ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Past Forward

If history is the version of the victor, education must surely be the version of the establishment. The battle here is for the minds of the masses, and this is not something that will be given up without a fight. Today, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party government that is facing flak for trying to alter the dynamics of what and how one is taught, and at least one school of thought seems to believe Murli Manohar Joshi's ham-handed approach is very much to blame for the mess-up. Like with so many things in the brief Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime, last week's effort at introducing a new education policy also seems to be a good idea done in by some inept handling.

Surely no one can dispute that history as taught for the last 50 years was how the Congress party wanted it to be taught. Surely no one can dispute that instead of the Allies, had the Axis won in 1945 text-books across the world would have been radically different. Surely no one can be blind to the fact that the Marxists, wherever they ruled, were the first to ensure that history as was taught in the states they ruled conformed to their worldview. But it is the BJP that is getting the flak for vocalising what everyone knew was among the foremost items on its agenda.

What is surprising is the welter of criticism that has flowed since the unveiling of the plan to 'Indianise' education. By itself, I believe it is a grand idea, one that is as welcome as the enactment of a common law, unless it follows from this criticism that somehow things associated with India, its past, have taken on an ugly, unwelcome connotation, rather like a family stigma that is hastily brushed under the carpet.

As I understand it, this criticism stems from a confusion in the terms 'religion' and 'culture'. The two may be complementary, but they are by no means synonymous. If the two have come to be mixed up today, we have no one to thank for it but our erstwhile rulers for whom driving a wedge among communities ranked prime. They displayed far greater finesse in doing this than the forces that are trying to undo the damage done decades ago.

The first time this difference in meanings was driven home to me was not in India but outside. Years ago, as I sat enchanted by a superlative performance of the Ramayana in a Bangkok restaurant, I asked my host if the Indian epic didn't militate against the country's religion, Buddhism, especially given the uneasy background to the two Indian faiths. By then I had been exposed to the historical ruins at Ayuthaya (a variation of Ayodhya), was elated at the Thai kings being called Rama, and was proud that an Indian epic was the national epic in another country. There was no inherent contradiction in my host when he explained to me that Thailand was Buddhist by religion, but that its culture was 'Hindu' and the Ramayana etc were part of its culture. "But how does one deny one's culture, and where is the conflict between the two?" he asked quizzically, leaving me searching for a coherent response. Today, for the same question, I would have showed him the legion of my own countrymen who think they know better.

Ironically, in Buddhist-majority Thailand, the Ramayana is a national epic while in India, the same Ramayana is a sectarian epic. There is some confusion here, as was evident from an interview with the HRD minister on a popular television channel the other night. Among the questions asked of the minister over the 'Indianisation' of education was the inclusion in Rajasthan's syllabus of questions like 'where was Rama born?' Surely, there is something terribly wrong if this question is held up as an offensive one in India...

Another incident from the past that has remained with me was a conversation with a friend, like me a Hindu. Referring to a peer who was known for his youthful looks, I called him the 'Markandeya of Bombay's journalism', but when it went over my friend's head I had to fall back on the chestnut, Peter Pan. Puzzled at this ignorance, especially since both of us came from the same cultural milieu, I asked him about it, if he was not taught the Indian legends either at home or at school.

No, he wasn't, and yes, he went to a missionary school, and yes, his mother was a housewife, his grandparents stayed with them.

The common belief all of us have is that teaching the Indian lore is the family's responsibility, not the school's, but this does not account for the profound changes in the urban family system. With both the parents turning bread-winner and families going nuclear, is it wrong to expect the schools to bridge the gap in a child's natural education, or should one be happy with mythology-based comic strips? Is it then acceptable that future generations of Indians grow up enamoured of Odysseus's exploits and not know about Karna's?

I believe every country, which is the modern equivalent of a civilisation, has a basic identity that is buttressed by the State. Doing so does not make the country concerned sectarian, insofar as none of the Western nations are exclusivist. All of them are democracies with a strong Christian character, and yet secular. But when the same yardstick is sought to be applied in India, it becomes revisionist, as though the Hindu tradition is an essentially ugly one.

The tragedy for India is that the political party that could have sanitised education and society without raising hackles, the Congress, suffered from lack of will all through its rule. The bigger tragedy is the political party that is keen on doing this, cannot carry out the exercise without dividing the country into two warring camps.

Where was the need for the Saraswati Vandana brouhaha, or the insistence on Sanskrit and antediluvian ideas like teaching girls alone home science? Why is the BJP so insistent on shooting itself in the foot? Or, was the row deliberately engineered, to send a message to the party's vote bank on the eve of the assembly election, that there has been no dilution in the party's commitment to its core beliefs?

Much as the BJP may deny it, it is evident that the gameplan was the latter. In which case, it's a simple case of playing politics with the country's heritage, something the BJP had all along accused the earlier governments of.

How Readers responded to Saisuresh Sivaswamy's recent columns

Saisuresh Sivaswamy