Please don't mess up with education

Recent news about the introduction of some of Dinanath Batra's books in the recommended reading list for primary and secondary schools in the state of Gujarat created a lot of controversy. Name of Mr. Batra is very well known in the circles of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and BJP, he was General Secretary of Vidya Bharati, the school network run by RSS. He is a retired school teacher and now claims to be an educational activist. It seems the purpose of introducing his books for recommended reading is to instill national pride, self-esteem, and cultural identity among students. There is nothing wrong in teaching students about their ancient culture, and presenting them with facts and figures from the past but do these recommended books do this in an unbiased manner? Mr. Batra's links with RSS or BJP should not be the issue here, his books should be discussed without any bias or prejudice. Whenever things are presented with some bias, there is selective appropriation. I feel that authors of some of these books (including Mr. Batra) try to do selective appropriation and their views present only one side of the story. They try to present Indian culture in a very narrow way, only the selected era from the past is defined as Indian tradition. These authors try to pick up very selective points and try to paint things either in a positive or negative way rather than giving a comprehensive view. Selective appropriation of facts often projects a one-sided image. This type of material is not appropriate for kids of so young age, and if they are presented with such things then it obviously creates doubts about the real intention behind this plan.

Only exposing one person's (or one-sided) view to highly impressionable minds presents its own dangers. Every society's history has some positive and some negative points, and we need to present both of them as objectively as we can. Religion, culture, and traditions have been used by many governments to propagate their own ideology. After all, politics and religion are about controlling people's minds and education is a very good resource to achieve this. This approach poses a danger of producing conditioned and biased thinkers rather than free thinkers. Decolonization of Indian education is necessary but that should not mean de-westernization. There is a need for open debate on this issue where all viewpoints are considered. People like Mr. Batra definitely have the right to express their views and concerns, their points should be taken into account, merits and demerits of all proposals should be discussed before making any final decisions. Educational institutes are a very important aspect of any society, and the government should not mess with them. These institutes should not be used to push any particular agenda, they should not be a tool in the government's hands. Imposing any language (like Sanskrit) or any culture (Hinduism) is not the way to Indianize the education system, there must be a better way of doing all these things without imposing anything on students which might affect their confidence.  Students should be made aware of the good parts of their culture as well as the bad parts of it so that they learn good values and don't repeat the same mistakes. Pluralism and diversity in India are part of its glorious culture, one cannot ignore this aspect of India's culture. I guess this is one of the reasons why there are some strong voices against the introduction of such books in schools.

India has a very rich cultural heritage. Some things mentioned in these books like cars were invented in the Vedik period or Ram traveled in the Pushpak airplane (implying that the airplane was first invented in ancient India), are factually wrong and can create very wrong impressions in student's minds. One should not mix mythology with history or science as it will harm the scientific aptitude of students. I am sure the Gujarat government doesn't want to raise a generation of misinformed students who have a false sense of cultural pride and are devoid of any scientific aptitude. This issue has attracted so much attention because the current prime minister Mr. Narendra Modi has written forewords to some of his books recommending them to current students. He did this when he was chief minister of Gujarat and as he is now the PM of India people think that this agenda might be implemented on a national level. I hope the think tank in BJP would not do this considering the resistance they might face nationally but as they have an absolute majority in parliament concerns of the people are valid. My only hope is that some better sense prevails in all concerned authorities and they stop messing with the education. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]