Haryana govt to introduce Gayatri Mantra in school prayers

The Haryana government has decided to introduce recitation of Gayatri Mantra during the morning prayers in schools of the state, Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma said. Sharma said the decision was taken after a meeting with school principals, teachers and other stakeholders on Friday and a notification in this regard would be issued on Tuesday. The decision has drawn criticism from the Congress, which said the Khattar government should "learn from Gita the lesson of Karma (doing one's work selflessly) before teaching its sermons to the students in schools". "Among the prayers to god, Gayatri Mantra is the supreme mantra...we have decided to add recitation of Gayatri Mantra in the morning prayers conducted at schools," he said. The minister claimed that the decision to include Gita shlokas in school syllabus taken soon after the formation of the BJP government had yielded positive results. Slamming those opposing the move, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today said, "The concept of the 3-R's -- Reading, Writing and Arithmetic -- may be vital, but these are not enough.

Moral values must be inculcated in children to make them grow as responsible citizens and become an asset to the society." "Inculcation of moral values in children is necessary to make them understand what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is unjust," he said. Khattar also underlined the significance of moral values in curbing the tendency to commit crime. The chief minister said students should also be taught biographies of great personalities who had sacrificed their lives for the country. Kiran Choudhry, the leader of the Haryana Congress Legislature Party, accused the BJP government of resorting to diversionary tactics like reciting Gayatri Mantra and shlokas from Gita in schools, to "divert people's attention" from its alleged failures on issues that concern the people of the state, especially the farmers. "Farmers continue to reel from agrarian distress, the employees are up in arms, traders are restive, women are feeling insecure due to frequent incidents of rape and murder, and the man in the street is suffering due to poor law-and-order situation and rampant corruption in government offices. All this as the BJP government keeps looking the other way or keeps chasing wrong priorities," Choudhry said in a statement issued here.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)