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Kargil storm created to get poll mileage: teacher

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

The Sangh Parivar has raked a controversy over the Kargil war in Goa.

Dharmanand Kholkar, a senior teacher, has incurred their wrath for portraying humanism among Pakistani soldiers. He had sketched such a scenario in a Konkani question paper distributed on January 19.

Asking students to complete a short story, the paper states that an Indian soldier falls down after suffering bullet injuries. He faints while his colleagues run away. The enemy soldiers give him drinking water and then take him to a hospital. When the Indian soldier asks them why he was not killed, the Pak soldiers tell him that all of us are human beings.

Describing this as an anti-national act, a group of around 60 Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists and other Sangh Parivar members manhandled Kholkar and painted his face black at Marcel village, around 15 kilometres away from Panaji this week.

"It is shameful to portray Pak soldiers in this way knowing they have tortured Indian soldiers. Our brave soldiers have been portrayed as cowards. Such a teacher should be sacked immediately," said local Bharatiya Janata Party secretary Govind Parvatkar.

"I was trying to inculcate universal brotherhood among the students through this. I had no other intention," clarified Kholkar.

Showing a similar question included in a 1996 Secondary School Certificate paper based on the Indo-China war, he said the only change he made was to mention the Kargil war.

The Goa Headmasters' Association, which produces this paper in Konkani every year, has apologised for hurting public sentiments in this regard. It also clarified that neither the teacher concerned nor the association had any kind of anti-national intention in framing the question.

"The question reflects perversity rather than human values. It should be condemned," said Professor Bhushan Bhave, an ABVP leader.

But Kholkar strongly suspected that the conspiracy has been raked up to get political mileage in the zilla parishad elections, scheduled for February 6.

Most of the Goa newspapers have condemned the ABVP's act of painting Kholkar's face black. Though a police complaint was lodged on February 1 soon after the incident took place, none of the student activists has been arrested yet.

The tourist state is presently ruled by a coalition government backed by the BJP.

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