Education – Page 2

UK govt wants nurseries to report potential "terrorist toddlers"

January 6, 2015 by Nasheman

AFP Photo/Johnny Green

by RT

It may become a “duty” of nurseries and elementary schools in the UK to track and report any child that shows signs of sympathy with terrorists or is a risk of potential radicalization, according to the government’s plans aimed at preventing extremism.

A consultation document by the Home Office on ways to enhance the UK’s anti-terrorism system, the so-called “Prevent” strategy, calls for senior management and governors to “assess the risk of pupils being drawn into terrorism,” manifested through youths’ extremist ideas that may breed terrorist ideology.

The nurseries should insure proper training of their staff to give them the “knowledge and confidence to identify” and “challenge extremist ideas which can be used to legitimize terrorism and are shared by terrorist groups,” the document stated according to British media. “They should know where and how to refer children and young people for further help.”

The new approach of identifying potentially dangerous toddlers should be implemented on non-discriminating basis according to the 39-page consultation document. The document is part of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill bundle currently being debated in the parliament. If the strategy is approved it will become a “duty” not only for nurseries but also for other learning institutions.

“Schools, including nurseries, have a duty of care to their pupils and staff. The new duty in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism will be seen in a similar way to their existing safeguarding responsibilities,” a government spokesperson told The Independent.

Questions remain as to how the new measures will be implemented, with politicians and NGO’s speaking out against the heavy-handed tactics.

“It is unworkable. I have to say I cannot understand what they [nursery staff] are expected to do,” David Davis, the Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary, told the Telegraph.

“Are they supposed to report some toddler who comes in praising a preacher deemed to be extreme? I don’t think so. It is heavy-handed,” he added.

“Turning our teachers and childminders into an army of involuntary spies will not stop the terrorist threat,”Isabella Sankey, the policy director at human rights body Liberty, told the Telegraph. “It will sow seeds of mistrust, division and alienation from an early age.”

The government defended itself from the avalanche of criticism saying that privacy of individuals will be protected.

“We are not expecting teachers and nursery workers to carry out unnecessary intrusion into family life but we do expect them to take action when they observe behaviour of concern. It is important that children are taught fundamental British values in an age-appropriate way,” a government spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

The controversial Prevent strategy is the main effort by UK government to stop radicalization or people supporting terrorism, in all its forms. Prevent works at the pre-criminal stage by using early intervention to encourage individuals and communities to challenge extremist and terrorist ideology and behavior. Opponent of contemporary counter-terrorist policies say the strategy produces counter-productive effects and often discriminates directly or indirectly against Muslims.

Saiyid Hamid was like 'Second Sir Syed' to Indian Muslims

December 31, 2014 by Nasheman

by Kaleem Kawaja

Washington: It is with profound sadness that Indian Muslims in North-America have learned of the passing away of Saiyid Hamid, renowned educationist, reformer and a top leader of Muslims in India.

After completing a very distinguished Indian Administrative Service (IAS) career, Saiyid Hamid, who was originally from Bulandshahar (UP), embarked on a 30 year second career as an educationist, working with much dedication to improving education in the Muslim community in India.

He served as vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, and chancellor of Hamdard University New Delhi. He spent nearly 30 years motivating many senior government officials and senior Muslims to build projects to improve education in the Muslim community in India.

He was the prime mover behind persuading the Indian government to form a committee headed by Justice Sachar to conduct research and to document the socio-economic-educational backwardness of Indian Muslims and to build programs for their uplift.

I was fortunate to get acquainted wih Saiyid Hamid on a personl level and to co-host his visit to USA in 1996 to motivate Indian Muslims in US to help in the establishment of educational institutions in India and an English language magazine/newspaper.

Following his visit to USA, as he established a postgraduate college of management and information technology in New Delhi and the monthly magazine ‘The Nation & the World’, I had an opportunity to work with him on these projects for many years.

A conversation with Saiyid Hamid was a pure delight. He was so erudite, so full of knowledge and such a practical visionary, so highly accomplished in both English and Urdu literature that it was difficult to understand how he acquired such broad accomplishment.

Indeed such was the strength of his personality and intellect that no matter who you were it was impossible not to be impressed with him or not to get motivated by his ideas. It was in the fitness of things that many people called him the “Second Sir Syed”, that he truly was.

Indian Muslims will miss him for a very long time as he was a very rare individual who fully epitomized the following verse of renowned Persian poet Hafiz Shirazi, that he once told me in conversation.

“When you travel through a desert, you see all types of creatures, small reptiles, birds, big animals etc travelling towards the oasis to fill their thirst. We should try to be that oasis”. Indeed Saiyid Hamid was an oasis towards whom we all looked up to, to satisfy our thirst to improve ourselves and our institutions.”

Kaleem Kawaja is Executive Director, Association of Indian Muslims of America, Washington DC.

How the Sangh Parivar is taking over education and culture institutions

December 26, 2014 by Nasheman

To propagate the Parivar’s brand of ‘cultural nationalism’, the government is purging some institutions and making suspect appointments in others.

by Praful Bidwai

A hallmark of the Modi government’s first 200 days in office is the beginning of the Sangh Parivar’s Long March through the institutions of the state, in particular bodies that deal with education and culture. The Parivar’s agenda is to reflect its own specific brand of “cultural nationalism” in these institutions by engineering long-term changes in their programmes and priorities, and by making key appointments of personnel who will loyally execute such changes.

The government’s imposition of the observance of Christmas Day as “good governance” day on a range of Central educational institutions – including Navodaya Vidyalayas and Central Board of Secondary Education-affiliated schools, the 45 Central universities, the elite Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management – is only the latest, if symbolic, step in that direction. It forces them through a mere executive order to celebrate the birth anniversaries of two Parivar icons, Atal Behari Vajpayee and the even-more sectarian former Hindu Mahasabha leader Madan Mohan Malaviya.

The larger Sangh agenda includes more substantive changes in the content of education and what is officially supported and promoted as culture. For instance, the government has appointed pro-Hindutva or pro-BJP individuals to head the apex-level Indian Council of Historical Research, the prestigious Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Shimla, and Banaras Hindu University, established, incidentally, by Malaviya in 1916.

De-saffronisation process derailed

This sends out an unmistakable signal about the shape of things to come in other Central universities, including Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Indian Council of Social Science Research, some of the IITs, and the CBSE, among many other institutions where new appointments are due soon at the top or in their councils and governing bodies.

An even stronger signal emanates from the manner in which Parvin Sinclair, the upright and independent-minded director of the National Council for Educational Research and Training, was ousted over two years before her term ended. This aborted at the last stage the revision (improvement and updating) of the National Curriculum Framework 2005 she had initiated. The framework itself was the product of a long, broadly consultative process of “de-saffronisation”, which led to widely acclaimed, secular-liberal and pedagogically superior school textbooks.

On May 22, even before Narendra Modi was sworn in, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas run by Dinanath Batra (of book-pulping fame) demanded a total overhaul of the education system and rewriting of textbooks so they inculcate patriotism, reflect “Indian tradition, social consciousness… and spiritualism”, and help build a “strong and vibrant India”. He insisted that Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani reconstitute the NCERT. When Sinclair refused to toe Irani’s line on the National Curriculum Framework and other issues, she was reportedly charged with financial irregularities, not allowed to defend herself fully, and asked to resign.

Questionable appointments

There has been no similar purge in other institutions so far. But the government has used three other methods to favour the Parivar: appointing RSS functionaries or close sympathisers to high positions although they manifestly lack academic competence, leave alone distinction; nominating mediocrities who are BJP fellow-travellers to head institutions; and co-opting appointees of the previous regime by striking questionable deals with them which benefit the Parivar.

Last month’s appointment of Girish Chandra Tripathi as Banaras Hindu University vice-chancellor, a post held earlier by luminaries like S Radhakrishnan and Acharya Narendra Dev, falls in the first category. Tripathi, long a hardcore prant (province)-level RSS official, was a professor of economics at Allahabad University. But going by a Google scholar search and other available biographical entries, he has published no books or papers, at least recently.

Teaching history of the epics

The appointment of Y Sudershan Rao, a singularly undistinguished historian close to a spiritual guru (who mediated with the RSS-Bharatiya Janata Party on his behalf), as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research is a similar, if somewhat less sordid, story. Rao rails against Western and Marxist scholars and defends the caste system. He wants to prove the historicity of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. He emphasises the relevance of the Puranas: “The ICHR has to play a catalyst role in taking to people their history” through the epics. According to Romila Thapar, Rao fails to distinguish between epics and historical texts. He has published no articles on the epics, or on Ayodhya as Rama’s birthplace, in peer-reviewed journals.

One of Rao’s first actions was to invite a Belgium-based, rabidly pro-Hindutva scholar, SN Balagangadhara, to deliver the Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture on November 11. Balagangadhara’s views drew serious criticism from distinguished historians like Rajan Gurukkal.

Belonging to the second category are Chandrakala Padia’s nomination as the chairperson of IIAS-Shimla by the Human Resource Development Ministry, and Kavita Sharma’s nomination as the vice-chancellor of South Asian University by the foreign ministry. Padia, who comes from Varanasi, does have some published work, but its quality is not commensurate with her position at IIAS. Sharma was director of the India International Centre, Delhi, and earlier principal of Hindu College, but can claim little academic accomplishment.

Changing with the times

Third, the Parivar seems to have cut deals with various United Progressive Alliance appointees, who have turned pro-BJP-RSS, including University Grants Commission chairman Ved Prakash and Delhi University vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh, who both attended a lunch hosted by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat in Delhi on October 12. Prakash is alleged to be anxious to continue in his post till 2017, despite vigilance and other inquiries against him.

Singh’s favourite, but mindless, scheme (the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme) was recently shot down by Irani. Sensing the wind, he allegedly capitulated. He has provided a platform to senior RSS functionaries on the campus, including Indresh Kumar and Krishna Gopal.

This is the first in a two-part series on the saffronisation of education and culture, which first appeared in Scroll.

Praful Bidwai is a journalist, social science researcher and activist on issues of human rights, the environment, global justice and peace. He received the Sean MacBride International Peace Prize, 2000 of International Peace Bureau, Geneva and London, one of the world’s oldest peace organisations.

Aligarh Muslim University, Raja Mahendra Pratap and Attempts of Polarization

December 2, 2014 by Ram Puniyani

Those resorting to communal politics have not only perfected their techniques of polarizing the communities along religious lines, but have been constantly resorting to new methods for dividing the society. On the backdrop of Muzzafar nagar, where ‘Love Jihad’ propaganda was used to enhance the divisive agenda, now in Aligarh an icon of matchless virtues, Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh is being employed for the similar purposes.

The attempt by BJP and associates to hold the memorial function in his honor within campus was successfully deflected by the Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) University with the plan for a seminar befitting his contribution to the freedom movement of this AMU alumnus.

BJP dug up this icon from pages of history and gauzing prevalent respect for him after the lapse of decades after his death. The answer to why now at this particular juncture is very revealing. Mahendra Pratap died on 29 April 1979, and now out of the blues BJP seems to have felt that his Jat, Hindu identity can be pitched as a flag of their politics. Pratap was a freedom fighter extraordinary, a journalist and a writer. He was a humanist, believing in International federation of nations transcending the national and religious boundaries. He was a Marxist who called for social reforms and empowerment of Panchayats. He was president of Indian Freedom Fighters’ Association He was also the first one to form the provisional Indian Government in exile by establishing it in Kabul in 1915. Just to recall the Indian National Congress adopted the goal of complete freedom for India much later in its 1929 session. This Provisional Government was called Hakumat-i-Moktar-i-Hind, and was constituted with Pratap as the President, Maulvi Barkatullah as prime minister and Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi as interior minister.

After independence he also participated in the electoral arena where he defeated Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Mathura in the 1957 Lok Sabha election. His commitment to being opposed to communal forces could not be more evident than this opposition of his to the leader of Bhartiya Jansangh, Vajpayee. Ironically same person is being lifted up as the icon, who opposed their politics. BJP leaders like Yogi Adityanath are claiming that had Mahendra Pratap not donated the land the AMU would not have come up. This is contrary to the facts. The predecessor of AMU, Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College was formed in 1886, with a land bought from British cantonment (Nearly 74 Acres) and much later Pratap had leased 3.04 acres of land, this is called Tikonia ground and is used as a playground by the City High School of AMU in 1929. He joined the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College in 1895, but could not complete his graduation. He left MAO College in 1905. MAO became Aligarh Muslim University in 1920, which regards Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh as an alumnus. In 1977, AMU, under V-C Prof A M Khusro, felicitated Mahendra Pratap at the centenary celebrations of MAO.

He wasn’t born when MAO was established, and there is no record of any donation of land from him. Mahendra Pratap’s father Raja Ghanshiam Singh of Mursan had got a hostel room constructed, which continues to stand as Room Number 31 in Sir Syed Hall (South).

BJP demanded that Mahenra Pratap’s birthday should be celebrated as AMU celebrates the birthday of Sir Syed, the founder of the University RSS Functionaries and BJP leaders put pressure on the VC. VC pointed out that AMU cannot celebrate birth day of every donor or alumnus, while recognizing their contribution to the building up of the University. As such already AMU in recognition of Pratap’s contribution to the University has put up his photo in University along with the photo of Sir Syed.

On November 17 (2014), BJP chief of UP Mr. Laxmikant Bajpai and general secretary Swatantra Dev Singh visited Aligarh and directed their district unit to celebrate the birth day of Mahendra Pratap’s within the MU campus. The raja is a also Jat icon, In popular perception AMU is seen as a Muslim institution. The Jat-Muslim conflict instigated by communal forces, which erupted in the form of violence in Muzaffarnagar continues to affect in western part of UP. The BJP through its machinations allegedly wants to restore the glory of a Jat ‘king’. As such the idea is to appropriate one more of icons and in the process if the state government puts curbs on the celebration, the BJP can benefit by accusing the state Government of “Muslim appeasement”.

As the matters stand VC, Gen. Shah’s suggestion of celebrating the birth anniversary of Raja Mahendra Pratap by organizing a seminar on his contribution to freedom movement of India is a welcome initiative. The situation seems to have been diffused for the time being. BJP had planned a rally outside the gate of AMU, which would have precipitated the unwarranted incidents.

This whole episode has many lessons for the society. To begin with, the national icons are being modulated to suit the interests of communal politics. Be it Sardar patel, Swami Vivekanand, Mahatma Gandhi or in this case Raja Mahendra Pratap, they are being presented in the light which suits the communal politics. In case of Mahedra Pratap, who was a Marxist internationalist; is being presented as a mere Jat leader. He was a person who opposed the politics in the name of religion, as is evident by his electoral fight against BJP’s previous avatar, Bhartiya Jan Sanghs’ Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Secondly BJP associates are manipulating people’s identity as primarily being religious identity, Hindu or Muslim. In case of Muzzafarnagar, the Jats who were instigated in the name of ‘love Jihad’ came to stand more for Hindu identity. This identity is then made to stand opposed to the ‘other’ religious identity in particular, the Muslim identity and sometimes Christian identity. Same game is also being experimented in parts of Delhi, where Dalits are being made to pitch against Muslims, in a way two deprived communities being made to fight for’ their’ religion’ on the pretext of some issues related to faith.

The communal politics not only manipulates the identity of the people but also that of the icons, as is clear in the case of Raja Mahendra Pratap. The third major lesson for society to learn is that the search is on to find more and more issues to pitch one religious community against the other to strengthen the politics of a particular type. While the top leadership will talk of moratorium on violence, the associates of the same leadership will stoke the processes which will lead to the process of violence in due course.

A great amount of restraint is needed to ensure that we learn the values of the icons, e.g. the likes of Mahendra Pratap teach us the basic lessons of love and amity, peace and universal humanism. To use the techniques of conflicting religious identities is a gross violation of human morality, irrespective of the religion in whose name it is done.

Dear PM, Save Our Colleges From Communal Agendas

December 1, 2014 by Nasheman

by Rana Ayyub

My father, a noted writer from the field of Urdu literature, like many of his friends from the Progressive writers movement, found in his alma mater Aligarh Muslim University, the courage to break the barriers of religion enforced stereotypes. He forced his wife, my mother, who was raised in a conservative family of zamindars from Uttar Pradesh to pursue her education post marriage and give up all ominous practices of subjugation.

Among the first few books my mother was gifted besides Maxim Gorky’s ‘Mother’ were on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of AMU, and Sultan Shahjahan Begum, the first female ruler who vehemently worked for the promotion of education amongst women and Muslims in particular.

Shahjahan Begum, also referred to as the Begum of Bhopal, was the first Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University which gave India some of its best known luminaries from the field of politics, art, literature. AMU alumni include former Presidents of India and current Vice President Hamid Ansari, who also served a term as the Vice Chancellor of the university.

Some of the most prolific writers and thinkers with affiliation to the Marxist philosophy owe their careers to AMU. One such figure was Raja Mahendra Pratap, an admirer of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who started the Mohammad Anglo Oriental College after successfully completing his education from Oxford and Cambridge.

With the dominance of religious education in the lives of Muslims, who were in the lowest rung of socio-economic progress, Sir Syed understood that religious studies from Madrassas did not give the less privileged a window into the world; for them to succeed, there was a dire need for a platform which helped them with a contemporary understanding of religion, philosophy and science.

While the University was started with the intent of providing modern education to Muslims, non-Muslims were welcomed. It was for this reason that many Hindu rulers of the time sent their children to the Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College spread over 468 hectares of land which was later renamed the Aligarh Muslim University.

So impressed was Raja Mahendra Pratap with the vision of Sir Syed that he decided to lease 3.04 acres of land to the AMU in 1929. Though it was a small share, this helped forge a strong bond between Hindus and Muslims. His commitment to the social cause and his zeal for the Marxist thought was such that Lenin himself is said to have invited him to Russia post the success of the Bolshevik revolution.

An independent MP from Mathura from the year 1955 to 1962, and a freedom fighter with a desire to weed out communal thinking, Mahendra Pratap despised all form of right-wing indoctrination. Little did he realize that one day his name would be used by right-wing leaders to turn an educational institute he so admired into a ground for religious polarisation.

Satish Gautam, BJP MP from Aligarh, whose party has professed commitment to ushering in a new era of development and inclusive growth, has decided to use AMU to instigate communal politics between Jats and Muslims, both communities being the main constituents of Aligarh.

Satish Gautam, a popular figure amongst Jats, possibly realises that the last time the two communities were provoked in Muzaffarnagar, it earned rich political dividends for his party. But in his overzealous endeavour to use AMU, he has conveniently forgotten to state some very important facts to his followers.

It would be judicious on the part of Satish Gautam, who has threatened to hold a rally at the gates of the AMU on the birth anniversary of Raja Mahendra Pratap on the 1st of December to list for his followers some of the most revolutionary non-Muslim thinkers from AMU. Before and during the freedom movement, both Muslim and Hindu kings and rulers united against the British and helped each other – these included funding educational institutions. AMU and the famous Banaras Hindu university were the two icons of this educational uprising that received patronage from both the communities.

Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder of the Banaras Hindu University, had no qualms about accepting funds from Muslim rulers and elites.

If one were to accept the BJP MP’s logic, then each and every person who leased land for the 468 hectares of AMU will have to be celebrated just like each and every donor of BHU and thousands of other educational institutes in India.

Would the BJP MP not do a great service to the iconic institution by asking it to celebrate the birth anniversary of social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who was one of the main influences on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, or guide the non-Muslim students of Aligarh to the plaque of historian Ishwar Prasad, who belonged to the first batch of graduates from the AMU?

The Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University has written to the Education Minister Smriti Irani stating that the BJP’s decision to hold a rally would provoke communal tension; he has said the university is willing to diffuse the tension by holding a seminar on Raja Mahendra in the future. Smriti Irani displayed her feminist side by speaking out against the VC’s alleged decision to not allow female undergraduate students into the Central library – she called it an “insult to the daughters of the country.”

Now she should take the first step in saving the legacy of the likes of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya by weeding out the rogue elements who threaten to target educational institutions.

In the last few months, there seems to have been a meticulous plan to target educational bodies by fringe elements by planting fictitious stories and dividing them on religious lines. On this particular occasion, it would be wise for the powers that be to not allow local Samajwadi Party and BJP leaders to target the sacrosanct for a communal or political agenda. Both the HRD Minister and the Prime Minister, who has held education as one of the key areas of development in his agenda, should step forward to save the legacy of the great reformists from being converted into a communal experiment.

Rana Ayyub is an award-winning investigative journalist and political writer. She is working on a book on Prime Minister Narendra Modi which will be published in 2015.

Future in Safe Palms

November 27, 2014 by Nasheman

by Anand Mazgaonkar

Ms. Smriti Irani consulting her astrologer is her private matter. In fact most things she does might be private matters. Election victory does turn things into private property. Astrological advice is the wisest thing one can do. It is her sacrifice for the Nation. We all know she has very selflessly dedicated herself to the service of the nation.

It is not only an absolutely self-abnegating act on her part, she’s had the foresight to ensure that there will be no vacuum when Mr Pranab Mukherjee finishes his term. Shri Nathulal Vyas has put to rest a whole Nation’s anxiety and reassured us that there will be continuity after Mr Pranab Mukherjee. Our bull run of happy days, ‘Achhe Din’ continues endlessly. For the first time in our country’s history we have a President-in-waiting.

She is indeed the most eligible person we have for President. For long we’ve experienced a dearth of talent in Rashtrapati Bhavan. It’s been long since someone like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed or Giani Zail Singh adorned that office.

Who better can we have as President than someone who’s ‘educated’ at Yale, has acted in soap operas, and has been flexible in ‘altering’ her opinions and positions. Remember she was distressed by the violence in Gujarat in 2002, and the then Chief Minister’s handling of the situation, until better wisdom dawned on her and she ‘adapted’ her opinion. Since then its been ‘Achche Din’ for her, never mind loss of elections. She generously wants to share her fortune with the country now.

Where the Nation’s Education is concerned, never mind an unclear, distorted, mis-stated, over-stated personal educational record, a future foretold by astrologers is what must guide us.

Becoming Minister immediately after losing elections is easy, especially if you’re not alone. Remember Mr Arun Jaitley also belongs to that chosen breed? Becoming President in case of an election defeat may need a Constitutional amendment. But, that is a small matter if an astrologer has ordained it.

Luckily, astrology must have been the guiding principle in the whole Cabinet formation. Mr Nitin Gadkari (Qualification: Purti fame), Mr Nihal Chand Meghwal (Qualification: Rape charge), Mr D V Sadanand Gowda (Qualification: Successful defence of son from rape charge) are shining examples where business dealings, criminal charges or their children’s actions added a feather in their caps.

In any case our electoral system does need reform. Even Mr Arvind Kejriwal has been calling for it. MPs, and MLAs deciding who will hold the country’s highest office is absolutely irrational. That should be entrusted to a Khap Panchayat consisting of astrologers, religious luminaries and Corporate honchos.

Today, India’s Education is in safe hands, tomorrow every aspect of India’s future, including ceremonial future will be in safe hands. Mrs. Irani’s formidable record as Human Resources Development Minister inspires tremendous confidence. As HRD Minister she’s has not executed blindly, unilaterally, the Sangh Parivar’s Education and Culture agenda, she seems to have consulted astrologers too.

Hopefully, our next Budget may be determined by Mr Nathulal Vyas’ (or someone from his profession) reading of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s palm. Actually, Mr Vyas reading Adani’s or Ambani’s palm might be even better. Fotunately that’s how SBI’s $ 1 billion loan to Adanis Australian coal mining project seems to have been cleared.

(Anand Mazgaonkar is with Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, Gujarat and Adviser to National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM))

A look at state of higher education under Smriti Irani

November 14, 2014 by Nasheman

The more things change…the more they remain the same. That seems to be the case of the new govt’s vision for higer education

by Purushottam Agrawal

The minister for human resource development, Smriti Irani, along with her mandarins and the vice-chancellors of all central universities was in a two-day retreat in September in Chandigarh. It is not surprising that the electronic media neither reported nor discussed the event. After all, it has fast ‘evolved’ from infotainment to unabashed comedy and live cockfighting. But, it did come as a surprise that this meeting was not reported adequately even in large sections of the print media.

Well, in defence of our journalistic class, one has to say nothing dramatic or curious happened at this retreat. Given Modi’s ballistic campaigning and general pretence that his government is different from all regimes independent India has seen (after all, ‘nothing’ happened in 60 years), the media was probably looking for some dramatic departures, some important disjunctions from the UPA policy framework on education.

What we got instead was smooth continuity, informed by a mindless technocracy, as far as the higher education policy is concerned.

From the point of view of the future of our higher education, this continuity of perspective is very important. Departures would, of course, have been interesting, but continuity is curious, to say the least. One recalls the great detective who reminded Inspector Gregory, while working on ‘The silver Blaze’ case, that the fact that the dog did nothing in the night-time was in fact the curious incident.

The continuity of UPA and NDA policies in many areas is becoming increasingly clear. In case of education the consensus amongst the ‘forward looking’ ruling elite had become clear decades ago when the nomenclature of the ministry was changed from education to HRD. Now, the state is not looking at educating its citizens, it is not investing in human individuals; rather it is investing in a resource which happens to be human.

The liberal framework gave way to the managerial one even without a whimper in political circles, just as education was sought to be reduced to science, technology and management. In fact, there is little scope in such an approach even for science in its fundamental sense. There is hardly any enthusiastic encouragement from the official side for fundamental and ‘non-pragmatic’ research in science. For the ruling elite, corporate bosses and most of the middle class these days, science is nothing but a euphemism for useful technology.

Another shared trait between the NGO-friendly, ‘inclusive’ UPA government and the ‘no-nonsense’ nationalist one under PM Modi is the obsession with controlling everything and propagating the great ideal of ‘one size fits all’, in the sphere of ‘human resource development’. The present minister, while paying lip service to the idea of autonomy of universities, still got a draft ‘single Act’ for all central universities circulated for ‘suggestions’. This Act is based on the recommendations of the Pathan committee, which was formed in 2013 (when Kapil Sibal was the HRD minister) with the clear mandate of suggesting ways of implementing the ministerial motto of ‘one size fits all’ and had recommended, inter alia, doing away with the office of chancellor, and having in its place a council of vice-chancellors headed by, no prizes for guessing, the minister for HRD! There is not even the veneer of autonomy here: the government must control all aspects of university life.

Another brain wave, ostensibly egalitarian and democratic (and common to UPA and NDA dispensations) is to have common admission and common curriculum for all the central universities in order to facilitate student and faculty mobility. Again, the idea of only technology and management being worthy of any serious consideration is implicit here. In the field of humanities and social sciences, it will be an extremely harmful step. Even in science, technology and management, the inclinations and orientations of various departments do and should influence their research programmes and priorities.

In social sciences and humanities, at any rate, interpretations matter a lot, and institutions of higher learning make their distinct mark by offering different interpretations to the same or similar data. This diversity of views and approaches enlivens the field of knowledge and enriches the collective wisdom of society. In education systems the world over, individual teachers are encouraged to offer new courses and identify new focus areas in the ongoing teaching programmes every semester. In contrast, our political and administrative bosses want 40 central universities to teach the same text, same poets, same set of research questions, same priorities to each and every student. If, by ‘common curriculum’, something else is meant, I would love to be enlightened.

Sibal also has to his credit the great idea of appointing vice-chancellors through advertisements and interviews. There is a world of difference between someone being nominated without having applied, and someone getting through after an interview. The supreme court has categorically stated that notwithstanding the funding from government, the relationship between the government and university professors and vice-chancellors is not that of master and servant. Under the guidance of Sibal, for the newly established central universities, the nomination method was replaced with selection method in order to make the master-servant point in a subtle psychological manner to be followed with legal steps in due course. Once the idea of a single act and a council headed by the minister, governing the matters of all central universities is put to practice, the Sibalian dream of ‘one size fits all’ would be happily realised. The gods of efficiency and good governance would have slain the demons of independent and critical research and teaching.

If she wants to reform education, Irani would do well to break from this Sibalian mould. Participating in a couple of TV debates about her suitability as the minister of HRD, as she does not possess higher degrees, I had made two points. First, in any democracy, ministers are supposed to provide direction and perspective, and this has nothing to do with higher degrees. In fact, the question of formal qualification is more pertinent in the context of high-level bureaucrats, i.e., IAS officers, who having passed one examination in life supposedly acquire expertise on everything from agricultural policy to rocketry to the finer points of pedagogy. Incidentally, in the mid 1950s, the administration in the education ministry was headed by a professor. Maulana Azad, as education minister, had appointed the distinguished academic Prof. Humayun Kabir as education secretary. It would be interesting to know when and how the IAS lobby captured this position. Irani may look at the idea of reviving the practice of having experts run higher education in the country.

The second point was about the standards of education. I believe that no human being can create more drift and confusion in our education system than what has been achieved by US-trained top-class ‘intellectuals’ under the benign guidance of Manmohan Singh. Irani can only take things in a better direction, provided she chooses to act differently and see through the designs of control-freak bureaucrats.

But, given the convergence of thinking on higher education between UPA and NDA as reflected during the Chandigarh retreat, one is probably asking for the moon.

The story appeared in November 1-15, 2014 issue of Governance Now.

Education & teaching in an de-intellectualised and obedient society – Interview with Apoorvanand

November 11, 2014 by Nasheman

Since the new government has come to power, there are continuous attacks on education in order to saffronize it. The history of the national movement is being re-written to manufacture an RSS role, which did not exist in the struggles against British rule. Dinanath Batra’s books, already a part of the Gujarat curriculum, are sought now to be introduced at the national level. He is same Dinanath Batra, from whose books, Modi drew “inspiration” to prove that in Mahabharata times, India had discovered genetic engineering and plastic surgery! Subramanian Swami wants book burning, starting with books of secular historians like Romila Thapar. RSS leaders have recently met HRD Minister Smriti Irani to discuss revision of text books. Education is being used as a tool to create communal divide.

Newsclick interviews Professor Apoorvanand of Delhi University on this communal attack on Indian history and education.

Why we need public intellectuals

November 1, 2014 by Nasheman

by Praful Bidwai

When Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani said of the Indian media during the Emergency that “when asked to bend, they crawled”, he received widespread praise from the intelligentsia and even from people opposed to the BJP’s ideology – because he spoke the truth.

Today, not just the media, but leaders from the fields of education, culture, healthcare and law, are crawling before the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh without even being asked to bend. They include the University Grants Commission chairman, Delhi University vice-chancellor, All-India Institute of Medical Sciences director, and numerous serving and former bureaucrats.

These were among the 60 luminaries who met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat over lunch in Delhi on October 12 at his invitation. Although many of them said they went “only to listen”, media reports suggest that some were ingratiating themselves to the unelected head of an organisation which spawned the BJP – an act unworthy of their positions and democratic propriety.

This is happening when the RSS, BJP and their affiliates have declared their intention to radically reorganise educational curricula along Hindutva lines, including the purging of textbooks of secularist ‘misrepresentations’. Parveen Sinclair, the upright director of the National Council for Educational Research and Training, was forced to resign.

Delhi University’s Sanskrit department, which has no expertise in history, has begun a campaign demanding that history textbooks show that the Aryans were indigenous to India, and not migrants, as most historians believe.

Articles are appearing in the mainstream media glorifying a fiction called ‘Vedic mathematics”’, based on a 1965 book by Bharati Krishna Tirtha, which fails to provide evidence that the sutras (formulas/algorithms) he cites exist in the Vedas. (For a scientific refutation of these claims, see http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/nothing-vedic-in-vedic-maths/article6373689.ece)

Meanwhile, calls for banning/burning books that advance non-Hindutva views have become strident. Fanatics are rampaging through colleges, bookshops, theatres, art galleries and cinema-halls, baying for punishment to dissidents. Everything from political belief, cultural identity to personal morality is being targeted in hysterical campaigns demanding conformity; dissenters are branded ‘un-Indian’.

Intolerance for the right to dissent, palpable in all regions, is now backed by the BJP. This is not to exonerate other parties, including the Congress, regional outfits, or even the Left, which too don’t fully respect the right to dissent.

However, they are not as instinctively, viscerally, and viciously anti-dissent as the BJP/Sangh Parivar, which regards dissent as ‘betrayal’ which must be snuffed out. This is in keeping with the profoundly undemocratic culture of the RSS, which long ago dispensed with the “cumbersome clap-trap of internal democracy” and opted for Ek-Chalak-Anuvartitva (unquestioningly following a single leader, or the Fuehrer Principle).

Yet, the right to differ, dissent, and express dissenting views is at the core not just of democracy – without which it would be impoverished into a majoritarian despotic system – but of knowledge production itself. Without the right to dissent, there can be no progress in the sciences, whether natural or social, and no generation of new knowledge and its dissemination in society through education, dialogue and public debate.

This is a theme that Professor Romila Thapar, one of India’s greatest historians and internationally respected scholars, emphasised in her Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture on October 26 in Delhi. This was the third lecture in the series: the others were delivered by economist-philosopher Amartya Sen and eminent British historian EJ Hobsbawm.

The theme of dissent couldn’t have been more appropriate for the memorial lecture. Chakravartty was a doyen among India’s post-Independence journalists, who edited the weekly Mainstream. He was for long a member of the Communist Party of India. Yet, he sharply criticised the Emergency – which the CPI then backed – and had to shut down the publication temporarily.

Thapar’s lecture was a tour de force covering many epochs and continents. It was at once a rigorous, scholarly analysis of the evolution of critical intellectual traditions over more than 2,000 years, and a passionate appeal to reason, scepticism and the spirit of questioning authority.

Thapar traced the relationship between dissidence and science from Socrates and Galileo in the west to the Buddha and Charvaka schools in India, and showed that certain principles, precepts and methods of science were common to all civilisations, from Athens and Arabia, to India and China. In our part of the world, we had the Buddha espousing agnosticism, and many materialist schools of thought which questioned karma, afterlife and the immortality of the atman (soul), and spurned various Vedic rituals.

If Aryabhatta hadn’t opposed contemporary royal astrologers, he wouldn’t have been able to show – a thousand years before Galileo – that the earth goes around the Sun. The key to this lay in the primacy he gave to logic and rationality, as distinct from faith and religious dogma. The method was to postulate a hypothesis linking observed phenomena to their causes, and test it through experiments; the results would be tested against future observations and refined till a scientific law was established.

Through her panoramic survey Professor Thapar showed the continuity of rational thinking and logical explanation across different countries and periods, which was invariably opposed by religious orthodoxy. Buddhist ideas were described in Brahminical orthodoxy as “delusional”, and a range of different schools like Charvakas, Ajivikas, atheists, materialists and rationalists, were all lumped into “one category – nastikas”, because they questioned the Vedas as “divinely revealed”.

Thapar says this reminds her of “the Hindutvavadis of today for whom anyone and everyone who does not support them, are Marxists!”

Numerous streams of thought coexisted in ancient and medieval India. Some “questioned beliefs and practices upheld by religious authorities”. Among them were women, such as “Andal, Akka Mahadevi and Mira, flouting caste norms, who were listened to attentively by people at large…” Amir Khusro is best known as a poet and composer, but he also studied astronomy; his heliocentric universe “distanced him from orthodox Islam”.

Later came social reformers like Ram Mohun Roy, Phule, Periyar, Shahu Maharaj, Syed Ahmed Khan and Ambedkar, who developed modern-liberal progressive values. Indian society has since been undergoing major changes, which need “insightful ways of understanding” so that social and economic conditions can be related to culture, politics and other phenomena. Public intellectuals are needed to explore these connections and “to articulate the traditions of rational thought in our intellectual heritage.”

As Thapar reminds us, there are “many specialists in various professions, but many among them are unconcerned with the world beyond their own specialisation.” These professionals are not identical with public intellectuals. “There are many more academics, for instance, than existed before. But it seems that most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free thought.”

Public intellectuals must take positions fiercely independent of those in power, must be seen as autonomous, and question received wisdom. In addition to possessing an acknowledged professional status, they must have a concern for “what constitute the rights of citizens” and particularly “issues of social justice”; and must be ready “to raise these matters as public policy”.

Thapar ends with an analysis of why public intellectuals are in decline in India and what they can do to become more assertive and effective. She didn’t speak a day too soon. (A recording of her talk is available for non-commercial use at http://sacw.net/article9874.html)

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and rights activist based in Delhi.

Academics must question more, intellectuals must to resist assault on liberal thought: Romila Thapar

November 1, 2014 by Nasheman

by Pheroze L. Vincent, The Hindu

Historian Romila Thapar asked a full house of Delhi’s intelligentsia on Sunday why changes in syllabi and objections to books were not being challenged.

Prof. Thapar was delivering the third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture here on Sunday, titled ‘To Question or not to Question: That is the Question.”

“There are more academics in existence than ever before but most prefer not to confront authority even if it debars the path of free thinking. Is this because they wish to pursue knowledge undisturbed or because they are ready to discard knowledge, should authority require them to do so,” the eminent historian asked.

Tracing the lineage of the modern public intellectual to Shamanic philosophers of ancient India, Prof. Thapar said the non-Brahminical thinkers of ancient India were branded as Nastikas or non-believers. “I am reminded of the present day where if you don’t accept what Hindutva teaches, you’re all branded together as Marxists,” she added.

“Public intellectuals, playing a discernible role, are needed for such explorations as also to articulate the traditions of rational thought in our intellectual heritage. This is currently being systematically eroded,” she explained.

Prof. Thapar stressed that intellectuals were especially needed to speak out against the denial of civil rights and the events of genocide. “The combination of drawing upon wide professional respect, together with concern for society can sometimes establish the moral authority of a person and ensure public support.”

However she said academics and experts shied away from questioning the powers of the day.

Why no reaction?

“This is evident from the ease with which books are banned and pulped or demands made that they be burned and syllabi changed under religious and political pressure or the intervention of the state. Why do such actions provoke so little reaction from academics, professionals and others among us who are interested in the outcome of these actions? The obvious answer is the fear of the instigators — who are persons with the backing of political authority,” Prof. Thapar said.

“When it comes to religious identities and their politics, we witness hate campaigns based on absurd fantasies about specific religions and we no longer confront them frontally. Such questioning means being critical of organisations and institutions that claim a religious intention but use their authority for non-religious purposes,” she said.

Prof. Thapar rued the fact that not only were public intellectuals missing from the front lines of defending liberal values, but also alleged a deliberate conspiracy to enforce what she termed a “Lowest Common Denominator” education.

“It is not that we are bereft of people who can think autonomously and ask relevant questions. But frequently where there should be voices, there is silence. Are we all being co-opted too easily by the comforts of conforming,” she asked.

This is the full audio of the Third Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial lecture delivered by Professor Romila Thapar. This audio recording was made in public interest by South Asia Citizens Web and may be used freely for non commercial use.