Each time there is an election on the horizon, the Indian political parties play out a great game. In the last few years this game has been enacted along the following lines: the BJP attempts to push through an agenda it knows will be termed foul, sectarian and anti-minority by the ´secular´ parties. Sometimes it succeeds, but when it doesn´t, it uses that opportunity to point out that ´anti-communal´ has now come to mean ´anti-Hindu´. With assembly elections due in four states, one could have ignored the farce this time around had it not, regrettably, been about education. The distressing irony is that the real farce being played out in the country is in primary education. To talk about "spiritualising, nationalising and Indianising" education, without providing teachers, blackboards, books or class rooms, is rather like debating the contents of a cookery book for the really poor. It is so vile that one recoils in horror to think what the bjp will think of next.
Manohar Joshi, the human resource development minister and RSS voice, was arranging an education ministers conference when he came up with the idea that there should be in the discussion papers a note – the origins of which can be traced back to Vidya Bharati (the education wing of the RSS) – which delineates exactly how the Indian education system should be changed. Its recommendations included compulsory Sanskrit in schools.
To further spice up the meeting, Joshi decided that he would begin it with Saraswati Vandana (in praise of the Hindu goddess of learning). The expected happened. It was like a scene from parliament; walkouts and protests, including by those from the Akali Dal and the Telugu Desam (both BJP allies), forced Joshi to withdraw his agenda, while the prime minister apologetically explained that his esteemed colleague should not be misunderstood, and that his minister had no plans of pushing through a sectarian agenda.
That is where the prime minister went wrong. Joshi did plan to do exactly that. Vidya Bharati, the provider of the ideol- ogy for the discussion papers, uses in its schools, textbooks in which the map of India includes Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Tibet. This it calls "Punyabhoomi Bharat". These books contain questions like "Name an island which touches the feet of India?" The answer? Sri Lanka. There is a section on the Babri Masjid followed by questions (and a detailed answer key) like "Who was the first Muslim to plunder Ramjanambhoomi shrine, how many times, who built this temple and why is it not a Masjid?" Or better still, "Why is 2 November the blackest day in the history of the country?" to which the answer is "That day kar sevaks were attacked in Ayodhya". This is what is being taught to 10-year-olds.