Muslims remain in
India as do Sikhs, Christians and others. India is not so much a secular
society as a multi-religious one. The Indian state in colonial times ran a regime
that did not interfere in religious practices and discouraged, much to its
chagrin, the Anglican Church from proselytising.In
contrast Christian Democracy in Europe was always anti-Communist, but also very
much in favour of business treating workers fairly
and in a spirit of communal harmony rather than class struggle. Christian
Democracy was a social as well as a political movement. It adapted itself to
the secularising forces in European life by
underplaying the formal religious elements in its make up
and bringing out the social relevance of religious values. It was a
conservative but socially inclusive movement, BJP however fell foul to
its own contradictions..
Although
`development' in fact did take place, it was on the terms and in
the vision of the NDA government running the state (See Rao `Vision 2010:
chasing mirages', Economic and Political Weekly, 38(18) 2003:1755-8, and Kakuta `Hindu nationalist movement and rural development: a
case study of Deendayal Research Institute: Chitrakoot
Project', University of Oxford,2002). The BJP has attempted to maintain its
upper-caste, middle-class vote-bank by facilitating economic liberalisation and capitalist growth. Even where it has
fielded low-caste or tribal candidates, they are not seen as representing their
respective caste or ethnic group in ideological terms, hence have often not won
the elections. The BJP has, therefore, sought to deal with lower-caste mobilisation by building alliances with caste-based and
regional parties that represent such groups. At the same time, it has used the
language of `social harmony' to reduce mistrust of these groups towards itself.
As far as tribal groups are concerned, however, it has tried to extend its own
vote-bank, by providing economic concessions, creating separate state
institutions for tribal development, alongside ideological indoctrination
(using populist religious parlance or 'Ram-Hanuman idiom') through an extensive
network of educational institutions.
Christophe Jaffrelot ('BJP and the challenge of factionalism in Madhya
Pradesh', in T. Hansen and Jaffrelot (eds) The BJP
and the Compulsions of Politics in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press1998:
267-90.) has explicitly described the BJP as `a cadre-based party'. And
although this might be slightly over-stated. Jaffrelot
argues convincingly, that divisions within the BJP should be seen as `groupism'
rather than `factionalism' - because the latter word implies struggles `between
individuals to whom local activists pay allegiance' (the emphasis is Jaffrelot's). He contrasts the BJP's cadre-based character
with that of other ` "aggregative parties" which cash in on the
influence of local politicians and notables', although he rightly notes that
the BJP has become somewhat more aggregative in recent years (Jaffrelot, 1998: 275-6)
However what
2008.World-Journal.net attempts to do in this second part is to present a
detailed and fair even if it is a critical, analysis of the BJP policy on
education.
Politics and
education policy in India can never be separated. In any country, the
government will try to shape the future by putting its mark on the school
curriculum in order to influence the thinking of future generations. This is
the case as much in countries with a democratic tradition as well as dictatorships
and countries with a fundamentalist leadership.
At Independence,
India was a secular state. The concept of secularism, though, was only
enshrined in the Constitution at a much later date, in part because the broad
consensus among the Indian elite that took over in 1947 did not feel the need
to emphasise what was seen as the obvious cornerstone
of the Indian Republic. While Pakistan had been created as a Muslim country,
India had from the start clearly been a multi-religious country with a secular
government. Article 30 of the Constitution of India clearly states that there
will be no discrimination against any educational institution on the ground
that it is under the management of a minority. Moreover, under the provisions
of Article 28 (1) religious instruction is barred in state funded schools, and
Article 29 (2) provides any person, irrespective of identity, has to be
admitted to any institution receiving state funds and give equal and due
respect for all religions. It is true to state tax this understanding was very
much one of elite thinking, and religion continued to play a major role in the
daily life of Indian society. Religion slowly crept back into politics under
the rule of Indira Gandhi and has remained there ever since, being used
by politicians to muster support from vote banks. However, since officially
there was still a separation between religion and state affairs it did not
enter the broad field of education.
Throughout the 1970s
until the mid 1990s, the main concerns of Indian education
policy was, the issue of the shortage of teachers in rural areas, the level of
literacy among the wider population and equity in education for women. As a
result of the inegalitarian distribution of education resources across much of
the rural and tribal areas, both Christian missionaries and the RSS
- set up school networks in remote areas, supplementing, and sometimes
replacing state education. This was the first level at which religion and
education started to mix.
Since the mid-1990s,
the issue of voluntary and forced conversions have become major issues in
tribal areas, as Christian missionaries have been depicted as using their
schools and medical surgeries to increase their flock. With BJP backing, the
RSS network started to expand its influence, using. the same means (schools and
medical services) to try to reconnect the tribal population to `Mother India'
and to Hindutva.
The BJP first managed
to form a government in 1998 and again in 1999. It is one of the many fronts of
the RSS, a `cultural' organisation set up in 1925 by
Dr. KB. Hegdewar. Its aim was to promote India as a
Hindu nation where minority religious groups would be subordinate to Hindus.
M.S. Golwalkar, who became chief of the RSS in 1940, laid down the RSS ideology
in We or Our Nationhood Defined. He wrote:
[I] n Hindusthan, the land of the Hindus, lives and should live
the Hindu nation.... The foreign races in Hindusthan
must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and
hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the
glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and must
lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the
country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving
no privileges, far less any preferential treatment - not even citizen's
rights. (1939: 62) See also part one of this two part study.
In 1998, the BJP had
a nationalist agenda that included the introduction of a Uniform Civil Code under
Hindu law and the construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya.3 However, one has
to remember that in order to stay in power, the BJP had forged an alliance with
14 other parties, many of which were regional and secular in nature. It was the
impact of coalition politics upon the NDA Government which in JVfect stopped the BJP from implementing the more radical
parts of its nationalist programme. The BJP strategy
has been to implement change slowly and mostly on less visible ground.
Education is seen as
one of the central tools in modern society to shape national identity. National
identity formation partially relates to the construction of a state identity
over time (Adeney `Federal formation and consociational stabilisation: the
politics of national identity articulation and ethnic conflict regulation in
India and Pakistan', unpublished thesis, University of London, 2003: 161-2).
Governments have the ability to control and impose curricula in schools and
with it define the identity discourse of the day. This can be done in overt
ways or sometimes in less obvious forms. For instance, Sleeter
(forthcoming) argues that '[s] tate-mandated
curriculum can be understood as one form of an overlapping web of
state-produced discourse that puts some order on the messiness of real life
from an elite point of view'.
Being a product of
the elite in power, it is also a flexible construction that changes over time
and according to the ideals and ideology of the current government (Adeney and Lall `Institutional
attempts to build national identity in India: internal and external
dimensions', 2005). For any Indian government, the question of national
identity has always been a problematic one because of the many differences on
the basis of caste and religion, which have traditionally divided Indian
society. At Independence, India's diaspora was seen as very much part of the
nation. However, at Independence, a statist definition promoted by Nehru,
excluded the diaspora in India's nation building efforts. Instead, the thrust was
to make sure that equality for all groups within India became a corner stone of
the new country.
According to the
Anthropological Survey of India, more than 4,000 distinct communities inhabit
India. Their identity and cultural profile is shaped by their environment,
language, occupational status and religion.' Nehru believed-:'that India, being
such a diverse country, could only be united on the basis of shared history and
universal education.' Education, just as matters of the state, had to be kept
strictly separate from religion. Religious education in schools entirely state
funded is to this day forbidden.' Shared history emphasised
mainly the independence struggle and getting rid of the British colonial power.
Nehru saw in this a great bonding process between the diverse communities.
However, shared history also went back to pre-colonial times and emphasised the integration of the Mughal invaders. The
Muslim community was - despite the controversial nature of India's Partition -
never to be depicted as a separate, non-Indian group. This was in effect a
mutually reinforcing strategy: education for all (the structural element) and
an inclusive curriculum `for all' (the content element).
The Hindu nationalist
agenda, however, has always been very different from that espoused by Nehru and
the mainstream of the INC. Using Golwalkar's aforementioned definition as the
basis for what Hindu nationalists would like young Indians to learn at school,
involves a radical re-articulation of Indian identity. It shifts secular
Nehruvian ideology to religion, from plurality to unity, from equality to
hierarchy, from coexistence to oppression. Any identity works by preferring
and privileging certain aspects over their opposition. The Hindu nationalist
discourse emphasises the following tenets: We are
Hindus, because we are not Muslims (or Other), and we do not want to be Muslims
(or Other), because they are morally, socially and politically inferior.
From the perspective
of Nandini Sundar '[w]hen it comes to debating
the nation's past or understanding contemporary society, the RSS/BJP agenda may
seem not very different from that of conservatives elsewhere'. She wearily
adds that, what makes the RSS agenda more dangerous is that it is not just a quéstion of giving excessive weight to certain people or
certain periods in history over others, of leaving out women and minorities, or
its preference for so-called `facts' over ways of thinking, but its readiness
to distort accepted truths with the express desire of creating hatred for
minorities.
(N.Sundar
`Teaching to hate: the Hindu right's pedagogical program'.2005)
Thus the NDA
Government did try to rewrite the curriculum and change the content of
textbooks in BJP-led states. If nationalist policies were to be implemented
nationwide, India's multicultural heritage would be destroyed from below by
teaching children to see India as solely a product of Hinduism. In this
setting, Taneja (BJP Assault on Education and Educational Institutions. Online.
Available at: http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year 2001/september/saffronimp.htm2003)
argues that `[a] whole generation would grow up with their collective memory of
a shared heritage destroyed and with ideas and information that have no basis
in reality'.
The NDA's education
policy - polarisation of society along communal lines
The NDA election
manifesto for the 1999 general election included a separate section on
education entitled `Education for all'. Its preamble stated:
It is sad that fifty
years after independence, the cherished goal of universal primary education
enshrined in the Constitution, which was to have been implemented by 1960, yet
remains
to be achieved. In
recent years, State support for education has been wholly inadequate. Quality
education is fast becoming the preserve of the social and economic elite of the
country. We hold that education is both a human right and a means to bring
about transformation to a dynamic, humane, thinking society. (NDA 1999 For a
Proud, Prosperous India: An Agenda. Online. Available at: http://www.bjp.org)
According to the
above, the main aims are in harmony with those of the previous governments and
the education reforms implemented under Rajiv Gandhi (1984-89). The main
excerpts of the actions and goals listed in the manifesto (reproduced in
summary form below) do not place emphasis on any communal line or
fundamentalist approach. In fact, they seem wholly reasonable steps in light of
India's main education problems. The principal NDA goals were to expand the
education infrastructure, increase literacy and discourage foreign influences.
• Increase state
spending on education progressively to 6 per cent and more of our Gross
National Product within five years.
• Achieve near
complete functional literacy in five years, particularly by mobilising
societal participation and full literacy by the year 2010.
• Accord priority to
free primary education and enrol the help of
locally-funded non-government organisations in this
area; also integrate early childhood care and pre-primary education with
primary education.
• Offer incentives in
the form of free text books, mid-day meals and nutrition programmes
and stipends to check dropout rate so that at least 80 per cent of children,
both boys and girls, who enrol, complete primary
school education.
• Set up a special
monitoring authority to scrutinise the quality of education
and remove gender disparity.
• Ensure autonomy to universities
and to colleges under them. Rid them of corruption and other baneful
influences. Encourage them to mobilise resources for
research and higher education and provide academic freedom to our scholars,
especially in the social sciences.
• Restore to teachers
self-esteem and make teaching a respectable profession.
• Create centres of educational excellence in our academic system
that can set an example and build self-confidence.
• Launch a scheme for
low interest bank loans for meritorious students who want to go in for higher
education.
• Thwart attempts by
dubious, so-called foreign universities, colleges and institutes to open
branches in India and prevent the outflow of foreign exchange on studies abroad
unless the course is relevant to our needs and requirements.
• Provide pecialised opportunities for highly talented students at
school level.
• Ensure that
traditional knowledge and skills are preserved and disseminated.
• Seek the help of
industrial establishments for rapid proliferation of technical education.
• Encourage the
enrichment, preservation, and development of all Indian languages, including
Sanskrit and Urdu.
• Encourage greater
participation of social and charitable institutions in expanding the network of
educational institutions and in improving their standards.
On the basis of this
manifesto, there seems to be no reason to expect that the Hindu nationalist
agenda would be pushed through schools or other educational institutions. The
only exceptions seem to be the last two points, which could have pointed to a
hidden agenda, whereby the 'Hinduisation' or 'saffronisation' of Indian education could be promoted
through the use of language or religiously inclined organisations.
In practice, the
increased use of the RSS to provide schools and furnish other types of less
formal education provision in tribal areas all over India, especially in Madhya
Pradesh and the northeast, have been a part of this drive to include pro
nationalist organisations in educating the less
nationalistic inclined areas in India. The inclusion of Urdu next to Sanskrit
is an interesting contrast, as it could have been expected that the BJP would
have promised to concentrate its efforts on languages linked to the Hindu
community.7
When the NDA came to
power in 1999, the BJP decided to retain control of the two most senior
positions in the human resource development portfolios, which included
education policy. Two BJP hardliners, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti, both
of whom had played a significant part in the Ayodhya
Ram temple agitation during the 1990s that had been organised
by the RSS, took on these offices. Much of what the NDA manifesto called for
was not implemented. Instead, the focus of the NDA's education policy became
the 'Hinduisation' or 'saffronisation'
of curricular content. In fact, Murli Manohar Joshi oversaw the expansion of
the network of RSS schools and the appointment of RSS people or sympathisers to top national education bodies such as the
NCERT8 and the University Grants Commission (UGC).'
The new approach in
the NDA's education policy should not be a surprise. As early as the State
Ministers' Conference, held in October 1998, the new agenda had been publicised. According to Taneja (see above, 2003), '[i]n fact it is quite clear what the agenda paper at the
Conference meant by the abrogation of Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution'.
Taneja added that 'Uma Bharti, the Union Minister of State in the Ministry of
Human Resources did not take long to pronounce that the Kashmir problem finds
its roots in the teaching pattern in the Madrasawnd
that there is a need to closely monitor them' (2003).
In the state schools
things started to change. The NCERT issued the National Curriculum Framework in
2001 for school education. This document was heavily based on the RSS
ideological agenda and on the premise of a slogan used by Murli Manohar Joshi
to justify the new framework: 'Indianise, nationalise and spiritualise'.10 The discursive
implications of this slogan are enormous: India is not really Indian; it needs
to be 'Indianised'. It is not a proper nation,
because it contains too many un-Indian elements, so it needs to be nationalised. And this, of course, is achieved by finding
and invoking its true (Hindu) spirit. In this view, all foreign elements have
to be purged from the curriculum. These include the British legacy as well as
aspects of Indian culture, which are seen as having been introduced by the
Mughal invaders. This links straight back to Golwalkar's text of 1939, which emphasises Hindutva as the only true basis of Indian
identity.
The new policy
involved a massive revision of school textbooks. The revisions were contested
by a petition to the Supreme Court brought by three activists who argued that
the NCERT had not followed the correct procedures of consultation with the
states and that it sought to introduce religious teaching, which is forbidden
by Article 28 (1) in the Constitution of India. This appeal, however, was
rejected by the Supreme Court."
The revised history
and social science textbooks, which were subsequently released, seemed to want
to re-write history, justifying an anti-minority outlook. According to Chandra
(`Texts were rewritten in Nazi Germany, Pak', Indian Express, 6 October 2002)
'[p]rofessional historians soon detected a number of
flaws, such as the statement that killing cows was forbidden in the Vedic
period, or the failure to mention Gandhi's assassin (from the RSS)'.
The BJP argued that
if history was one sided it had to be corrected. Objectionable material, which
was deleted from the textbooks, included material written by four prominent
Indian historians: R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar, Bipin
Chandra and Harbans Mukhia.
None of them were asked about the changes made to their textbooks. Officially,
16 pages in three history textbooks used in secondary education history classes
were removed. This included a paragraph detailing that there was no archaeological
evidence of settlements in and around Ayodhya around
2000 BC. 12
In an interview,
Murli Manohar Joshi explained that changes were made to textbooks after
complaints were received from Jains, Sikhs, Jats and
other communities who felt aggrieved by how certain things were depicted in the
old textbooks. In the interview, Joshi argued that:
We examined them and
the NCERT made a decision to delete them.... Certain authors of history have
tried to distort history. They have given it a purely leftist colour. They say that India had no history of its own
because they are guided by Marx. They teach the history of a nation that was
mainly defeated and conquered by foreign powers. It's a travesty of facts and
an attempt to kill the morale of a nation. (Sharma Hindutva: Exploring the Idea
of Hindu Nationalism, Delhi: Penguin. 2003: 215)
Aside from accusing
India's historians of an underhand communist agenda, Joshi also denied any RSS
involvement and any Hindutva agenda in the corrections made to the history
books. He said that:
Nobody from the RSS
has ever talked to me on this issue (...) They (the protesting historians)
think that I will foist a Hindu agenda. No, I will teach correct history. I
will teach Marxism but I will also teach the failures of Marxism. Why should
they object to it? I have only an Indian agenda.
(Sharma 2003: 216)
Joshi's main
contention has been that in all the science books all the discoveries have been
ascribed to the western world. He disagreed with this orientation. Instead, he
posed the question: `Was the invention of computers possible without the
invention of the Indian binary system, zero and one?' (Sharma 2003: 208).
During the NDA's
tenure, much of the Hindu nationalist agenda was pushed through the teaching of
`moral' education and general knowledge that focused on the `pride of being
Hindu'. Indian culture was presented as Hindu culture, ignoring the pluralistic
roots and the contributions of the Muslim and other minorities. Non-Hindu
communities were characterised as foreign, in part
owing their religious allegiance to a country outside India. This was a total
reversal of the Nehruvian roots of Indian education as it had been taught for
over 50 years. With it came the reversal of the definition of Indian national
identity as being inclusive of all the different communities in India. The
Human Resource Development Minister responded to the widespread criticism from
the historical profession by calling it `intellectual terrorism unleashed by
the left ... more dangerous than cross border terrorism' (The Indian Express
2001).
The debate, which was
labelled by the press as the 'saffronisation' of
education, became a national issue in the summer of 2001 when even the
coalition partners of the NDA let it be known that if the Human Resource
Development Ministry insisted on the new agenda, states not ruled by the BJP
would refuse the textbooks and the changes made to the syllabus. The criticism
of the new education policy was based on two main arguments. First, that they
were directed by the communal agenda of the Sangh Parivar and were contrary to
the principles enshrined in the constitution. Second, that the subject of
education was the individual states' responsibility and changes could not be
imposed unilaterally from the central government, thus no curriculum could
become *tional policy without the mandatory
endorsement by the states. Through these debates, the BJP remained isolated in
parliament, not supported by its own coalition partners.
The dispute is
exemplified by the relationship between the central government and the state
government in Delhi. The state government there has taken the unusual step. of
creating its own textbooks. Delhi's INC Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said she
had no problems with the old textbooks and would have happily reprinted them.
However, the NCERT refused permission and insisted that the new textbooks, with
the historical revisions, be used. Thereafter, the Delhi state government
fought back by creating its own books (Joshi, P. From chalk to cheese',
Outlook, 18 August, 2003).
It is evident that in
the name of curriculum reform there had been an attempt to rewrite textbooks
along communal lines on a scale that would have submerged all secular
interpretations in school level teaching. In Uttar Pradesh, for example the RSS
undertook the task of rewriting, along communal lines, the history of every district
in the state." The Indianisation of history
would do away with any contributions from minority groups.
Based on a reading of
curricular changes, Taneja (2003) shows some examples from the revised history
textbooks. They include some of the following items:
• The Aryans are
shown as the original inhabitants of India and the builders of Indian civilisation. In contrast, the coming of Muslims is
depicted as an intrusion that shattered the imagined homogeneity of the Indian
community.
• The ancient period
of history, especially the Mauryan and the Gupta period, is painted as `Golden'
because the rulers during this time are seen to be Hindus, and the medieval
centuries are seen as the advent of darkness, a threat to culture, and an
attack on Indian civilisation.
• The Moghul
emperors, especially Aurangzeb, are painted as cruel tyrants without reference
to the medieval context in which these rulers acted.
• When studying the
Nationalist Movement, Muslims are portrayed as the enemie
of the nation and are held responsible for India's Partition, while- indu communal forces are depicted as the greatest patriots
and nationalists.
Aside from what was
happening in state schools during the NDA's tenure, the RSS started to expand
its influence through the education and health sectors. They feel they can
emulate the work of Christian missionaries in reaching members of SCs and STs,
who are not part of the BJP's natural vote bank. In providing help and support,
the RSS hoped to instil Hindutva in all segments of
society."
The first Saraswatu Shishu Mandir was
established in 1952 by some RSS members whose aim was to contribute to `nation
building' through education. There are now more than 50 state and regional
committees affiliated to Vidya Bharati, the largest voluntary association in
the country. 15 These coordinate around 13,000 institutions with 74,000
teachers and 1.7 million students.The expansion of
the network of RSS schools was a major pillar in this strategy, essentially
going against the traditional separation of education and religion. Funds for
this expansion have been collected through various means, including charities
operating in the West. In fact, according to a recent report published by Awaaz, a London based secular network, almost a quarter of Sewa International earthquake funds raised from the British
public to help Gujarat have been used to build RSS schools.
The centre of teaching in RSS-sponsored schools revolves around
the concept of Sanskrit Cyan (knowledge of culture). Sanskrit Gyan texts are
taught in Vidya Bharati schools and Shishu Mandirs
(temples for children). The RSS, however, also sponsored an agenda paper on education.
The central government tried to present this agenda - which suggested that
Sanskrit Cyan and similar texts could be made compulsory for all schools -
before the Conference of the State Education Ministers in October 1998.
RSS schools teach a
distinctive perspective of history. In these schools, students are taught such
`facts' as that Homer adapted Valmiki's Ramayana into an epic called the Iliad;
that the Egyptian faith is based upon Indian traditions according to Plato and
Pythagoras; that the cow is
- the mother of all;
that Jesus Christ roamed the Himalayas and drew his ideas from Hinduism. The
interesting thing here is that Hindutva emphasises
the universalisation of Hinduism as the source of all
human wisdom, at the same time as setting Hindus apart from non-Hindus.
But most importantly,
these RSS schools are being legalised and could have,
under legislation proposed during the NDA's tenure, received state funding.
According to Taneja,Through a directive that makes
all schools running for 10 years automatically entitled to affiliation and
recognition, the BJP govt. has ensured large transfers of state funds to RSS
schools in the states of BJP govt., especially if it can be easily shown that
govt. schools are not functioning well.
(2003)
Undermining higher
education, other educational institutions and committees
Although the BJP
manifesto is very clear that it supported the independence of higher education
institutions, in practice the NDA Government increased control and centralisation. According to Mehta `[e]very major
institution of higher education, from the Indian Institutes of Managementto the IITs, from universities to professional
bodies su# as the council of architects, from private
institutions to foreign players are now subject to a single-point agenda that
defines higher education policy: control and centralisation'
(`The education wars', The Hindu, 8 January, 2004).
During the NDA's
period of governance, vice chancellors of various universities were appointed
with the sole criteria of sympathising with the new
policies. Nalini Taneja cites the- example of Delhi University. She writes
that:
In Delhi University,
while the BJP was holding the State Government, all democratic norms were
flouted and the functioning and role of the statutory bodies such as the
Academic Council completely undermined. Governing Bodies of Delhi
Administration and other colleges were filled with known sympathisers
of no academic achievements or interest in education with a view to ensuring
appointment of affiliated persons as Principals for the colleges. Appointments
to teaching posts were similarly ensured through this process. (2003,BJP
Assault on Education and Educational Institutions. Online. Available at:
http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year 2001/september/saffronimp.htm)
Similar problems have
been observed in Himachal Pradesh where all three state universities are being
run by RSS cadre. Formal academic qualifications do not seem to be only
criteria for admission any longer. In addition, problems were reported at the
Aligarh Muslim University, where the student union's president had been
dismissed illegally by the Vice Chancellor.
Under the NDA, the
UGC had its authority and autonomy undermined with regard to teachers'
salaries, promotions and working conditions. The UGC is being used to commercialise education and to cut state funding. Personnel
at the National Institute of Planning and NCERT have also been changed. The
three historians (Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra and
Satish Chandra considered ‘Communists’) whose texts were scrapped from the
national textbooks were dropped from the NCERT board.
To date, there have
not been any studies conducted on how change of senior personnel at the
universities has affected the curriculum. However, it seems inevitable that the
political outlook of the heads of the higher education institutions wou'd taint the teaching and research of those
institutions.
Aside from rewriting
textbooks and replacing senior personnel at universities, the government has
also placed pro Hindutva personnel in the right places within national
education institutions." For instance, several historians appointed to the
Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) are known to have supported the
VHP campaign on Ayodhya. The Indian Council of Social
Science Research has been staffed with RSS supporters. In Simla,
the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies has a new pro RSS chairman. In the
National Museum, galleries were renamed and the choice of items displayed
reflected the Sangh Parivar’s view of Indian history. Vhilarly,
the Indian Institute of Mass Communication has a new chairman on the executive
council who is known to have RSS affiliations. The advisor to the director of
the All India Council for Technical Education has RSS links as well.
During the years of
NDA rule, budgetary allocations in science and technology were shifted to focus
on military and nuclear research to the detriment of research in the fields of
health, agriculture and general science education. More significantly, there
has been a change in discourse among certain academics on the ground. One of
the senior professors interviewed at IIT in Delhi said:
For 50 years - since
independence there has been a policy to enhance the history of minorities
disproportionately. All this government is doing is putting the history of the
Hindus into the right perspective (...) If you go to JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru
University) you can still find those who toe the old socialist line that the
old interpretation of history is right and the new take on it is wrong.
It would have been
inconceivable to hear such a statement anywhere in the academic community even
a few years ago. The greatest success of the BJP education policy seems not to
have been the introduction of new textbooks with a revised history and science
curricula, nor even the emergence of RSS activists at the helm of national
education institutions; it is the fact that the logic of their discriminatory
discourse has permeated the intelligentsia. While it is easy to conceive that a
less well-educated rural population would accept as true the 'Hinduised' interpretation of India's past, it is difficult
to understand how such discourse has been accepted and swallowed whole by the
educated middle classes. This is especially the case for the generation who
grew up with Nehru's secular ideals of constructing an inclusive Indian
national identity. The greatest danger is the erosion of the concept of this
inclusive, statist identity, which allows for the different communities to live
with each other.
At JNU, there were
changes as well. Professors and students explained that pujas (Hindu prayers)
had started in the student halls of residence. As a reaction, Muslim students
had been doing namaz (Muslim prayers) in the
refectories. Consequently, the university gave a neutral space outside of the
halls, but on campus, for all religious activities to take place. Again, it
should be emphasised that even until the late 1990s
it would not have been possible to conceive that religion would play any kind
of public role in JNU's student and university life. Nevertheless, one of the
professors interviewed by this author tried to make reassuring comments. `India
is such a large country that changes like this cannot happen over night. There are plenty of people who oppose these
changes'."
It might well be that
there are many people who oppose such changes, and individual state governments
have defied the BJP, refusing to adopt the new textbooks. However, the speed at
which ti discourse among the urban middle class has
been changing is breathtaking and should cause concern.
The effects of the
new policies have gone much further than schools, universities and education
institutions. While the changes in these institutions have been largely
conducted quietly, and public debate has been limited, there has been a new
development on the book-publishing front. Very active Sangh Parivar members
have taken it upon themselves to intimidate authors and publishers when they
have found books critical of Hinduism or Hindutva.
Books that allegedly
show Hinduism or the Hindu Right in a poor light have been attacked. For
instance, a civil injunction was laid against historian D.N. Jha's book on
beef-eating in ancient India. Likewise, two commissioned volumes on the
freedom struggle, which included documents showing that the RSS and Hindu
Mahasabha collaborated with the British, were withdrawn from publication by the
ICHR.
In January 2004,
Oxford University Press withdrew a book in India written by James Laine, an
academic from the University of Minnesota. The withdrawal of the book, titled
Shivaji - the Hindu King in Islamic India, took place after violent protests by
extreme right groups who were upset by anecdotes about Shivaji's personal life,
especially those concerning his paternity20 (THES`OUP Withdraws book after
violent protest', The Times Higher Education, 2004). The research centre in Pune, BORI, where the book was researched was
also vandalised. The Laine controversy has caused
consternation within the academic community. However, Sharad Pawar, a former
INC member, and now leader of the Nationalist Congress Party observed that `
[r] esearch scholars should not tarnish the image of
inspiring personalities' (THES`OUP Withdraws book after violent protest', The
Times Higher Education, 2004).
While this
controversy seems to point to a `book burning' type strategy, things are not quite
that simple. On the political front there seems to be a two-pronged approach.
On the one hand, the NDA Government was instigating slow changes behind the
scenes, which included curriculum and personnel changes as described above. On
the other hand, there were sometimes violent protests by activists of various
Sangh Parivar affiliated organisations, almost as if
to see how far they could go. The violence appears to have been condoned by the
NDA Government, largely because it did not take any action against the
protesters despite the damage they caused.
What is interesting
to note is that, even in the run up to the 2004 general election, these
education issues did not make waves in the press. The discourse of the average
middle classes had changed. For those who live in rural areas, the critical
issues were roads, water, electricity and jobs, and to a lesser degree, access
to education. The possible reason for this is that religi0i and its role in
society has always been a complicated subject in India. Although India is a
secular state, religion has been used in politics when it suited a particular
politician. However, in principle, religion was a matter of the private sphere
and totally separate with regard to education. Nevertheless, the coming to power
of the BJP-led NDA alliance has shown that in India secularism is to date still
a contested concept.
For the 2004 general
election, the NDA's manifesto changed slightly in its emphasis on education;
moving towards a more `communal' and nationalistic stand. Compared to the 1999
NDA manifesto, three points stood out in the 2004 version:
• The focus on Indian
culture, heritage and ethical values in syllabi will be strengthened.
Character-building and all-round development of the student's personality will
be emphasised. Sports, physical training and social
service will be mainstreamed into the educational system.
• The growing
de-emphasis of Bharatiya languages in school and
college education will be checked. Teaching in the mother tongue will be
encouraged.
• Efforts will be
intensified for the propagation of Sanskrit.
In essence, this
shows that the BJP was more confident than ever that it could push its
nationalist agenda through the education portal. While issues pertaining to the
Ram temple at Ayodhya and the Uniform Civil Code
might still be seen as divisive within society, there was little or no
resistance to changes on the education front. Although the NDA did not win
re-election, the BJP and its allies did not lose the 2004 general election
because of their nationalist agenda. The 2004 general election was not about
endorsing or rejecting Hindutva and fundamentalism, but principally about jobs,
roads, water and electricity. Despite a good monsoon, high economic growth at
around 7.5 per cent, and the peace talks with Pakistan, an INC-led Government
has been formed. The electorate rejected policies, which in effect widened the
economic gap between rich and poor.
The INC and its
allies will have a heavy burden improving rural economic problems. In the field
of education, they will have to reverse the policy and personnel changes that
were implemented by the NDA. The fact that the BJP, as the leading party in a
minority governing coalition, utilised education to
re-educate the Indian population by stealth is enough reason to pay close
attention to this policy arena in the future. The new INC-led coalition will
have to review the new textbooks and the new curriculum, and rid it of its
chauvinistic, nationalistic content. The silence on this issue needs to be
lifted and the debate on what has been happening to the education system needs
to be made public. If they fail to do so, secularism will continue to be eroded
throughout the educational system. Their task will be made more difficult by
the fact that a large section of the educated middle class and the
intelligentsia had jumped on the ideological bandwagon of Hindu nationalism and
had accepted the tenets of its discourse. It is important to remember that the
original fears that the BJP would impose Hindutva in India have subsided. This
means that if the Congress Party does not get it right, they could be voted out
in five years time, and we could see a revival of
Hindu nationalism again.
For a detailed
analysis on the dilemmas of resource allocation and planning, see alo Raghavan in Educational planning in India', in B. Tilak
(ed.) Education,Society and Development, New Delhi:
NIEPA: 49-62.2003, plus Sharma (2002) for a detailed analysis of the Kothari
Commission, further:
3 In 1992, `Hindu' kar sevaks under the leadership of the BJP and other
members of the Sangh Parivar, demolished the Babri Masjid, a fifteenth century
mosque in Ayodhya. Despite the lack of historical
evidence, they claimed the mosque had been built over an earlier temple
commemorating the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram.
4 This survey also
shows that Hindus and Muslims share more than 95 per cent of characteristics of
various kinds that are common and that it is shared lives that have given shape
to the diverse cultural expressions. Among other things the studies also show
that nobody today can be characterised as an original
inhabitant or a foreigner, see details in Taneja (2003).
5 More on the
construction of Indian national identity, see Adeney
and Lall (forthcoming).
6 See specifically
Article 28 (1) of the Constitution of India which provides that no religious
instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained
out of state funds.
7 However, in the
2004 election manifesto Urdu was dropped.
8 The NCERT, though
an autonomous body, draws up the national curriculum framework and publishes
textbooks which are used as models by most state governments.
9 The detailed list
of posts which was offered to RSS members and sympathisers
is discussed at a later stage in this chapter.
10 This attempt to 'Indianise' at the university level includes introducing
courses like Vedic rituals and Vedic Astrology.
11 Judgment by
Justice M.B. Shah, D.M. Dharmadhikari and H.K. Sema in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 98 of 2002, Ms. Aruna Roy and others vs. Union of India and others.
12 `Archaeological
evidence should be considered far more important than long family trees given
in the Puranas. The Puranic tradition could be used to date Rama of Ayodhya around 2000BC but extensive excavations in Ayodhya do not show any settlements around that date'
(Sharma 2002: 198).
13 The RSS has a
separate Institute known as the Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Samiti, with 400
branches all over the country, for coordinating and giving direction to this
effort. One of the key `achievements' of this Samiti is the `cleansing' of
Christian influence on historical chronology (Taneja 2003)
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