Dear BJP Government,
In your pursuit to honour Babasaheb, don’t plan #Ambedkar Yatras, as your processions evoke riots. Neither do we want Mr PM, who now sounds like a cheap “ballad-monger”, to discuss and distort (he loves doing that) Babasaheb’s legacy.
If you and your government truly respect Babasaheb, kindly include “Annihilation of Caste” in the class 12 curriculum. The shattered Indian society won’t be put together unless everyone reads that text. In the following paragraphs, I’ll investigate for you the reasons to support my argument.
In the English Core curriculum, the CBSE currently prescribes the following long-reading texts:
1. “An Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells (~200 pages)
2. “Silas Marner” by George Eliot (~270 pages)
Apart from inculcating s rigorous reading habit, what good do these texts do to the students? These fictitious foreign texts, in no manner, aid the making of a better scholar – a scholar who could pay back to the society.
On the contrary, Dr Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of Caste” is roughly a 50-page text, yet far rich in content than the prescribed ones. If taught over a period of one year, facilitating multiple readings, the text would open layers of knowledge to the students. Not only will it liberalise their thought process, it will also give them a better purview of the society they live in. In the process, it will encourage them to hammer the evil societal system. Also, being linguistically sharp, the text can help in eliminating modern-day ‘Dronacharyas’ from the education system.
Therefore, it is de rigueur to replace the existing texts with Babasaheb’s “Annihilation of Caste” to ensure that after finishing their schooling, the students have acquired something concrete, and not just their school-leaving certificates.