Stating that the current education system has led to loss of the “treasure and techniques of our knowledge, creation and application”, RSS mouthpiece Organiser has suggested that the system should be “Indianised”. “In a massive country like India, debating discussing, fine-tuning and then executing with suitable customisation is necessary. It may take some time but meanwhile we need to develop consensus about the need for fundamental change in our approach towards education in terms of structure and content,” says an editorial titled “Transforming Education” in the latest issue of the weekly. Claiming that the British education was a “design” to uproot Indians from their traditional knowledge system, it says: “The system they created was mainly to run the state machinery as per their convenience. The corollary of this British legacy is, we lost the treasure and techniques of our knowledge, creation and application.” [related-post] According to the editorial, the Indian education system is “neither here nor there”. As a result, the graduates are “not productive in applied world” and the high performing professionals are “socially and morally disconnected.” “People losing their professional and intellectual monopoly may create ruckus, but Indianising education based on our socio-cultural roots is the only way to transform India’s population into a human development hub,” it says, slamming those who negate Indianisation with allegations of “saffronisation”. “The likes of Ramachandra Guha or Romila Thapar who talked about ‘change’ but benefited from the status quo are the people who coined and abused the term ‘saffronisation’. Without getting into their malicious intentions, one needs to take an objective stand on connecting education to Indian realities,” it says. The weekly has also praised HRD Minister Smriti Irani’s “outreach” on the “process of democratisation of Indian education”, saying such an effort comes after a long hiatus.
