While opposing the draft curriculum released by the University Grants Commission (UGC) last month, a panel constituted by the Kerala government flagged the “imposition of ideologically driven content under the guise of Indian knowledge system”, outdated content and violation of academic autonomy. On the basis of the panel’s report submitted earlier this month, the Kerala government announced this week that it had rejected the draft curriculum and communicated its decision to the UGC. The UGC had released the curriculum framework for nine subjects last month and called for comments on them. The Kerala government panel, headed by economist Prabhat Patnaik, called for a rethink of the proposed curriculum framework’s very premise, instead of only making corrections. The report, made public Thursday, said the UGC’s draft learning outcomes-based curriculum framework fails to “respect the standards of intellectual rigour, disciplinary integrity, and academic autonomy that Universities in the State are legally mandated.” The report said the curriculum frameworks violate the autonomy of universities to a degree that “does not exist in any major country of the world” and is “unprecedented even in our own country”. It “arrogates to the UGC, and a group of hand-picked experts by it, the power to dictate the contents of the syllabi in every discipline to the entire academic community of the country.” The panel included Rajan Gurukkal, Vice Chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council; historian Romila Thapar who was a special invitee; NJ Rao, retired professor at the Indian Institute of Science; and Vani Kesari, Director of the Prof N R Madhava Menon Interdisciplinary Centre for Research Ethics and Protocols, at CUSAT, Kochi, among others. It referred to the proposed curriculum as “an admixture of material” from textbooks used in British and American universities, of writings that underplay the exploitative role of imperialism in the history of our society, and “of a Hindu-exclusivist perception of the Indian knowledge system.” It adds “a dash of Hindutva-inspired smugness and self-satisfaction under the guise of Indian knowledge system,” the panel said. It added that the syllabi are missing the requirement of what university syllabi should do in India — including inculcating in students a recognition of the contributions “made to the Indian society by diverse ethnic, caste and religious groups”. It said the draft becomes even more objectionable when Indian contributions are made synonymous with Hindu contributions. “The Buddhist and Islamic contributions for instance are not included in the syllabi, nor are the interactions between Arab scholars and Indian ones that led to the diffusion of Indian ideas across the world,” the report stated. The report quoted Thapar as saying: “I would also question the general references in various situations to something which educational bodies of the current times refer to as “the Indian Knowledge System”. None of them have defined what they mean by this, nor has there been any analytical writing about it.” “So. It will again be anything and everything that anyone in authority wishes to see taught. It has also been quite correctly said that however one defines it, it cannot be treated as a solely Hindu contribution,” she added.
