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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