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Central government's strides towards an 'indianised,
nationalised and spiritualised' curriculum
By MH Lakdawala
Last month nine state education
ministers jointly adopted a resolution demanding the immediate withdrawal
of the NCERT's National Curriculum Framework. But while the strongly
worded resolution passed at the end of the three-day ''national convention
against communalisation of education'' in the capital does well to slow
down the NDA government in its tracks, doubts will continue to be niggled
on another count. Are the brave words against the saffronisation of
education accompanied by an alternate vision or framework of education? Or
will this debate too, as so many others that have gone before, remain
stunted by the restrictive contours of the BJP vs. the Rest political
straitjacket?
There is reason enough, of course, to target the BJP. Ever since Human
Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi proposed to make the
rendering of the 'Saraswati vandana' and 'vande mataram' compulsory in all
schools in November 1998, suspicions about the BJP's not-so-hidden
educational agenda have justifiably abounded. Now these have been touched
anew by the slew of double-edged pledges in the National Curriculum
Framework.
Even the most cursory glance at what has been happening in the name of
education down the years will reveal that education, especially at the
primary and secondary levels, has always been held hostage to
ill-conceived topic selection and substandard textbook writing, to
confused policy and outright trivialisation by curriculum planners.
What is being dished out by the Sangh Parivar in the name of history,
through its textbooks and the 'research' of its ideologues, does not
fulfill even the minimum criteria of verified facts for their assertions.
There is a concerted attempt to deny the composite cultural heritage of
the Indian people, and the deliberate obliteration of the contributions of
the Dalits, the Dravidians and the tribes in the making of Indian culture.
The political campaign of the Sangh Parivar cannot succeed without
legitimising the Aryan origin of Indian culture and privileging Sanskrit
over other languages, which accounts for the serious effort by the Sangh
Parivar to invent its own version of history. It is not merely a distorted
history, but pure invention that are being propagated. The imaginary
claims of Sangh Parivar historians about the Aryan civilisation, and that
Homo sapiens originated in the upper reaches of the Saraswati River,
brings them close to the Nazi ethnocentric ideology.
Alarmed by the central government's strides towards an 'Indianised,
nationalised and spiritualised' curriculum, various NGO's are gearing up
to educate the masses about the potential threat to the secular fabric of
our country. A slow poison is being injected into the system,'' warns
Tapti Mukhopadhyay, a college teacher. "The liberal basis of our
education is under attack.''
Soon after becoming HRD minister, Murli Manohar Joshi recommended that
Sanskrit and the Saraswati Vandana be made compulsory in schools.
Meanwhile, RSS sympathisers were granted plum posts in academic bodies
like the ICHR and ICSSR, leading to the brazen promotion of 'ideologically
correct' research and an equally blatant censorship of alternate
world-views.
In December 2000,the NDA government unveiled its National Curriculum
Framework which made contentious recommendations about "reducing the
scope of social studies'' and increasing the quantum of religious and
value education. This policy is to be implemented through the NCERT (the
National Council for Educational Research and Training), which is
rewriting a clutch of textbooks. A few months later, the UGC jumped onto
the bandwagon by introducing degrees in Vedic Astrology and Vedic
Mathematics.
While a relatively strong liberal lobby in Maharashtra has tempered
central attempts to change the curriculum, a perfunctory glance at
textbooks in states like Gujarat and Rajasthan demonstrates the dangers of
an overdose of ideology. The Std IX social studies text in those states,
for example, refers to Muslims, Christians and Parsis as
"foreigners''.
Describing the varna system as "a precious gift of the Aryans to
mankind'', it devotes a couple of lines to the ills of the caste system
before attributing the problems of the scheduled castes to "their
ignorance, illiteracy and blind faith, because they still fail to realise
the importance of education in life''. Loaded statements-like 'Akbar was a
great ruler although he was a Muslim' and 'Hindus, being in the majority,
expect that Muslims should be loyal to this country'- crop up routinely in
school textbooks and college reading lists.
The controversy over ‘saffronisation of education' is acquiring curious
political dimensions, without a consensus in sight about the appropriate
‘colour’ of education for India. Though education was shifted from the
State List to the Concurrent List by the 42nd Amendment of the
Constitution in 1976, it has never been as contentious an issue as during
the past couple of years and never before have as many State Governments
made a concerted move to oppose the Centre's education policy.
Neither within the NDA, nor within the Congress, is there a consensus on
an education policy for the country. What is being proposed or opposed is
either a particular interpretation of historical events or introduction of
a few questionable courses. When the world is changing rapidly and
globalisation is the buzzword in all walks of international life, India's
rulers (the Opposition included) are quibbling over antique inanities,
totally oblivious of their twin responsibilities of ensuring universal
access to elementary education in the country and making the quality of
education in India globally competitive. Second, while quibbling over `saffronisation'
goes on, a vision to reshape the Indian education system, which learns
from past mistakes to take on the challenges of educating and training the
vast human resources of the country, does not seem to be emerging.
If the ‘saffron’ history being taught at 18,000-plus Saraswati Shishu
Mandirs, the Sangh Parivar network of schools, is any indication, its way
of ‘correcting' historical misinterpretations is by perpetuating
falsehood, not by producing fresh convincing evidence to prove the point.
For its proponents, `faith' is history.
Further, how introduction of Jyotir Vigyan and Paurohitya at the bachelors
and masters levels in the age of IT `Indianise' education defies logic.
Even if Jyotir Vigyan, on which many politicians depend for their
political moves, is accepted as a faith-neutral `science', Paurohitya
beyond doubt belongs to the Hindu religion. An avowed secular Indian state
providing funds for and encouraging the `majority' religion undoubtedly
insults the spirit of the Constitution.
The recent Lok Sabha debate on `saffronisation of education', which could
attract only 36 MPs, reflects the political frivolity of the discourse.
Not once did this debate highlight that education in India fails to retain
three-quarters of children beyond the elementary stage.
Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi 's secretary, M.K.
Kaw, said in an article entitled, Education in Human Values, in the
official NCERT journal: ''The greatest damage to our intellectual freedom
has been caused by traditional religions, especially by those which have a
single holy book from which they derive their authority.''
Muslims, Sikhs and Christians believe in one book, the Qur’an, the Guru
Granth and the Bible, respectively. Each community considers its book holy
and finds in it the message of God. Kaw's remarks are derogatory and
provocative. To add insult to injury, he had written, ''we tend to forget
that these religions have been founded by people like us.'' Thank God, the
National Commission for Minorities noticed his writings and told him that
his article might have an adverse effect on the country's pluralistic
society.
After the September 11 events the secular fabrics of our country is once
again under the threat. So all the like-minded individuals and NGO's must
exert pressure on the politicians to stop fiddling with the education
system for political gains and instead concentrate on making Education
universal. This can only be achieve if we wish to do so.
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