All the apprehensions among democratic intellectuals regarding the eventual assault of the saffron brigade on education, have been justified. In a systematic series of moves the HRD Minister, Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi has pushed through a series of decisions regarding the content of Education. Raising the verbiage of Globalization disinformation about hitherto ‘distortion’ of history and facts by ‘left intellectuals’, Joshi has chillingly portrayed his Hindutva agenda as a ‘correction’ to centrism, as an attempt to ‘play fair’. This is the most dangerous aspect; even more dangerous than the actual policies which are being pushed through.

The agenda that Murli Manohar Joshi has at last unveiled, is undoubtedly vast. Beginning with the compulsory teaching of the dead Sanskrit language in high schools (classes IX and X) and even in IITs, now basic attitude formation of children is under attack. Understandably, Joshi has decreed that children in middle and upper schools should learn less history and less science. They should also move to vedic mathematics. In consonance with this, while the govt. moves out of funding of higher education, it is willing to set up Departments of astrology as a scientific branch. And to wrap up all these thrusts in a package, the NCERT, under Joshi’s protegee director J.S. Rajput, has brought out a New Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF).

Throw Veils over History

The NCF document in toto has not been made public yet. But the fields it is intended to cover can be gauged by Joshi’s arguments over the months. The NCF says that school children are being taught too much history. The framework argues that the quantum of history taught should be “substantially reduced”. Rather, the document is known to argue for amalgamation of the subject with other disciplines. While this is the prescription in general, in the over 20,000 Saraswati Shishu Mandirs run by the RSS controlled Vidya Bharati, a new version of history especially pertaining to the karsevaks and the Babri Masjid is being taught – some say ever since 1953. Second under attack is the ancient history of India, where Murli Manohar Joshi is out of prove that any argument of Aryans migrating into Indian- either in a single invasion or in waves- is ‘leftist distortion’ and the truth is that the Aryan was the original ‘born of the soil' Indian.

The Vedic mathematics being propagated by the HRD is neither vedic nor a science of precision. A book written in 1965 by Shri Bharathi Krishna Tirathji Maharaj Shankaracharya based on “sutras” written by the writer himself have become the basis of this mathematics!

The third push was over the ‘science’ of astrology. On the floor of Parliament, Joshi talked of astrology as being taught as a science in hundreds of foreign universities especially in USA and UK. A galaxy of intellectuals took up the challenge and disproved this. It was being offered by some universities as a correspondence or diploma course but not as a scientific discipline. The latest position is that astrology will be taught, but not as a science.

The NCERT document is known to tread even more dangerous paths. It states “What is required today is not religious education but education about religion”. The problem is again the propensity of the Hindutva brigade for Gobbelsianism. No document on education policy till date has ever advocated religious education, whatever may have been done in practice.

The NCERT document has also carried forward the concept of distance education by advocating that poor children of the age group of 6 years- 14 years need not go to school at all!

Who Benefits from These Policies?

Who benefits from these policies being bundled in under the agenda of ‘saffornization’? This is the moot question. The BJP of course is out to use it to woo the upper caste Hindu vote and to fulfil the cherished agenda of the RSS brigade. But the policies must be seen in the light of the fact that already in major cities, the situation is that University or regular college education is accessible increasingly to a very small segment of students who are passing out of elite schools- the vast majority go into correspondence colleges or IGNOU. The NCERT document is going to institutionalize the differential education for primary schools. But the effects of these policies go further.

A major part of the WTO regime is concerned with technology and scientific advancement and how to keep it in the control of imperialist countries. As was observed in the comment on Dunkel Draft (New Democracy, October 1994) the attempt is to make the third world a vast village in the services of the advanced handful of countries and rob the productive capacity of third world. An education system tailored to institutionalize a backward mathematics, a non-scientific background, divert average students towards astrology and Sanskrit and leave the advanced fields open only for the handful of students who will pass out of the elite schools which will not necessarily adopt the NCERT prescriptions. This is the scenario for the future. This agenda is really a medievalization of education- taking the Indian student out of modern education and India out of even the race of modern technological and scientific advancement. It is an agenda which goes hand in hand with commercialization and eventual MNCization of education. The saffronizers, compradors of the imperialism as they are, are of course not oblivious of how their policies will serve their masters as well as it serves themselves. The fight against it has to be directed by keeping the comprehensive whole in mind.

This medievalization is quite consonant with the feudal character of Indian perception.  A vast majority of Indian ruling class politicians who heard out Joshi’s Goebbelsian tirade against Marxism in Parliament are themselves firm believers in the ‘science’ of astrology. The fight of education for all, and the scientific, egalitarian education system will clearly have to be a fight which rests on the shoulders of democratic and progressive organizations who can also establish the link between this medievalization and commercialization.