A panel of eminent left academicians on Friday condemned the Centre’s draft national education policy terming it ‘‘an unabashed attempt to saffronise the practice of teaching.’’
They came together under the aegis of left-leaning students’ and teachers’ organisations here to stir up popular resistance in Kerala against the Centre’s move “to re-engineer the country’s education policy to suit its right wing Hindu nationalist agenda.”
B. Ekbal, former Vice Chancellor of University of Kerala, set the tone for the conclave by stating that the policy paper had “Hindu Brahminical corporate agenda” stamped all over it. The Centre sought to reinstate the patriarchal and totalitarian Vedic era Gurukul system that justified caste-based hierarchy and social categorisation.
The new education policy dispelled democratic, decentralised and student-centric indigenous pedagogy practices that pre-dated the Vedic era. Instead, the policy paper sought to present a false and distorted version of the country’s knowledge tradition.
The policy extolled the nationalist heritage of right wing intellectuals such as Gokhale, Ram Mohan Roy and Malaviya. It blindly refused to acknowledge the contributions made by Sree Narayana Guru and Ayyankali, both social reformers, for the educational uplift of the indigent masses. Dr. Ambedkar did not even get a passing mention in the policy paper.
Rajan Kurukkal, former Vice Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, said the policy viewed knowledge only as a product with sizeable market value. It was tailor-made for the corporates. The Centre’s education policy had lost sight of its social purpose.
Historian K.N. Panikkar said corporatisation and communalisation could endanger the country’s education sector. The new policy sought to bolster both tendencies. Education Minister C. Ravindranath spoke.
