Yoga guru Ramdev is likely to head the Bharatiya Shiksha Board, which the government wants to set up to standardise education in Vedic tradition, The Indian Express reported on Monday. Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust was on Saturday selected as the best bidder to set up this proposed government-recognised education board. The Bharatiya Shiksha Board will be the first private board to be recognised by the Centre.
This will now be considered by the governing council of the Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Vedavidya Pratishthan, which is headed by Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar, later this week.
Besides Ramdev’s trust, the Ritnand Balved Education Foundation and Pune-based Maharashtra Institute of Technology had also expressed their interest to set up the board. Patanjali Yogpeeth is learnt to have been selected as the best bidder after its trustee, Balkrishna, said the trust was willing to commit Rs 21 crore to develop the Board. Balkrishna also reportedly told a five-member committee in Delhi that the Vedic board will be headquartered in Haridwar and Ramdev will be its chairperson.
“We are very serious about it [setting up a Vedic education board],” Balkrishna told The Indian Express. “Education is not about learning the alphabet. A student should also learn our Indian morals, culture and values. We are already running Acharyakulam on this model.” Acharyakulam is Ramdev’s residential school in Haridwar.
The government had invited private players to help set up the board to standardise education in Vedic tradition on February 11. A letter inviting expressions of interest was released by the Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Vedavidya Pratishthan, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Human Resource Development. It has its headquarters in Ujjain. The deadline was February 19.
The document described the objectives of the board as “standardising education in Indian traditional knowledge, especially in the field of Vedic education, imparted with or without modern education”. The board will conduct examinations, develop pedagogy and curriculum.
Applicants should be “involved in preservation, conservation, promotion and propagation of Indian traditional knowledge which includes Vedic education, Sanskrit education, yoga in schools for at least five years”. They should have a net worth of at least Rs 300 crore and should commit a corpus of Rs 50 crore, it had said.
The governing council of the Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Vedavidya Pratishthan had given its in-principle approval to set up such a board on January 11. On February 12, the government agreed to let private players set up the board.
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