The Congress government led by Siddaramaiah has decided to remove the chapters on KB Hedgewar — one of the founders of the Hindutva militant group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — from school history books.
The chapter which was added last year by Basavaraj Bommai government, also teaches other Hindutva figure Savarkar.
Along with it, all the changes in school syllabus made by the BJP government have also been reversed, said HK Patil, the state’s Law & Parliamentary Affairs minister on Thursday.
The Cabinet has also decided to make it compulsory to read the Preamble of the Constitution along with the hymn in schools and colleges.
At the same Cabinet meeting, the Congress government has also decided to scrap the law against religious conversion introduced by the previous BJP government.
The law which was adopted by many BJP-ruled states, was introduced in the southern state through an Ordinance or executive order in May last year. A bill to replace it was later introduced in the state assembly in September.
Under this law, a complaint can be lodged against an interfaith marriage, and the couple will have to prove that the marriage did not take place under coercion from either side.
“This law is targeted primarily at Muslims and Christians. Acts of charity (in education and health services) by minority institutions can be viewed as “allurement’, making minority institutions and individuals vulnerable to being targeted,” earlier said Bahutva Karnataka, a civic rights group in the state.
