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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
Missing The Point
The debate on education should be about quality, not
secularism
 It
is with growing fascination that I have watched the debate on the "saffronisation
of education" currently underway in our political class and our newspapers.
All talk has been of the BJP's hidden agenda which-in the view of those
who consider themselves the vanguard of secularism like Sonia Gandhi-needs
to be fought in the halls of learning and Parliament.
The Congress president is not known for making
articulate interventions in Parliament but "saffronisation"
inspired her to unusual heights of eloquence. "We will alert the
prime minister about the need for continuous vigil in the matter,"
she said in the Lok Sabha, "lest the hidden agenda is smuggled in
through the back door in the mistaken belief that nobody is watching.
We are watching. We will not allow the Government to get away with any
sleight of hand."
 What
fascinates me is that nobody thinks that the debate needs to be about
the quality of education Indian children are offered and not limited to
the tired clichés of secularism and communalism. Murli Manohar
Joshi is a lousy education minister. That is our real problem. Had he
been even marginally competent he would have noticed that our education
system was designed by the British for colonial times and this is one
of the main reasons why our best schools are still those that use English
as the medium of instruction. Indian language schools are, without exception,
provincial, outdated and out of touch with modern methods of education.
This is why even politicians like Mulayam Singh Yadav, who believe passionately
in the Hindi cause, end up sending their own children to English-medium
schools. This is why children of our bureaucrats and politicians end up
being taught in English. This is why even ordinary villagers seek English-medium
schools for their children. This should be a matter of grave concern to
a human resource development minister who belongs to a political party
that considers itself the sentinel of Indian national pride.
Apparently it is not or Mr Joshi would not have
wasted time on stupidities like introducing "Indian values",
astrology and similar wacky ideas. If the minister took the trouble to
make a small tour of municipal schools even in Delhi, he would notice
that there are more important things to be done. Things that a Congress
education minister could not possibly do because the party's leaders are
so steeped in the notion that "secularism" and respect for the
white man are synonymous (their choice of leader speaks for itself). They
never noticed in the 40 years they ruled us that our education system
was designed by Lord Macaulay more than a 100 years ago to teach English
to the Indians and turn India into a nation of clerks.
We are still doing this but Mr Hindutva Joshi
appears not to have noticed. So the changes he has sought to bring are
superficial and silly. But then he is not really the education minister
since this most vital of ministries does not exist in the Vajpayee Cabinet.
We have totally unnecessary ministries for it, industry, food processing
and God knows what else but no ministry of education. Rajiv Gandhi abolished
it in the mistaken belief that human resource development (whatever that
is) was somehow more modern, more scientific, and no government has considered
making a change.
The result is a system of education in desperate
need of change. The result also is that it is easier for Indians to study
India's culture and civilisation in some American university than in India.
Here, we pride ourselves on our ability to teach western civilisation
and culture even if our teachers now speak English in a way that is considered
incomprehensible outside India. Vajpayee joked, recently, about the fact
that the British Raj ended because the British could no longer bear the
way Indians massacred their language. It is only half a joke.
Other countries teach Shakespeare in their own
languages, we teach in bad English. As for our own literature, we teach
so little of it that most Indian students have no idea what is being written
in languages other than their own and, in any case, would find it hard
to buy books in Indian languages since all our big bookshops sell only
English books. It is a disgraceful state of affairs but it cannot change
as long as we think of education as merely a debate between secularism
and communalism.
On account of it being viewed through this bizarre
prism we find our education policy trapped in colonial times-teach the
natives English to turn them into clerks. If the Congress and the BJP
would both grow up they might understand the full horror of this situation.
And, if the prime minister grows up, instead of just growing old, he would
understand the importance of appointing an education minister from academia
and not politics. When the debate becomes about education and not politics
we might see that "saffronisation" is the least of our problems.
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