Yog guru Baba Ramdev, proposed setting up of the country's first Vedic Education Board due to which The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) held a meeting this week to discuss it.
On Tuesday, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Nripendra Misra met the secretaries of school and higher education in the Union HRD Ministry, S C Khuntia and V S Oberoi respectively to discuss on this i.e. a national board that would allow affiliated schools to offer a blend of the traditional gurukul system and modern curriculum.
Yog guru's proposal said that the VEB will help Indianise education by offering a mix of "archaistic education of Maharshi Dayanand", "human education of Aurobindo", "vedanta education of Swami Vivekananda" and modern curriculum. Its schools will also focus on teaching the Vedas, Upanishads and Gita along with Sanskrit, Hindi, regional languages and English. Its structure would be similar to CBSE, including a chairman and vice-chairman. Schools up to Class XII would be affiliated to it, as per the proposal, and the VEB would hold examinations and prescribe a curriculum for them. Who will run the board is still under discussion.
On the pattern of Acharyakulam, a school run by Ramdev in Haridwar, VEB would be based. It has over 400 boys and girls in Classes V to VII studying Sanskrit, the Vedas and Shastras, apart from the National Council of Educational Research and Training curriculum prescribed by most boards in the country.
Vedic board would provide benefits to educational institutions such as Acharyakulam, Vidya Bharati schools (run by the RSS) and gurukuls run by the Arya Samaj, as it will allow them to sustain their model of education up to Class XII, which the CBSE currently does not permit. Baba Ramdev feels the need for Vedic education as there is a need for Bharatiyakaran and swadeshikaran (indigenisation) of education. He wants to set up 700 gurukulam and acharyakulam all over the nation. Former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami, too had mooted the idea of a national school board for Sanskrit and Vedic studies last month.