forum for Movement on Education (JFME) and supported by eminent figures including historian Romila Thapar, noted author Githa Hariharan, and Carnatic music vocalist T M Krishna.
“Students and teachers are constantly being hounded with charges of being ‘anti-national and seditious.’ Indeed, the purpose of education, and its process of questioning and debate is being sabotaged. Knowledge itself – the quest for knowledge and its growth – is the victim, along with the future of India which resides in the youth of the country,” a joint statement issued by Thapar, Hariharan and Krishna.
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