The education sector in Karnataka was dogged by a series of controversies in 2022, most of them emanating from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological stance.
The hijab row
The year began with six students at a government pre-university college in Udupi protesting and demanding that they be allowed to wear hijab inside the classroom.
As the government issued a circular to maintain a status quo on the hijab rule, other colleges in the district also disallowed girls from wearing the hijab inside college campuses, leading to vocal protests.
The issue soon went out of hand as a section of Hindu students sported saffron shawls inside classrooms, polarising campuses on religious lines and creating a deeply divided student body across the State.
On March 15, the High Court of Karnataka, hearing petitions filed by the students of the Udupi college seeking permission to wear hijab inside classrooms, upheld the rights of the managements of colleges, where there is a uniform prescribed, to ban hijab inside classrooms.
The Supreme Court on October 13 delivered a split verdict hearing a challenge to the High Court order and the matter is now pending before a larger Bench.
Textbook row
The textbooks prepared by the textbook revision committee, led by Rohith Chakrathirtha, a known proponent of the Hindutva ideology, stirred a hornet’s nest in the State.
The new textbooks include a lesson by RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and had dropped several lessons by progressive authors. The books turned controversial as several caste organisations also took objections to lessons on Narayana Guru being dropped, lessons on B.R. Ambedkar and Basavanna edited objectionably, among others.
Vokkaligas objected to the alleged insult to Kuvempu by Mr. Chakrathirtha leading to protests on the streets. Several prominent writers like Devanur Mahadeva and Roopa Hassan withdrew permission to use their write-ups in the textbooks, despite which the government has decided to teach them for the academic year 2022-23.
This story was originally published in thehindu.com . Read the full story here