Patriarchal predispostion:Encounter reinforced male dominance being propagated by Rajastan’s revised school textbooks

Jaipur July 18 After removing RTI and reducing Jawaharlal Nehru to nothing more that a footnote in history, BJP regime in Rajastan ,has erased stories ,ideas and characters relating to female independence, equality and relevance from Rajastan’s revised school textbooks.

The revised Hindi and English school text books in Rajastan, feature women and girls introduced  as subversive or inferior to men and whose only duty is to follow her ‘man’.

This mild but overt negligence to remove women-centric references ,hint many instances of  predisposed male dominance or superiority while relegating women to domestic or restrictive roles in society.

A report prepared by academics based in Delhi and Jaipur says women are introduced in stories and examples with reference to men in school textbooks

A Class III Hindi textbook chapter titled ‘Games’ has three illustrations only of boys playing games indicating that girls are not encouraged to do so and that sports and games are generally for boys.

The previous textbooks had decent representation of girls in all illustrations, if not equal,” says Devyani Bhardwaj, an academic who scanned the revised textbooks.

The chapter on a Sindhi poet,Sant Kanwar Ram,, in Class VIII ,”states that a woman’s duty is to follow her man.” It further goes on to showcase that the poet had six children,three from each of his wives.

The poet remarrying after the death of his first wife, at the age of 46.This only stresses that fact that the entire chapter reflects male dominance and that a woman’s job is to bear children.

From another cited example ,the Class VI chapter on Gulab Singh, the founder of the Dogra dynasty,”sends a clear message that girls are not the first choice when it comes to portraying bravery or courage.”,according to Bhardwaj,  another academic.

SIERT is the academic body that worked on the new curriculum for schools under the Rajasthan education board.

The new textbooks were reviewed by a team of educationists under the banner of Shiksha Ka Adhikar, on the basis of content, knowledge acquisition, pedagogy and scientific temper.

The team termed the revised textbooks as insensitive and hinting of male dominance