New Delhi: Responding to a suggestion by Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankar, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that he will give copies of the Vedas to all his Rajya Sabha colleagues, the Deccan Herald reported.
Pradhan was answering a question about Vedic schools during the Question Hour when Dhankar said “…it will be greatly appreciated if you make available to members of Parliament a set of the Vedas,” and asked each member to further distribute a 100 copies to others, the Times of India reported.
Pradhan, who accepted the suggestion, said that Vedas are the original pool of knowledge in the Indian education system, and it was the Modi government that formalised the learning of Vedas by setting up the Vedic Board, the Deccan Herald report said.
“The Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Sanskrit Shiksha Board was established by our government last year to promote the formal system of Vedic education,” Pradhan said. The Board was established on August 8, 2022, the report said.
There are currently 123 paathshalas under the Board with nearly 4600 students and 632 teachers across the country, Pradhan said. In addition to that, there are 258 Guru Shishya Parampara Units which have 2,240 students and 430 teachers, the report said.
The minister also said that five regional centres of the Vedic Board will be established in Sringeri, Badrinath, Dwarka, Rameshwaram and Guwahati.
The government has also established model Vedic schools called Rashtriya Adarsh Veda Vidyalaya in six states, including Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Assam, Karnataka and Uttarakhand, the report said. These schools admit students on the merit of their proficiency in the Veda Bhusan and Veda Vibhushan in various grades.
Apart from the four Vedas – Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharva — students can opt for science, english, mathematics, social science, computer science, and agriculture.
According to a 2022 decision by the Association of Indian Universities, students who clear Class X (Veda Bhushan) and Class XII (Veda Vibhushan) offered by Vedic boards are eligible to join any college for higher education, including medicine and engineering, on par with students from other boards across the country.