Exclusion of lessons on Periyar, Narayan Guru from school texts triggers outrage in Mangaluru

MANGALURU: Even as the row over inclusion of RSS founder KB Hedgewar’s speech in school textbooks is refusing to die down, it has now come to light that lessons on social reformers Shree Narayan Guru and Periyar have been reportedly excluded from the Class 10 Social Science textbook, triggering an outrage. 

The exclusion of Narayan Guru’s lesson is likely to snowball into a controversy, especially in the state’s coastal and Malnad regions, where the Billavas, who revere the social reformer, are concentrated. 
In a statement, Congress MLC and Dakshina Kannada District Congress Committee president K Harish Kumar asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s praise of Narayan Guru’s preachings during the 90th anniversary of Sivagiri Pilgrimage in April this year was just a drama. Strongly condemning the exclusion of lessons on Narayan Guru and Periyar, he alleged that it was done to please vested interests. 
He said the BJP government should immediately include the lessons on these great personalities, failing which it will have to pay a heavy price in the coming days.  

Addressing a press meet, former Congress MLA J R Lobo termed the development an insult to the great social reformer and said that the government still has time to include the lesson as the textbooks are still to be printed. Recalling the incident of Kerala’s Narayana Guru tableau being left out of Republic Day parade earlier this year, Lobo said although they protested the development then, they thought that the tableau might have been excluded due to oversight. “But now, their intentions have become very clear. Even the tableau seems to be left out intentionally,” he said.