Under the saffron

At the height of the roiling controversy over the 8216;saffronisation8217; of education, amid fevered speculation over the identity of the...

At the height of the roiling controversy over the 8216;saffronisation8217; of education, amid fevered speculation over the identity of the new textbook writers, NCERT bosses jealously guarded their names, particularly of those writing the history texts. It turns out they had good reasons to be secretive. A report in this paper has revealed that the new Class XII text on world history abounds in paragraphs of the lifted kind. They have been freely borrowed, give or take a word, from a seminal work on the subject, written in America. More vindication, certainly, for those who have always maintained that the furore over the ideological colour of education skims over what must be the central point of any such discussion 8212; the quality of education. They argued that in the ways in which it was being framed, the debate was a largely spurious one. Except, even they mustn8217;t have bargained for that description turning out to have been so terribly apt.

So this was how the guardians of Brahminical Hinduism were setting about their task of correcting a perceived historical bias 8212; riding on pilfered scholarship. These, then, were their tools 8212; of foreign origin. The brandishers of swadeshi, who loudly proclaimed their intent to revive a 8216;8216;healthy nationalistic spirit8217;8217; gone missing, through the National Curriculum Framework for School Education, may have had nothing more to guide them but their prejudice. So Messrs Anwarul Haque, Himansu Patnaik and Pratyusa Mandal had to look to a text authored by US scholars for inspiration and more. Going by their neat getaway 8212; NCERT director J.S. Rajput hailed their textbook as a 8216;8216;marvel of 21st century scholarship8217;8217; 8212; it is only natural to wonder how many more such scandals lie scattered in the new texts, waiting to be exposed by the media.

It has been conceded that Murli Manohar Joshi and his warriors may have a point. The textbooks that have been purveyed as objective so far may have carried a deeply embedded perspective. But before they sally forth to do battle, Joshi and Co. are best advised to check if they have the most elementary skills in their arsenal. But even that can wait. First, bring the plagiarists to book.