India: Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas pushing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s education agenda - RSS proposal to award PhDs to people who haven't gone to university

scroll.in - 24 October 2016

The RSS has a proposal to award PhDs to people who haven't gone to university
The plan, sent to the HRD minister, is possibly aimed at securing academic respectability to its small pool of ideologues and dilettantes.

by Anjali Mody


The Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, an organisation tasked with pushing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s education agenda, has given Human Resource Development minister Prakash Javadekar a five-page critique of the draft New Education Policy, which was made public in June.

“It is not clear how the New Education Policy differs from the old education policy,” the critique states, adding that it lacks an “integrated…vision, mission, lakshya [goal] and udeshya [message]”.

This assertion is not borne out by a comparison of the six points that the RSS-affiliated outfit sets out as “goals of education” and the “broad objectives" of the New Education Policy, 2016. Where the draft policy and the Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas document differ is that the latter makes no mention of India’s diversity, while talking of social-coexistence.

Apart from calling for a total rejection of the National Curriculum Framework, 2005, the critique is short on specifics and replete with commonplace statements such as “importance of teachers to quality of education cannot be denied”.

The Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas has also given Javadekar an annotated copy of Suggestions for a New Education Policy in which it acknowledges that the draft National Education Policy contains many good things. Several of the outfit’s proposals such as a special curriculum for tribal areas, the mother tongue as medium of instruction in primary schools and a promotions policy for career advancement of teachers have been included in the draft policy document. However, the outfit clearly hopes that its political connection and easy access to the Human Resources Development minister will allow it to redirect the revision of the draft policy to include some of its proposals that the draft policy ignored.

Familiar RSS demands

Some of these proposals are what we have come to expect from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s education organisations. Among them is a proposal to control the content of textbooks and published research. The RSS, in setting up the Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, committed senior people and resources towards excising what it deems to be “insulting” references to Indian culture, tradition, sects, eminent personalities, and the “incorrect interpretations” of facts. The Nyas has successfully used public campaigns – supported by the Sangh’s street-fighting arms – and the courts to have textbooks altered and books banned.

Its other major concern is with making Indian languages the medium of instruction. The RSS has long held that education in an Indian language, ideally Hindi, is the only way to raise a population that is imbued with what it calls Bharatiya culture. It has, over the years, come to accept that Hindi is unacceptable as the medium of instruction in non-Hindi speaking states and hence proposes that the medium of school education until class five be in the mother tongue or regional language. This part of the proposal fits with what education experts and cognitive scientists say is the importance of the mother tongue in how young children learn, and is part of the draft National Education Policy.

Beyond class five, the Nyas does not specify the medium of instruction, but it says that English, and any foreign language, should not be mandatory at any level in the education system, and all English-medium tertiary education institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management should immediately provide for teaching in all Indian languages.

In its critique of the draft National Education Policy submitted to Javadekar, it states: “The draft NEP reflects the ‘angrezi mentality’ of its authors, because it recommends making English as second language mandatory.”

Angrezi refers to the English language, but in common parlance it is also used to mean foreign.

Sangh’s education model

The nine-page Suggestions for a New Education Policy is a mostly inchoate list that reveals much about the Sangh Parivar’s understanding of, and attitude to, formal education, and its cultural and intellectual anxieties.

In the sub-section titled "Syllabus and Curriculum" (words it uses interchangeably), it calls for the inclusion of “Indian culture, history and scientific tradition in the basic curriculum at all levels” and the “mandatory inclusion of ‘India’s contribution to the world’, like Vedic mathematics etc”.

Apart from cleansing textbooks of references it believes are insulting, it also wants the New Education Policy to provide for a “review [of] how India is presented in education curricula abroad, and future steps based on this”. This hints at taking its book-cleansing efforts to foreign shores, where its supporters are already providing yeoman service, with no great success.

In the sub-section on research, the RSS document makes some remarkable propositions. For example, it wants a “provision to be made for results of research to be published in local/domestic journals and for these to then be sent abroad”.

But what stands out is this one sentence: “Research work should be independent, without time constraints and those doing useful research outside universities should also be awarded degrees."

Researchers in universities across the country will welcome the first part of the proposal, that research be independent, and there will be not a few who are pleased by the proposal that it should not be constrained by time. But many will ask what the Nyas means by independent, since it gives itself the right to decide what is a correct interpretation and what is acceptable in research, and will use every avenue open to it to ensure that those who disagree with it are censored.

The second part of the Nyas' proposition that those doing “useful research outside universities should also be awarded degrees” sounds like a plan to put ideological pamphleteers and dilettantish writers on par with scholars who have worked hard at university and received a degree for research that meets certain quality standards and passes scholarly review.

Some universities abroad have a rarely used provision to consider original published work instead of a standard thesis for a doctorate. The published work has to meet the high standards of research in these universities, which are truly independent of political control. In India, where governments in general, and the Bharatiya Janata Party government in particular, control universities by appointing Vice Chancellors and administrators for their pusillanimity and political affiliation, this is a slippery slope.

Fashioning academic respectability

This arrangement will give Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s ideologues the imprimatur of academic respectability and the certification they need to apply for university jobs and public positions they are now not qualified for. The Sangh Parivar’s small pool of ideologues and dilettantes meet the demands of Indian news television and social network discussions, but not much else. Their inability to breach the relatively low walls of Indian academia stand in the way of its project to command the production of knowledge. If they can just be given degrees, circumventing the rigours of university-based research, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh will have fixed its little problem.

RSS-birthed organisations like the Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas have unprecedented access to ministers in the BJP-led government. The extent to which the Sangh’s wish list is reflected in government policy depends on how politically acceptable the proposals can be made. It will be interesting to see which, if any, of the proposals of the Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas that did not make it to the draft National Education Policy, go into the final policy document. Much will depend on public scrutiny of these proposals.

India: Joint seminar on new education policy by RSS connected Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas and Delhi University Sankrit Dept | RSS hack Dinanath Batra to deliver keynote

Delhi University dept, Dinanath Batra to discuss new education policy
The seminar, whose final report will be sent to HRD minister Smriti Irani, will also have educationist Dinanath Batra delivering the keynote lecture on changes required in education.
Written by Shikha Sharma
Delhi
Nov 22, 2015

Delhi University’s Sanskrit department and the RSS-backed Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas (SSUN) will be holding a seminar on November 24 to discuss the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry’s ‘New Education Policy-2015’.

The seminar, whose final report will be sent to HRD minister Smriti Irani, will also have educationist Dinanath Batra delivering the keynote lecture on changes required in education.

“The status of education in Bharat is highly fragmented. It is limited to providing degrees to students and has also lost its research essence. Education has no outreach to the poor. It has also failed to spread our cultural heritage in the country and across the globe. There is an immediate need for educational reform,” said Batra in a three-page letter that details suggestions to improve the education scenario.

The suggestions include tweaking of teachers’ training curriculum to introduce concepts such as patriotism, health conservation, social consciousness, spiritualism, moral science, value-based education, vedic maths; establishment of Bhartiya Education Services, and inclusion of subjects such as ancient and modern knowledge, science, physical education, yoga and character building.

He also suggested a five-year integrated course for training teachers, with a compulsory one-year social service in rural areas or slums. The teaching methodology, he said, should be based on the “Upanishad method of dialogue” in order to encourage interactive classroom sessions.

However, he stressed on keeping politics out of education and recommended setting up an autonomous education commission.

“Children should not suffer because of change in government. The Education Commission will supervise, manage and evaluate primary and higher education, and research,” he said.

The 32-page agenda for the seminar will also discuss the HRD Ministry’s 20-point consultation framework for the new education policy.
“It is essential to meaningfully define education through integration of yoga, humanities, science, technology, skill development, art and creativity…,” said Batra.
The session will feature both Batra and Atul Kothari, while the concluding session will be chaired by Kapil Kapoor (former Pro-VC of JNU).

“We want to try and highlight Batra’s philosophy on education. The decision to organise the seminar was taken five months ago, when we were approached by the SSUN…,” said Ramesh Bharadwaj, head of the Sanskrit department.
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- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-university-dept-dinanath-batra-to-discuss-new-education-policy/

India: History Lessons | Anjali Modi

Caravan Magazine

History Lessons
The appointment of a new chief at the Indian Council of Historical Research reignites old battles over who controls ideas of India
By ANJALI MODY | 1 August 2014

NOAH SEELAM / AFP / Getty Images
A BJP campaign rally in Hyderabad in 2009. The party promised to redress supposed historical wrongs.

THE RECENT CONTROVERSY over Y Sudershan Rao’s appointment as the chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research has once again made history-writing news. Historians described variously as Marxist, Hindutva, secular and communal have lined up on opposing sides, and a familiar war of words has commenced in the media. The historian Romila Thapar set the terms of engagement in an India Today opinion piece focused on public statements made by Rao that indicate a complete disregard for historical method and the vast body of existing research in his areas of interest (such as fixing dates for the events in the Ramayana and Mahabharata). According to Thapar, Rao’s appointment suggests the ICHR “may now turn the clock back” on historical scholarship. Rao has gamely defended his academic interests and his research methodology, on television and in newspaper interviews. But he remains an easy target—one that distracts from deeper issues connected to his appointment.

The ICHR has always been political. The council was created in 1972, when the historian, diplomat and politician Nurul Hasan was education minister. That was the twenty-fifth year of India’s independence, and the ICHR’s activities then—primarily commemorative research projects on the freedom movement and political martyrs, and surveys “to locate the lacunae in historical study”—set the tone for its functioning over time. The council was mostly a funding body, sponsoring conferences and dispensing scholarships, travel bursaries and other grants to graduate students and scholars. More significantly, it was part of a system of academic patronage that was of a piece with a larger culture of patronage created by successive Congress governments. The council’s chairman was—and has always been—selected by the government of the day. (In all these years, historians have not tried to change this basic arrangement.)

The important projects the ICHR funded were concerned with the anti-colonial struggle and the formation of the nation. The most ambitious of these, approved in the council’s first year, was Towards Freedom, which set out to document the regionally complex, contentious and varied resistance to British rule after 1937. The time frame was fixed by a government committee that considered the Indian National Congress’s victory in provincial elections held between 1936 and 1937 as the event that finally made Independence inevitable. The project was conceived as a response to the Transfer of Power series, twelve volumes of official British documents published by the UK government between 1970 and 1983. But, despite spending nearly Rs 2 crore and co-opting tens of graduate students, only three of Towards Freedom’s twenty projected volumes had been published by the year 2000.

During the first quarter century of the ICHR’s existence, the chairmanship passed from one historian to another within a small and largely friendly group. Although they were not all from the same ideological stream and had varied scholarly interests, they regarded each other as peers. Their common enemies were colonialism and colonial historiography. By and large, these men—and they were mostly men—accommodated the interests of their overlapping circles of patronage. They seemed satisfied so long as the appointments excluded people they considered philistines and fantasists. The dominance of the Congress in politics, and of Left-linked historians in academia, underpinned this peculiar equilibrium.

But this consensus soon found itself competing against another type of history, as the Bharatiya Janata Party gained prominence during the late 1980s and 1990s on the back of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Together with its ideological anchor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP advanced an alternative history in which the Indian nation had enjoyed a Vedic golden age that was catastrophically interrupted by the arrival of Muslims. The country had not yet recovered from this supposed historical wrong, which the BJP promised to redress.

The Ram Janmabhoomi movement, which was presented as a demand for such a remedy, made history an electoral issue. Many historians, including several former chairmen of the ICHR, actively opposed the campaign on historical grounds. They pitted their professional expertise against the BJP’s political rhetoric. But their arguments had very little impact outside university seminars, historical societies and the living rooms of the intelligentsia. For every piece of evidence an anti-BJP historian produced, a BJP-friendly historian produced a counter. Ancient texts, potsherds and pillars piled up on both sides. In this milieu, arguments about intellectual rigour and academic qualifications made little difference.

For the first time, perhaps, a spotlight fell on the limited role that academic historians, mostly cloistered in universities, played in defining what history was for ordinary Indians. As the historian Neeladri Bhattacharya wrote about a controversy over changes to school history textbooks that followed the formation of a BJP-led government, “Historians could try and shape popular imagination, countering inherited opinions and sedimented stereotypes, but they could not deny the right of the citizens to express themselves in public, operating with their own sense of history. It is this right that defines the limits of the historian’s territory and the historian’s anxieties about such limits.”

The RSS and its affiliates in the Sangh Parivar, whose political campaigning was built on what they called “bhavana”—loosely, sentiment and belief—had these anxieties in reverse: they felt a need to put the justificatory stamp of scholarship on popular sentiment. This was, in a sense, legitimated by the fact that, since Independence, writing history had been part of the nation-making project. Taking over this practice was not hard, as the Congress–Left combine and the BJP shared the premise of a unitary nation state (even if they violently disagreed on its ideology), and the belief that the state should have a role in shaping understandings of history.

After coming to power in 1998, the BJP-led coalition government evicted the custodians of the ICHR and other research bodies. Suddenly, the political patrons had changed, and the idea of a secular nation that emerged from an anti-colonial struggle against the British was openly challenged. State institutions were now controlled by votaries of a rival history. If the old guard made room for historians of some calibre and, within limits, a contest of ideas, the new regime only had use for those who shared its vision. The ICHR’s new masters suspended Towards Freedom, and set up a committee to review the project. The Left organised demonstrations in protest, and newspapers carried fiery claims and counterclaims from each side.

But the ICHR was not where the real battle was fought. It was the National Council of Educational Research and Training, tasked with devising school curricula, syllabi and textbooks, where the most intense dispute over the idea of India took place. The BJP-led government commissioned new school textbooks to replace those in use since 1970. To lead this project, it picked historians with strong links to the RSS. Certain omissions in the resulting textbooks indicated that an effort had been made, among other things, to gloss over the RSS’s detachment from the anti-colonial movement and its role after Independence.

The exercise became a well-publicised shambles, embarrassing even those not unfriendly to the BJP or a Hindu-nationalist view of history. Unsurprisingly, the process was reversed in 2004, when the Congress returned to power. New chiefs were appointed to the NCERT and the ICHR, and the Towards Freedom project was revived. As a result of the NCERT debacle, there was a thoroughgoing discussion on the nature of school textbooks, and their control by timorous nationalists—whether from the Congress–Left or the RSS. The new NCERT director worked with a focus and speed never seen at the institution before to gather a group of fine scholars and teachers. They produced an entirely fresh set of textbooks on history and political science, which for the first time reflected modern pedagogy, remained open to changing ideas—including ideas of the nation—and, above all, encouraged critical thinking.

Ever since these textbooks were published, the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas and Shiksha Bachao Andolan have been demanding changes to them via court petitions and public campaigns. They describe their work as a battle against “Marx, Macaulay, Madrassa (The Evil Three),” and a “mobilisation of all nationalistic and patriotic forces to preserve the true History of India so that the confidence of future generations is not emasculated by Communist distortions.” The NCERT has responded pragmatically, accepting tweaks so long as they do not entail major pedagogic changes or ideological intrusions.

Against this background, Rao’s appointment as the chief of the ICHR comes as little surprise. Replacing one set of political appointees with another marks a kind of continuity. Rao’s lack of scholarly credentials is also in keeping with a pattern: although obsessed with controlling ideas, the RSS and its various arms have always been anti-intellectual. Whatever its ideological predilections, the Left has always had the advantage of thorough scholarship—something even its arch critics, such as the journalist and BJP member Arun Shourie, concede.

Yet, in the current context, this distinction is moot—as is the question of who controls one or another research-funding body. The underlying problem is the extension of political control and patronage into ostensibly free intellectual spaces. Long before the BJP was a political force, universities felt the deadening weight of political interference in course design, syllabi and “essential reading” lists. Even in the best Indian universities, opportunities for intellectual work—jobs, promotions and research sabbaticals—were closely controlled, and handed out as discretionary prizes.

In the political melee, we often forget that historical research has moved away from grand statist narratives. The discipline has opened up to more imaginative and peopled renderings of the past, with thinking about gender, caste, the environment, culture and language offering new perspectives. This increasingly rich body of work has emerged, in the main, without the patronage of bodies such as the ICHR. A good deal of research on Indian and subcontinental history is now being done abroad. Graduate students and even established scholars from India are being drawn away, in the words of one young researcher, to “communities of scholars producing new research.” Defenders of independent historical research in India should be concerned less with individual appointments and more with how intellectual freedom and imagination are hampered by political patronage, how the production of historical knowledge continues to struggle against rigid ideologies and bureaucracies, and how politically dominant ideas of India still cast long shadows over historians and their craft.

Anjali Mody is an independent journalist.

--See more at: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/history-lessons

India: Hindutva driven education coming soon at your doorstep

[see reports posted below]

Indian Express

Science lesson from Gujarat: Stem cells in Mahabharata, cars in Veda
Written by Ritu Sharma | Ahmedabad | July 27, 2014 1:35 pm

Summary
Tejomay Bharat is to be distributed along with eight books written by Dina Nath Batra.

Gujarat’s new compulsory reading list for government primary and secondary students doesn’t just seek to educate students on “facts” about India’s culture, history and geography. It also has its own take on science, particularly landmark inventions.

“…America wants to take the credit for invention of stem cell research, but the truth is that India’s Dr Balkrishna Ganpat Matapurkar has already got a patent for regenerating body parts…. You would be surprised to know that this research is not new and that Dr Matapurkar was inspired by the Mahabharata. Kunti had a bright son like the sun itself. When Gandhari, who had not been able to conceive for two years, learnt of this, she underwent an abortion. From her womb a huge mass of flesh came out. (Rishi) Dwaipayan Vyas was called. He observed this hard mass of flesh and then he preserved it in a cold tank with specific medicines. He then divided the mass of flesh into 100 parts and kept them separately in 100 tanks full of ghee for two years. After two years, 100 Kauravas were born of it. On reading this, he (Matapurkar) realised that stem cell was not his invention. This was found in India thousands of years ago.” — Page 92-93, Tejomay Bharat

“We know that television was invented by a priest from Scotland called John Logie Baird in 1926. But we want to take you to an even older Doordarshan… Indian rishis using their yog vidya would attain divya drishti. There is no doubt that the invention of television goes back to this… In Mahabharata, Sanjaya sitting inside a palace in Hastinapur and using his divya shakti would give a live telecast of the battle of Mahabharata… to the blind Dhritarashtra”. — Page 64

“What we know today as the motorcar existed during the Vedic period. It was called anashva rath. Usually a rath (chariot) is pulled by horses but an anashva rath means the one that runs without horses or yantra-rath, what is today a motorcar. The Rig Veda refers to this…” — Page 60

The 125-page book, Tejomay Bharat, that these passages are excerpted from was recently mandated as supplementary reading by the Gujarat government for all government primary and secondary schools.

Published by the Gujarat State School Textbook Board (GSSTB), the book seeks to teach children “facts” about history, science, geography, religion and other “basics”.

Tejomay Bharat is to be distributed along with eight books written by Dina Nath Batra, a member of the national executive of Vidya Bharati, the educational wing of the RSS. Batra’s books, translated into Gujarati and published by the GSSTB, have also been mandated as supplementary reading by the state government.

Each of these books carries a customised message from Narendra Modi, as then chief minister, while Batra’s books praise him and the GSSTB. Tejomay Bharat carries a message from Modi praising the GSSTB for republishing the book.

The book has chapters such as Adhyatmik Bharat (spiritual India), Akhand Bharat (undivided India), Vigyanmay Bharat (scientific India), and Samarth Bharat (competent India). The book’s content advisor is Harshad Shah, vice-chancellor of Childrens’ University in Gandhinagar who was Gujarat chairman of Vidya Bharti till 2006. The review committee includes Ruta Parmar and Rekha Chudasama, both associated with Vidya Bharati.

Shah told The Sunday Express, “Tejomay Bharat gives an insight to students about our rich culture, heritage, spiritualism and patriotism. The language has been kept simple, which is apt for students. These are to be given free of cost to all schools, while 5,000 copies priced at Rs 73 have been prepared for those other than students.”

Asked how schools would reconcile the “facts” of Tejomay Bharat with the NCERT syllabus, the Deputy Commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Ahmedabad region, P Dev Kumar, said, “Being a government servant, I am here to follow and implement government policies. Though we have not been told of any change in the NCERT curriculum for this academic session, if there is any for the next year, we have to wait and watch.”

Tejomay Bharat also objects to the country being called India. “We should not demean ourselves by calling our beloved Bharatbhoomi by the shudra (lowly) name ‘India’. What right had the British to change the name of this country?… We should not fall for this conspiracy and forget the soul of our country (Page 53).”

“It is better to die for one’s religion. An alien religion is a source of sorrow,” the book says on Page 118. “Guru Gobind Singh had four sons — Ajit Singh, Juzar Singh, Zoravar Singh and Fateh Singh… King’s men tried hard to convince them, but they courageously replied, ‘Our grandfather Guru Tegh Bahadur gave his head for saving Hindu religion and we will also give our lives but will never leave our religion’.”

o o o


Business Standard


G Sreedathan | New Delhi Jul 27, 2014
Last Updated at 12:03 AM IST

Sangh sets up panel to push 'saffronisation' of education Commission to study the present education system and suggest corrective steps to make it Bharat-centric

Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, an organisation affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has set up Bharatiya Shiksha Niti Aayog (Indian Education Policy Commission), the first commission of its kind in the non-governmental sector, to study "the present education system and suggest corrective steps to make it Bharat-centric". Likely to be headed by Dinanath Batra - who shot to fame when he pulped American scholar Wendy Doniger's book on Hinduism - this body is being seen as RSS' effort to mount pressure on the Narendra Modi-led government to implement the Sangh agenda of "saffronisation" of education and to prevent the latter from diverting from its core ideals.

Though the commission was formed a few months ahead of the swearing-in of the Modi government on May 26 - Sangh mouthpiece Organiser informs the 'bhoomi pujan' of the office was done in Delhi on April 13 - RSS gave its go-ahead for the panel at a recent Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal meeting in Madhya Pradesh.

According to Sangh insiders, education is a key area in the RSS' scheme of things and could emerge as a point of conflict in future with the government. Given Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani's lack of understanding of the Sangh Parivar's functioning, RSS is adopting a wait-and-watch policy. Irani, meanwhile, has managed to establish a good rapport with some senior RSS leaders, but a section of the organisation still has reservations about her credentials to occupy the important HRD portfolio.

Besides Batra, the 21-member commission will have J S Rajput, former director of the National Council Of Educational Research And Training (NCERT); Kapil Kapoor, former pro vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University; Badrinarain Khandelwal, former director of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Atul Kothari as members. "It has not taken a final shape. We are contacting all luminaries in the field of education, irrespective of their ideology, for the cause of education. We will prepare a curriculum framework and that will be circulated and discussed widely. We will seek the country's collective wisdom," said Batra.

"RSS sees in him (Batra) an ideal candidate to lead an agitation if a showdown is inevitable with the government, given the body of work he has done so far," said a Sangh leader who did not want to be named.

On his assessment of the new government's performance, especially the HRD ministry's, Batra said: "She (Minister Irani) has not spoken her heart so far. They (the ministers) are settling... It is good that Smriti Irani has declared that the ministry will set up a national commission for education, on the pattern of the Kothari Commission."

Batra, 85, who has been relentlessly fighting "distortions of Indian history and culture" in the school and college text books, doesn't foresee a clash with the government in the immediate future, but he won't shy away from fighting for the cause. "Our strategy is to fight to live and win. Apnon se ladna kathin hai (it is difficult to fight with our own people). But when it's for the cause, we have to fight," Batra added.

However, Atul Kothari, the secretary of the Nyas, dismissed any suggestion of a political motive behind establishment of the commission.

"It is an effort to revisit the education system in India and to give shape to an alternative education policy for the country. Though many commissions were set up earlier, successive governments failed to implement their recommendations. Our commission will study the reports of all the commissions so far and come out with a report," said Kothari.

On why the commission was set up at an NGO level, Kothari said: "Education is not the responsibility of the government alone. The entire society has a role to play."

He added the Nyas had given the HRD minister a memorandum highlighting irregularities in various departments under the ministry and "anti-constitutional, anti-national portions" in NCERT textbooks.