Nishant Saxena
The UP Board of Secondary Education has implemented substantial revisions to the syllabus of Class X and XII. Starting from the upcoming academic session in July, the UP Board will incorporate the biographies of 50 eminent leaders, including Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, into the curriculum.
The addition of these biographies aims to enhance the moral and cultural values of students, who will play a crucial role in the nation-building process, as stated by UP Education Minister Gulab Devi. While the decision has been met with frustration from opposition parties, who have criticized the move, the UP government remains steadfast in its commitment to the new curriculum.
One such opposition party, the Samajwadi Party (SP), has urged the UP government to reconsider its inclusion of the chapter on Veer Savarkar. SP spokesman Sunil Sajan asserted that the state government should apologize to the countless freedom fighters for glorifying Veer Savarkar, who allegedly betrayed their sentiments by apologizing to the British rulers.
Notably, the revised syllabus encompasses the life stories of other distinguished individuals, including Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Mahavir Jain, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, Arvind Ghosh, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Sarojini Naidu, Nana Saheb, Chandra Shekhar, and Ramkrishna Paramhans, among others.
It is important to highlight that the marks obtained in these subjects will not be reflected on the mark sheets of Class X and XII. These biographies have been integrated into moral, sports, physical education, and yoga subjects, which are compulsory for all students and require successful completion. However, their grades will not contribute to the final academic scores.
Over one crore students in classes IX to XII attending more than 27,000 government, government-aided, and unaided schools under the board’s jurisdiction will now have the opportunity to study the life stories of these eminent personalities. The revised curriculum introduces the biographies of renowned figures such as Chandra Shekhar Azad, Birsa Munda, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Veer Kunwar Singh, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Gautam Buddha, Jyotiba Phule, Chhatrapati Shivaji, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Vinoba Bhave, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Mangal Pandey, Roshan Singh, Sukhdev, Lokmanya Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mahatma Gandhi, Khudiram Bose, and Swami Vivekananda.
The UP Board’s decision to incorporate these biographies into the academic curriculum has sparked discussions and debates surrounding historical figures, their contributions, and their impact on the nation’s development. With the academic session fast approaching, students and educators eagerly await the implementation of the revised syllabus, hoping that it will foster a deeper understanding of the nation’s rich history and values.
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