(September 17, 2012) Nearly 1,500 secular thinkers and teachers have condemned what
they alleged was the gradual process ‘saffronization’ or ‘Hinduization’ of school
textbooks in southern India’s Karnataka state. The participants from all major religions
in the country attended a day-long seminar in Mangalore on Sunday on the theme “saffronization
of text books and subaltern voice”. Rosy D’Souza, a teacher and a participant at
the seminar said that saffronisation is a gradual poison that makes Hindu children
feel superior and Muslim and Christian children inferior. The education department
of the state government led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, has introduced
the new history and social science text books for 5th and 8th grades, with other classes
to follow next year. Father J. B. Crasta, a Catholic priest, complained that the
new textbooks are distorting history teaching children that churches in India, especially
in Karnataka, were built by the British; whereas they were built by Christians as
expression of their faith. Indudara Honnapura, a journalist, lamented that instead
of curing untouchability, which is the biggest cancer of Hinduism, the state government
was making children the victims of their experimentation of saffronizing the textbooks.