RSS affiliate bats for Sanskrit, mother tongue in schools

Students should be taught Sanskrit or a classical language like Latin or Persian with the choice to study without learning English or Hindi after class 8, RSS-affiliate Bharatiya Sikshan Mandal (BSM) has said.

In the “integrated and holistic education policy” it released here on Wednesday, BSM also wanted compulsory teaching in mother tongue and national languages like Sanskrit, Hindi and English as second language until class 8.

“This is essential from the socio-cultural perspective,” the policy said. “However, mother tongue, Sanskrit or a classical language will be mandatory for students (of class 9-12).”
Calling for mandatory daily prayers in all schools, BSM also wanted the working days to be increased by 20 days to include “extra classes” for moral education. IT also said the current 210 working days as “inadequate”.

It also wanted ethics and philosophy as compulsory subjects for higher secondary classes. Formulated based on suggestions from nearly 4000 teachers, the draft policy would be fine-tuned by one more round of consultation and will be presented to all state governments and to the Centre, BSM’s joint organising secretary and an RSS pracharak Mukul Kanitkar told reporters.

The draft policy is released at a time when the HRD Ministry is working on a national education policy.  Asking that English should not be imposed on students, BSM said students should be allowed to pursue professional courses like Engineering in their mother tongues.

Institutions admitting 50 per cent of students from a minority community should be recognised as minority institution, it said.  “Institutions are misusing the special autonomy status given by our constitution,” Kanitkar said.