GITA IN TN UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM SPARKS ROW

CHENNAI: Anna University in Chennai has courted controversy over its decision to make the learning of Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Sanskrit compulsory for B.tech and postgraduate engineering students, as per the “Model Curriculum” prescribed by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Coming close on the heels of the controversy over Union home minister Amit Shah’s remark about Hindi being a unifier, the development has provided a handle for the opposition to target the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government.

The Opposition, including the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the Left parties and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam criticised the move, calling it yet another instance of saffronisation of education. Educationists too have joined the chorus against the new course regulations. Though AICTE, the technical education regulator , released the “Model Curriculum” in 2018, it was to be implemented from this year. It was on Tuesday that students of information science and technology department of Anna University learnt about the move to implement the AICTE curriculum, triggering a huge backlash.

The department had made Sanskrit mandatory.

Among the 32 courses prescribed by AICTE, Anna University chose 12. “Students are free to opt any three of the 12 electives offered in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Management Courses. As the subjects were mandated by AICTE, we could not remove them,” said Anna University vice chancellor, Dr MK Surappa.