A chapter on Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar will be made a part of the school curriculum in Madhya Pradesh, state School Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar said on Thursday, reported The Indian Express.

Parmar described Savarkar as a “great revolutionary” and said that he was sentenced to life imprisonment twice. He said that the Hindu Mahasabha leader deserved respect as he made an unprecedented contribution to the freedom struggle.

“Unfortunately, the Congress governments in this country did not give any place to the great revolutionary leaders of India in history pages,” the minister said, according to the Hindustan Times. “Foreign invaders were written as ‘great’ and patriots were forgotten.”

Parmar said that during the tenure of the previous Congress government in the state, a principal was suspended after a book about Savarkar’s life was distributed in a school.

On the proposal, Congress MLA Arif Masood said it was unfortunate that the state government was including Savarkar in the curriculum. He said that the Hindutva leader had “written letters to the British and asked for forgiveness”.

Madhya Pradesh is the second Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state in recent days to have included a chapter on Savarkar in its school curriculum. Last week, the Uttar Pradesh government decided to include the biographies of 50 great personalities, including Savarkar and Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader Deendayal Upadhyay, in the school syllabus, the Hindustan Times reported.

Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Minister (independent charge) Gulab Devi had said: “If we don’t teach students about our great leaders like Savarkar and Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay, what do we teach them? Are we supposed to tell our kids about terrorists instead of making them aware of the life and times of great personalities of India?”

The Uttar Pradesh government had excluded the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru from the list. On this, Devi said that Nehru was left out as he had “not made the supreme sacrifice for the country”.

Earlier this month, the Congress government in Karnataka removed a poem on Savarkar written by KT Gatti from the syllabus and reintroduced an extract on Nehru.