Liluah: Amidst reports that lessons from Hindu religious texts may soon be taught in schools and colleges, the head of a Roman Catholic religious institute on Sunday said they will engage in a dialogue with the government on the issue.
“As a congregation and also as a church we will talk to and partner with the government for all matters in education because we are highly engaged in education,” Father Angel Fernandez Artime, head of the Salesians of Don Bosco which runs a number of educational institutions in the country, told reporters here.
The Rector Major of the institute was asked to comment on recent reports that lessons from Mahabharata, Ramayana and Gita may soon be taught in schools and colleges as part of NDA government’s new education policy, reported The Statesman.
“We realise that governments will do better if they concentrate on what unifies people rather than what divides people,” Artime said during his visit to Don Bosco School in Liluah, a few km away from Kolkata.
He said their provincial and other sister institutions of the Salesians family will definitely engage in a dialogue with the government because it has invited opinions of all citizens for the education policy that is being formed.
Artime, the tenth successor of educator-saint John Bosco, popularly known as Don Bosco, said he doesn’t understand much about what is going on with the education policy in India but they have such concerns everywhere in the world.
“It is easy for us to understand that any government will have its own vision for the country. It would be right for this country to do what it thinks best,” the educator said adding that in a secular country like India religious freedom exists.
To mark the bicentenary celebration of Don Bosco’s birth, the South Asia Salesian Family Congress is being held here.
Tomorrow Artime is scheduled to meet monks of the Hindu religious order Ramakrishna Mission at Belur Math.