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Showing posts with label Vidya Bharati. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vidya Bharati. Show all posts
May 27, 2019
May 10, 2019
India: RSS Indoctrination of adivasi young boys and adults in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh - Report by Neha Dixit on newslaundry.com
Reproduced from: https://www.newslaundry.com | May 9, 2019
Meet the boys, young adults and old men of RSS preparing for 2019 elections in Jhabua
Battling Christianity and Islam is a top priority.
In January 2018, Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, said all are “children of Adivasis”. Addressing a rally in Raipur, Bhagwat said: “When we say Adivasi, then that is our core identity. We are their children. Even though we see different pictures, our forefathers were the same … from 40,000 years ago."
According to the 2011 census, 21 per cent of the total population of Madhya Pradesh is Scheduled Tribe, known as Adivasi. The Malwa-Nimar region comprising the districts of Jhabua, Dhar, Badwani, Khargone, Khandwa, Dewas, and Ratlam has 22 out of the 47 seats reserved for STs in Madhya Pradesh. The area, of extreme political consequence, has been part of the RSS's pet project to draw the tribals into a pan-Hindu world through RSS-affiliated outfits like the Sewa Bharti, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Vidya Bharti, among others.
Despite that, since the first Lok Sabha elections in 1952 up till 2015—a span of 17 elections—the RSS's political body, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has only won this seat once, in 2014.
The Ratlam-Jhabua parliamentary seat is set for polls in the last phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections on May 19. Newslaundry meets members of different age groups and outfits of the RSS to find out about their work, areas of focus, and preparations for the upcoming elections.
The RSS: old men and 'ghar wapsi'
“As of now, religious conversions of tribals by Christians is at an all-time high in Jhabua. Thirty-five per cent of the district is now Christian," says Ashok Verma, sitting in the verandah of his house in Antervelia village. Verma is in charge of the RSS unit of Antervelia in Meghnagar town in Jhabua district. A small-built man in his mid-50s, he runs a tent house and a local grocery shop, even as he’s otherwise employed in “spreading Hindutva”.
Verma attended a “Hindu Sangam” in 2008 in Jhabua and joined the RSS soon after. The Hindu Sangam is a platform to bring members, supporters of the RSS and its affiliate organisations—over 40 of them—together to exchange thoughts on building a Hindu nation. The RSS has been holding these Sangams, a congregation of Hindus in the tribal-dominated areas of Jhabua, for over three decades.
Ashok Verma, who is in charge of the RSS unit in Antervelia.
Verma's anti-conversion Hindutva rhetoric against Christians in Jhabua dates back to the 1990s. It first started when Sister Rani, a nun at a local church, was killed in the neighbouring district of Indore in 1995. When Uma Bharti, the hardline BJP leader who came into prominence for her role in the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, was appointed as the Madhya Pradesh chief minister from 2003 to 2004, slogans like “Pehle Kasai, Phir Isai (First the Muslims, then Christians)” became commonplace in this tribal belt. These are the two communities that are perceived enemies in the Hindutva project of RSS. In 2005, there was a spate of attacks on churches in Jhabua when a minor girl was raped inside a Christian missionary school. Since then, almost every year, anti-Christian violence picks up during the month of December. As a result, NDTV reports, in 2017, in parts of Madhya Pradesh, Christians chose to “forego Sunday prayers, carol singing and displaying crosses and rosaries through the year, fearing they will be accused of converting locals and persecuted”. In January 2018, two boys performing a "Christmas dance" in a primary school in Meghnagar were stopped by RSS members.
According to Verma, there are 400 “illegal” churches in Jhabua built to convert tribals to Christianity and to occupy government land. He estimates that at least 7,000 people have converted to Christianity in the last three years in the district. This year, on February 3, a statue of the Virgin Mary was set on fire in Ishgar village in Jhabua. He says: “They lure them with biscuits, cakes, money, non-vegetarian food. First, they get them to start lighting incense sticks in front of a picture of Jesus Christ on a weekly basis, and then get them to baptize. Are we going to be mute spectators?"
He says his local RSS unit has managed to do “ghar wapsi” of over 100 families over the past year in Jhabua.
“Ghar wapsi” is a series of “reconversion” activities initiated by the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the RSS to “facilitate” the conversion of non-Hindus to Hinduism. In December 2014, VHP leader Pravin Togadia had said the world was once inhabited only by Hindus, and that the VHP would ensure the Hindu population in India increased from its current 82 per cent to 100 per cent.
The reconversion process involves a hawan, a Hindu ritual of burning offerings to “purge” the converts, and a pledge to follow the tenets of Hinduism.
Verma believes there is a larger conspiracy behind the religious conversions done by the local churches. "The Indian Constitution guarantees reservation to STs in the government sector. By converting tribals to Christianity, they want to take over positions of power in the Indian administration and rule the Hindus."
His son Rohendra Verma, 24, nods at his father's statement. Currently unemployed, Rohendra believes that only “kattar” or “staunch” Hindus can save India. When asked if he knows of any cases of tribals converting to Christianity, he replies, "I have heard of them but don't know any in my own circles. They are taking away our jobs. We either save Hindus now or get rid of Muslims and Christians later. There are only two choices." He is yet to officially join the RSS.
The 2011 census data negates the paranoia peddled by the RSS. According to these figures, 0.3 per cent of Madhya Pradesh's population of 77 million were registered as Christians and around 90 per cent were Hindus. The same census figures state that the Christian population in Jhabua is 3.75 per cent, 10 times less than the RSS’s figures. In fact, instead of an increase, the overall population of Christians in India has been on a decline in the past five decades: 2.60 per cent in 1971, 2.44 per cent in 1981, 2.34 per cent in 1991, 2.30 per cent in 2001 and 2.30 per cent in 2011.
Verma says the census data is “flawed”.
Apart from “saving” the tribal population from Christians, Verma also actively works towards propagating the Hindu religion among them. This includes distributing statues of Hanuman to all households, teaching them how to celebrate Raksha Bandhan, and how to conduct Hindu weddings. He says, “They didn't even know how to take seven rounds around the fire. We had to teach them."
In her book In The Belly Of The River, sociologist Amita Baviskar had written: “Adivasi religious life is built around animism and ancestor worship and evolved quite distinctly from the Hindu tradition. Their myths and rituals are located in their closeness to and reverence for nature.” Verma’s task is to appropriate these practices as Hinduism. “The kind of round stone the Bhil community worships as Bada Dev is actually like Shiv. Similarly, the foliage and the trees are part of the 'Mata Ka Van (Forest of the Goddess)’. We tell them their practices are all Hindu. They just don't know that.”
Another task is to repudiate local tribal practices and replace them with “upper-caste” Hindu rituals. The RSS started a drive here to stop the sacrifice of kadaknath—a rare breed of fowl available only in this belt—among tribals on Diwali and replaced it with the ritual worship of Ganapati and Goddess Lakshmi. Similarly, the tribal communities participate in a pre-Holi celebration called Bhagoria: a “festival of love” called pranayapurva where young women choose their life partners by applying gulal on the faces of the young men. Verma says this behaviour is a “blot on the character” of Indian women. “We have worked to stop this perversion.”
In this area, the RSS has a comprehensive network that follows a five-tiered structure of villages, mandals, khands, sankuls and jilas (divisions, segments, complexes and districts) parallel to the two-tiered government model. When asked what is the larger goal of Hindutva, Verma says, "I didn't think about it ever. I just want to see a society purged of Christianity. I hope Modiji will help us in his second term."
In the upcoming 2019 elections in the state, the BJP has fielded their local MLA Guman Singh Damor. Verma says, “We worked very hard to get Damor elected from the Jhabua Assembly seat. For the upcoming elections, our booth agents have been shortlisted. The booth tolis with 20 RSS members each are ready. Our slogan will be 'Hindu Jago, Kristi bhago (Hindus wake up, Christians go away)'."
The young men: battling Muslims and ‘deviant’ Hindu girls
Meanwhile, the Bajrang Dal is also hard at work to save Hinduism in the area.
"We try very hard to work for Hindu unity. Our special focus is on ‘love jihad’ cases," says Devraj Singh Rathore, a 21-year-old member of the outfit. Tall, lean and well-built, he wears a freshly-applied red tilak on his forehead. Rathore is an undergraduate student of commerce at a local college. His area of concern, "love jihad", is a Hindu Right-wing theory that Muslim men “lure” Hindu women to marry them and convert them to Islam. Many police investigations have conceded in court that there is no evidence to prove the existence of this practice.
The Bajrang Dal is the youth wing of the VHP, formed in 1984 in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, when the VHP was organising a “Ram-Janki rath yatra” in the town. Ayodhya is believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram and the tense communal atmosphere at the time led the government to refuse the VHP permission to carry out the procession, citing security reasons. As a result, senior leaders of the VHP had called upon the Hindu youth to protect the procession—and Hinduism—from its enemies, resulting in the formation of the Bajrang Dal.
The group organises akhadas, training camps to teach martial arts, wrestling and Hindutva ideology. Like a lot of young men, Rathore was interested in bodybuilding and wrestling, and hence started attending the local akhada in the area three years ago. “I was initially just having fun. I really got interested in Bajrang Dal activities when Deepak Makwana, the RSS pracharak from Thandla tehsil, addressed us. He said that we should think of how Muslims are united all over the world. Then why not Hindus? That really struck a chord with me."
Devraj Singh Rathore and Gaurav Vikram, both members of the Bajrang Dal.
Rathore’s friend, 22-year-old Gaurav Vikram, sits next to him. He’s also a member of the Bajrang Dal. “There are one crore Bangladeshi Muslims and 11 lakh Rohingya Muslims in India,” Vikram says. “They run terrorist training camps inside madrassas. There’s an organisation by the name of Jaish even in Jhabua. This needs to stop or they will take over.”However, he is unable to explain how an organisation called “Jaish” is necessarily a terrorist outfit. He says, "I will find out and tell you."
Vikram has been running a mobile shop for the last three years. He was unable to enroll for higher education because of financial constraints at home. “They are taking over jobs, our country and our women. For the last three years, I have actively done the Hindu religion's promotion to fight the Islamic threat," he says.
On May 19, Rathore and Vikram will vote for the first time in a Lok Sabha election. Rathore says, “We want a government at the Centre that listens to us. The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh under Shivraj Singh was here for 15 years. Even their administration rarely listened to us when we protested against Muslims taking out Muharram processions and against 'love jihad' cases. Now, with the Congress government in power, there is even less scope.”
Both young men firmly believe that they “show the direction to those who get lost or deviate from the Hindu way of life”. They regularly conduct vigils in Meghnagar town, especially on Fridays and during Ramzan because that is the time “Muslim shop owners in town get together to plan anti-Hindu activities”, according to them. This has often led to many reported skirmishes between the two communities.
Rathore says, "Two years back, we had a major breakthrough. We managed to separate at least five Hindu women from their Muslim husbands in town. It was a big achievement for us. But now, our Hindu girls are deviating from our traditions at a lightning fast speed."
To prevent “love jihad”, the local Bajrang Dal unit actively collaborates with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, to keep tabs on every single girl in college to track whom they’re interacting with. “If we see them talking to boys, especially Muslim boys, we inform their families,” Vikram says. The girls are then stopped from coming to college regularly and only come to sit for the exams. That is one way of saving girls from ‘love jihad’ kind of situations.”
However, this tactic hasn’t been as effective as they’d hoped over the last year. When Rathore spotted the daughter of a well-known Hindu family in Meghnagar roaming around with her Muslim boyfriend, her family was informed. However, they paid no heed. When nothing worked, they tried to “explain” to the young woman that she should end the relationship immediately. Rathore says: “She was my college senior. She said, 'there is nothing illegal in having a Muslim boyfriend'. She even threatened us with a police complaint. Imagine! We want the central government to change this law in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections."
The boys: protecting the Hindu way of life
A few kilometres inside Khacchartodi village of Meghnagar in Jhabua, in the backdrop of hillocks, stands a building under construction in a huge compound. The plaque on the building identifies it as the “Vanvasi Sashaktikaran Kendra/Forest Dwellers' Empowerment Centre” run by the Padma Keshav Trust.
The Sewa Bharti building.
The centre currently serves as a hostel for 26 boys in the age group of 5-17 monitored by Sewa Bharti, the welfare organisation of the RSS. "We have children from many tribal communities including Damoh, Bhil, Bhilala, and Katara. It takes up to three years to make a Bhil-speaking child learn Hindi. How will they learn Indian values and build a Hindu Rashtra if they don't learn Hindi?" asks Kailash Ameliya, the hostel’s coordinator. He is lean and wears a pigtail on his head—a tradition observed by upper caste Brahmins—and a pointy moustache. Ameliya has been associated with the organisation for the last 15 years. Most of the boys are students of Class 2 to Class 11 in several local government-run (shasakiya) schools, Ameliya says. They are selected on the basis of a test that involves IQ, general knowledge and course-related questions. "Most of their parents are migrant labourers in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, so we get them here. The children of single parents are given priority."
Once they complete their school education, the students are made to stay at the hostel for four more years to, as Ameliya says, integrate them into the “mainstream” way of life and “serve Bharat Mata”.
At the hostel, the students wake up at 5 am. The shakha, an RSS assembly ritual, commences at 6 am. Mango Singh Katariya, the manager of this Sewa Bharti branch, says, “We teach them how to play Indian games like kabaddi and kho-kho. We have also come up with a game called Tank War to instill feelings of nationalism in the young boys so that they can protect Bharat Mata.” Tank War is a game where each group tries to make a chain and encircle the other group to capture it. The groups are often named “India” and “Pakistan”.
Mango Singh Katariya, the manager of this Sewa Bharti branch, and Verma.
As we talk, Satyanarayan Chakradhari, a member of Vidya Bharti, the educational wing of the RSS, steps in. He announces that he was just passing by. On his arrival, both Ameliya and Katariya stop answering further questions from this reporter. Instead, Chakradhari intervenes in the conversation. “Our aim is to protect Indian culture and values, and we can only do that by catching the children young,” he says. According to him, there are 16 Christian schools in Jhabua which convert tribal children to Christianity. Chakradhari echoes what Ashok Verma had said earlier: “5,000 people were converted to Christianity last year.”
He laments, “Can’t you see the Christian influence? Children want to celebrate birthdays by cutting cake instead of going to temples. They want to study in an English medium school. And the girls! The Western clothes, such forthrightness instead of being docile. We believe in teaching them Indian values and culture from childhood itself so that they don’t lose their way when they grow up.”
When I ask to take a photograph, Chakradhari refuses. “We don’t engage with the media. You can take pictures of the boys.”
The boys who stay in this hostel.
The 26 boys are lined up in a huge hall in the backdrop of a large Bharat Mata poster. They’re all dressed in half-sleeved shirts and pants. I’m not allowed to speak to them. They greet me in chaste Hindi and begin with a war song followed by a hymn in praise of Bharat Mata. In the upcoming elections, this Sewa Bharti branch plans to carry out a mass drive among the hostel children to “write pamphlets on Bharat Mata and the Hindu way of life” for distribution among the local population. "So that they vote for the sons of Bharat Mata and not the Kristis," adds Chakradhari.
Disclaimer : Newslaundry.com is determined to include views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. This doesn't mean we agree with everything we publish. But we do support their right to the freedom of speech. In case of columnists and non-Newslaundry staff articles, the information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not reflect the views of Newslaundry.com. Newslaundry.com does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
March 17, 2017
India: 125 RSS affiliated schools put on notice by West Bengal Govt
The Times of India
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said 350-odd schools in the state are run by Vivekananda Vidyabikas Parishad, a registered body, and follow the curriculum set by Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan. "They are mostly in remote places, providing education to more than 60,000. They have been running in Bengal since 1975 when the first Sharada Sishu Tirtha was set up in Siliguri. They mostly follow the state school syllabus with some additional impetus to develop the student's physical, moral and spiritual values. This is an accepted practice in the country and also the state. I think they are sniffing politics everywhere. If they do anything legal we are prepared to battle it out," Ghosh said.
Minister Chatterjee said the state was examining the 125 identified schools and would revoke their NOCs if needed. "We will not allow spreading religious intolerance in the name of teaching students," he said. Of the 125 schools, 96 run without NOC. While 10 are affiliated to the state board, 19 have provisional NOCs. Chatterjee said many of the private schools get affiliation from central boards and take NOCs from the state, making it difficult to act against them.
Shutdown threat to 125 schools with saffron link
TNN | Updated: Mar 9, 2017, 08.07 AM IST
KOLKATA: The Bengal government on Wednesday put on notice 125 schools, run by three private trusts perceived to be close to RSS affiliates, for "fanning religious intolerance" and "deviating from the state-mandated syllabus".
All these 125 schools are run mostly by three trusts, Sarada Shishu Tirtha, Saraswati Shishu Mandir and Vivekanada Vidya Vikas Parishad, which proclaim themselves to be affiliated to the Lucknow-headquartered Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan. These organisations have a network of over 350 schools in Bengal, with a student strength of over 60,000.
State education minister Partha Chatterjee singled out 125 of these 350 schools citing a "list" handed over by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in her capacity as the state home minister.
"We have asked these 125 schools to explain why they have deviated from the state curriculum. We have decided to withdraw their affiliation and will shut them down if there is no satisfactory explanation," he said.
There is a great deal of ambiguity about the status of the other 225 schools, many of wh-ich teach only up to Class VIII.
The assembly announcement threw Bengal politics into a tizzy and could indicate the contours of a larger anti-BJP axis in the state. Significantly, the issue was raised in the assembly by CPM MLA Manas Mukherjee, who alleged that 350 schools were fanning religious intolerance that went against the state's multi-religious and multi-cultural ethos. Minister Chatterjee, as if on cue, brought out a list of 125 of these 350 schools, which he put on notice.
The ruling Trinamool and principal non-BJP opposition parties—CPM and Congress—recently came together to oppose the central BJP government's stand on linking Aadhaar to the school mid-day meal scheme.
Schools in Bengal last came under the scanner for their ideological bent during the Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee regime. The Left government in 2002-2003 ordered intelligence agencies to look into the curriculum and funding of non-registered madrassas, primarily in Murshidabad, Malda and North and South Dinajpur districts.
All these 125 schools are run mostly by three trusts, Sarada Shishu Tirtha, Saraswati Shishu Mandir and Vivekanada Vidya Vikas Parishad, which proclaim themselves to be affiliated to the Lucknow-headquartered Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan. These organisations have a network of over 350 schools in Bengal, with a student strength of over 60,000.
State education minister Partha Chatterjee singled out 125 of these 350 schools citing a "list" handed over by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in her capacity as the state home minister.
"We have asked these 125 schools to explain why they have deviated from the state curriculum. We have decided to withdraw their affiliation and will shut them down if there is no satisfactory explanation," he said.
There is a great deal of ambiguity about the status of the other 225 schools, many of wh-ich teach only up to Class VIII.
The assembly announcement threw Bengal politics into a tizzy and could indicate the contours of a larger anti-BJP axis in the state. Significantly, the issue was raised in the assembly by CPM MLA Manas Mukherjee, who alleged that 350 schools were fanning religious intolerance that went against the state's multi-religious and multi-cultural ethos. Minister Chatterjee, as if on cue, brought out a list of 125 of these 350 schools, which he put on notice.
The ruling Trinamool and principal non-BJP opposition parties—CPM and Congress—recently came together to oppose the central BJP government's stand on linking Aadhaar to the school mid-day meal scheme.
Schools in Bengal last came under the scanner for their ideological bent during the Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee regime. The Left government in 2002-2003 ordered intelligence agencies to look into the curriculum and funding of non-registered madrassas, primarily in Murshidabad, Malda and North and South Dinajpur districts.
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said 350-odd schools in the state are run by Vivekananda Vidyabikas Parishad, a registered body, and follow the curriculum set by Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan. "They are mostly in remote places, providing education to more than 60,000. They have been running in Bengal since 1975 when the first Sharada Sishu Tirtha was set up in Siliguri. They mostly follow the state school syllabus with some additional impetus to develop the student's physical, moral and spiritual values. This is an accepted practice in the country and also the state. I think they are sniffing politics everywhere. If they do anything legal we are prepared to battle it out," Ghosh said.
Minister Chatterjee said the state was examining the 125 identified schools and would revoke their NOCs if needed. "We will not allow spreading religious intolerance in the name of teaching students," he said. Of the 125 schools, 96 run without NOC. While 10 are affiliated to the state board, 19 have provisional NOCs. Chatterjee said many of the private schools get affiliation from central boards and take NOCs from the state, making it difficult to act against them.
February 17, 2017
The Importance of Education for Hindutva
by Ram Puniyani
Education has been the major area of work for RSS all through. Since it has a view of Nationalism which is opposed to the concept of Indian Nationalism, it already had made lot of efforts to promote its views through Shakhas, through Sarswati Shishu Mandirs and through Ekal Schools. It has set up organizations to influence the policies in the field of education like Vidya Bharati. It has also started putting its followers in the top positions in Universities and major research institutes of the country. The previous BJP led NDA regime had already started the process of saffronisation by changing the school books [ . . . ]
http://www.sacw.net/article13115.html
Education has been the major area of work for RSS all through. Since it has a view of Nationalism which is opposed to the concept of Indian Nationalism, it already had made lot of efforts to promote its views through Shakhas, through Sarswati Shishu Mandirs and through Ekal Schools. It has set up organizations to influence the policies in the field of education like Vidya Bharati. It has also started putting its followers in the top positions in Universities and major research institutes of the country. The previous BJP led NDA regime had already started the process of saffronisation by changing the school books [ . . . ]
http://www.sacw.net/article13115.html
January 20, 2017
India: Motor car existed during vedic period - Gujarat tells its schoolkids [2014 news report]
India Today
Motor car existed during vedic period: Gujarat tells its schoolkids
The supplementary books want the primary and secondary schoolchildren in Gujarat to believe that stem cell therapy technology originated from the birth of 100 Kauravas.
Darshan Desai
Ahmedabad, July 28, 2014 | UPDATED 09:38 IST
After tutoring its primary school children that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on October 30, 1948, Japan mounted a nuclear attack on the US during World War II and that a country called Islamic Islamabad was formed after India's partition, the Gujarat government has now come up with textbooks which teach students that "stem cell technology found mention in Mahabharata and motor car existed during the vedic period".
Authored by Dinanath Batra, a member of National Executive of the RSS' education cell called Vidya Bharati, and translated into Gujarati by Gujarat State School Textbooks Board, a set of eight books seeks to propagate what it claims to be Hindu ideology. It also says the country's history books are coloured by the western version.
The supplementary books want the primary and secondary schoolchildren in Gujarat to believe that stem cell therapy technology originated from the birth of 100 Kauravas.
A 125-page book by Dinanath Batra called Tejomay Bharat says, "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."
The book goes on to say that, "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."
It also has a take on the automobile technology. Here is what it wants school children to believe: "What we know today is that 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."
When contacted, Gujarat Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama told Mail Today, "These are only reference books for children about Indian culture. They are not mandatory and not part of the syllabus. We only want children to read material by eminent and knowledgeable authors." Countered that Batra's averments on the birth of the 100 Kauravas appeared more like a television serial lift, the education minister said, "It has been written by an eminent author and nothing has been thrust upon children." He said the books are only for supplementary reading.
The minister insisted that there was no question of withdrawing the books since they are not mandatory. Asked about the textbooks that said Japan mounted a nuclear attack on the US instead of the contrary and the wrong date of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, Chudasama said, "An erratum has already been published."
Motor car existed during vedic period: Gujarat tells its schoolkids
The supplementary books want the primary and secondary schoolchildren in Gujarat to believe that stem cell therapy technology originated from the birth of 100 Kauravas.
Darshan Desai
Ahmedabad, July 28, 2014 | UPDATED 09:38 IST
After tutoring its primary school children that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on October 30, 1948, Japan mounted a nuclear attack on the US during World War II and that a country called Islamic Islamabad was formed after India's partition, the Gujarat government has now come up with textbooks which teach students that "stem cell technology found mention in Mahabharata and motor car existed during the vedic period".
Authored by Dinanath Batra, a member of National Executive of the RSS' education cell called Vidya Bharati, and translated into Gujarati by Gujarat State School Textbooks Board, a set of eight books seeks to propagate what it claims to be Hindu ideology. It also says the country's history books are coloured by the western version.
The supplementary books want the primary and secondary schoolchildren in Gujarat to believe that stem cell therapy technology originated from the birth of 100 Kauravas.
A 125-page book by Dinanath Batra called Tejomay Bharat says, "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."
The book goes on to say that, "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."
It also has a take on the automobile technology. Here is what it wants school children to believe: "What we know today is that 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."
When contacted, Gujarat Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama told Mail Today, "These are only reference books for children about Indian culture. They are not mandatory and not part of the syllabus. We only want children to read material by eminent and knowledgeable authors." Countered that Batra's averments on the birth of the 100 Kauravas appeared more like a television serial lift, the education minister said, "It has been written by an eminent author and nothing has been thrust upon children." He said the books are only for supplementary reading.
The minister insisted that there was no question of withdrawing the books since they are not mandatory. Asked about the textbooks that said Japan mounted a nuclear attack on the US instead of the contrary and the wrong date of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, Chudasama said, "An erratum has already been published."
June 16, 2016
India: The BJP’s Plans for Assam - An RSS-Run School in Every Panchayat
The Wire
The BJP’s Plans for Assam: An RSS-Run School in Every Panchayat
By Hiren Gohain on 15/06/2016
The RSS is riding high on the success of a Muslim student in Assam’s high school examination, but supporting the Hindutva agenda may not resonate with a large number of Muslims.
A young boy gets ready to join the procession. Credit: Shome Basu
A young boy gets ready to join an RSS procession. Credit: Shome Basu
On June 1, newspapers in Assam flashed the results of the high school leaving certificate (HSLC) examination, for which nearly four lakh students appeared. But in some of the headlines one striking fact stood out.
A Muslim student of the Sankardev Shishu Niketan school topped the rankings, scoring 590 out of a total of 600 marks. The school is part of a chain run by Vidya Bharati, the educational wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Founded in 1977 in the wake of the triumphant emergence of the RSS as a formidable troop of fighters against the Emergency, the school proudly proclaims its dedication to provide to the young “education in religion, culture and nationalism”.
Known by a different name across the country – Saraswati Shishu Mandir – in Assam, the RSS appears to have appropriated the name of the great 15th century Assamese poet-saint Sri Sankar Deva by naming its schools after him. By 1993-94, the number of schools run by Vidya Bharati all over India was 6,000. Today, in Assam alone it appears to have several hundred such schools. At a time when most government schools are crumbling in the face of inadequate budgets for the so-called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, with empty school rooms and idle teachers, the Vidya Bharati-run schools offer education of a reasonable quality with affordable fees for low-income groups in most places.
Scores of private schools patronised by the upper and middle classes have switched to CBSE courses, and the state board examination is taken mostly by pupils of the remaining government schools, some Assamese-medium private schools and the Sankardev Shishu Niketan schools. Significantly, students from government schools like Cotton Collegiate School of Guwahati, once Assam’s top high school, have not found a place in the top 20 positions in the results of state board examination for several years.
This year’s topper, Sarfaraz Hussain, the son of a humble tea-shop employee, was interviewed on television after the results. He came across as an intelligent and articulate teenager who paid due tribute to the acharyas (teachers) of his school. Asked to name the three most serious tasks before the new BJP-led government in Assam, Hussain mentioned the expulsion of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants as one of them. The proud members of the Sangh parivar could hardly contain their glee and claimed that the examination results had finally nailed the lie that the RSS was an anti-Muslim organisation.
Himanta Biswa Sarma with Sarfaraz Hussain. Credit: Twitter
Himanta Biswa Sarma with Sarfaraz Hussain. Credit: Twitter
The same day, Himanta Biswa Sarma, state education minister and the most important person after chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal in the new BJP-led government, announced with the zeal of a Sangh neophyte that the schools guided by RSS ideals would soon spread to all 2,202 panchayats in Assam. It did not seem to bother him that the government could not directly finance or encourage a state-wide expansion of a chain of what are after all private schools. This is a disquieting sign of how Sangh zealots habitually overstep the limits of law in exercise of state power. The opposition, perhaps humbled by their disastrous collapse in the elections and over-awed by the fanfare of the RSS triumph in the HSLC examination as well, has kept mum about Sarma’s extraordinary, unconstitutional proclamation.
On June 2, a talk show on a popular television channel raked up a year-old controversy in which I was vehemently attacked by RSS ideologues and sympathisers for stating in a speech that such schools inculcated Hindutva ideals and therefore had an anti-Muslim bias. At that time, I was able to silence the critics by producing as evidence a plaque in front of such a school firmly proclaiming adherence to Hindutva. The TV anchor arrayed half a dozen experts, mostly from the Sangh parivar, as witnesses to the triumph of truth against this contemptible purveyor of untruths. I was mentioned by name, an honour I normally do not merit in such elevated circles, except when there is an urgent need to run me down. The only snag with such an arrangement, loftily ignored by those triumphalists, was that my response was neither sought nor reproduced from past records. The anchor also remarked that wretched secular bigots like myself never associated Christian missionary schools, such as the Don Bosco school, with the spreading of Christianity but ‘cried wolf’ only in the case of RSS schools. But it is important to know that Christian missionary schools take care not to propagate Christian theology in the classroom. I mention this incident only as an example of the palpable bias among a section of the popular electronic media.
Can the Sangh really claim that its secular credentials have been vindicated? I think not. Samudra Gupta Kashyap, one of the panelists on the talk show and a correspondent with the Indian Express, mentioned in an article that the pradhan acharya (headmaster) of the school where Hussain’s father had taken him to be admitted had asked if he was comfortable with his children chanting “various shlokas, including the Gayatri Mantra and Saraswati Vandana”. This is evidence enough of the firm and clear Hindutva orientation of such schools, although Kashyap had not the faintest idea of it.
Nowadays, the RSS is ready to welcome some Muslims if they support the Hindutva agenda. This may not resonate with large numbers of Muslims who are by no means Islamist fanatics. So what is the RSS’s attitude towards those Muslims who do not support the Hindutva agenda? Ample evidence is available from around the country to answer that question.
Hiren Gohain is a writer and scholar. He lives in Guwahati.
The BJP’s Plans for Assam: An RSS-Run School in Every Panchayat
By Hiren Gohain on 15/06/2016
The RSS is riding high on the success of a Muslim student in Assam’s high school examination, but supporting the Hindutva agenda may not resonate with a large number of Muslims.
A young boy gets ready to join the procession. Credit: Shome Basu
A young boy gets ready to join an RSS procession. Credit: Shome Basu
On June 1, newspapers in Assam flashed the results of the high school leaving certificate (HSLC) examination, for which nearly four lakh students appeared. But in some of the headlines one striking fact stood out.
A Muslim student of the Sankardev Shishu Niketan school topped the rankings, scoring 590 out of a total of 600 marks. The school is part of a chain run by Vidya Bharati, the educational wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Founded in 1977 in the wake of the triumphant emergence of the RSS as a formidable troop of fighters against the Emergency, the school proudly proclaims its dedication to provide to the young “education in religion, culture and nationalism”.
Known by a different name across the country – Saraswati Shishu Mandir – in Assam, the RSS appears to have appropriated the name of the great 15th century Assamese poet-saint Sri Sankar Deva by naming its schools after him. By 1993-94, the number of schools run by Vidya Bharati all over India was 6,000. Today, in Assam alone it appears to have several hundred such schools. At a time when most government schools are crumbling in the face of inadequate budgets for the so-called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, with empty school rooms and idle teachers, the Vidya Bharati-run schools offer education of a reasonable quality with affordable fees for low-income groups in most places.
Scores of private schools patronised by the upper and middle classes have switched to CBSE courses, and the state board examination is taken mostly by pupils of the remaining government schools, some Assamese-medium private schools and the Sankardev Shishu Niketan schools. Significantly, students from government schools like Cotton Collegiate School of Guwahati, once Assam’s top high school, have not found a place in the top 20 positions in the results of state board examination for several years.
This year’s topper, Sarfaraz Hussain, the son of a humble tea-shop employee, was interviewed on television after the results. He came across as an intelligent and articulate teenager who paid due tribute to the acharyas (teachers) of his school. Asked to name the three most serious tasks before the new BJP-led government in Assam, Hussain mentioned the expulsion of undocumented Bangladeshi migrants as one of them. The proud members of the Sangh parivar could hardly contain their glee and claimed that the examination results had finally nailed the lie that the RSS was an anti-Muslim organisation.
Himanta Biswa Sarma with Sarfaraz Hussain. Credit: Twitter
Himanta Biswa Sarma with Sarfaraz Hussain. Credit: Twitter
The same day, Himanta Biswa Sarma, state education minister and the most important person after chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal in the new BJP-led government, announced with the zeal of a Sangh neophyte that the schools guided by RSS ideals would soon spread to all 2,202 panchayats in Assam. It did not seem to bother him that the government could not directly finance or encourage a state-wide expansion of a chain of what are after all private schools. This is a disquieting sign of how Sangh zealots habitually overstep the limits of law in exercise of state power. The opposition, perhaps humbled by their disastrous collapse in the elections and over-awed by the fanfare of the RSS triumph in the HSLC examination as well, has kept mum about Sarma’s extraordinary, unconstitutional proclamation.
On June 2, a talk show on a popular television channel raked up a year-old controversy in which I was vehemently attacked by RSS ideologues and sympathisers for stating in a speech that such schools inculcated Hindutva ideals and therefore had an anti-Muslim bias. At that time, I was able to silence the critics by producing as evidence a plaque in front of such a school firmly proclaiming adherence to Hindutva. The TV anchor arrayed half a dozen experts, mostly from the Sangh parivar, as witnesses to the triumph of truth against this contemptible purveyor of untruths. I was mentioned by name, an honour I normally do not merit in such elevated circles, except when there is an urgent need to run me down. The only snag with such an arrangement, loftily ignored by those triumphalists, was that my response was neither sought nor reproduced from past records. The anchor also remarked that wretched secular bigots like myself never associated Christian missionary schools, such as the Don Bosco school, with the spreading of Christianity but ‘cried wolf’ only in the case of RSS schools. But it is important to know that Christian missionary schools take care not to propagate Christian theology in the classroom. I mention this incident only as an example of the palpable bias among a section of the popular electronic media.
Can the Sangh really claim that its secular credentials have been vindicated? I think not. Samudra Gupta Kashyap, one of the panelists on the talk show and a correspondent with the Indian Express, mentioned in an article that the pradhan acharya (headmaster) of the school where Hussain’s father had taken him to be admitted had asked if he was comfortable with his children chanting “various shlokas, including the Gayatri Mantra and Saraswati Vandana”. This is evidence enough of the firm and clear Hindutva orientation of such schools, although Kashyap had not the faintest idea of it.
Nowadays, the RSS is ready to welcome some Muslims if they support the Hindutva agenda. This may not resonate with large numbers of Muslims who are by no means Islamist fanatics. So what is the RSS’s attitude towards those Muslims who do not support the Hindutva agenda? Ample evidence is available from around the country to answer that question.
Hiren Gohain is a writer and scholar. He lives in Guwahati.
January 29, 2016
India's Prime Minsiter to address principals of Vidya Bharati schools - a prominent front organisation of the RSS
The Indian Express
PM Modi to address principals of 1,100 RSS-run schools on Feb 12
his is first time since 1991 that Vidya Bharati, the Sangh’s frontal organisation working in education sector, is organising such a conference for principals of senior secondary schools.
Written by Shyamlal Yadav | New Delhi | Published:January 23, 2016 12:29 am
RSS sources said February 12 was chosen for the PM’s address as the day will be observed as Vasant Panchami and Saraswati Puja this year. (File Photo)
PM Narendra Modi is set to address principals of nearly 1,100 RSS-run senior secondary schools at Vigyan Bhawan on the “role of principals in present academic and social scenario.” The three-day conference will be inaugurated by Modi on February 12 and will also be addressed by HRD Minister Smriti Irani, RSS’s BJP incharge Krishna Gopal, NCERT director Hrushikesh Senapaty and CBSE Chairman Y S K Seshu Kumar. RSS sources said February 12 was chosen for the PM’s address as the day will be observed as Vasant Panchami and Saraswati Puja this year.
RSS sources said the programme was confirmed only on Thursday. This is first time since 1991 that Vidya Bharati, the Sangh’s frontal organisation working in education sector, is organising such a conference for principals of senior secondary schools.
A senior RSS pracharak told The Indian Express, “We got confirmation from the PMO only on Thursday. The PM will spend around 70 minutes with us. He will address principals and will also have an informal chat with our senior functionaries.”
Vidya Bharati is a prominent frontal organisation of the RSS. As many as 56 pracharaks work for it. This is the largest number of pracharaks working for any frontal organisation. Sources in the RSS said that while Atal Bihari Vajpayee had addressed two programmes of Vidya Bharati during his tenure as PM, this will the first time any PM will directly address school principals.
PM Modi to address principals of 1,100 RSS-run schools on Feb 12
his is first time since 1991 that Vidya Bharati, the Sangh’s frontal organisation working in education sector, is organising such a conference for principals of senior secondary schools.
Written by Shyamlal Yadav | New Delhi | Published:January 23, 2016 12:29 am
RSS sources said February 12 was chosen for the PM’s address as the day will be observed as Vasant Panchami and Saraswati Puja this year. (File Photo)
PM Narendra Modi is set to address principals of nearly 1,100 RSS-run senior secondary schools at Vigyan Bhawan on the “role of principals in present academic and social scenario.” The three-day conference will be inaugurated by Modi on February 12 and will also be addressed by HRD Minister Smriti Irani, RSS’s BJP incharge Krishna Gopal, NCERT director Hrushikesh Senapaty and CBSE Chairman Y S K Seshu Kumar. RSS sources said February 12 was chosen for the PM’s address as the day will be observed as Vasant Panchami and Saraswati Puja this year.
RSS sources said the programme was confirmed only on Thursday. This is first time since 1991 that Vidya Bharati, the Sangh’s frontal organisation working in education sector, is organising such a conference for principals of senior secondary schools.
A senior RSS pracharak told The Indian Express, “We got confirmation from the PMO only on Thursday. The PM will spend around 70 minutes with us. He will address principals and will also have an informal chat with our senior functionaries.”
Vidya Bharati is a prominent frontal organisation of the RSS. As many as 56 pracharaks work for it. This is the largest number of pracharaks working for any frontal organisation. Sources in the RSS said that while Atal Bihari Vajpayee had addressed two programmes of Vidya Bharati during his tenure as PM, this will the first time any PM will directly address school principals.
January 28, 2016
Hindu takeover of tribal religion: Unholy politics of India’s far right (Clea Chakraverty)
Le Monde DiplomatiqueFebruary 2016
Hindu takeover of tribal religion
Unholy politics of India’s far right
Ultra-nationalist Hindu organisations are taking a close interest in indigenous religion in the mountains of northeast India.
by Clea Chakraverty
Rata Yirang, a young Adi tribesman, comes back from a hunting expedition with a well-filled bamboo bag. He signals his success by clicking his tongue and hooting. In plastic sandals (made in China), he moves easily over the mud and gravel between the houses on stilts of his village. Damro, population 1,000, stands on a hill 800 metres above sea level in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Bordering China, Bhutan and Burma, it’s a region of forests, rivers and mountains largely unexplored except by the locals, mostly “scheduled tribes” (1) who speak Tibeto-Burman languages. Damro is about six hours by jeep from the district capital, Pasighat, a former British army station in the Siang valley.
Life in the valley, largely unchanged until the 2000s, has rapidly caught up withthe global economy, which has brought advertising, private banks and cheap Chinese and Indian consumer goods. The electricity supply is intermittent, but everyone has a mobile phone. People crowd around the few television sets, fascinated by Indian sitcoms. But agricultural festivals and fertility rituals still govern the rhythm of life for the villagers, who depend on subsistence farming and hunting. The Adi religion blends mythology with shamanistic and social practices and has until recently resisted institutionalisation.
According to clan elder Saram Yirang, young people today are “more interested in Bollywood and western fashion than in the wellbeing of the village.They are moving to the city, and clan solidarity is gradually declining.” The latest census (2001) shows the state’s urban population has increased to 21.34%, compared with 3.70% in 1971. Some blame this migration for the adoption since 1980s of the dominant non-tribal — especially Christian — cultural practices, to which they attribute the most significant changes. “Christianity has made significant inroads into all tribes. The converts don’t observe our festivals any more,” said Aini Taloh, chair of an Adi feminist and cultural organisation in Pasighat. A dozen evangelical churches have been established there in under a decade (2).
A young Baptist pastor said: “Our ancestors were like children. People continue to worship nature spirits, but we believe that is shaitan — the work of the devil. We condemn sacrifices and the consumption of alcohol.” These churches with their powerful, well-organised congregations use a modernist message to win over new converts, while incorporating aspects of local culture (folk songs, dances) into their services. They hold regular prayer and healthcare camps. These “healing crusades” (in both the physical and spiritual senses) have been very popular with participants, who are turning away from healers, whom they feel charge too much, and government hospitals, which suffer from staff absenteeism (3).
“The evangelicals started converting masses of people, because they were offering something more attractive, more modern, than our tribal system,” said Kaling Borang, a civil servant in Pasighat who became a militant indigenist in the 1970s. “Conversions threatened our culture. That’s why we created our own religious movement, reforming our practices and beliefs.” A few educated, English-speaking Adi took up the cause, concerned by the extent of conversion to Christianity, which had already spread to most other states in India’s northeast (4).
In Arunachal Pradesh today, households that practice Donyi-Polo display a flag with a red sun on a white ground. The place of worship, a big rectangular house, is mostly frequented on Saturday mornings, when services are held. There is an altar, with figures from tribal mythology in the style of Hindu gods.A psychedelic rainbow symbolises the faith. There are candles, incense and little bronze bells. The innovation continues: “We have introduced meditation and yoga, and reciting the word keyum,an Adi concept similar to the Hindu ‘Om’ (5),” said Tajom Tasum, secretary general of the Pasighatganggin. But this is not to everyone’s taste.
“Thirty years ago, none of this existed. The reforms were useful in fighting against conversions, but now, Hindu organisations are interfering with our beliefs,” said Kalin Taloh, a business owner in Pasighat, who refuses to go along with them. The organisations provided strong support to the indigenist movement. According to Borang the support was only logistical at first: “We didn’t know how to get started, how to organise our movement. They gave us practical help, manpower, training, advice...”
But these organisations are part of, or have close links to, the ultra-nationalist Hindu movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organisation). The RSS’s ideological project, Hindutva (Hindu-ness), is based on a political and supremacist vision of Hinduism. In many Donyi-Polo places of worship today, there are portraits of RSS leaders. Talom Rukbo, co-founder of the indigenist movement, was made an icon of the RSS after his death in 2002.
These organisations have had a strong presence in Arunachal Pradesh since the Sino-Indian war of 1962, and operate through a social and educational network designed to strengthen the sense of national identity. The small Donyi-Polo Vidya Niketan primary school in Pasighat, and 14 others like it in the RSS Vidya Bharati (6) network in Arunachal Pradesh, offer activities over and above the official Indian curriculum: patriotic songs glorifying Bharat Mata (Mother India) and religious songs in Sanskrit. Yet most pupils are from tribes like the Adi, who are unfamiliar with Sanskrit and the Hindu pantheon. “As far as we are concerned, they are Hindu,” said educational coordinator K V Ashokan. “Donyi-Polo is part of Hindu pluralism. If local people think otherwise, we won’t try to stop them from saying so. But this religion is as indigenous as Hinduism: we have the same beliefs. Hindus have Surya, the Sun, and our god Ram was himself a descendant of the Sun; Hindus venerate nature, as do followers of Donyi-Polo. So what’s the difference?” Ashokan, a senior figure in the organisation, believes education should raise young people’s awareness of their culture as promoted by the RSS, which seeks to demonise conversion to Christianity. Schools also foster a Hindutva view of history.
One RSS organisation, Arun Jyoti, asserts in an English-language pamphlet that there is a “need to protect nationalist sentiment against foreign agents”, especially through its personal development and counselling camps for teenagers. This implies that social and economic ills are due to “backward” tribal culture, a view shared by RSS organisations and by India’s education system, according to anthropologist Nandini Sundar (7).
Omer Tatin, assistant secretary of Arunachal Vikas Parishad, another local RSS organisation, said: “The ministry of tribal affairs is useless. When we wanted to establish our religion formally, only the RSS supported us. That’s why we turned to them.” Like other Adi, he believes the tribal populations need to be developed.The Adi have internalised the rhetoric of a branch of Indian sociology led by Govind Sadashiv Ghurye in the 1940s: the tribes are “backward Hindus”, who must be assimilated through (Hindu) cultural and economic development. This view, reflected at the highest levels of government, helps to get massive industrialisation projects accepted. Between 2005 and 2014, public-private partnerships signed 162 pre-project agreements for dams on the Brahmaputra, without properly consulting the people who would be affected and with no transparency about the use of the funds.
Life in the valley, largely unchanged until the 2000s, has rapidly caught up withthe global economy, which has brought advertising, private banks and cheap Chinese and Indian consumer goods. The electricity supply is intermittent, but everyone has a mobile phone. People crowd around the few television sets, fascinated by Indian sitcoms. But agricultural festivals and fertility rituals still govern the rhythm of life for the villagers, who depend on subsistence farming and hunting. The Adi religion blends mythology with shamanistic and social practices and has until recently resisted institutionalisation.
According to clan elder Saram Yirang, young people today are “more interested in Bollywood and western fashion than in the wellbeing of the village.They are moving to the city, and clan solidarity is gradually declining.” The latest census (2001) shows the state’s urban population has increased to 21.34%, compared with 3.70% in 1971. Some blame this migration for the adoption since 1980s of the dominant non-tribal — especially Christian — cultural practices, to which they attribute the most significant changes. “Christianity has made significant inroads into all tribes. The converts don’t observe our festivals any more,” said Aini Taloh, chair of an Adi feminist and cultural organisation in Pasighat. A dozen evangelical churches have been established there in under a decade (2).
A young Baptist pastor said: “Our ancestors were like children. People continue to worship nature spirits, but we believe that is shaitan — the work of the devil. We condemn sacrifices and the consumption of alcohol.” These churches with their powerful, well-organised congregations use a modernist message to win over new converts, while incorporating aspects of local culture (folk songs, dances) into their services. They hold regular prayer and healthcare camps. These “healing crusades” (in both the physical and spiritual senses) have been very popular with participants, who are turning away from healers, whom they feel charge too much, and government hospitals, which suffer from staff absenteeism (3).
“The evangelicals started converting masses of people, because they were offering something more attractive, more modern, than our tribal system,” said Kaling Borang, a civil servant in Pasighat who became a militant indigenist in the 1970s. “Conversions threatened our culture. That’s why we created our own religious movement, reforming our practices and beliefs.” A few educated, English-speaking Adi took up the cause, concerned by the extent of conversion to Christianity, which had already spread to most other states in India’s northeast (4).
‘We felt devalued’
“From the time when we first had contact with the rest of India — at school, or when applying for official documents — we always had to identify ourselves by our religion. But we didn’t have one, or at least not one that other Indians knew about. We felt devalued,”said Borang. Local activists decided to blend their religious practices under the name Donyi-Polo (sun-moon), which relates to cosmology and tribal beliefs. In 1986 they established an official committee. Inspired by Christian and Hindu practices, they established places of worship known as ganggin, and a clearly defined pantheon with standardised divinities and symbols. Talom Rukbo, leader of this group, proposed to write down the songs and prayers — a revolution for these tribes, which have a preference for spoken forms of language.In Arunachal Pradesh today, households that practice Donyi-Polo display a flag with a red sun on a white ground. The place of worship, a big rectangular house, is mostly frequented on Saturday mornings, when services are held. There is an altar, with figures from tribal mythology in the style of Hindu gods.A psychedelic rainbow symbolises the faith. There are candles, incense and little bronze bells. The innovation continues: “We have introduced meditation and yoga, and reciting the word keyum,an Adi concept similar to the Hindu ‘Om’ (5),” said Tajom Tasum, secretary general of the Pasighatganggin. But this is not to everyone’s taste.
“Thirty years ago, none of this existed. The reforms were useful in fighting against conversions, but now, Hindu organisations are interfering with our beliefs,” said Kalin Taloh, a business owner in Pasighat, who refuses to go along with them. The organisations provided strong support to the indigenist movement. According to Borang the support was only logistical at first: “We didn’t know how to get started, how to organise our movement. They gave us practical help, manpower, training, advice...”
But these organisations are part of, or have close links to, the ultra-nationalist Hindu movement Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteer Organisation). The RSS’s ideological project, Hindutva (Hindu-ness), is based on a political and supremacist vision of Hinduism. In many Donyi-Polo places of worship today, there are portraits of RSS leaders. Talom Rukbo, co-founder of the indigenist movement, was made an icon of the RSS after his death in 2002.
These organisations have had a strong presence in Arunachal Pradesh since the Sino-Indian war of 1962, and operate through a social and educational network designed to strengthen the sense of national identity. The small Donyi-Polo Vidya Niketan primary school in Pasighat, and 14 others like it in the RSS Vidya Bharati (6) network in Arunachal Pradesh, offer activities over and above the official Indian curriculum: patriotic songs glorifying Bharat Mata (Mother India) and religious songs in Sanskrit. Yet most pupils are from tribes like the Adi, who are unfamiliar with Sanskrit and the Hindu pantheon. “As far as we are concerned, they are Hindu,” said educational coordinator K V Ashokan. “Donyi-Polo is part of Hindu pluralism. If local people think otherwise, we won’t try to stop them from saying so. But this religion is as indigenous as Hinduism: we have the same beliefs. Hindus have Surya, the Sun, and our god Ram was himself a descendant of the Sun; Hindus venerate nature, as do followers of Donyi-Polo. So what’s the difference?” Ashokan, a senior figure in the organisation, believes education should raise young people’s awareness of their culture as promoted by the RSS, which seeks to demonise conversion to Christianity. Schools also foster a Hindutva view of history.
A Hindutva view of history
Ashokan said: “We need to be sure of the loyalty of the local populations. Muslims and Christians cannot be loyal. How can they, when their allegiance is to the Pope of Rome or Mecca? When people do not feel they are Hindus, then they are foreigners. It’s a threat to our national identity and integrity.”At the little school, the teachers use Hindi on a day-to-day basis. “Post the 1962 war, the Indian government let missionary schools such as the Ram Krishna mission or Vidya Niketan run freely in Arunachal to ensure that Hindi was also taught. The idea was to get and maintain a grip in the region, especially since in the other northeastern states such as Manipur or Nagaland, the insurgent movements were gaining popularity,” said Mirza Zulfiqur Raman of the social sciences department at the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati. “This allows the government to assert its authority in the region.”One RSS organisation, Arun Jyoti, asserts in an English-language pamphlet that there is a “need to protect nationalist sentiment against foreign agents”, especially through its personal development and counselling camps for teenagers. This implies that social and economic ills are due to “backward” tribal culture, a view shared by RSS organisations and by India’s education system, according to anthropologist Nandini Sundar (7).
Omer Tatin, assistant secretary of Arunachal Vikas Parishad, another local RSS organisation, said: “The ministry of tribal affairs is useless. When we wanted to establish our religion formally, only the RSS supported us. That’s why we turned to them.” Like other Adi, he believes the tribal populations need to be developed.The Adi have internalised the rhetoric of a branch of Indian sociology led by Govind Sadashiv Ghurye in the 1940s: the tribes are “backward Hindus”, who must be assimilated through (Hindu) cultural and economic development. This view, reflected at the highest levels of government, helps to get massive industrialisation projects accepted. Between 2005 and 2014, public-private partnerships signed 162 pre-project agreements for dams on the Brahmaputra, without properly consulting the people who would be affected and with no transparency about the use of the funds.
July 19, 2015
India: Sangh groups at Smriti door - Four-hour meet to lobby for key posts
The Telegraph
Sangh groups at Smriti door - Four-hour meet to lobby for key posts
Our Bureau
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150719/jsp/frontpage/story_32469.jsp
New Delhi, July 18: A group of RSS affiliates today met Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani over four hours and lobbied to get their nominees into key posts at premier educational institutions, sources said. Several central universities, IITs and IIMs as well as school boards and textbook publishers have vacancies at the top.
Although none from the minister's office or the Sangh-affiliated organisations would officially confirm it, sources said the meeting discussed appointments and the new education policy.
Held at the minister's home, the meeting drew representatives from Sangh education wings Vidya Bharati and Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal, student arm Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, and teachers’ body Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh.
Also present were members from the Samskrita Bharati, which promotes Sanskrit, and the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, led by Sangh ideologue Dinanath Batra, which had moved court against Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History * and got Penguin India to withdraw it.
Sources said inputs were shared at the meeting on the new national education policy that Irani's ministry is expected to announce early next year. The delegates emphasised that the policy should instil “nationalism, pride and ancient Indian values in modern education.”
Irani has been nudged from the top to keep herself on the right side of the Sangh and its affiliates, sources said. They added that she would face a challenge balancing the demands of these competing organisations - each of which came with a wish list of candidates for key posts -since she is not from the Sangh and is not versed on its functioning.
Her forebear in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Murli Manohar Joshi, knew the Sangh better and had fewer education affiliates to handle anyway. Irani has many posts to fill. The central universities in Odisha, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Kashmir have lacked vice-chancellors for over a year, while the IITs in Delhi, Indore and Mandi have no directors and the IIMs in Kozhikode, Lucknow and Ranchi lack chairpersons.
The Central Board of Secondary Education, the country’s largest school board, too is without a chairperson. The National Council of Educational Research and Training {NCERT} lacks a director and the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, which runs a chain of schools, is waiting for a commissioner.
Posts in the NCERT, which prepares school textbooks, have always been coveted by the Sangh and its affiliates, who feel that schools now largely ignore India's “glorious past.”
Recently, the Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal and the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti released their own draft education policies to mount pressure on the government. Their policies give priority to Indian languages, “value education,” national heroes and Vedic mathematics.
Mandal national organising secretary Mukul Kanitkar told a news conference last week that the government and the Sangh were on the same page on policy issues.
Sangh groups at Smriti door - Four-hour meet to lobby for key posts
Our Bureau
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150719/jsp/frontpage/story_32469.jsp
New Delhi, July 18: A group of RSS affiliates today met Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani over four hours and lobbied to get their nominees into key posts at premier educational institutions, sources said. Several central universities, IITs and IIMs as well as school boards and textbook publishers have vacancies at the top.
Although none from the minister's office or the Sangh-affiliated organisations would officially confirm it, sources said the meeting discussed appointments and the new education policy.
Held at the minister's home, the meeting drew representatives from Sangh education wings Vidya Bharati and Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal, student arm Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, and teachers’ body Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasangh.
Also present were members from the Samskrita Bharati, which promotes Sanskrit, and the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, led by Sangh ideologue Dinanath Batra, which had moved court against Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History * and got Penguin India to withdraw it.
Sources said inputs were shared at the meeting on the new national education policy that Irani's ministry is expected to announce early next year. The delegates emphasised that the policy should instil “nationalism, pride and ancient Indian values in modern education.”
Irani has been nudged from the top to keep herself on the right side of the Sangh and its affiliates, sources said. They added that she would face a challenge balancing the demands of these competing organisations - each of which came with a wish list of candidates for key posts -since she is not from the Sangh and is not versed on its functioning.
Her forebear in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Murli Manohar Joshi, knew the Sangh better and had fewer education affiliates to handle anyway. Irani has many posts to fill. The central universities in Odisha, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Kashmir have lacked vice-chancellors for over a year, while the IITs in Delhi, Indore and Mandi have no directors and the IIMs in Kozhikode, Lucknow and Ranchi lack chairpersons.
The Central Board of Secondary Education, the country’s largest school board, too is without a chairperson. The National Council of Educational Research and Training {NCERT} lacks a director and the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, which runs a chain of schools, is waiting for a commissioner.
Posts in the NCERT, which prepares school textbooks, have always been coveted by the Sangh and its affiliates, who feel that schools now largely ignore India's “glorious past.”
Recently, the Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal and the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti released their own draft education policies to mount pressure on the government. Their policies give priority to Indian languages, “value education,” national heroes and Vedic mathematics.
Mandal national organising secretary Mukul Kanitkar told a news conference last week that the government and the Sangh were on the same page on policy issues.
August 09, 2014
The Problems With Systemic ‘Saffronisation’ Of Education In India : Heeba Din
http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2014/08/problems-systemic-saffronisation-education-india/
The Problems With Systemic ‘Saffronisation’ Of Education In India
4th August, 2014
By Heeba Din:
Did you know that Qutub Minar was built by emperor Samudragupta and its real name was Vishnu Stambha, or that our original ancestors Manu and Shatrun gave life to this earth. That man took birth in Tibet, originally a part of India, and all beings were Aryan beings. Or that stem cell research was invented by India’s Dr. Balkrishna Ganpat Matapurkar, or that invention of television dates back to the Indian rishis using their yog vidya which would help them attain divya drishti for e.g. In Mahabharata, Sanjaya sitting inside a palace in Hastinapur and using his divya shakti would give a live update of the battle of Mahabharata, to the blind Dhritarashtra?
education
These are few of the “Facts” about the world and national history that lakhs of students are learning as a part of their curriculum under RSS run schools all over India. One may laugh at or simply overlook the digressing ‘facts‘ mentioned above, but the underlying impact and erroneous amount of details and portrayals regarding minorities and different ideologies other than Hindus have set alarm bells ringing in the past. The National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation (consisting of a large number of experts from all over the country) appointed by the NCERT itself, a few years ago, came to the conclusion that ‘the main purpose which these books would serve is to gradually transform the young children into bigoted morons in the garb of instilling in them patriotism’.
While The Rashtriya Swamayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has never deviated from its core ideology of forming a ‘Hindu Rastra’, it is the systematic attempt of rewriting history with saffron ink through its vast network of educational institutes like vidya bharti, one of the largest chain of private schools in India, catering mainly to lower middle class, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) which specialises in hostels for adivasi children along with other activities and Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, which runs single pre-school teacher centres, where students are taught basic reading and writing of Sanskrit and Sanskrit behaviours, is a clear indicator of RSS’s slow but deliberate attempt of “saffronising” the education system of the country. And in the process, feeding large number of young brains with their core ideology of Hindutva.
Now one might think how a right wing Hindu Nationalist group can rewrite the history of a mighty nation like India. The HRD ministry’s approval of creation of The Bharatiya Shiksha Niti Ayog (BSNA), which has been constituted by the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, that is mandated to “suggest corrective steps” to “Indianize” the education system, which will be headed by the controversial Dinanath Batra, the same person who advised Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to remove sex education from the state curriculum and got Penguin to pulp Wendy Doniger’s book “The Hindus: An Alternative History”, suggests which waves is the BJP led government riding.
Coincidentally, the major attempts in recent past to change the course of Indian history and revamping the education system, where minorities were portrayed as main problems of the nation and Muslims, Christians and Parsis referred to as foreigners, where struggle for freedom was portrayed as war against the Muslims; all done in the name of instilling nationalism and national pride have been done in the last two terms of the BJP rule. First with Murli Manohar Joshi, the then HRD minster, going all out to saffronise the education system by bringing changes in NCERT text along with huge changes in the reconstitution of major educational bodies like Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, the NCERT and the Indian Council of Historical Research to include members having pro BJP/RSS stand. And now with Smriti Irani, the current HRD minster, trying to bring Vedas, ancient Hindu texts and Unpanishads in the syllabus of class 8th, 9th and 10th.
One might profess that reading ancient texts and scripts has no communal aspect to it, but the agencies and institutions propagating the move are the one that need to be scrutinised. Created by the RSS in 1978, the Vidya Bharati, Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan network, focuses on moral, extracurricular and physical education for “mind, body and spirit.” The Vidya Bharati educational mission is founded on the objective of training children to see themselves as protectors of a Hindu nation. The Vidya Bharati system supervises over 18,000 schools across India, with 1.8 million students and 80,000 teachers. A shared curriculum is used across the country. The Vidya Bharati operates 60 graduate institutions. About 5,000 Vidya Bharatis are endorsed by education boards primarily in states where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power. Another organisation called Bhartiya Adhyapak Parishad, an offshoot of Vidya Bharti, has trained teachers on the ideology of Hindutva. Bhartiya Itihas Sanklan yojana was set up in 1973 to re-write Indian History of the past 5000 years to prove that the ‘Aryans’ are indigenous people, not the invaders. Samskar Bharti established in 1982 with the aim of preventing western influence on Indian culture has 900 branches. Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, founded in 1948, was registered in 1949. Its sole objective is to channelize the energy of the students in the task of National reconstruction. Out of 30 Central Universities, it captured 15. Its activists played a major role in the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid.
With these organisations at the helm of affairs, the rabid distortions in historical texts and the influence on young minds under such ideology is capable of communalising the situation in no time and flaring up of sentiments in the name of patriotism and nationalism, and creating fundamentalists and extremists out of the innocent young children, who are constantly fed with an ideology of superiority of one sect and demonising of another.
The fact that the government has failed to provide free education to children is also one of the contributing factors as to why such institutions and organisations are filled with students all year round. The poor, homeless illiterate parents have no option but to send their children to these schools backing a particular ideology, the only hope for their wards to have a future.
Though BJP always took its stand against the previous ruling government’s inefficiency to stop the degradation of Indian culture and values, it is by bringing ancient texts and setting up a committee to “Indianise” education, that the current government seems to find solution to the problem. Mr. Batra, who will be heading the BSNA, a staunch advocate of revamping the whole education system with his campaign of Shiksha Bachao Andolan, which seeks to ban all ‘anti Hindu‘ books says, “NCERT textbooks will be rewritten according to the aim and objects of the nation so that it inculcates feeling of patriotism among children. Modernity is not westernisation. We want modernity with Indian base (marked by) patriotism and spiritualism.’’
What is the message that we send out to the growing child with these factual misrepresentations and deliberate exclusions of some historical events?
The ICSE History and Civics textbook, Part II for Std. X, devotes a whole chapter to the ‘Formation of the Muslim League’. But there is no mention at all of Hindu communal organisations. It is in the same book that when assassination of Mahatma Gandhi is talked about, no mention or comment is made on Nathuram Godse or the ideology that drove him to assisinate Gandhi and neither the fact that the Government Of India banned RSS because of Godse’s close links with the organisation and the Hindu Mahasabha. Similarly, the Social Studies text for standard VIII of the Gujarat State Board has a tiny sub-section titled, “The Murder of Gandhi”. This reads thus: “After Independence there were severe communal riots in India. Gandhiji tried his utmost to suppress it. Many people did not like this. Gandhiji was murdered at the hands of Godsay on 30th January 1948.”
On the other hand, the state government of Gujarat time and again has tried to meddle with the education system. On January 19, 2000, the Gujarat state education department sent out a GR directing all schools to subscribe to the RSS magazine, Sadhana. Sadhana is a monthly printed by the Gujarat unit of the RSS. Another circular brought out in December 2000 had insisted that all schools send their teachers to sanskrit training camps in preparation for the move to make the subject mandatory learning and teaching in schools. And the newly subscribed list of books for primary and secondary class is full with nationalist books written by authors like Dinanath Batra , which propagate epics and mythological instances as facts.
Call it saffronisation of education, communalisation of education or politicisation of education, the basic fact remains that young minds are increasingly becoming laboratories for fundamentalists and extremists propagating their views and ideologies, while the innocent minds get fashioned in the beliefs which are inculcated in them and the result is creation of a generation which is fed half baked truths, misrepresented facts and distorted history. Is this the generation you want to be a part of?
The Problems With Systemic ‘Saffronisation’ Of Education In India
4th August, 2014
By Heeba Din:
Did you know that Qutub Minar was built by emperor Samudragupta and its real name was Vishnu Stambha, or that our original ancestors Manu and Shatrun gave life to this earth. That man took birth in Tibet, originally a part of India, and all beings were Aryan beings. Or that stem cell research was invented by India’s Dr. Balkrishna Ganpat Matapurkar, or that invention of television dates back to the Indian rishis using their yog vidya which would help them attain divya drishti for e.g. In Mahabharata, Sanjaya sitting inside a palace in Hastinapur and using his divya shakti would give a live update of the battle of Mahabharata, to the blind Dhritarashtra?
education
These are few of the “Facts” about the world and national history that lakhs of students are learning as a part of their curriculum under RSS run schools all over India. One may laugh at or simply overlook the digressing ‘facts‘ mentioned above, but the underlying impact and erroneous amount of details and portrayals regarding minorities and different ideologies other than Hindus have set alarm bells ringing in the past. The National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation (consisting of a large number of experts from all over the country) appointed by the NCERT itself, a few years ago, came to the conclusion that ‘the main purpose which these books would serve is to gradually transform the young children into bigoted morons in the garb of instilling in them patriotism’.
While The Rashtriya Swamayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has never deviated from its core ideology of forming a ‘Hindu Rastra’, it is the systematic attempt of rewriting history with saffron ink through its vast network of educational institutes like vidya bharti, one of the largest chain of private schools in India, catering mainly to lower middle class, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) which specialises in hostels for adivasi children along with other activities and Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, which runs single pre-school teacher centres, where students are taught basic reading and writing of Sanskrit and Sanskrit behaviours, is a clear indicator of RSS’s slow but deliberate attempt of “saffronising” the education system of the country. And in the process, feeding large number of young brains with their core ideology of Hindutva.
Now one might think how a right wing Hindu Nationalist group can rewrite the history of a mighty nation like India. The HRD ministry’s approval of creation of The Bharatiya Shiksha Niti Ayog (BSNA), which has been constituted by the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, that is mandated to “suggest corrective steps” to “Indianize” the education system, which will be headed by the controversial Dinanath Batra, the same person who advised Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to remove sex education from the state curriculum and got Penguin to pulp Wendy Doniger’s book “The Hindus: An Alternative History”, suggests which waves is the BJP led government riding.
Coincidentally, the major attempts in recent past to change the course of Indian history and revamping the education system, where minorities were portrayed as main problems of the nation and Muslims, Christians and Parsis referred to as foreigners, where struggle for freedom was portrayed as war against the Muslims; all done in the name of instilling nationalism and national pride have been done in the last two terms of the BJP rule. First with Murli Manohar Joshi, the then HRD minster, going all out to saffronise the education system by bringing changes in NCERT text along with huge changes in the reconstitution of major educational bodies like Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, the NCERT and the Indian Council of Historical Research to include members having pro BJP/RSS stand. And now with Smriti Irani, the current HRD minster, trying to bring Vedas, ancient Hindu texts and Unpanishads in the syllabus of class 8th, 9th and 10th.
One might profess that reading ancient texts and scripts has no communal aspect to it, but the agencies and institutions propagating the move are the one that need to be scrutinised. Created by the RSS in 1978, the Vidya Bharati, Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan network, focuses on moral, extracurricular and physical education for “mind, body and spirit.” The Vidya Bharati educational mission is founded on the objective of training children to see themselves as protectors of a Hindu nation. The Vidya Bharati system supervises over 18,000 schools across India, with 1.8 million students and 80,000 teachers. A shared curriculum is used across the country. The Vidya Bharati operates 60 graduate institutions. About 5,000 Vidya Bharatis are endorsed by education boards primarily in states where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power. Another organisation called Bhartiya Adhyapak Parishad, an offshoot of Vidya Bharti, has trained teachers on the ideology of Hindutva. Bhartiya Itihas Sanklan yojana was set up in 1973 to re-write Indian History of the past 5000 years to prove that the ‘Aryans’ are indigenous people, not the invaders. Samskar Bharti established in 1982 with the aim of preventing western influence on Indian culture has 900 branches. Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, founded in 1948, was registered in 1949. Its sole objective is to channelize the energy of the students in the task of National reconstruction. Out of 30 Central Universities, it captured 15. Its activists played a major role in the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid.
With these organisations at the helm of affairs, the rabid distortions in historical texts and the influence on young minds under such ideology is capable of communalising the situation in no time and flaring up of sentiments in the name of patriotism and nationalism, and creating fundamentalists and extremists out of the innocent young children, who are constantly fed with an ideology of superiority of one sect and demonising of another.
The fact that the government has failed to provide free education to children is also one of the contributing factors as to why such institutions and organisations are filled with students all year round. The poor, homeless illiterate parents have no option but to send their children to these schools backing a particular ideology, the only hope for their wards to have a future.
Though BJP always took its stand against the previous ruling government’s inefficiency to stop the degradation of Indian culture and values, it is by bringing ancient texts and setting up a committee to “Indianise” education, that the current government seems to find solution to the problem. Mr. Batra, who will be heading the BSNA, a staunch advocate of revamping the whole education system with his campaign of Shiksha Bachao Andolan, which seeks to ban all ‘anti Hindu‘ books says, “NCERT textbooks will be rewritten according to the aim and objects of the nation so that it inculcates feeling of patriotism among children. Modernity is not westernisation. We want modernity with Indian base (marked by) patriotism and spiritualism.’’
What is the message that we send out to the growing child with these factual misrepresentations and deliberate exclusions of some historical events?
The ICSE History and Civics textbook, Part II for Std. X, devotes a whole chapter to the ‘Formation of the Muslim League’. But there is no mention at all of Hindu communal organisations. It is in the same book that when assassination of Mahatma Gandhi is talked about, no mention or comment is made on Nathuram Godse or the ideology that drove him to assisinate Gandhi and neither the fact that the Government Of India banned RSS because of Godse’s close links with the organisation and the Hindu Mahasabha. Similarly, the Social Studies text for standard VIII of the Gujarat State Board has a tiny sub-section titled, “The Murder of Gandhi”. This reads thus: “After Independence there were severe communal riots in India. Gandhiji tried his utmost to suppress it. Many people did not like this. Gandhiji was murdered at the hands of Godsay on 30th January 1948.”
On the other hand, the state government of Gujarat time and again has tried to meddle with the education system. On January 19, 2000, the Gujarat state education department sent out a GR directing all schools to subscribe to the RSS magazine, Sadhana. Sadhana is a monthly printed by the Gujarat unit of the RSS. Another circular brought out in December 2000 had insisted that all schools send their teachers to sanskrit training camps in preparation for the move to make the subject mandatory learning and teaching in schools. And the newly subscribed list of books for primary and secondary class is full with nationalist books written by authors like Dinanath Batra , which propagate epics and mythological instances as facts.
Call it saffronisation of education, communalisation of education or politicisation of education, the basic fact remains that young minds are increasingly becoming laboratories for fundamentalists and extremists propagating their views and ideologies, while the innocent minds get fashioned in the beliefs which are inculcated in them and the result is creation of a generation which is fed half baked truths, misrepresented facts and distorted history. Is this the generation you want to be a part of?
September 07, 2013
India: Learning acquires saffron hue in RSS-run schools in Madhya Pradesh
From:
Have
you heard this one? If 15 kar sevaks demolish the Babri Masjid in 300
days, how many kar sevaks will it take to demolish the Masjid in 15
days? There is no punchline, however, because this is no joke.
It is one of the questions to be introduced in a mathematics textbook
for primary school students in Madhya Pradesh-part of the RSS'S grand
design to etch its Hindutva ideology on impressionable minds in the
state.
Undoubtedly, the subversion of the educational system by the RSS has the state BJP Government's backing. To give education a saffron hue, entire textbooks from nursery to the postgraduate level are being rewritten with a Hindu emphasis.
More alarming is the Government's decision to give the Vidya Bharati, an RSS-run educational organisation, permission to set up a parallel education board conducting class five and eight exams. Till now, these exams were conducted by the Education Department.
As the efforts to subvert history acquire serious proportions, the Opposition is beginning to stir. Last fortnight the Congress(I), the CPI and the Janata Dal formed a common forum, the Sampradayik Sadbhavna Manch, to fight RSS infiltration into the state Government.
Says MPCC(I) chief Digvijay Singh:' 'The recent example of RSS infiltration was the Government decision to permit Vidya Bharati to conduct examinations."
His concern is legitimate. The decision has far-reaching ramifications. With around 1,600 Vidya Bharati schools catering to 1.95 lakh students in the state, the RSS-run institution now enjoys a carte blanche to steer students' minds in the 'right' direction.
The organisation's Hindutva leanings are proclaimed in its official brochure: "Our goal is to develop a national education system which can create a generation loyal to Hindutva and the nation." As Vinayak Shendey, an RSS worker in charge of the state Vidya Bharati, says: "A silent revolution is taking place in Madhya Pradesh."
Although the Government insists the rewritten history will only be correcting a "distorted" history, its new version is tailored to perpetuate the RSS ideology. While many text-books are still being tampered with, the state University Grants Commission has already introduced a new book, Bharat Ki Sanskritik Virasat (Cultural Heritage of India) in the foundation courses.
While commission Chairman Om Nagpal claims that the book lays emphasis on "projecting the past glory of India", it often borders on crude glorification of all things Indian. Consider these: "Indian culture is among the best in the world....
The Vedas, which epitomise the height of Indian culture, were written at a time when western countries were not even civilised"; "India is the original place of the Aryans. It is open to question that they migrated to other countries from India."
The
new book also reinterprets the freedom movement with a strong RSS bias.
For instance, it is often critical of Gandhi: "The Gandhi-Irwin Pact
will always be looked down at with suspicion and criticism in the
background of the hanging of Bhagat Singh and his colleagues."
In keeping with the party's rightist ideology, the communists who refused to participate in the Quit India movement have been described as "traitors".
The rewritten history subverts information by highlighting certain facts and omitting others. Some of the changes that have been agreed upon: a chapter on Karl Marx will be withdrawn from a class five textbook; history books will now project Maharana Pratap and Shivaji as heroes and Aurangzeb as a villain; other textbooks will include the biographies of RSS leaders such as Deendayal Upadhyay and Hedgewar; and courses on the freedom struggle will quote extensively from the writings of the original Hindutva hero, V.D. Savarkar.
The Education Department has already withdrawn the supplementary readers used from class three to eight. The idea, as Education Minister Vikram Verma explained, was to "lighten the load on the children". But the real reason behind scrapping the readers was that they included the biographies of certain national leaders who are anathema to the BJP.
Not surprisingly, the issue has forced its way into Parliament, forcing Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh to declare: "I would only plead with the Madhya Pradesh Government not to treat Gandhi, Mohammed, Buddha and Christ as a burden on children."
The state Government, of course, defends itself. According to the Education Department: "The books are being rewritten under the normal revision programme to update them." But ripping the veil off the Government's pious facade is the conversion of Vidya Bharati into a parallel examination board.
It is no coincidence then that the number of Vidya Bharati schools in the state has shot up from 1,2 00 to 1,600 since the BJP came to power. The Government has also relaxed the rules for appointment of Vidya Bharati teachers: they do not need to undergo training at a government institution.
There have been other examples of the BJP Government's largesse to Vidya Bharati. Although Vidya Bharati claims not to take any grant from the Government, in Bhopal its office is located in a government bungalow. Moreover, Vidya Bharati schools all over the state have been allotted about 200 plots, costing crores, free or for a nominal fee.
Vidya Bharati is now close to achieving its goal of acquiring at least one plot of land in each of the 317 tehsils in the state. The state Housing Board Chairman, Rajendra Dharkar, a BJP politician, has announced in no uncertain terms that Vidya Bharati schools will be given priority over others in allocation of land.
The grossly preferential treatment given to Vidya Bharati has raised many eyebrows. However, Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa contends that Vidya Bharati has been working with unparalleled devotion without any government help so far.
Besides, the Education Department points out that about 90 per cent of the Vidya Bharati schools were recognised during the Congress(I) rule in the state. So: "Why should there be such a hue and cry if their noble activities have received a little encouragement in the last two years?"
However, it is the BJP-RSS'S insidious motives that are raising hackles. The opposition parties have denounced the decision to grant autonomy to Vidya Bharati as "a conspiracy by the RSS to infiltrate the educational field".
Digvijay Singh is furious: "The BJP Government wants to turn the schools into centres for the dissemination of RSS propaganda." His party has submitted a memorandum to the governor accusing the BJP Government of trying to pollute young minds with communal views.
There are other RSS-linked organisations that are also being promoted. The Government has given a grant of Rs.6 lakh to the Ujjain-based Itihas Sansodhak Mandal to rewrite history from a Hindu point of view.
Apart from this, it has begun the Chitrakoot Rural University in Satna district-with RSS leader Nanaji Deshmukh as chancellor-which will function "on the lines of ancient Nalanda and Takshila".
In the face of such evidence, few believe the state Government when it says it has no intention of subtly filtering its ideology into the state'ssocial and educational structure. Even fewer will do so when their children start spouting RSS shibboleths such as "the 21st century will be the century of the Hindus" in the same breath as their sweet little nursery rhymes.
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/learning-acquires-saffron-hue-in-rss-run-schools-in-madhya-pradesh/1/307451.html
Injecting propaganda
Learning acquires saffron hue in RSS-run schools in Madhya Pradesh
Prayers at a Vidya Bharati school
Undoubtedly, the subversion of the educational system by the RSS has the state BJP Government's backing. To give education a saffron hue, entire textbooks from nursery to the postgraduate level are being rewritten with a Hindu emphasis.
More alarming is the Government's decision to give the Vidya Bharati, an RSS-run educational organisation, permission to set up a parallel education board conducting class five and eight exams. Till now, these exams were conducted by the Education Department.
As the efforts to subvert history acquire serious proportions, the Opposition is beginning to stir. Last fortnight the Congress(I), the CPI and the Janata Dal formed a common forum, the Sampradayik Sadbhavna Manch, to fight RSS infiltration into the state Government.
Says MPCC(I) chief Digvijay Singh:' 'The recent example of RSS infiltration was the Government decision to permit Vidya Bharati to conduct examinations."
His concern is legitimate. The decision has far-reaching ramifications. With around 1,600 Vidya Bharati schools catering to 1.95 lakh students in the state, the RSS-run institution now enjoys a carte blanche to steer students' minds in the 'right' direction.
The organisation's Hindutva leanings are proclaimed in its official brochure: "Our goal is to develop a national education system which can create a generation loyal to Hindutva and the nation." As Vinayak Shendey, an RSS worker in charge of the state Vidya Bharati, says: "A silent revolution is taking place in Madhya Pradesh."
Although the Government insists the rewritten history will only be correcting a "distorted" history, its new version is tailored to perpetuate the RSS ideology. While many text-books are still being tampered with, the state University Grants Commission has already introduced a new book, Bharat Ki Sanskritik Virasat (Cultural Heritage of India) in the foundation courses.
While commission Chairman Om Nagpal claims that the book lays emphasis on "projecting the past glory of India", it often borders on crude glorification of all things Indian. Consider these: "Indian culture is among the best in the world....
The Vedas, which epitomise the height of Indian culture, were written at a time when western countries were not even civilised"; "India is the original place of the Aryans. It is open to question that they migrated to other countries from India."
Fact Or Fiction?
|
In keeping with the party's rightist ideology, the communists who refused to participate in the Quit India movement have been described as "traitors".
The rewritten history subverts information by highlighting certain facts and omitting others. Some of the changes that have been agreed upon: a chapter on Karl Marx will be withdrawn from a class five textbook; history books will now project Maharana Pratap and Shivaji as heroes and Aurangzeb as a villain; other textbooks will include the biographies of RSS leaders such as Deendayal Upadhyay and Hedgewar; and courses on the freedom struggle will quote extensively from the writings of the original Hindutva hero, V.D. Savarkar.
The Education Department has already withdrawn the supplementary readers used from class three to eight. The idea, as Education Minister Vikram Verma explained, was to "lighten the load on the children". But the real reason behind scrapping the readers was that they included the biographies of certain national leaders who are anathema to the BJP.
Not surprisingly, the issue has forced its way into Parliament, forcing Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh to declare: "I would only plead with the Madhya Pradesh Government not to treat Gandhi, Mohammed, Buddha and Christ as a burden on children."
The state Government, of course, defends itself. According to the Education Department: "The books are being rewritten under the normal revision programme to update them." But ripping the veil off the Government's pious facade is the conversion of Vidya Bharati into a parallel examination board.
It is no coincidence then that the number of Vidya Bharati schools in the state has shot up from 1,2 00 to 1,600 since the BJP came to power. The Government has also relaxed the rules for appointment of Vidya Bharati teachers: they do not need to undergo training at a government institution.
There have been other examples of the BJP Government's largesse to Vidya Bharati. Although Vidya Bharati claims not to take any grant from the Government, in Bhopal its office is located in a government bungalow. Moreover, Vidya Bharati schools all over the state have been allotted about 200 plots, costing crores, free or for a nominal fee.
Vidya Bharati is now close to achieving its goal of acquiring at least one plot of land in each of the 317 tehsils in the state. The state Housing Board Chairman, Rajendra Dharkar, a BJP politician, has announced in no uncertain terms that Vidya Bharati schools will be given priority over others in allocation of land.
The grossly preferential treatment given to Vidya Bharati has raised many eyebrows. However, Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa contends that Vidya Bharati has been working with unparalleled devotion without any government help so far.
Besides, the Education Department points out that about 90 per cent of the Vidya Bharati schools were recognised during the Congress(I) rule in the state. So: "Why should there be such a hue and cry if their noble activities have received a little encouragement in the last two years?"
However, it is the BJP-RSS'S insidious motives that are raising hackles. The opposition parties have denounced the decision to grant autonomy to Vidya Bharati as "a conspiracy by the RSS to infiltrate the educational field".
Digvijay Singh is furious: "The BJP Government wants to turn the schools into centres for the dissemination of RSS propaganda." His party has submitted a memorandum to the governor accusing the BJP Government of trying to pollute young minds with communal views.
There are other RSS-linked organisations that are also being promoted. The Government has given a grant of Rs.6 lakh to the Ujjain-based Itihas Sansodhak Mandal to rewrite history from a Hindu point of view.
Apart from this, it has begun the Chitrakoot Rural University in Satna district-with RSS leader Nanaji Deshmukh as chancellor-which will function "on the lines of ancient Nalanda and Takshila".
In the face of such evidence, few believe the state Government when it says it has no intention of subtly filtering its ideology into the state'ssocial and educational structure. Even fewer will do so when their children start spouting RSS shibboleths such as "the 21st century will be the century of the Hindus" in the same breath as their sweet little nursery rhymes.
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/learning-acquires-saffron-hue-in-rss-run-schools-in-madhya-pradesh/1/307451.html
February 20, 2012
Ten years after the Gujarat genocide: Hindu Right has grown deeper in India
Hindustan Times
Saffron's deeper now
by Sitaram Yechury
February 20, 2012
This fortnight marks the 10th anniversary of the horrendous Godhra train fire and the communal carnage that followed in Gujarat, which consumed thousands of innocent lives. Among all factors that reflect on the vulnerability of the secular, democratic foundations of modern India, this decade highlights the serious limitations of our system of delivery of justice. This is one of the main yardsticks that measures the character of a modern republic. On this count, India finds itself wanting. This is, unfortunately, not confined only to the victims of the communal genocide in Gujarat, but continues to plague the victims of other carnages as well. The old adage 'justice delayed is justice denied' cannot find a more tragic manifestation than what is happening to the hapless victims of the Gujarat genocide.
The delivery of justice continues to elude us despite the latest order of the apex court (January 25, 2012) entrusting the inquiry of all extrajudicial (encounter) killings by the Gujarat police between October 2002 and December 2006 to a retired Supreme Court judge. In response to the charges of subversion of the criminal justice system, the higher judiciary had earlier ordered the transfer of riot cases outside the state, reopening of more than 2,000 closed cases by the Gujarat police, the appointment of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to reinvestigate nine major incidents of mass killings and directing the CBI to investigate some specific complaints and fake encounters. Much speculation has been generated by the CBI's sealed report submitted to the judiciary. On the one hand, there are serious allegations of complicity and, on the other, chief minister Narendra Modi has claimed that this 'exonerates' his administration's role in subverting the delivery of justice. The report is yet to be made public officially. Notwithstanding all this, the fact remains that the delivery of justice continues to elude us.
While the RSS and its political arm, the BJP, continue to pride themselves in these events as representing the success of the 'Hindutva laboratory' in Gujarat, the tentacles they use to spread the communal virus continue to extend further. Following its successful experiment in controlling the reins of governance at the Centre for six years by keeping its core communal agenda - the construction of a temple at Ayodhya, abolition of Article 370 and imposition of a uniform civil code - on the backburner to elicit the support of its NDA allies, it refrains from using these issues for communal polarisation. However, this polarisation is being pursued vigorously on other grounds.
It has revived its old issue of 'cow protection' in an aggressive manner. Since its inception in 1925, the RSS had founded a wide network of 'Gau Raksha Samitis' (cow protection societies). In 2010, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) conducted a yatra on this issue in different parts of the country. The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has enacted a new law, the 'Prohibition of Slaughter of Cow Progeny Amendment Bill'. With this, it has become the first state in the country to make consumption of beef illegal, going beyond the laws enacted by other BJP state governments. This law puts an accused on a par with someone charged under anti-terrorist laws where the onus of proving innocence lies with the alleged violator, reversing the fundamental tenet of our criminal law that states that an accused is 'innocent until proven guilty'.
The Gujarat government, in its latest move of polarisation, has enacted a law for preventing distress sale of property in areas dominated by another community. This is designed to consolidate the further ghettoisation and, thus, communal polarisation in the state. The state government has also refused to implement the central scheme of scholarships for Muslim minorities on the grounds that it did not want to allow special privileges to religious minorities. This scheme was introduced in 2008 following the national outrage over the findings of the Sachar Committee report on the status of Muslims in India. In Gujarat, only 26% Muslims reach matriculation compared to 41% overall. Urban poverty among Muslims is 800% higher than among high caste Hindus and 50% more than the OBCs.
Simultaneously, in all BJP-ruled states, the massive parallel education machinery of the RSS continues to grow steadily. The Vidya Bharati, established in 1977, today runs nearly 30,000 educational institutions with 32.5 lakh students and 1.6 lakh teachers. Its declared objective is to "develop a national system of education which would help to build a generation of young men and women that is committed to Hindutva and infused with patriotic fervour". As early as 1996, the NCERT, on the basis of a survey of the Vidya Bharati textbooks, concluded that they were "designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the younger generation".
A more disturbing aspect of this process of communal polarisation comes with the latest arrest of an RSS activist by the National Investigation Agency for his involvement in the terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express to Lahore, which claimed the lives of 68 passengers in February 2007. This re-establishes the RSS links to the growing web of Hindutva terror in the country. Earlier, investigations had established such links with terrorist attacks in Malegaon (September 2008), Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad (May 2007) and the Ajmer Sharif Dargah (October 2007). It needs to be reiterated that terrorism of all varieties feed and strengthen each other. This is anti-national and the country must display zero tolerance.
All such insidious efforts by the RSS and its affiliates to sharpen communal polarisation must be defeated to strengthen the secular democratic foundations of modern India.
(Sitaram Yechury is CPI(M) Politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP. The views expressed by the author are personal)
Saffron's deeper now
by Sitaram Yechury
February 20, 2012
This fortnight marks the 10th anniversary of the horrendous Godhra train fire and the communal carnage that followed in Gujarat, which consumed thousands of innocent lives. Among all factors that reflect on the vulnerability of the secular, democratic foundations of modern India, this decade highlights the serious limitations of our system of delivery of justice. This is one of the main yardsticks that measures the character of a modern republic. On this count, India finds itself wanting. This is, unfortunately, not confined only to the victims of the communal genocide in Gujarat, but continues to plague the victims of other carnages as well. The old adage 'justice delayed is justice denied' cannot find a more tragic manifestation than what is happening to the hapless victims of the Gujarat genocide.
The delivery of justice continues to elude us despite the latest order of the apex court (January 25, 2012) entrusting the inquiry of all extrajudicial (encounter) killings by the Gujarat police between October 2002 and December 2006 to a retired Supreme Court judge. In response to the charges of subversion of the criminal justice system, the higher judiciary had earlier ordered the transfer of riot cases outside the state, reopening of more than 2,000 closed cases by the Gujarat police, the appointment of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to reinvestigate nine major incidents of mass killings and directing the CBI to investigate some specific complaints and fake encounters. Much speculation has been generated by the CBI's sealed report submitted to the judiciary. On the one hand, there are serious allegations of complicity and, on the other, chief minister Narendra Modi has claimed that this 'exonerates' his administration's role in subverting the delivery of justice. The report is yet to be made public officially. Notwithstanding all this, the fact remains that the delivery of justice continues to elude us.
While the RSS and its political arm, the BJP, continue to pride themselves in these events as representing the success of the 'Hindutva laboratory' in Gujarat, the tentacles they use to spread the communal virus continue to extend further. Following its successful experiment in controlling the reins of governance at the Centre for six years by keeping its core communal agenda - the construction of a temple at Ayodhya, abolition of Article 370 and imposition of a uniform civil code - on the backburner to elicit the support of its NDA allies, it refrains from using these issues for communal polarisation. However, this polarisation is being pursued vigorously on other grounds.
It has revived its old issue of 'cow protection' in an aggressive manner. Since its inception in 1925, the RSS had founded a wide network of 'Gau Raksha Samitis' (cow protection societies). In 2010, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) conducted a yatra on this issue in different parts of the country. The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has enacted a new law, the 'Prohibition of Slaughter of Cow Progeny Amendment Bill'. With this, it has become the first state in the country to make consumption of beef illegal, going beyond the laws enacted by other BJP state governments. This law puts an accused on a par with someone charged under anti-terrorist laws where the onus of proving innocence lies with the alleged violator, reversing the fundamental tenet of our criminal law that states that an accused is 'innocent until proven guilty'.
The Gujarat government, in its latest move of polarisation, has enacted a law for preventing distress sale of property in areas dominated by another community. This is designed to consolidate the further ghettoisation and, thus, communal polarisation in the state. The state government has also refused to implement the central scheme of scholarships for Muslim minorities on the grounds that it did not want to allow special privileges to religious minorities. This scheme was introduced in 2008 following the national outrage over the findings of the Sachar Committee report on the status of Muslims in India. In Gujarat, only 26% Muslims reach matriculation compared to 41% overall. Urban poverty among Muslims is 800% higher than among high caste Hindus and 50% more than the OBCs.
Simultaneously, in all BJP-ruled states, the massive parallel education machinery of the RSS continues to grow steadily. The Vidya Bharati, established in 1977, today runs nearly 30,000 educational institutions with 32.5 lakh students and 1.6 lakh teachers. Its declared objective is to "develop a national system of education which would help to build a generation of young men and women that is committed to Hindutva and infused with patriotic fervour". As early as 1996, the NCERT, on the basis of a survey of the Vidya Bharati textbooks, concluded that they were "designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the younger generation".
A more disturbing aspect of this process of communal polarisation comes with the latest arrest of an RSS activist by the National Investigation Agency for his involvement in the terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express to Lahore, which claimed the lives of 68 passengers in February 2007. This re-establishes the RSS links to the growing web of Hindutva terror in the country. Earlier, investigations had established such links with terrorist attacks in Malegaon (September 2008), Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad (May 2007) and the Ajmer Sharif Dargah (October 2007). It needs to be reiterated that terrorism of all varieties feed and strengthen each other. This is anti-national and the country must display zero tolerance.
All such insidious efforts by the RSS and its affiliates to sharpen communal polarisation must be defeated to strengthen the secular democratic foundations of modern India.
(Sitaram Yechury is CPI(M) Politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP. The views expressed by the author are personal)
February 07, 2012
Communalism in School curriculum via Sangh Parivar's “Indianisation reforms”
From: Frontline, 11 February 2012
Communal curriculum
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
The Sangh Parivar is systematically following its “Indianisation reforms” in schools run by its affiliates.
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP
A BJP leader holds a copy of the Bhagvad Gita. In November 2011, the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka introduced lessons on the Bhagvad Gita in schools.
THE attempts of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar at “saffronising” education attracted widespread attention between 1998 and 2004 when the Hindutva combine's political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), held the reins of power at the Centre. During that period, especially between 1998 and 2002, the BJP's Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi advanced a number of initiatives self-professedly aimed at making “the content of education in the primary, secondary and higher stages Indianised, nationalised and spiritualised”.
Specific proposals were brought in as part of this effort in various fora, including at the national-level conferences of State Education Ministers and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). These proposals argued for the incorporation of studies on the Hindu way of life and also the Vedas and the Upanishads into the curriculum. The strong response and resistance to these moves from academics, educationists and secular political parties forced the Sangh Parivar to give up these “Indianisation reforms”. However, periodic reports emanating from different parts of the country, particularly from the States ruled by the BJP, have underscored the fact that the party and its multifarious associate organisations in the Sangh Parivar are systematically and quietly pursuing the Hindutva agenda in education.
In November 2011, the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka introduced lessons and discourses on the Bhagvad Gita in schools. They sought to make the teaching of the Gita compulsory. But following widespread opposition from political parties, educationists and even Education Department officials, the governments in both the States were forced to make Gita studies optional. A Central government official told Frontline that officials in Karnataka had cautioned the State government that the introduction of Gita studies in the syllabus would lead to divisions among students from different backgrounds.
According to Father Cedric Prakash Lobo, an Ahmedabad-based social activist, attempts at saffronisation are being pursued in a discreet manner in Gujarat. “On paper, the highly objectionable anti-minority, gender-insensitive contents of various textbooks introduced in Gujarat in 2001 have reportedly been withdrawn. But these portions are still brought into discussion in classrooms across the State.” The portions referred to by Father Prakash Lobo include the ones that brand minority communities as “one of the foremost problems facing the country”. This portion, introduced in the social studies textbook of class IX, was under the chapter titled “Problems of the country and their solutions”. It listed “minority communities” as the foremost problem, followed by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, smuggling, corruption and bribery. The chapter also termed Muslims, Christians and Parsis as “foreigners”. The government claims that these portions have been erased, but reports from different parts of the State indicate that references are made to these portions even now.
Father Prakash Lobo told Frontline that the elaborate but subtle political and ideological game being played in the State's education sector subverts the constitutionally mandated parameters of the education system. Chief Minister Narendra Modi figures in the classrooms, from the primary to higher levels, in various forms. Modi's life story is part of the suggested reading for classes at the secondary level. On Teachers Day, you see Modi addressing classes across the country through television and the Internet. “In many ways Teacher's Day is not the day of teachers in Gujarat, it is Modi projection day,” Father Prakash Lobo pointed out. According to a senior official in the Central government, the saffronisation initiatives of the BJP-ruled States are at complete variance with the current requirements of the educational system and the curriculum. “What is required is the upgrading of the study material and its orientation to a changing world. But these State governments do not seem to have this as a priority.”
While attempts are being made in fits and starts in all BJP-ruled States, the massive parallel education machinery of the Sangh Parivar is also growing steadily. This machinery, which is spearheaded by organisations such as Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, predominantly follows a syllabus that has communal overtones. Take the case of Vidya Bharati, which was established in 1977 as an apex body with the objective of providing a coherent organisational setting for the activities of the RSS in the field of education. Vidya Bharati runs 28,000 educational institutions with approximately 32,50,000 students on their rolls. The organisation employs approximately 1,60,000 teachers. These schools are run in all States except Mizoram.
The organisation's promotional material says: “Vidya Bharati caters to the educational needs of students of pre-primary, primary, secondary & senior secondary schools, colleges and post-graduates training colleges. Vidya Bharati conducts and promotes research in education and has its own publication division which brings out books, magazines and research studies. The organisation is part of the Sangh Parivar and is understood to be integral to promote Hindutva nationalism by targeting areas with limited facilities.” It goes on to add that one of the ultimate objectives of the organisation is to “develop a National System of Education which would help to build a generation of young men and women that is committed to Hindutva and infused with patriotic fervour”.
The organisation's growth underscores the systematic work that has been carried out by the Sangh Parivar in this core area. In the first two decades of its existence, Vidya Bharati set up 14,000 schools at the nursery, primary and secondary levels and had over 18 lakh students under its tutelage. In that period, there were 80,000 teachers on its rolls. These numbers almost doubled in the next 12 years.
In fact, many of these State and regional institutions have been around for more than four decades. The schools themselves are known by a variety of names – Saraswati Shishu Mandir, Bharatiya Vidya Niketan, Gita Vidyalaya, and Saraswati Bal Vidyalaya. Significantly, the State and regional governing bodies of these institutions do not always go by the name of Vidya Bharati. They use different names depending on the socio-political situation in each State.
As early as 1996, an evaluation of Vidya Bharati textbooks carried out by the NCERT found that they were “designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation”.
PTI
SCHOOLCHILDREN PERFORM SURYANAMASKAR at the Sabarmati river front in Ahmedabad. Chief Minister Narendra Modi's life story is part of the suggested reading for classes at the secondary level in Gujarat.
The NCERT thought it was a matter of “serious concern” that such material was being utilised for instruction in schools, which “presumably, have been accorded recognition”. It found that Vidya Bharati schools prescribed a series of booklets under titles such as Sanskriti Jnan Pareeksha (cultural knowledge examination) and Sanskriti Jnan Pareeksha Prasnottari (cultural knowledge examination questions and answers). These consist of a series of questions and answers, which are provided in a manner that makes the rigour of original thinking superfluous. Students are required to learn by rote this “catechistic series”, as the NCERT characterised it. These booklets stated categorically that the “Ram Janmabhoomi was invaded no fewer than 77 times between A.D. 1528 and A.D. 1914” and “3.5 lakh devotees laid down their lives in defending this holy site in that span of time” and that November 2, 1990, when an attempt by Hindutva hordes to mount an assault on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was repulsed by the police, would go down as a “black day” in India's history.
The course material used in Vidya Bharati schools throughout the country is the same.
While Vidya Bharati seeks to function within the parameters of the organised education system, the Sangh Parivar also sponsors a number of Ekal Vidyalayas (one-teacher schools) that focus on the informal illiteracy eradication movement. These schools obtain government grants but in States such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and even in parts of Assam, the majority of these institutions are under the control of the Sangh Parivar. As a consequence, the teaching material overtly promotes Hindutva communalism.
A study conducted in 2006 by Avdesh Kaushal, renowned social activist based in Dehradun in Uttarakhand and the founder of the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK), highlighted this. The study, carried out in Jharkhand and Assam, pointed out that even days of the week were taught by employing metaphors and icons related to Hindutva. He suggested steps to correct this.
However, Kaushal told Frontline, that even after five years he found many of the Ekal Vidyalayas using the same offensive material. “I had occasion to travel in Jharkhand in the last months of 2011 and I found that no course correction had been carried out by the government,” he said.
According to informal estimates, Ekal Vidyalayas function in about 35,000 villages catering to 10 lakh students. The Sangh Parivar's own estimate is that more than 60 per cent of the Ekal Vidyalayas follow its ideological footprint. Clearly, despite being out of power at the Centre for the last seven years and despite the absence of aggressive campaigns on the so-called nationalist reforms in the education sector, the Sangh Parivar's pursuit of the Hindutva agenda in this area continues unabated.
In a sense, it is a pursuit that has imparted to the Sangh Parivar enough clout to force the withdrawal of A.K. Ramnujan's celebrated essay on 300 Ramayanas from Delhi University's syllabus and stop the national seminar and a film show on Kashmir organised by Symbiosis University, Pune.
Communal curriculum
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN
The Sangh Parivar is systematically following its “Indianisation reforms” in schools run by its affiliates.
SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP
A BJP leader holds a copy of the Bhagvad Gita. In November 2011, the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka introduced lessons on the Bhagvad Gita in schools.
THE attempts of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar at “saffronising” education attracted widespread attention between 1998 and 2004 when the Hindutva combine's political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), held the reins of power at the Centre. During that period, especially between 1998 and 2002, the BJP's Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi advanced a number of initiatives self-professedly aimed at making “the content of education in the primary, secondary and higher stages Indianised, nationalised and spiritualised”.
Specific proposals were brought in as part of this effort in various fora, including at the national-level conferences of State Education Ministers and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). These proposals argued for the incorporation of studies on the Hindu way of life and also the Vedas and the Upanishads into the curriculum. The strong response and resistance to these moves from academics, educationists and secular political parties forced the Sangh Parivar to give up these “Indianisation reforms”. However, periodic reports emanating from different parts of the country, particularly from the States ruled by the BJP, have underscored the fact that the party and its multifarious associate organisations in the Sangh Parivar are systematically and quietly pursuing the Hindutva agenda in education.
In November 2011, the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka introduced lessons and discourses on the Bhagvad Gita in schools. They sought to make the teaching of the Gita compulsory. But following widespread opposition from political parties, educationists and even Education Department officials, the governments in both the States were forced to make Gita studies optional. A Central government official told Frontline that officials in Karnataka had cautioned the State government that the introduction of Gita studies in the syllabus would lead to divisions among students from different backgrounds.
According to Father Cedric Prakash Lobo, an Ahmedabad-based social activist, attempts at saffronisation are being pursued in a discreet manner in Gujarat. “On paper, the highly objectionable anti-minority, gender-insensitive contents of various textbooks introduced in Gujarat in 2001 have reportedly been withdrawn. But these portions are still brought into discussion in classrooms across the State.” The portions referred to by Father Prakash Lobo include the ones that brand minority communities as “one of the foremost problems facing the country”. This portion, introduced in the social studies textbook of class IX, was under the chapter titled “Problems of the country and their solutions”. It listed “minority communities” as the foremost problem, followed by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, smuggling, corruption and bribery. The chapter also termed Muslims, Christians and Parsis as “foreigners”. The government claims that these portions have been erased, but reports from different parts of the State indicate that references are made to these portions even now.
Father Prakash Lobo told Frontline that the elaborate but subtle political and ideological game being played in the State's education sector subverts the constitutionally mandated parameters of the education system. Chief Minister Narendra Modi figures in the classrooms, from the primary to higher levels, in various forms. Modi's life story is part of the suggested reading for classes at the secondary level. On Teachers Day, you see Modi addressing classes across the country through television and the Internet. “In many ways Teacher's Day is not the day of teachers in Gujarat, it is Modi projection day,” Father Prakash Lobo pointed out. According to a senior official in the Central government, the saffronisation initiatives of the BJP-ruled States are at complete variance with the current requirements of the educational system and the curriculum. “What is required is the upgrading of the study material and its orientation to a changing world. But these State governments do not seem to have this as a priority.”
While attempts are being made in fits and starts in all BJP-ruled States, the massive parallel education machinery of the Sangh Parivar is also growing steadily. This machinery, which is spearheaded by organisations such as Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan, predominantly follows a syllabus that has communal overtones. Take the case of Vidya Bharati, which was established in 1977 as an apex body with the objective of providing a coherent organisational setting for the activities of the RSS in the field of education. Vidya Bharati runs 28,000 educational institutions with approximately 32,50,000 students on their rolls. The organisation employs approximately 1,60,000 teachers. These schools are run in all States except Mizoram.
The organisation's promotional material says: “Vidya Bharati caters to the educational needs of students of pre-primary, primary, secondary & senior secondary schools, colleges and post-graduates training colleges. Vidya Bharati conducts and promotes research in education and has its own publication division which brings out books, magazines and research studies. The organisation is part of the Sangh Parivar and is understood to be integral to promote Hindutva nationalism by targeting areas with limited facilities.” It goes on to add that one of the ultimate objectives of the organisation is to “develop a National System of Education which would help to build a generation of young men and women that is committed to Hindutva and infused with patriotic fervour”.
The organisation's growth underscores the systematic work that has been carried out by the Sangh Parivar in this core area. In the first two decades of its existence, Vidya Bharati set up 14,000 schools at the nursery, primary and secondary levels and had over 18 lakh students under its tutelage. In that period, there were 80,000 teachers on its rolls. These numbers almost doubled in the next 12 years.
In fact, many of these State and regional institutions have been around for more than four decades. The schools themselves are known by a variety of names – Saraswati Shishu Mandir, Bharatiya Vidya Niketan, Gita Vidyalaya, and Saraswati Bal Vidyalaya. Significantly, the State and regional governing bodies of these institutions do not always go by the name of Vidya Bharati. They use different names depending on the socio-political situation in each State.
As early as 1996, an evaluation of Vidya Bharati textbooks carried out by the NCERT found that they were “designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation”.
PTI
SCHOOLCHILDREN PERFORM SURYANAMASKAR at the Sabarmati river front in Ahmedabad. Chief Minister Narendra Modi's life story is part of the suggested reading for classes at the secondary level in Gujarat.
The NCERT thought it was a matter of “serious concern” that such material was being utilised for instruction in schools, which “presumably, have been accorded recognition”. It found that Vidya Bharati schools prescribed a series of booklets under titles such as Sanskriti Jnan Pareeksha (cultural knowledge examination) and Sanskriti Jnan Pareeksha Prasnottari (cultural knowledge examination questions and answers). These consist of a series of questions and answers, which are provided in a manner that makes the rigour of original thinking superfluous. Students are required to learn by rote this “catechistic series”, as the NCERT characterised it. These booklets stated categorically that the “Ram Janmabhoomi was invaded no fewer than 77 times between A.D. 1528 and A.D. 1914” and “3.5 lakh devotees laid down their lives in defending this holy site in that span of time” and that November 2, 1990, when an attempt by Hindutva hordes to mount an assault on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was repulsed by the police, would go down as a “black day” in India's history.
The course material used in Vidya Bharati schools throughout the country is the same.
While Vidya Bharati seeks to function within the parameters of the organised education system, the Sangh Parivar also sponsors a number of Ekal Vidyalayas (one-teacher schools) that focus on the informal illiteracy eradication movement. These schools obtain government grants but in States such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and even in parts of Assam, the majority of these institutions are under the control of the Sangh Parivar. As a consequence, the teaching material overtly promotes Hindutva communalism.
A study conducted in 2006 by Avdesh Kaushal, renowned social activist based in Dehradun in Uttarakhand and the founder of the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK), highlighted this. The study, carried out in Jharkhand and Assam, pointed out that even days of the week were taught by employing metaphors and icons related to Hindutva. He suggested steps to correct this.
However, Kaushal told Frontline, that even after five years he found many of the Ekal Vidyalayas using the same offensive material. “I had occasion to travel in Jharkhand in the last months of 2011 and I found that no course correction had been carried out by the government,” he said.
According to informal estimates, Ekal Vidyalayas function in about 35,000 villages catering to 10 lakh students. The Sangh Parivar's own estimate is that more than 60 per cent of the Ekal Vidyalayas follow its ideological footprint. Clearly, despite being out of power at the Centre for the last seven years and despite the absence of aggressive campaigns on the so-called nationalist reforms in the education sector, the Sangh Parivar's pursuit of the Hindutva agenda in this area continues unabated.
In a sense, it is a pursuit that has imparted to the Sangh Parivar enough clout to force the withdrawal of A.K. Ramnujan's celebrated essay on 300 Ramayanas from Delhi University's syllabus and stop the national seminar and a film show on Kashmir organised by Symbiosis University, Pune.
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