Mapping methods in 145;madness146;

The Joshi think tank suggests the minister will claim India has 8216;8216;adopted a new curriculum framework which also emphasises value education and equal respect for all religions. 8217;8217; And this claim comes in the wake of a number of historians saying the Islamic rule in India, including that of the Mughals, has not been given the kind of space it deserved in school text books.

Whenever in the company of foreign academics, Joshi has been adopting this line of 8216;8216;tolerance towards civilisational diversity8217;8217; for sometime now. Though his aides won8217;t explain, the phrase hints at two different strands of thought. In the Indian context, it can mean 8216;8216;secularism8217;8217;. In the international context, especially after 9/11, it may imply that the level of tolerance in Islamic countries towards the West should go up and vice-versa.

In July, a resolution adopted at an international conference that the HRD Ministry co-hosted with UNESCO had a sentence which read, 8216;8216;8230;. a common human community unites all civilisations and allows for celebration of the variegated splendour of the highest attainment of 8230; civilisational diversity.8217;8217; A bit pompous may be, but some would suggest that since 2001 Joshi is networking well with international organisations with limited funds like the UNESCO and not so much with richer donor agencies like the World Bank or the EU which apply conditions to the money they hand over. Here, Joshi puts on the mantle of the statesman-academic.

In one of his speeches tomorrow, Joshi will insist that obstacles 8216;8216;engendered by ignorance 8230;. can best be removed by a new mode of awareness and action that promotes diversity, interchange, assimilation, synthesis and enrichment. He will use the UNESCO forum to propagate the need of understanding the richness of 8216;8216;multi-religious culture8217;8217; of the Indian Ocean region. 8216;8216;The countries of this region are veritable storehouses of diverse cultural and intangible heritage some of which is threatened with extinction,8217;8217; he will say. And he is not excluding Islam.

Joshi goes to stress that his ministry was doing everything to incorporate 8216;8216;secularism, democracy, human rights, responsibilities and respect for diversities and pluralism8217;8217; in the curriculum. His distinguished foreign audience would hear this is the time for adherence to 8216;8216;the law of varied expression rather than uniform monotone.8217;8217;