On Thursday, the Karnataka High Court postponed making a decision regarding a petition brought by the Karnataka Unaided Schools Managements’ Association (KUSMA), an association of private unaided schools, regarding the controversy surrounding the Savarkar textbook and the paucity of information about the 1984 Delhi Sikh genocide in the state’s textbooks.
After hearing from KUSMA and the state government, a Division bench made up of Justices Alok Aradhe and Vishwajit Shetty reserved its decision.
KUSMA has argued that many provisions of the Karnataka Education Act, 1983, with regard to private unaided schools, are irrational and unconstitutional.
Along with a dozen other articles in the Karnataka Education Act, the clause in which the state government specifies textbooks and orders that only the curriculum specified by the state government in the state-mandated textbook should be taught to children was contested.
With reference to the Savarkar controversy, attorney K V Dhananjay argued on behalf of petitioner KUSMA by asking the panel to remember the recent textbook controversy in Karnataka, where a draught textbook for schoolchildren had claimed that Savarkar would escape from jail by flying on the wings of a Bulbul.
It was further argued that after the Government publicly prescribes the school curriculum, schools should be free to teach that curriculum in any way they see fit and use textbooks that they may prepare themselves or adopt from the open market if those textbooks are more kid-friendly than publications from the government.
With reference to the Supreme Court’s 11-judge decision in the TMA Pai case of 2002, which had ruled that government regulation should be minimal in school education when the school does not receive government aid, Dhananjay argued that ‘the government has no authority under the Constitution to say that nothing more than the prescribed syllabus should be taught to school children.’
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