India: Modi government mulls new education policy, including making Vedic Maths compulsory

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Modi government mulls new education policy, including making Vedic Maths compulsory
Sunday, 8 March 2015 | Place: New Delhi | Agency: dna | From the print edition

by Rohinee Singh

In a recent meeting held at Bhopal, where academicians from various organisations were present, the idea of making Vedic mathematics compulsory was also brainstormed

As the government sets the ball rolling to create a New National Education Policy (NEP) after almost three decades, the right wing hindu organisations have started the consultation process for formulating their own suggestions for the HRD ministry.

A national language university for professional courses like medical and engineering, introducing history of mathematics in mathematics, giving more weightage to studying India history and doing away with English as a compulsory language at school. These suggestions have come in about a dozen of consultations the various academic bodies associated or affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The section has started their internal brain storming through a series of meetings taking place all over the country.

"We will give our inputs on the 33 themes put out by the HRD ministry.But we also have our own suggestions, which we will present to the ministry," said Atul Kothari, national co-convenor of Shiksha Bachao Andolan.

Kothari also explained that the need of the hour is to introduce value education with mathematics and sciences. "Today we teach our students the formulas given by the great mathematician S Ramanujam. But the anecdotes of his journey, his struggle and contribution to human kind beyond mathematics is never taught to our students. Teaching should be made holistic," suggests Kothari.

In a recent meeting held at Bhopal, where academicians from various organisations were present, the idea of making Vedic mathematics compulsory was also brainstormed. While the ideology have made peace with English being taught as a language, but they want it to remove its compulsory status. " We are not against teaching English. But it should not be a compulsory medium. We are in support of teaching in Indian languages which can be any regional language of the states," added another member associated with Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad.

The Hindu fundamentalist are also of the view that instead of teaching professional courses like medical, engineering and management in English language, these courses should also be taught in regional language. "In the new policy, we want one regional language university in every state. We shall give that in our proposal to the ministry," added Kothari.

Massive revision of the history syllabus is also one of the key priority. The common consensus amongst the ideologues is to give more space to freedom fighters and MM Malaviya, Ram Manohar Lohia and historians like Hazari Prasad Dwivedi.

The ministry of human resource development has uploaded its 33 themes on the website and has sought suggestions from stakeholders. It is expecting suggestions from both India and abroad. The new policy is expected to be ready in six months time.