India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—The Congress government in Karnataka has restored in academic syllabi the writings by popular authors like such as Girish Karnad, P. Lankesh, Devanur Mahadeva, A. N. Murthy Rao, Akka Mahadevi, etc. Their writings were removed by the previous BJP government in the state on the pretext of rationalisation of school and college textbooks.
However, the Siddaramaiah government has not restored the chapters on Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali that were also removed by the BJP government.
Is this anything to do with high octave emotions around these issues during an election season? And does this justify to retain the changes made by the BJP with regard to Muslim rulers of Mysore?
But the previous BJP government in Karnataka was not the only one to delete chapters on Muslim historical personalities. Chapters on Muslim rulers and their history were also removed from textbooks by state governments in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan.
However, the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan corrected the BJP’s wrongs in Rajasthan. BJP government (2013-2018) had declared Maharana Pratap as winner of the Haldighati battle, a total falsehood. But the Congress government only partially corrected it declaring that no one had won the war because the Mewar king had fled the war.
The BJP government also removed the prefix ‘great’ from Mughal emperor Akbar’s name and added ‘veer’ (courageous) as title for Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who coined the Hindu nationalist ideology of Hindutva, and emphasised his works. Later, the Congress government removed the honorific from the name of Savarkar.
Huge controversy erupted after the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) deleted references to Mahatma Gandhi, his assassin Nathu Ram Godse and post-Godhra riots from its textbooks.
References to the Mughal empire in several chapters of history textbooks were removed. Rise of political movements and dominance of one party in Indian polity were also deleted.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre also removed the cartoons of first Prime Minister Jawahalal Nehru and Dr Ambedkar from textbooks following resignations of Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav as advisors of NCERT textbook council.
Their protests were against the “offensive” medieval paintings in NCERT text books.
It withdrew Minakshi Jain’s book — claiming desaffronisation of the syllabus.
Commenting on it, Dr Sudha Acharya, chairperson of the Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC), said history is always open to political interpretations.
“It has always happened. But sudden addition and deletion in textbooks in the middle of the session leads to confusion, chaos and misunderstandings among the students as well as the teachers who are transacting the contents in classrooms,” she told India Tomorrow, simultaneously adding that content for her is not important.
However, she opposed the addition and deletion in textbooks in the name of rationalisation.
Why are we not able to decide what should be in our syllabus; why are we not able to decide how Gujarat riots should be referred to, why are we not able to decide the role of Mahatma Gandhi, why are we not able even to decide whether Tipu Sultan and Haider Ali should or should not get reference?
In her reply, Dr Acharya stressed on consistency in the contents of textbooks. “The syllabus and textbooks must not change with the change of governments. It creates confusion for our students and education system,” she said.
It is happening, she reasoned, because educationists are not at the helm of affairs. “Expert committees views are not taken by governments on deletion and additions,” she concluded.
Asked about the politicisation of education and how education can be insulated and kept immune from politicking, Dr Furqan Qamar, a professor of management at the Jamia Millia Islamia, said the decisions that are being made are not at all based on merits.
“It’s completely based on the political thought processes of different governments. And I think this must change. It is nothing new; and therefore, we have set up autonomous institutions such as NCERT, SCERT, etc. Unfortunately, these bodies are functioning with autonomy as they ought to be,” alleged the ex-adviser (education) of the Planning Commission (now Niti Ayog), the Government of India.
Professor JS Rajput, former director of the NCERT, agreed with what Professor Qamar said.
“Having gone through the process and having been accused of saffronising education some 20 years ago, I know the process. Changes are bound to happen. Since everything is changing so fast all around, education, which remains and will remain important always, too has to change. For instance, when I was the director of the NCERT, there were no changes in history books despite the fact that new inventions, excavations and researches were in place. Since the changes had to be included, I approached the authors to revise the books. And it was done,” he said.
“It is implicit on part of governments to ensure that their political ideologies do not dominate the process of revising textbooks. But at the same time, there are limits to human objectivity. I have seen it, and it happens,” he added, stating that it depends on academics as to how strong and objective they are and how committed they are to the welfare of children and generations ahead.
And for the change, he said, the authors must be blamed who make the changes on the directions of the government.
“India needs academics who think beyond ideological considerations and constraints. Unfortunately, it is missing. Our politicians of all hues should not indulge in this scholarly exercise. There are so many fields available to them to do politics. Please leave education to educationalists, let them decide what should be taught, how should be taught and who should be teaching,” he urged.
When asked about the idealist words that governments should do but there is a huge dichotomy between what governments should do viz a viz what governments are doing, Professor Aeijaz said, “In the education system, just like any civil society, there is also a huge polarisation. And more so, the academics instead of giving more importance to studies and knowledge per se are more concerned about loyalty to governments and their political masters. The whole problem lies in the manner in which loyalty is given precedence over merit.”
He raised a battery of questions: how governments pick up experts; who are these experts; are they really experts; do they really have the credibility to bring and talk about the changes in the syllabus that they are doing?
“The credentials of all these experts must be put in public domain and let people decide who belongs to which category of people. People must be selected based on their merits, and not their ideology,” he suggested.
He reiterated that content is important because it is linked to knowledge and knowledge translates into the visions of a society.
Rajput sees the National Education Police (NEP) as a solution to the problem as the government has come up with it following consultations of all autonomous bodies and lakhs and lakhs of experts.
But Furqan disagrees, saying, “It’s not true that the NEP has been introduced after such a huge deliberation. It’s not at all true that wide consultations happened for NEP and lakhs and lakhs of people were consulted. The NEP is a top down policy and it is largely a recipe for privatisation.”
Talking about saffronisation and then de-saffronisation, he said when one says saffronisation of textbooks, it means that some sort of bias came in during the entire revision process.
“You say that there are a lot of discoveries and researches; and therefore, the changes are being made. But in the name of rationalisation, we end up doing saffronisation. When you make some changes, put it in the public domain so that a robust discussion can take place — making your job of revision easier,” he concluded.
