NTT Desk
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday set a one year target of opening at least 1,000 schools run by Vidya Bharati, the education wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), across the state.
Speaking at Vidya Bharati’s 74th anniversary programme at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark, Adhikari said every district, municipality and panchayat should have such a school. The state currently has 313 Vidya Bharati institutions. Nationwide, the organisation runs more than 12,000 schools and about 10,000 Bal Sanskar Kendras.
He asked the organisation to take the lead in what he called “nationalistic learning” and invited its leadership to Nabanna to meet the education department and draw up a plan. Adhikari also said expansion should be faster in Murshidabad and South 24 Parganas, districts he alleged see “more anti-national activities.”
The chief minister linked the school drive to a larger overhaul of education administration. He proposed merging the state’s four education departments - school, higher, technical and minority affairs - into one body and ending a separate administrative track for madrassa education.
“Our belief is to have a single education department. There will be no madrassa education department and others. You keep watching,” Adhikari said. He added that the previous government had “polluted” the state’s education environment and that Vidya Bharati’s “help will be needed to come out of this.”
On the syllabus under the earlier Trinamool Congress government, he alleged: “Mother was referred to as ‘amma’ and not ‘ma’… The syllabus was created in such a way that Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s or Swami Vivekananda’s lessons remained neglected.”
Invoking Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s line of “one nation, one constitution, one flag, one leader,” he said the same principle should apply to education. “And our thinking is that there should not be separate forms of education, Madrasa education and other forms of education. All of it should be one education system,” he said.
Adhikari reiterated the full recitation of ‘Vande Mataram’, the national song - a condition for government aid. Recalling an earlier interaction with some institutions, he said: “I told them that government aid would stop. Then they budged, but only partially. They stood up, but did not move their lips. Then I told them that lips must move as well.”
The announcement comes months after the BJP formed its first government in West Bengal in may this year, after wresting power from Trinamool Congress. The government has not yet issued a detailed timeline, funding formula or land-allocation plan for the 1,000-school target.
