The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : “Education system must respond to the needs of pluralistic India”

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Friday, Dec 12, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

“Education system must respond to the needs of pluralistic India”

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: Pluralism and democratic values should form the basis of reforming school education, Teesta Setalvad, civil rights campaigner and secretary, Citizens for Peace and Justice, Mumbai, said on Thursday.

In a keynote address at a national seminar on ‘Civil Society and Religion,’ organised by the Department of Christian Studies, University of Madras, Ms. Setalvad said education reforms had not followed the country’s attainment of political freedom.

India, she said, was yet to evolve an education system that was responsive to the needs of a pluralistic and vibrant India.

“Textbooks that dismiss the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in one sentence or condense the upheaval of the Partition to just four paragraphs represented an education system in denial.”

Apart from involving equality and social justice principles of democracy, school years should generate in children a sense of respect for work, she said.

The activist, who is editor of ‘Communalism Combat,’ also called for a healthy exposure to the role of religion in civil society and the core values of various faiths from the school level.

Advocating that religious leaders should boldly engage in public discourses on social evils such as female foeticide and dowry deaths, Ms. Setalvad said it was wrong to regard religion as a “non-evolutionary” entity. “Religious beliefs must be as much about reformative aspect of faiths.”

She spelt out as a critical task negotiating an equation between religion and civil society within the framework of democracy.

Ms. Setalvad said the problem had not been with the choice of democracy; rather the fault lay in failing to constitutionalise the institutions of democracy and make them accountable to the people. As a result of adopting archaic British Acts, the structure of democratic institutions remained very much colonial in character, she said.

Christodas Gandhi, principal secretary, Youth Welfare and Sports Development, said civil society was nothing but an art of living together harmoniously, “a constant flux of interactions between diverse groups of people.”

A contribution to civil society would come about only when believers looked beyond their own communities, learn to accommodate the opposite viewpoint and work for the betterment of others, he said.S. Ramachandran, Vice-Chancellor, said the departments of religious studies at Madras University were making important contributions to civil society.

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