Author: K R Malkani
Publication: The Hindustan
Times
Date: November 29, 2001
Recently, the NCERT produced the
National Curriculum Framework for School Education. Here was, in the words
of NCERT Director J.S. Rajput, "the first ever honest attempt to modernise
education by upholding not only the deepest but forgotten values of Indian
civilisation, but also the sagely advice of the founding fathers of our
nation".
But without waiting for the curriculum
to be actually developed, some friends promptly dubbed the changes as 'saffronisation'
and even rubbished it as 'Talibanisation'.
Incidentally, why should anybody
be allergic to saffron? It is a colour sacred not only to Indians but also
to Arabs. The Congress Flag Committee had unanimously recommended a saffron
flag in place of the tricolour in 1931. And its members included Nehru,
Patel and Azad.
It is good to note that former Justice
V.R. Krishna Iyer, who had earlier associated himself with the critics,
has in a letter to the HRD minister said, "I drop my criticism of the NCERT
stand."
The Congress chief minister of Kerala,
A.K. Antony, has condemned the misuse of the term 'saffronisation' and
said, "Saffron is a symbol of Indianness." He added: "By using and misusing
the word off and on, we are hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus."
Congress Chief Minister of Madhya
Pradesh, Digvijay Singh, has said that astrology is a science and there
is nothing wrong in teaching it. And he is an engineer by training and
profession.
Objection has been taken to 'Vedic
mathematics'. Now there is no mathematics as such in any Veda. But all
ancient mathematics is being called 'Vedic mathematics' for the sake of
convenience. Here is a country that developed the concepts of zero, the
decimal system and much else besides. All that the NCERT document says
is that "the students may be encouraged to enhance their computational
skills by the use of Vedic mathematics". Why should anyone object to that?
After all, education is a concurrent subject in the Constitution and states
can take a different line on educational matters.
The West Bengal government had rejected
the National Policy of Education developed in the Eighties; and, for years,
they had refused to have any Navodaya School. (NCERT decisions are recommendatory
and not mandatory. NCERT books are optional, not compulsory.) That being
so, why should anybody object to anybody else exploring ancient sciences?
The same with astrology. Here is
a subject difficult to believe and even more difficult to disbelieve. There
are people who go to the ridiculous length of being guided in everything
by the stars. (In Tamil Nadu, everything - including the courts - comes
to a standstill during 'Rahu kaalam'.) But when we consider that the sun
and the moon churn up whole oceans and cause tidal waves, one begins to
wonder whether they would not have some influence on life on earth.
Life is full of uncertainties. Man
has always wanted - and tried - to know the future. From Alexander to Napoleon
to Ronald Reagan, leaders have consulted astrologers and soothsayers. As
Shakespeare put it in the mouth of Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven
and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your (secular and scientific)
philosophy." Even Motilal Nehru used to show his son's horoscope to pandits.
Decades ago, I used to see a pandit,
complete with tilak and turban and even an artificial beard sitting on
the footpath, predicting things for passersby. In the evening, he would
wrap up his beard and things and go home. Would it not be better to have
regular courses in astrology so that bogus astrologers do not bring a bad
name to astrology?
The UGC has suggested astrology
as a "discipline which lets us know the events happening in human life
and in the universe on time scale". On a lighter note, astrology can, perhaps,
earn us more employment and money in the West than information technology.
We teach meteorology. How accurate is it? Is it any more accurate than
astrology?
The other day, a noted scientist
working with the World Seismic Safety Initiative, predicted that "one lakh
people might lose their lives" in an earthquake in Delhi. He did not say
when. We teach seismology; but is seismology more accurate than astrology?
The astrologers at least tell you nice things; seismologists etc. tell
you only about impending tragedies.
A third whipping boy of our secular
friends is Sanskrit. Sanskrit, they say, is dead. All right, but why then
do they worry about something that is dead? They fear that Sanskrit is
very much alive in itself and through other Indian and European languages.
Why, even Nehru said: "If I was
asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her
greatest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Sanskrit
language and literature and all that it contains. This is a magnificent
inheritance, and so long as this endures and influences the life of our
people, so long will the basic genius of India continue."
Even Dr Ambedkar was all for Sanskrit.
In September 1949, along with B.V. Keskar, T.T.K. Durgabai, Naziruddin
and other MPs, he gave notice of an amendment to the Draft Constitution
which read: "Official language of the Union shall be Sanskrit." How it
did not materialise is another story.
Recently, the Supreme Court upheld
the primacy of Sanskrit. It held that "in view of the importance of Sanskrit
for nurturing our cultural heritage, making of Sanskrit alone as an elective
subject, while not conceding this status to Arabic and/or Persian, would
not in any way militate against the basic tenet of secularism," (Justices
Kuldip Singh and Hansaria, October 4, 1994).
The real fear of these friends is
that this HRD programme will revive and strengthen Indian culture. They
have little understanding and no appreciation of this culture. But culture
- which includes religion - is the soul of a nation. And every nation must
protect and promote its culture. That is what value education is all about.
Life for mankind, said Freud, is
hard to endure. It is religion that humanises nature and with that "much
is already won". Religion is an inescapable part of being human. Life is
un-navigable without the mast, sail and flag of religion.
Some people think that science,
technology and computers are everything. They are not. Jerry Mander rightly
warns that "all technologies should be presumed to be guilty until proved
innocent". He points out (In the Absence of the Sacred) that millions of
gallons of carcinogenic computers seep into the soil and water and poison
them. Thanks to chemicalised foods and carcinogenic computers, today 30
per cent of American males are infertile; 30 years ago it was only half
a per cent (Miracles Do Happen by Normal Shealy).
In this bewildering situation of
a "holiness gap" only belief in god can strengthen man. As Davis Kingsley
puts it, "Religion gives the individual a sense of identity with the distant
past and the limitless future. It expands his ego by making his spirit
significant for the universe and the universe significant for him."
Even science is rooted in spirituality.
Isaac Newton invented calculus and developed his theory of gravity at the
age of 23, during the plague ridden years of 1655 and 1666. Columbia University
historian Lynn Thorndyke compared Newton's method of discovery to "that
of a medium coming out of a trance". Lord Maynard Kenyes, speaking at the
tercentenary of Newton in 1947, said, "His deepest instincts were occult,
esoteric, semantic. with a profound shrinking from the world."
Einstein was a school drop-out who
worked in a patent office because no university would have him. And yet,
in an inexplicable burst of genius which can only be described as supra-mental,
he suddenly produced in one year, 1905, six papers that created the theory
of relativity and quantum physics.
Edison held over one thousand patents
including that of the electric bulb, phonograph and motions-picture projector.
The Search magazine wrote that "much of what he put down on paper originated
from a higher source, and that he was simply a vehicle or channel through
which this information could flow freely".
This is not the first time that
our secular friends have objected to the BJP approach to education policy.
A few years back, they had objected to some improvements in school history
texts in UP and MP. A fitting reply came from N.J. Nanporia, veteran journalist:
"The BJP is striving to do in the states it rules what the nation as a
whole should have done immediately after Independence. Only a well-defined
sense of national identity can provide the kind of vitality and motivation
a nation needs. In calling for a national ideology, the BJP has struck
the right note.
"India is an ancient civilisation
that wrested a sense of nationalism in response to the British. It has
yet to discover an ideology of its own. And that is not something a computer
can do for us." I say, Amen.
(The writer is a senior BJP leader
and ideologue)
