Save education from bigots

We have made rapid strides in the realm of higher education, but the progress in basic education has been unsatisfactory. Many goals set out at the time of Independence have yet to be realised. The Constitution laid down that within a period of 10 years thereshould be universal, free and compulsory education for all children until the age of 14 years, but it is manifestly beyond our capacity to fulfill this directive principle for years to come. The growing gap between higher education and elementary education led the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to argue that the inequalities in education in India are, in fact, a reflection of inequalities of economic and social powers of different groups. Finally, education planners had hoped that education would help to draw out the best in child and man — body, mind and spirit. This too has not been translated into practice as is demonstrated by the crisis faced by our education system. Some of these areas require attention and prompt remedial measures.

Instead, politicians and bureaucrats dissipate their energies raking up fresh controversies. The task of placing a fragile education system on a sound footing is periodically deferred in response to the changing political climate. Scores of reports and recommendations,drafted by eminent educationists, are willfully ignored. Even if they are now rescued from the dusty shelves, they will make little sense unless we have some conception of the kind of citizen we wish to produce, before we form any definite opinion as to the education we consider best. Appropriately enough, Gandhi wrote the following in the context of his reflections on the dowry system: There is something radically wrong in the system of education that fails to arm girls and boys to fight against social or other evils. That education alone is of value which draws out the faculties of a student so as to enable him or her to solve correctly the problems of life in every department.

Education, as the Mahatma’s comment illustrates, concerned the nationalist leaders and was integral to their vision of transforming India as a whole. Gandhi, for one, mooted a scheme known as Basic Education to counter the ill-effects of the Western-style education which produced generations of students whose main ambition was toobtain a secure job. The Wardha scheme enshrined many of the ideals and innovations the Mahatma had worked out.Interestingly enough, the scheme omitted, presumably with Gandhi’s approval, any provision for formal religious instruction, leaving this to parents.

Though a devout Hindu, he did not want his own world-view to be reflected in the curriculum. Education was, after all, the instrument to unite people and not to widen areas of religio-cultural conflicts. His overriding concern in public life was to weld different castes and communities into a coherent whole so as to create a strong and unified nation. And his real strength lay in not harbouring bitterness or hatred for anyone. Jawaharlal Nehru, who was sensitive to the Gandhian legacy, laid stress on providing a moral and ethical tone to education.

Arguing that being a secular state did not imply any disregard for moral values or India’s rich spiritual heritage, he desired an ethical content in instruction imparted in schools and colleges. He didnot, however, want this to be done without reference to any particular religion. This message, which captured the secular character of the liberation struggle, was not lost on the framers of the Constitution. They recognised, even in the aftermath of Partition, the intrinsic connections between democracy, multiculturalism and the obligation to protect minority rights.

Thus Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution summed up the position of the minority groups and delineated, howsoever ambiguously, their relationship with the secular state. Amending such provisions would militate against the tone and tenor of the Constitution, raise cultural and religious fears, alienate the minorities and make them more susceptible to communal propaganda.

A national government needs to address itself to the challenge of national reconstruction and not reduce itself to being an ideologue of a particular viewpoint. It must endeavour to evolve and sustain a consensus around symbols of national unity and national regenerationand avoid messing around with sensitive religious and cultural suspectibilities. The issue is not the appeasement of minorities, which should at any rate be eschewed. What is at stake is the future of secular democracy and the preservation of our multicultural inheritance. The recent controversies around culture, nationalism and history-writing are of a complex nature and cannot be resolved through polemical exchanges or the denigration of individuals.

Men who talk of Hindu culture, Nehru told the Nagpur University students in 1950, miss the basic human culture and show a narrow, barren and limited outlook on life. They are completely against the assimilating and absorbing nature of India’s ancient and glorious culture. He was surprised that, in the complicated and fascinated world of today, with a hundred varieties of principles and experiences, there were people talking in the narrowest, in the most limited way of nationalism and of India. “Anybody will tell you that India has shown an amazing capacityto assimilate and absorb other ideas. A people who can do so must have inner strength provided, of course, they are not swept away by any poisonous wind that blows”. But, as Nehru told the same audience, keep your windows and doors of your mind always open. Let all winds from the four corners of the earth blow in to refresh your mind, to give you ideas, to strengthen you… In other words, Nehru envisaged that a change in the political regime would not jettison the consensus reached in the Constituent Assembly on democracy, secularism and the educational and religious rights of the minorities. The need for that consensus to survive is greater now than ever before.