Ryan Ba­choo

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) says the in­clu­sion of sex­u­al­i­ty and sex­u­al health in pri­ma­ry school "can in­ter­fere with the stat­ed tenets of our re­li­gious text and be­liefs."

In a state­ment to the me­dia on Mon­day, the Ma­ha Sab­ha said the gov­ern­ment up­on win­ning the Gen­er­al Elec­tion in 2022 start­ed fo­cus­ing on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem with a pro­pos­al to in­clude sex ed­u­ca­tion in the pri­ma­ry school cur­ricu­lum.

The re­lease, signed by the or­gan­i­sa­tion's act­ing Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Vi­jay Ma­haraj, stat­ed, "This pro­pos­al was an in­fringe­ment of the rights and re­li­gious free­dom un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion and the 1960 Con­cor­dat. Try­ing to pro­vide stu­dents with knowl­edge did not in­clude what ex­act­ly was go­ing to be taught."

The SDMS says "with so many gen­der dis­tinc­tions and gen­der flu­id­i­ty" teach­ers may in­ad­ver­tent­ly raise "un­bri­dled cu­rios­i­ty and ex­plo­ration among pre-pu­bes­cent and pu­bes­cent stu­dents."