Amid chants of hymns, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday inaugurated the country’s second Rashtriya Adarsh Veda Vidyalaya (RAVV) in Puri, with the objective of spreading knowledge of the Vedas among people.
The RAVV or the National Model Vedic School has come up on the campus of the Central Sanskrit University here. Maharishi Sandipani Rashtriya Ved Vidya Pratishthan is the first such school in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain.
“Feel fortunate to inaugurate this institute, which is also called the Shree Jagannath Rashtriya Adarsh Veda Vidyalaya. The objective of this institute is to conserve knowledge of the Vedas and spread it among people,” Pradhan said.
The institute, a residential school where education and lodging will be provided free of cost, will help promote the Sanskrit language as well, he said.
Besides courses on the four Vedas -- Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda – students will get a chance to opt for science, English, mathematics, Vedic mathematics, social science, computer science, and agriculture as part of the curriculum.
Admission will be based on merit in ‘Veda Bhusan’ fourth (Class 9), ‘Veda Bhusan’ fifth (Class 10), ‘Veda Vibhusan’ first (Class 11), and ‘Veda Vibhusan’ second (Class 12), officials said.
Courses will begin from the 2022-23 academic year.
Four more such schools will come up at Badrinath in Uttarakhand, Sringeri in Karnataka, Dwarka in Gujarat, and Guwahati in Assam, the officials said.
Pradhan also said a separate Veda Studies Board has been constituted as per the suggestion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The minister said Vedas are not just some “mantras”, but all that is written in the Vedas are scientifically proven facts of life.
“There are remedies for humanism in the proper pronunciation of the Vedas," he said.