What better time to give my two cents about the ever-continuing debate on the “saffronisation of education” than the Modi-led BJP government completing two years at the centre? When they came to power in 2014, there was an uncontrollable paranoia amongst the left-liberals at the inevitability of the forceful ‘Indianisation’ of well, everything (guilty, as charged). Two years since, I have a little more to say.
A Crash Course in History
Modern Education, as we know it today, began in 1835 when under Macaulay, the English Education Act was established. He clearly dismissed all traditional forms of education, and state support to gurukuls and madrassas was withdrawn. Post independence, the decision-making power was passed on to majorly left-liberal, ‘westernised’ Nehruvian intellectuals, who carried forward the same model of education; the Congress party – still coming into its own, then – was quick to assimilate this into their identity.
When the NDA first came to power in 1999, all the NCERT books were changed. After all, the British were successful in ruling over us, significantly through the regulation of education and language.
In 2004, when the Congress returned, Macaulay’s syllabi returned, as well.
The Context
Rajasthan’s State Institute of Education Research and Training (SIERT) rolled out the new social science curriculum for middle-school-goers recently, and of course the number of times Nehru was mentioned was painstakingly counted. When – surprise, surprise – some focus was seen to have been shifted from the former Prime Minister of India, the Congress party understandably stepped in and made some noise.
But there’s a catch.
While you can clearly see the glisten of the saffron ink in the new edition of the Class 8 Social Science textbook, it makes for an arguable, yet interesting revelation: No one can deny the obvious tampering of content to suit the narrative of a Hindu rashtra, but perhaps some balancing out of the previously politicised narrative was much needed.
Also Read: Adding the Gita, Omitting Nehru: Ideology and Education in India
This is easily seen in the chapter titled ‘India After Independence’ in the previous edition. Nehru and Sardar Patel are mentioned, in one line, as the two national leaders who thought of appropriating existing British governance structures into a new Indian democratic structure. Nehru’s photograph features along with Sardar KM Pannikar under the box listing out members of the Constituent Assembly from Rajasthan. A page later, there is another illustration of Nehru and Gandhi engaged in conversation in the section dealing with the integration of displaced persons after the Partition in 1947.
No one can deny the contribution of Nehru in the fortification of India’s independent identity at a time it was most fragile, but to constantly reiterate it at the sake of the glaring absence of information about the politically fraught process of integration of princely states post Independence can be argued as tampering, of another kind. The revised edition of the textbook dedicates an entire section to this topic, along with the invaluable contribution of Sardar Vallabhai Patel in this process, and how he came to be known as the ‘Iron Man of India’. Some may argue that this in itself is the BJP trying to own some national figures of their own to combat Congress’ Nehru-Gandhi chant, especially with Modi’s ambitious 522-feet high Statue of Unity, featuring Sardar Patel, currently under construction – but what is the flipside being proposed? A book that completely obliterates the work of Sardar Patel, someone who potentially saved the country from divisive violence by persuading most of the princely states to peacefully join India?
Also read: Stamped & Stomped: The Nehru-Gandhi Legacy
Similarly, the mention of Shivaji, a man who practically captures the imagination of an entire state of India, second only to Lord Ganpati, is missing from the chapter titled “Decline of the Mughal Empire and 18th Century India” in the older edition. The book is left wanting in the mention of several personalities who fought a brave war against the up and coming East India Company then, and happened to be Hindus. Shivaji, Balaji Bajirao, Tipu Sultan, Rani Lakshmi Bai are a few of the other names that find a place in the new narrative of India’s pre- and post-Independence struggle.
Just because some aggressive sanghis leaders have been successful in branding Shivaji as RSS property entirely, does not make Shivaji’s fight at that time communal, in the sense that the word means today. It definitely isn’t how it should be taught.
There is but a passing mention of Savarkar in the chapter dedicated to the National Movement in the 2015 edition, with much page-space given to the birth and rise of the Indian National Congress. One of the greatest Indian freedom fighters, who fought against caste, for Dalits and for a unified, independent India is removed from the pages of history simply because it has become fashionable to consider Savarkar as anti-Gandhi? Instead of teaching the context in which Savarkar called for conversion to Hinduism and propagated Hindutva, the Congress-led government, for years, simply removed him from the book based on their own political interpretations of him.
Similarly, extremists who branched out of the INC, leaving behind the Congress intelligentsia, if I may so call it, don’t find a space in the older book. You can well argue about the methods of Rajguru, Sukhdev, Bhagat Singh and even Tilak – but should you have an entire chapter of the national movement written with an arrogant nonchalance about their presence and following?
What is to be noted is that at no place has Nehru been removed factually. In his submission of the ‘Nehru Report’, in his role in the drafting of the Constitution, and as the first Prime Minister of India – he gets his due share.
This is not to say the new edition is a godsend. At some places, the use of language to paint a rosy and idealistic picture of a Hindu theocracy is bone-chilling. In the chapter talking of India after independence, the words deshbhakti and deshdrohi have been used in the context of loyalty towards India and Pakistan respectively; another section of the same chapter deals with “Jinnah’s conspiracy” to take over several princely states to the enemy Pakistan, and the “forceful takeover of Kashmir by Pakistan.” The language of the ‘other’ is continuously fed into the minds of Class 8 students in another chapter titled “Contemporary Indian Society” where ‘western’ education, capitalism, consumerism, and market dependencies have been blamed as the cause of the depletion of Hindu traditions, rituals and even, the breakdown of marriage! A section on Right to Information has also been removed in the book, which is one of the worst things to take away from children learning in the remote villages of Rajasthan.
The saffronisation is not very subtle, and yes, they have overdone it dangerously at places, but can we take a moment to question whether some balancing out of the previously politicised syllabi is much needed, as well?
Can there be such a thing as too much Nehru, and not enough Savarkar? I am not saying the new edition of this book is good for distribution; it needs to be thoroughly revised and rephrased at a lot of places, but to stage a cry for a return to the previous syllabi might be a step too hasty.
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