The News International (Pakistan) Thursday September 26, 2002 Education by hatred
Praful Bidwai When India's foreign minister Jaswant Singh went to Kandahar in December 1999 to exchange civilian hostages from a hijacked Indian Airlines plane for three men (including Ahmed Omar Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar) detained in India under serious terrorist charges, the sarasanghachalak (supreme leader) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh described the trade-off as an act of "Hindu cowardice", no less! This might sound scathingly, weirdly self-deprecatory coming from the head of a virulently militant organisation dedicated to promoting "Hindu pride", indeed, Hindu supremacism, for three-quarters of a century. But it reveals, as nothing else, the power of stereotypes that Hindu/Muslim communalists in South Asia have constructed about one another. Such images have been disseminated over decades through stories, myths, jokes, films, skits and, increasingly, books. They have been so fully internalised within the ethnic-chauvinist discourse that it is hard to begin a serious dialogue between Indians and Pakistanis without discarding, attacking or dismantling these cliched views. Some of the stereotypes go back to 19th century colonial historiography, which divided India's past between different "religious" periods and dynasties. Among the most important stereotypes are the image of the Hindu as the quintessential "wily" Bania - "weak, unable to fight and timid" - and of the Muslim as "brave and valiant" (or if you like, "violent and hot-tempered"). As Rubina Saigol, a Lahore-based independent researcher and freelance writer on feminism and educational issues, argues, "the Two-Nation Theory was a binary construction used by history and social studies textbook writers to create the India/Hindu as the opposite Other of the Muslim/Pakistani." Textbooks, prescribed or approved by the state, have become one of the most contested spaces in this tussle over identities. This is true, with a vengeance, of India, where the Hindu Right has been trying since the 1970s to censor, rewrite or suppress textbooks. Its special targets are works by liberal or left historians who question both "colonial" and "nationalist" schools of history-writing, and who put people and socio-economic processes at the centre of their concerns. "Saffronising" education has been at the very core of the BJP's agenda since it came to power in 1998. This has met with stiff, principled resistance at several levels from educationists, scholars, teachers, social activists and political leaders of all persuasion except Hindutva. The resistance has now received a temporary setback with a judgment of the Supreme Court in a public-interest petition moved by three eminent citizens, including an award-winning right-to-information activist, a social scientist, and a journalist-commentator. Two of the petitioners are Hindus (one married to a Muslim), and one a Christian. They questioned the role of the government-sponsored NCERT (National Council for Education Research and Training) in formulating the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) on which future textbooks will be based. Regrettably, the verdict upholds the validity of the devious methods NCERT used to write the NCF. The textbook process in India progresses from the National Education Policy (last revised 1986) to the NCF. From this are derived both the syllabi and textbooks for different classes. Once adopted by the Central Board for Secondary Education, the textbooks get disseminated through most schools, even private ones. Pivotal to the process is consultation between teachers, experts and officials, and between the Centre and states. The principal agency here is the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) - a 104-member body consisting largely of state representatives. CABE (established 1920) is uniquely empowered to approve the NCF. Without CABE, the states' views would be excluded - spelling dangerous overcentralisation. However, CABE never approved the NCF produced two years ago. It was deliberately bypassed. This was wilful sabotage of democratic process. NCERT, headed by a crony of education minister Murli Manohar Joshi, systematically excluded independent scholars and educationists from the NCF discussion process. Rather than organise a free exchange of views through structured seminars, it merely put the NCF draft on its website and mailed it out to individuals. The NCF-2000, "finalised" by NCERT, is based on the concept of "value education" which is itself centred on religion. This violates the principles of secularism and equality and the right to education. Under India's Constitution, the state cannot favour religion, nor under Article 28 support "religious instruction". But the NCF roots its entire philosophy in religion as "a major source" of "universal" values central to education. Thus it says: "What is required today is ... education about religions, ... the values inherent therein and also a comparative study of the philosophy of all religions..." It claims that "the essence of every religion is common, only the practices differ." This violates the National Policy on Education-1986, from which alone the NCF can be legitimately derived. NPE does not even mention religion. The Supreme Court has held in any number of cases that "religion cannot be mixed with any secular activity of the state. In fact, the encroachment of religion into secular activities is strictly prohibited". However, NCERT ruthlessly insinuated religion into the NCF. It also censored several existing textbooks - to promote Hindutva. NCERT's syllabi and censored textbooks depict Hinduism as the "essence" of India and other religions as "alien". Parts of them exclude Islam and Sikhism from the list of "Major Religions". In the NCERT-doctored textbooks, Vedic culture is made contemporary with Harappan civilisation, although centuries separate them. History is presented as a succession of dynasties. Twentieth-century communalism is reduced to the Muslim League (as if Savarkar did not father the Two-Nation Theory and the RSS did not exist). There is no mention of the Hindu Mahasabha's collaboration with the British. >From what I have read, there are analogous biases in Pakistani textbooks too. Their "official" history jumps straight from Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro to the next "real" civilisation, which "naturally" begins with the "Islamic conquest" of Sindh. The intervening "Buddhist" and "Hindu" periods are treated as pitiable voids or aberrations. Scholars like K K Aziz and Mubarak Ali have exposed the biases in such "history". Pakistani civics textbooks too blatantly project "nation-building" principles purportedly derived from patriarchical Islam. Counterpoised to this is the contemptuous treatment of India as "feminine", "weak" and "mean". To return to India, a close, critical reading of the NCF should have persuaded the Supreme Court to order its reformulation. But it did not recognise the NCF's communal slant. It relied on a technicality - that CABE is not a statutory body. But then, nor is NCERT. The judgment is another blow to Indian secularism - barely six months after the Gujarat pogrom. There is a lesson in this for all South Asians. We cannot rely on established institutions alone to guard the citizen's rights, nor to combat stereotypes. We have to fight for our rights primarily on our own. And that's going to be a long haul. _____ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-W-E-B---S-I-T-E-=-=-= To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from GoaNet | http://www.goacom.com/goanet =================================================================== For (un)subscribing or for help, Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dont want so many e=mails? Join GoaNet-Digest instead !
