[This article is a part of a series of articles on ‘India’s Education Journey: From Macaulay to NEP’. This is the seventh part of this series. The previous articles have been published in previous issues of Janata Weekly.]

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The early Nineteen Nineties marked a turning level in India’s post-independence political panorama. On the one hand, the worsening financial disaster led to the Rao–Manmohan Singh reforms and globalisation of the Indian financial system. Then again, it additionally led to a gradual rise of right-wing forces, particularly the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its many associates. The BJP, the RSS’s political wing, first shaped a coalition authorities on the Centre in 1998 that lasted six years. After a spot of ten years, it returned below the management of Narendra Modi in 2014, and has remained in workplace since.

As famous earlier, the BJP has aggressively pushed ahead the neoliberal reforms began in 1991, exhibiting little concern for the poor and the marginalised. However what really distinguishes the BJP from the Congress is its political and cultural agenda.

The Indian inhabitants includes greater than 4,000 distinct communities, marked by variations in customs, language, caste, spiritual beliefs, delicacies, and many others.[44] The RSS believes that regardless of this range, 80 % of Indians are Hindus and the unique inhabitants of the land, whereas the remaining are considered foreigners. It goals to culturally homogenise this ocean of diversities by way of a means of ‘Hinduisation’. The BJP–RSS hope that if they’re able to unite this majority below a Hindu identification, it should allow them to win all Central and State elections and remodel India as per their ideology. The political agenda of the BJP–RSS is to undermine the core values of the Indian Structure—equality, liberty, fraternity and secularism—and remodel the nation culturally, politically and socially right into a Hindu Rashtra. That is the essence of Hindutva, the ideology of the RSS.

A key technique adopted by the BJP for advancing this agenda is saffronisation of the nation’s training system, and use it as a software to propagate Hindutva.

The Hate Community of RSS Faculties

Since its founding 100 years in the past, crucial methodology utilized by the RSS for its venture of uniting the Hindus has been to rally them towards imagined enemies—the minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians. Within the early a long time after independence, when nearly all of the grownup inhabitants was nonetheless influenced by the values of the liberty wrestle, RSS leaders realised that it could be simpler to indoctrinate kids with their ideology, and probably the greatest methods of doing this was by way of training. And so, the RSS started organising its personal colleges. It inaugurated its first college, referred to as Saraswati Shishu Mandir, in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh in 1952. Over the following twenty years, its college community grew step by step. By 1977, when the RSS arrange Vidya Bharati as its nationwide coordinating physique, it had grown to 500 colleges with 20,000 college students.

Within the Nineteen Nineties, the BJP shaped governments in a number of States, and in 1998, got here to energy on the Centre. This enabled the RSS to make use of State patronage to unfold its instructional community. By 2012–13, Vidya Bharati ran 13,465 colleges (largely major and center) with 31.2 lakh college students and 1.3 lakh lecturers, 49 schools and coaching centres, and almost 10,000 colleges offering casual training to 2.4 lakh kids unable to attend formal colleges (referred to as Sanskar Kendras and Single Instructor Faculties). Different RSS fronts offering training embrace the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (which runs hostels for Adivasi kids), Sewa Bharati (for Dalits), and the Ekal Vidyalaya Basis, which runs single-teacher pre-school centres.

These colleges use on a regular basis rituals to instil Hindutva values in college students: lecturers are addressed as Acharyas; college students contact their ft in respect; school rooms are named after Hindu sages; birthdays of Shivaji, Jijabai, Vivekananda, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Savarkar are celebrated; and youngsters chant shlokas just like the Gayatri Mantra throughout prayers.[45]

These colleges indoctrinate college students with a extremely skewed model of Indian historical past, that portrays India as an completely Hindu nation and equates Indian tradition with Hindu tradition, thereby denying its wealthy pluralistic heritage. These distortions embrace:

1. Claiming Aryans are the unique inhabitants of India and founders of Indian civilisation—portrayed as similar to ‘Vedic civilisation’, and dubbed because the world’s oldest. All invaluable data and cultural achievements of Indian civilisation are presupposed to have their origins within the Vedas. The RSS disregards the contributions of different philosophical, cultural and non secular traditions that fall exterior the Vedic fold, together with Buddhism, Jainism, the Dravidian legacy and the Bhakti motion.
2. The traditional interval known as the ‘Hindu interval’—a golden age of Indian civilisation—whereas the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire are labelled because the ‘Muslim interval’, with Muslims depicted as international invaders. This era is described as a Darkish Age, marked by plundering of Hindu wealth, massive scale massacres, compelled conversions and widespread temple destruction. This narrative erases India’s syncretic cultural heritage and the numerous contributions of Muslims and Islam to Indian civilisation.[46] Mockingly, this historiography of the RSS was first superior by British historian James Mill within the early-19^th century. It was Mill who first divided Indian historical past into Hindu, Muslim and British intervals, claiming that Hindus had suffered below Muslim despotism, and that British rule had liberated them from this tyranny.
3. RSS historical past seeks to erase its personal collaboration with the British colonial rule, its opposition to the Structure and the nationwide flag, and its function in Partition. As an alternative, it portrays itself as having performed in vital function within the freedom wrestle and its founder Keshavrao B. Hegdewar as a nationalist hero.[47]

Manner again in 1993–94, a Nationwide Steering Committee on Textbook Analysis arrange by the NCERT, consisting of eminent students, discovered that the textbooks in RSS colleges promoted “bigotry and non secular fanaticism” within the title of cultural training. [48]

Even earlier than the BJP secured an absolute majority within the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the RSS had already developed an intensive instructional infrastructure to propagate its ideology to the younger.

Communalisation of the Authorities Faculty System

With the BJP’s rise to energy on the Centre in 1998, the RSS received a golden alternative to unfold its ideology throughout the authorities college community. In 2000, the Union HRD Minister launched a brand new Nationwide Curriculum Framework for Faculty Schooling (NCF-2000). It marked a big shift from NCF-1988, which had harassed democratic values, social justice and nationwide integration by way of appreciation of cultural range. NCF-2000 included content material from Vidya Bharati textbooks that promoted hatred in the direction of minorities. Beneath the guise of worth training, it brazenly launched Brahmanical spiritual training content material.[49] NCERT historical past books had been revised, and a number of other passages written by eminent secular historians like Romila Thapar, R.S. Sharma and Satish Chandra had been deleted.[50] Even pure sciences had been undermined with the inclusion of ‘Vedic arithmetic’, which students observe is neither Vedic nor really arithmetic.[51]

After the BJP’s return to energy in 2014, the communalisation of the varsity curriculum has gathered tempo. Over the previous decade—most notably in 2023—NCERT has repeatedly revised textbooks, deleting sentences, paragraphs, photos, and in lots of instances, even whole chapters. These modifications can have a far-reaching affect on the training of lakhs of youngsters, as NCERT textbooks are utilized in over 24,000 CBSE-affiliated colleges and adopted by no less than 19 college boards throughout 14 States. Some examples of those modifications are given beneath:

• Medieval Historical past: A number of pages on the Delhi Sultanate (Mamluks, Tughlaqs, Khaljis, Lodis) and key sections on the Mughal Empire have been faraway from the Class 7 and 12 Historical past textbooks. These deletions indicate that college students will stay unaware of the syncretic tradition that emerged in medieval India from the mixing of indigenous and Islamic traditions, which led to nice developments in artwork, literature, music and structure, paralleled by appreciable financial development.
• Fashionable Historical past: Two chapters—Colonial Cities: Urbanisation, Planning and Structure, and Understanding Partition: Politics, Reminiscences, Experiences—have been deleted from the Class 12 Historical past textbook.
• Mahatma Gandhi: Vital references to Gandhiji’s efforts to advertise Hindu–Muslim unity, his function in calming the violence after Partition, in addition to the opposition he confronted from Hindu extremists—who made a number of makes an attempt on his life—have been faraway from the Class 12 Political Science textbook. Additionally deleted are passages that point out the RSS’s function in spreading communal hatred and the ban imposed on it following Gandhi’s assassination.
• Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: References to Maulana Azad—freedom fighter, shut affiliate of Gandhiji, Constituent Meeting member and India’s first training minister—have been faraway from the Class 11 Political Science textbook.
• Emergency: Passages describing the abuse of energy through the Emergency imposed by the Indira Gandhi Authorities have been deleted from the Class 12 Political Science and Sociology textbooks.
• Well-liked Actions: A chapter, Rise of Well-liked Actions, overlaying individuals’s actions like Chipko (Uttarakhand), Dalit Panthers (Maharashtra), Bharatiya Kisan Union-led farmer struggles, women-led anti-arrack campaigns (Andhra Pradesh), Narmada Bachao Andolan and the RTI motion, has been dropped from the Class 12 Political Science textbook.
• 2002 Gujarat Riots: All references to those riots have been dropped from the Class 12 Political Science and Sociology textbooks.
• Preamble to the Structure: This has been dropped from a number of Class 3 and Class 6 textbooks.
• Democracy: 4 chapters introducing college students to democracy have been deleted, together with a chapter in Class 6 that introduces college students to the idea of democracy, a chapter in Class 8 that talks of framing of the Structure and the making of linguistic States, and two chapters in Class 10—one discusses race and caste social divisions and inequalities on this planet, and the second is on reforming democratic politics.
• Equality: An imaginary narrative illustrating discrimination confronted by a home employee, a Dalit author and a Muslim couple has been faraway from the Class 7 Political Science textbook. Additionally deleted is the chapter Struggles for Equality from the Class 7 Social Science textbook that knowledgeable college students about well-known struggles for equality resembling the ladies’s empowerment motion. Appreciable deletions have been made in textbooks from Courses 6 to 12 associated to injustices of the caste system and the hereditary nature of the varna system. Examples exhibiting how untouchability nonetheless operates in on a regular basis life have been faraway from the Class 12 Sociology textbook.
• Poverty: A complete chapter on poverty has been dropped from the Class 11 Economics textbook, depriving college students of publicity to a crucial concern in our social and financial system.[52]
• Foundational Scientific Ideas:
• Darwin’s principle of evolution has been faraway from Class 9 and 10 textbooks, following a declare by the junior HRD minister Satyapal Singh that it was “scientifically improper.” Although it has been retained in Class 11, most college students don’t examine science past Class 10 and they also will miss publicity to this foundational idea. Greater than 4,500 scientists, lecturers and science communicators opposed this deletion, saying that this can critically handicap college students of their thought course of as the idea of evolution is the cornerstone of scientific and rational considering.
• A chapter on the Periodic Desk has been faraway from the Class 10 Science textbook—that makes college students conscious of life’s basic constructing blocks.[53]

BJP-led State governments are additionally making modifications at school textbooks. Listed below are some key modifications made to highschool textbooks in Rajasthan after the BJP gained the 2013 Meeting elections:

• A Class 6 story, Mundmaal, praises the banned follow of sati. Throughout lessons, textbooks reinforce gender roles—ladies are not often proven enjoying sports activities however are sometimes proven fetching water or cooking.
• Muslims, Christians and different minorities are largely absent from textbooks. Textbooks subtly promote the Hindu majoritarian perspective amongst college students. Thus:
  • In Class 1, phrases like rishi, rath, yajna and trishul are used to show the Hindi alphabet.
  • Class 5 contains a letter by which the cow (Kamadhenu Gaumata) declares herself a purveyor of “energy, knowledge, longevity, well being, happiness, prosperity and glory”.
  • Class 8 textbook calls Somnath temple’s reconstruction Sardar Patel’s best contribution.
  • Not a single Muslim is included within the 15 personalities listed within the Hamare Gaurav sections of Class 3–5 Environmental Science textbooks.
• The Class 6 Social Science ebook claims that caste was initially primarily based on professions and never linked to delivery, and that there was no bar on sharing meals or marriage between castes, nor did untouchability exist.
• The Class 6 Historical past ebook describes the Saraswati River as actual, on whose banks the Vedas had been composed. It portrays the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as historic occasions, and claims that the Pandavas spent their exile in Matsya mahajanapada and Shri Ram dominated over Kaushal mahajanapada (each described as historic Indian kingdoms).
• A Class 10 textbook now teaches that Maharana Pratap conclusively defeated Mughal Emperor Akbar at Haldighati.
• Science is defined by way of tales from Indian mythology. A Class 4 lesson hyperlinks lotus to goddess Saraswati; a Class 6 geography lesson features a story about Dhruva Tara from Hindu spiritual texts whereas discussing the pole star; Class 7 classes on water and Earth start with an elaboration of their significance in Hindu spiritual rituals; and all Class 3–8 maths textbooks embrace chapters on ‘Vedic Arithmetic’, described by students as mere calculation methods.[54]

In Gujarat, the place the BJP has dominated since 1998, the State authorities has launched 9 supplementary books in colleges that promote Bharatiya Sanskriti (Indian tradition) and a ‘Hindu’ code of conduct. These books are by RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra and have been endorsed by then Chief Minister Narendra Modi. They include tales resembling one by which worshipping cows enabled a king to have a number of kids. Additionally they make claims that quite a few scientific innovations had been made by Indian rishis in historic India: the 100 Kauravas had been take a look at tube infants, proving that stem cell analysis originated in India; automobiles and tv existed within the Vedic period; and the Pushpak Viman was the primary airplane on this planet. They advocate day by day visits to RSS shakhas and blame communists and Orientalists for India’s “dangerous” training system.[55]

Notes:

44. Nalini Taneja, “BJP’s Assault on Schooling and Academic Establishments”, http://archive.cpiml.org.
45. Nandini Sundar, “Educating to Hate”, Financial and Political Weekly, 17 April 2004, http://www.epw.in. See additionally: http://vidyabharati.web/ statistics.php.
46. Irfan Habib, “The Rewriting of Historical past”, 13 February 2002, http://www.outlookindia.com; Romila Thapar, The Previous as Current, Aleph E-book Firm, New Delhi, 2014.
47. Shamsul Islam, Undoing India the RSS Manner, Media Home, Delhi, 2002; Within the Identify of Historical past: Examples from Hindutva-Impressed Faculty Textbooks in India, http://www.sacw.web.
48. Aditya Mukherjee et al., RSS, Faculty Texts and the Homicide of Mahatma Gandhi, SAGE Publications, New Delhi, 2008, pp. 17–43, https://books.google.co.in.
49. Ibid.; Hiren Gohain, “On Saffronisation of Schooling”, Financial and Political Weekly, 16 November 2002, http://www.epw.in.
50. Nalini Taneja, “Historians Protest Deletions in NCERT Texts”, 9 December 2001, https://archives.peoplesdemocracy.in
51. Cease This Fraud on Our Youngsters: Scientists Protest Towards Vedic Arithmetic and Astrology in Faculty Curriculum, http://www.sahmat.org.
52. This has been compiled from the next newsreports: Ritika Chopra, “In NCERT Textbook Trim: Mughal Period, Delhi Sultanate, Emergency Influence and 2002 Riots”, 7 April 2023, https://indianexpress.com; “Historians Condemn Key Deletions from NCERT Textbooks”, 8 April 2023, https://www.thehindu.com; “Historic’ Adjustments: Right here is What the NCERT has Dropped from Textual content Books”, 5 April 2023, https://www.business-standard.com; “Mughals, RSS, Evolution: Outrage as India Edits Faculty Textbooks”, 14 April 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com; Ritika Chopra, “Specific Investigation, Half 1: From Emergency to Gujarat Riots, Classes of Previous Deleted from Textbooks of Future”, 18 June 2022, and “Specific Investigation, Half 2: Key Deletions on Caste, Minorities in Revised Faculty Textbooks”, 19 June 2022, https://indianexpress.com; Basant Kumar Mohanty, “Preamble to the Structure Dropped from A number of Class III and VI Textbooks”, 5 August 2024, https://www.telegraphindia.com; “Lesson on Poverty Dropped from I PU NCERT Economics Textbook”, 6 April 2023, https://www.thehindu.com.
53. “NCERT Drops Chapters on Evolution, Periodic Desk, Democracy from Class 10 Textbooks”, 1 June 2023, https://scroll.in.
54. Shreya Roy Chowdhury, “BJP’s Main Achievement in Rajasthan: Rewriting Faculty Textbooks to Replicate RSS Worldview”, 14 November 2018, https://scroll.in; “Rajasthan Rewrites Historical past: Maharana Pratap, Not Akbar, Received Battle of Haldighati”, 25 July 2017, https://www.indiatoday.in.
55. Anupama Katakam, “Distorted Classes”, Frontline, 22 August 2014, http://www.frontline.in; Anil Dharker, “Bharat by Batra & Co.”, 30 July 2014, http://www.deccanchronicle.com.; “Apathy for Reality”, 13 August 2014, https://www.deccanherald.com.

[Neeraj Jain is a social activist and writer. He is the convenor of Lokayat, an activist group based in Pune. He is also the editor of Janata Weekly, India’s oldest socialist magazine. He has authored several books, including Globalisation or Recolonisation?, Education Under Globalisation: Burial of the Constitutional Dream, Nuclear Energy: Technology from Hell, and most recently, Union Budgets 2014-24: An Analysis.]