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Tuesday, Jun 29, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Education: beyond review

By K.N. Panikkar

Even if the NCERT books are withdrawn, there is still a large space in which communal ideas have a free play.

IF THE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were to list its achievements during its five-year rule, the communalisation of education is likely to figure at the top. It is much more extensive and intense than what is apparent. Understandably, intellectuals and educationists have demanded that the damage done by the manoeuvres of the BJP-led Government be immediately repaired. How best this could be achieved is likely to engage the attention of the new United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government as well as of the secular forces outside it. The initial response justifiably focusses on corrective steps, both in administration and policy. They are necessary, but not sufficient. For, the BJP and the agencies it promoted had set in motion a process aimed at altering the intellectual climate in educational institutions in favour of the communal. As a result, the sense of values, anti-humanist and anti-democratic, is likely to exercise abiding influence on future social consciousness.

The detoxification should, therefore, go much beyond rectification; it should involve a strategy to reverse the process itself. Given that the communal penetration is deep and pervasive it has intruded into almost all levels of institutional functioning, both in structure and ideology. The changes sought or implemented without taking into account this grim reality would at best touch only the tip of the iceberg. In the field of education, therefore, the new Government faces the task not of review and reform but of a reordering of the system in order to retrieve the earlier secular ethos, even when issues, which need urgent solution, are immediately attended to.

Restoring the secular ethos in education calls for a long, sustained and continuous effort. Inevitably, the communal distortions and misrepresentations in curriculum and content consciously incorporated by the BJP-led Government have to be addressed as a priority issue. The steps initiated by the UPA Government to address this task without delay by appointing a review committee to examine the history textbooks, which were at the centre of controversy during the last few years, is most appropriate. Yet it is necessary to take into account two important dimensions. First, the main objection to these books is not the factual errors they contain as many historians have tried to project. The factual errors are indeed deplorable. What is more disconcerting is the sense of values and the political and social vision they project. Secondly, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks are prescribed only in a small number of schools. Being a government agency, its efforts to communalise the curriculum have attracted national attention and they are likely to be rectified through administrative intervention as the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is currently engaged in. But a greater danger exists. Even if the NCERT books are withdrawn, there is still a large space in which communal ideas have a free play.

Let me give an example. A textbook prescribed for class six students in an ICSE school in Kerala is a biography of V.D. Savarkar written by an activist of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It contains a quotation from Savarkar, prominently displayed in a full page, on Hindu rashtra as the ideal to strive for. In the same school, the biography of Vivekananda for students of eighth class is also written by an RSS activist. Similar examples are aplenty, particularly in the schools run by private foundations affiliated to the Sangh Parivar. A study of the textbooks prescribed in the schools run by Vidhya Bharati in Rajasthan would reveal how the free space permitted in the system is used for communalisation. What enables these schools to introduce communal reading material is the freedom they enjoy for choosing texts for specific areas, particularly for the study of regional languages. Through these manoeuvres, most of which have made great strides, unnoticed and undocumented, communalism has managed to strike deep roots in the educational system.

After all the NCERT textbooks are used only in a small number of schools. While exorcising the communal content from the NCERT textbooks is an urgent need, the space outside can hardly be left free for communalism to colonise. Just like the NCERT textbooks, these too not only distort and misrepresent or eliminate historical facts but also promote a communal conception of state and society. In the process, they foster in young minds a sense of values that contributes to the legitimacy of communal ideology.

The reputation of Government agencies such as the Indian Council of Social Science Research, Indian Council of Historical Research, NCERT, the University Grants Commission and so on were based earlier on their professional competence and the academic stature of those who headed them. In their roll call were some of the outstanding intellectuals of the country. G. Parthasarathy, Sukumoy Chakravarthy, D.S. Kothari, S. Gopal, Ravider Kumar and Nihar Ranjan Ray to mention a few from the distinguished list of people who are not with us today. Under the dispensation of the BJP, academic excellence was given the go-by in favour of allegiance to the Sangh Parivar. As a result, almost all of them came to be controlled either by those with a communal past or those who were willing to carry out the wishes of a Minister who relentlessly pursued his obscurantist and irrational convictions. In the bargain, these institutions have been deprived of their professional competence and character. The whims of the Minister and his political biases came to be writ large on almost all decisions of these institutions.

The communal influence was not limited to the upper echelons of these institutions. In almost all of them, a substantial section of the official hierarchy, either through intimidation or allurements, were recruited to the communal cause. This has happened across the board from research institutions in the cities to Ekal Vidhyalayas in tribal villages. As a result, these institutions as such have assumed a communal outlook and character. Like the fascist mentality persisting in society even after its overthrow the communal virus will continue to be present in them, even if a change is effected at the top. What is necessary is to flush out the communal poison from the body of these institutions.

The defeat of the BJP in the election of 2004 is not the end of communal ideology or the efforts to inculcate it in society. On the other hand, if the reports are true, communalisation through education is likely to intensify. The joint secretary-general of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Shyam Gupta, recently stated that a project is on the anvil to reach out to 100,000 tribal villages through a four-point programme of education, health, economic progress and self-respect. As a part of this agenda, about 1.5 lakh single-teacher schools are being set up in tribal villages, with RSS cadres employed as teachers. Since there would be no government control over these schools, it is certain that they would indulge in the Hindutva's pedagogy of hate. It is no secret that the Sangh Parivar has already organised a parallel system of education through the schools controlled or managed by it. The addition of these new schools would further extend its reach as well as reinforce it.

Today the nation stands forewarned. Under the BJP-led Government the education system of the country had almost slipped into the darkness. Immediate steps are, therefore, called for from the Government to ensure that the past does not recur. At least three steps are urgently required. First, structural changes in the constitution of Government-funded institutions to ensure that their fundamental character and objectives are not subverted through administrative interventions. Secondly, introduction of academic control over all educational institutions so that the students are not subjected to the communal influence which militates against the fundamental principles of the nation such as democracy and secularism. Thirdly, a thorough review of the reading materials used in all existing schools and elimination of all that promotes communal consciousness.

The political commentators may quibble over the meaning of the mandate of 2004. Yet there cannot be any doubt that the outmoded and obscurantist educational policy of the BJP-led Government has made a substantial contribution to its debacle. The defeat of Murli Manohar Joshi, in fact, can be read as the popular verdict against the attempt to deprive education of its modern and progressive character and to impart communal and irrational content to it. That also underlines the responsibility of the UPA Government to restore and further the secular-democratic system of education.

(The author, historian, is Vice-Chancellor, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, Kerala. He can be contacted at knp8@rediffmail.com)

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