India Tradition and Culture new focus areas of NCERT

HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar while inaugurating a lecture series on Bharat Bodh (Idea of India) at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) said that The National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) will work on the creation of courses about India’s history in tradition and culture.

Javadekar said that "Bharat's (India's) education system became such that we kept on forgetting Bharat's culture and insisted on remembering the rest of the world’s, it is necessary to know and remember the world but this does not imply that we can forget Bharat. It is necessary to understand the Bharat and its glorious past”.

He also added that “We will replicate such courses with NCERT because we think our true identity begins with the identity of our nation. Without knowing it, we will not be able to decipher the truth about the world. We are open to discussions about the value of our past”.

The minister also said all philosophy and Indology students should attend this lecture series and people did not know about India and they should know the identity of their country.

IGNOU organized this lecture series in association with Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal (BSM), IGNOU Vice Chancellor Ravindra Kumar said that "We will soon launch a new formal academic programme called certificate course in Bharat Bodh. This will talk about the cultural wealth of India and will also take a critical look at it".

Everything would not be taken for granted but critically examined and whatever was valuable would be retained he added.