Bhagwat Gita has not been made compulsory in primary schools in Netherlands

June 28, 2021January 24, 2022 Shriya Handoo

Spread the truth:

A picture of two girls with Bhagwat Gita in their hands is viral yet again on social media claiming that according to the Netherland law, it is now compulsory for all dutch students from Grade 5 to study Bhagwat Gita as a part of their curriculum. Earlier this picture was highly shared in 2016 on various platforms.

Twitter

Hare Krishna pic.twitter.com/zCqSI7usI1

— Maithili (@SuvarnBharat) June 26, 2021

A similar post was shared in 2016 on Twitter and is being reshared in 2021 too.

Bhagavad Gita classes made compulsory for Dutch students from Grade 5 – The Netherlands Law.@PrakashJavdekar pic.twitter.com/CKXcxDTdlm

— Asmakhan Pathan (@PathanAsmakhan) July 9, 2016

Bhagavad Gita classes made compulsory for Dutch students from Grade 5 -The Netherlands Law.#BhagavadGita #Hindutva🚩🙏 pic.twitter.com/rw5lqkDnNs

— M.C.Vivek (@mcvivek) July 10, 2016

Truth

The girls in the above picture are not Dutch girls and the dutch students from Grade 5 don’t need to study Bhagwat Gita as a part of their curriculum.

While searching about the picture, we used reverse google image search and found a similar picture of two girls with Bhagwat Gita in their hands. The picture of the two girls was uploaded by the ISKON design tree website in September 2013.

Source

We searched for the compulsory subjects for the Grade 5 students from the official website of the Government of Netherlands and found out that there was no reference of Bhagwat Gita for the students. Hence, the claim that the Netherlands has made it compulsory to study Bhagwat Gita is totally incorrect. The list of compulsory subjects includes Dutch, English, Arithmetic, Mathematics, Social and Environmental studies (including geography, history, biology, citizenship, road safety, and political studies), creative expression (including music, drawing, and handicrafts), sport, and movement.