THE HINDU EDITORIAL-
MARCH, 30, 2022
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Without
sufficient cause Unwarranted arrests at behest of
majoritarian outfits dent the country’s image The recent arrest of a 25-year-old
Muslim woman at Mudhol in Bagalkot district of Karnataka for an innocuous
message on Pakistan’s Republic Day is yet another instance of the perverse
misuse of the law by authorities. If it was the provision relating to sedition
that was invoked mindlessly in the past, including once for a play enacted by
primary schoolchildren, the latest one involves an alleged attempt at
creating enmity among different groups. Kuthma Sheikh was granted bail on the
same day of her arrest, but the incident is no less disconcerting as it
indicates the ease with which members of the minority community can be
arrested without sufficient cause, often at the behest of overzealous
activists with a disproportionate clout in the Administration. In this case,
the madrassa student had said, “May God bless every nation with peace, unity
and harmony” on March 23, but a local Hindu activist complained to the police
that she was creating enmity among communities by wishing people on Pakistan
Day. With unsurprising promptitude, the police booked her under penal
sections relating to promoting enmity between different groups. As to how her
wishes would have attracted wither Section 153A or 505(2) of the IPC is
something only the police can explain. The district police have claimed that
the arrest was aimed at preserving peace and maintaining order, but it is
quite apparent that they acted in a cavalier manner without ascertaining
whether there was any substance in the complaint.
Ever since a controversy broke out over girl students wearing the
hijab, there seems to be a tendency among right-wing groups to foment trouble
targeted at Muslims. These groups have called for a ban on Muslim traders and
vendors doing business as part of temple fairs. Even though the State
government is citing a law that prohibits non-Hindus from getting property in
the vicinity of the temple on lease, it is doubtful whether the rules cover
temporary stalls on special occasions. It is regrettable that the State
government is not doing enough to stem the impression that its administration
is hostile towards minorities. Unwarranted arrests, especially for trivial
reasons and on communally motivated complaints, result in unfair
incarceration, ruined lives and immensely delayed justice. For a regime that
takes strong exception to strident criticism about its human rights and
religious tolerance record, the Union government should be equally concerned
about the possible damage that such incidents may cause to its global image.
The Centre may not have anything to do with law and order, but it may have to
advise certain States to restrain the police from perfunctory use of the
power to arrest to please majoritarian groups and individuals. Centralizing
tests A common test as the sole determinant
of merit for admission is problematic The decision to conduct a Common
University Entrance Test (CUET) for admission in undergraduate programmes in
all University Grants Commission-funded Central Universities (CUs) from
2022-23 has triggered concerns. No doubt, the proposal is influenced by the
National Education Policy, which advocates common entrance examinations by
the National Testing Agency for undergraduate and graduate admissions and
fellowships. The concept as such is not alien to the CUs. Over a dozen CUs
admit students to undergraduate programmers using Central Universities Common
Entrance Test (CUCET) scores. The proposed CUET, in 13 languages, seeks to
make it mandatory for 45 CUs – there are 54 such institutions – to conduct
admissions using a single national level test score. This would spare
aspirants from taking multiple entrance tests and also eliminate unfair
advantage gained from disproportionate scores in class XII. Critics are
evidently viewing this development through the prism of the Narendra Modi
government’s obsession with pushing the ‘one nation, one standard’ maxim in
different sectors. But as early as 1984, the Madhuri R. Shah Committee,
looking into the working of CUs, recommended a national merit examination. In
the instant case, the UGC has clarified the existing scheme of reservations
in individual universities would not be disturbed.
Yet, the CUET may not qualify as a wholesome determinant of merit
given the educational and regional disparities in India. While a vast
majority study in State Boards, the test would be based on the NCERT
syllabus, followed largely in CBSE schools. The policy limits the Class XII
marks as a qualification benchmark and not a co-determinant of merit. With
the test being introduced just ahead of an admission season, students, whose
learning process was disrupted by COVID-19, may find it challenging.
Education Ministers from Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh have
flagged some legitimate concerns. In the North-east, the argument about the
test possibly affecting the interest of State domiciles to secure admission
in a university in the region cannot be ignored. There are genuine
apprehensions about CUET serving as a precursor to introducing a nationwide
entrance test for all undergraduate courses – the UGC has said all
institutions are free to use the test scores for admissions. It has been
sufficiently demonstrated that common entrance tests spawn the coaching
industry and induce cost-heavy hybrid courses from class VI onwards, creating
a divide between the haves and have-nots. The country has miles to go in
enabling access to entry-level higher education and bridging the gender and
economic gap in its university portals. In such circumstances, it needs to be
dispassionately examined if prescribing a single entrance test as a sole
determinant of merit, either for CUs or for the higher education system as a
whole, is pragmatic. |
What is wrong
with saffronising education The Vice-President of India arguing
for an overhaul of the Macaulay system of education is fine, but there are
challenges PETER RONALD DESOUZA The short answer to the question ‘what
is wrong with saffronising education?’ is ‘really nothing… well… except
that…’
In his address earlier this month at the inauguration of the South
Asian Institute of Peace and Reconciliation, on the Dev Sanskriti
Vishwavidyalaya campus in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, the Vice-President of India,
M. Venkaiah Naidu, argued for a major overhaul of the Macaulay system of
education which he rightly observed is both dominant in, and damaging to,
India. It produces in us a sense of inferiority, replaces our traditional
education in the bhashas with the alien curricula of the English,
gives us a colonial mindset, makes us ignorant of our heritage and, most of
all, and disconnects us from the rich body of ideas and philosophies that
constitute our ancient civilization. A resonance
earlier In making this claim, Mr. Venkaiah
Naidu has joined a stellar list of public persons who, over the decades, have
made a similar argument. Rabindranath Tagore, a moving force of the National
Education Movement in the early 1900s, fashioned an innovative nationalist
curriculum in Visva Bharati, the great university he established. Eminent
Indians such as Amartya Sen, Satyajit Ray, and Mahasweta Devi were educated
there. Further, K.C. Bhattacharya in his seminal lecture (October 1931),
‘Swaraj in Ideas’, also spoke of the enslavement of our minds by western
education which produced ‘shadow minds’ instead of ‘real minds’. This had to
be overcome. Abu-ur-Rashid Moulvi, even earlier in 188, in the Asiatic
Quarterly Review, argued for higher education in Punjab to be delinked
from Calcutta University because the university was exhibiting an
‘anglicizing tendency’ which would lead to the ‘denationalization of the
younger generation of Punjabis’. The creation of Punjab University, he hoped,
would resist such Anglicization since the literatures and sciences would now
be taught in the ‘vernaculars and classical languages’. Arguing for an Indian
system of education has, therefore, been an important part of the public
debate in India for over a century. Mr. Venkaiah Naidu was not the first. But
he is in good company.
He is right when he ascribes to the Macaulay system the production of
a sense of inferiority among us Indians. This is an idea common to other
anti-colonial thinkers such as Aime Cessaire and Frantz fanon. He is also
right when he warns against us becoming ‘mental cripples’, to use Tagore’s
term, because we imitate alien ideas and adopt them uncritically. His case of
the Macaulay system producing ‘amnesia and erasure’ is also persuasive as is
the fear of ‘denationalization’, an idea spoused by T.B. Cunha when he argued
against Portuguese colonialism. However, for us not to see Mr. Venkaiah
Naidu’s address as him to give us a road map of how to decolonize this
Macaulay system, make it more Indian. Honest saffronisation would primarily
require sincerity of intent since it would confront many conundrums and
challenges along the way. Let me indicate just a few. An inclusive list Let me begin with the first challenge.
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, whose knowledge of the depth and the quality of Indian
civilization is second to none (for which he was appointed as the spalding
professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University), recommended
in chapter eight of the 1949 report of the University Education Commission
(he was Chairman), that religious education (call it saffronisation) be
introduced in our universities. He suggested that the class day begin with a
few minutes of silent meditation and that students in the first-year degree
course be introduced to the lives of great thinkers such as ‘Gautama the
Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Jesus, Somkara, Ramanuja, Madhava,
Mohammad, Kabir, Nanak, Gandhi’. This is Dr. Radhakrishanan’s own list. It is very inclusive and shows the openness
of his curious mind. By including the founders of major religions in his
list, Radhakrishnan was affirming their value for an Indian education. Would
Mr. Venkaiah Naidu’s saffronisation be similarly open-minded? About diverse
narratives His inclusive list leads to the larger
question that saffronisation would have to address. Call it the second
challenge. It would need to decide which themes and topics should be included
and which excluded in such a saffron education. For example would A.K.
Ramanujan’s essay ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’ be included? If one really wants
to overcome the amnesia of a Macaulay education, as Mr. Venkaiah Naidu
suggests, to ‘feel proud of our heritage’, then Ramanujan’s essay would have
to be included. Ramanujan’s scholarship on the folk tales of India, just like
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, has few equals. His essay celebrates the rich
performative and narrative practices of the living epic, the Ramayana. Would
saffronisation accept this diversity of narratives? Would it smile at the
idea, in one of the performances he describes, of Sita berating Ram who was
advising her not to come to the forest, by asking him whether he has seen any
performances where Sita does not accompany Ram? Is such philosophical
playfulness allowed, if not encouraged? How we answer this important question
of inclusion will depend on how we position ourselves on India’s cultural
diversity.
This leads to the third challenge. Would the model for recovery and
reconstruction of India’s ancient culture, which is what saffronisation does,
be that of Dinanath Batra who in a long letter to Smriti Irani, when she was
HRD (Education) Minister, set it out, or would it be that of D.P.
Chattopadhyaya’s Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture
(PHISPC) which has already published several volumes of India’s intellectual
achievements? The former espouses Vidya Bharati’s project of cultural
assimilation, a thin but toxic agenda, while the latter is a substantive philosophical
response to Macaulay, who, had he read the PHISPC volumes would not have the
temerity to write, in his 1835 ‘Minute on Education’, that a ‘single shelf of
a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and
Arabia’. On Indianisation So does Mr. Venkaiah Naidu’s
saffronisation side with Dinanath Batra or D.P. Chattopadhyaya? If by
saffronisation Mr. Venkaiah Naidu really means Indianisation, it would
include both the orthodox and the heterodox traditions of India, the
Brahmanical schools and their Buddhist and Jaina challenges. It would include
the great architectural practices of the Mughals well as the Sufi and Bhakti
movements.
Here, Indianisation would have many colours besides saffron. Moving to science Moving from the humanities and social
sciences, to the STEM educational stream, i.e., Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics, then what would Indianisation entail? Would it
just involve the simple task of translating the best science textbooks of the
world into the various Indian languages, as they do in Japan, since
scientific knowledge is universal? Or would it mean advocating some crazy
theories as those propounded at the 106th Indian Science Congress
in January 2019 where, it was claimed, that we in India were making test tube
babies thousands of years ago and that Albert Einstein did not understand
relativity. Indianisation must decide if science is only a western product, or
is universal. Is Mr. Venkaiah Naidu suggesting that there is a distinctive
Indian science? After all this STEM proficiency in India, a product of
Macaulay’s system of education has produced the Nadellas and Pichais of the
world. Or am I holding the wrong STEM?
And, finally, the paradox. Does saffronisation endorse the decision of
the vice-chancellor to permanently station a Central Industrial Security
Force camp inside Visva Bharati, the only university in India that has
established a nationalist curriculum? The vice-chancellor did this because of
student protests. The Government of India supported him. If his conception of
saffronisation endorses this decision then, sad to say, Macaulay has
triumphed over Tagore. Macaulay may have designed the system of education for
Indian but he was also the author of the Indian Penal Code. We decry Macaulay
on education, rightly so, but (sadly) enthusiastically embrace Macaulay on
the Indian penal system. Bridging the bay
in quest of a stronger BIMSTEC The grouping has potential as a
natural platform for development cooperation in a rapidly changing
Indo-Pacific region RAJEEV RANJAN
CHATURVEDY Sri Lanka is gearing up to host the
Fifth Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic
Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Summit, now in its silver jubilee year (the summit is
being held in virtual/hybrid mode on March 30, and Sri Lanka is the current
BIMSTEC chair). This special occasion makes it imperative for BIMSTEC leaders
to reinforce their commitments and efforts in building the momentum of
collaborations in the Bay of Bengal region for the security and development
of all.
This summit is expected to build the required momentum of
collaborations among the member states – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar,
Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand – as there has been commendable teamwork among
them and a finalization of several agreements to enhance regional strategic
and economic integration. The unique ecology of BIMSTEC is witnessing
enriched political support and commitment from India.
Undoubtedly, BIMSTEC has special significance for India in a changing
mental map of the region. India has made the Bay of Bengal integral to
India’s ‘Neighborhood First’ and ‘Act East’ policies which can accelerate the
process of regional integration. BIMSTEC matters for India and the region. An area of
importance Finalizing the BIMSTEC Character;
BIMSTEC Master Plan for Transport Connectivity; BIMSTEC Convention on Mutual
Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters; BIMSTEC Technology Transfer Facility
(TTF); cooperation between diplomatic academies/training institutions; and a
template of Memorandum of Association for the future establishment of BIMSTEC
centres/entities present signs of optimisms as well as the comeback of the
Bay of Bengal as a new economic and strategic space.
Further, the economic and strategic significance of the Bay of Bengal
is growing rapidly with a re-emergence of the idea of the ‘Indo-Pacific’
region. This notion assumes that the growing economic, geopolitical and security
connections between the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean regions are
creating a shared strategic space. The Bay of Bengal is evolving as the
centre of the Indo-Pacific region again. The renewed focus has given a new
lease of life to the developmental efforts in the region, in particular
BIMSTEC.
As the BIMSTEC process turns 25 years, it is all set to make visible
progress through advancing concrete cooperation among the member states. They
have invested some fresh energy in the last couple of years to make BIMSTEC a
valuable institution for regional integration and collaboration. A bridge between
Asias BIMSTEC has huge potential as a
natural platform for development cooperation in a rapidly changing
geopolitical calculus and can leverage its unique position as a pivot in the
Indo-Pacific region. There has been tangible progress in BIMSTEC cooperation
in several areas that include security, counter-terrorism, intelligence
sharing, cyber-security and coastal security, and transport connectivity and
tourism, among others.
The growing value of BIMSTEC and its attempt to generate synergy
through collective efforts by member states can be understood, for three key
reasons. First, there is a greater appreciation of BIMSTEC’s potential due to
geographical contiguity, abundant natural and human resources, and rich
historical linkages and a cultural heritage for promoting deeper cooperation
in the region. Indeed, with a changed narrative and approach, the Bay of
Bengal has the potential to become the epicenter of the Indo-Pacific idea – a
place where the strategic interests of the major powers of East and South
Asia intersect. Political support and strong commitment from all member
countries are crucial in making BIMSTEC a dynamic and effective regional organization. Need for
connectivity Second, BIMSTEC serves as a bridge
between two major high-growth centres of Asia – South and Southeast Asia.
Connectivity is essential to develop a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable
Bay of Bengal region. Therefore, BIMSTEC needs to address two dimensions of
connectivity – one, upgrading and dovetailing national connectivity into a
regional road map; and two, development of both hard and soft
infrastructures.
The BIMSTEC Master Plan for Transport Connectivity will provide the
necessary boost to connectivity. There is growing involvement of educational
institutions, industries and business chambers through various forums and
conclaves which are helping to enhance cooperation in the areas of education,
trade and investments, information technology and communication among others.
Resisting the temptation to make lofty promises, the BIMSTEC leaders have
focused on priority areas through a concrete action plan on time. India’s role Third, the BIMSTEC Secretariat coordinates
monitors and facilitates the implementation of BIMSTEC activities and
programmes. The leaders must agree to strengthen the institutional capacity
of the BIMSTEC Secretariat. Approval of a charter for BIMSTEC during the
summit will further augment its visibility and stature in international fora.
Likewise, India has implemented its promise to set up a Centre for Bay of
Bengal Studies (CBS) at Nalanda University, Bihar for research on art,
culture and other subjects related to the Bay of Bengal. The quest for
economic growth and the development of the BIMSTEC region can be achieved
with single-minded focus and cooperation among the member countries. In this
endeavour, India has a key role in accelerating regional cooperation under
the BIMSTEC framework and in making it vibrant, stronger and result-oriented. |
