In Saffronizing Education, Javadekar Will Beat Smriti Hands Down

I must confess to a soft corner for Smriti Irani. She was such a feisty HRD minister – pungent, tart, ever-ready to fight her corner, articulate in both Hindi and English (and, presumably, her mother tongue, Gujarati), with a sharp repartee always on her tongue, a vocabulary of wit and abuse in equal measure, well-prepared in parliament and a first-class orator – even if economical with the truth. Of course, she was an awful minister, combining “arrogance with ignorance”, as Ram Guha said on NDTV, but she carried it off with such panache and chutzpah, even on so personal a matter as her complete absence of higher education (“I have a degree from Yale”!), that it could not but evoke some admiration in a polemicist like myself. But as she wore her saffron like a colour combination, she appeared more to be playing games to please her master than working out some deep ideological compulsion.

Her successor, Prakash Javadekar, is everything she was not. Where she was aggressive, Javadekar is accommodating. Where she hit out, he is modest and retiring. Where she offended, he is charming and personable. Where she wore her illiteracy as a badge of honour, Javadekar is learned and profound. Which is what makes him much more dangerous. Because, as was revealed to me in a series of private conversations I had with him some years ago when he came across to discuss my views on Hindutva, he is steeped in that dangerous philosophy. With great ability and dexterity, he is much more likely to steer the saffronisation of our education than poor Smriti ever got around to doing. I would, therefore, consecrate his appointment with the observation made by Hiren Gohain, the Assamese intellectual, when Murli Manohar Joshi was running HRD: “‘saffronization of education’ appears to denote a fairly innocuous, if dubious process…it is (in fact) a combination of a confident appeal to a brutalized mass consciousness and a coercive imposition of a dogmatic view of national history and culture.” (Economic and Political Weekly, 16 November 2002).

Where Irani, aided and abetted by her MoS, Katheria, sought to slam down with a sledge-hammer that combination of “brutalized mass consciousness” and “a dogmatic view of history and culture”, Javadekar is much more likely to accomplish his fell purpose with a stiletto. So, watch out. The devil with a smile is more a threat than a star strutting the stage.

Smriti Irani was so obvious. She began by bringing in a fantasist, not a historian, as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research. His main contribution was the totally unoriginal suggestion that “Sanskrit sources” should be the source of all ancient history (as if Romila Thapar and other established historians, towards whom he had a “deep-seated hostility”, were not well-versed in Sanskrit sources, besides sources in the various other languages of ancient India and more modern commentaries); that “Greater India”, stretching from South East Asia to Afghanistan and Iraq, should be the focus of academic study; and the ideological dictum that “Muslims are the only ones to have maintained a distinct culture”. (The quotes are from an interview that Gopinath Ravindran gave to Atul Dev after he resigned in disgust from the post of member-secretary of ICHR).

Javadekar will not be so obvious. He will, of course, bring in RSS types, but only after checking whether they have a fig-leaf of academic acceptability. Of course, it is another question whether he will be able to overcome the obvious contradiction between RSS loyalties and scholarly respectability.

Javadekar’s next challenge will be to settle the row at the Film and TV Institute of India, headed now by Irani appointee Gajendra Chauhan, whose only claim to fame is that he made an idolatory film on Narendra Modi. The new HRD Minister’s problem is that most film-makers and TV producers are at one with India’s artistic community in being broadly tolerant, especially when it comes to religious tolerance, rejecting narrow chauvinism and celebrating the diversity of India – indeed, in lauding every facet of our composite civilization that the RSS, in particular, and Hindutvists, in general, reject in toto. Javadekar’s range of choice is, therefore, not going to extend much beyond Anupam Kher!

For Vice Chancellors, if he does not escape from under the RSS embrace, he is going to be left with the likes of M Jagadesh Kumar whom his predecessor selected as Vice Chancellor, JNU, principally because he was an RSS favourite; or Vishram Jamedar, a known RSS aficionado, whom she picked for chairman of the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur. Or with known acolytes of his boss like Zafar Sareshwala, Chancellor of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad. I said, “if he does not escape from under the embrace of the RSS” – but would Javadekar, a lifelong follower of the RSS, want to do so? Please fasten your seat belts for more of the same, but appointments being made with a bewitching smile, not the flame-throwing of his predecessor.

For school education, the only way of securing improved learning outcomes is not by just establishing school infrastructure, as has been happening hitherto, but to move towards embedding the school management and village education committees in the panchayat raj/gram sabha system so that the last-mile implementation of the Sarva Shiksha Abihyanto individual schools and students takes place under the supervision and vigilance of the beneficiaries themselves – that is, the parents and the local community. Whether, in view of the centralization of all governance under the Modi dispensation, Javadekar will be able to push through such a revolutionary measure of decentralization, even if he were to be so inclined, is all but impossible to expect.

I doubt he would be so inclined for his party’s ideological objective is not to improve state-run primary and secondary education, but to encourage commercialization so as to promote saffronization. In his previous assignment at Environment, he won kudos principally because he happily forewent environmental concerns to promote the interests of big business. Going by his ideological preferences and private sector bias, we can only apprehend more of the same in HRD to the serious detriment of the really poor and deprived. Our position on the UN’s Human Development Index will continue to stagnate at the pathetic position – around 135 – at which it finds itself.

University education is in an unholy mess. Smriti uncorked her tongue-lashing at directors of the IIM and IIT. UGC and HRD suborning of university autonomy reached unprecedented levels. At the instance of the RSS and the students’ wing of the BJP (the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – ABVP), the atmosphere for free debate and discussion in institutions of higher learning in the spirit of promoting a pluralism of ideas was vitiated. Student bodies like the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle at IIT, Guindy, Chennai were brought under attack; Rohith Vemula and his friends were targeted at the instance of the BJP regional vice-President and the BJP MP for Secunderabad; an enquiry was ordered into “Islamization” at Pondicherry University because some saffron outfit complained; a probe was initiated, at the instance of an RSS member, into ‘tamsik‘ food being served at IITs; Kanhaiya Kumar and friends were persecuted for holding alternative views; it was made mandatory to fly national flags at central universities to prove that Smriti Irani was a patriot; weird bodies like the “Patriots Forum” became the arbiters of what could and could not be said, and what could and could not be done at centres of higher education; and an attempt was made to augment government perspectives and intervention in the running of the IIMs through the IIM Bill. Scores of universities and colleges were left headless for months because no suitable and willing RSS type could be found to head them. The TSR Subramaniam committee report on the National Policy on Education 2016 was kept under wraps. No attempt was made to take NGOs and think-tanks active in the field, experts and the general public into confidence. Lack of space forbids a more detailed retailing of all the excesses committed in the drive to saffronize institutions and their leadership.

Will this end with the change of minister at HRD? I doubt it. For the new minister is even more of a dyed-in-the-wool saffronite than the lady he replaces. As my Punjabi friends say, “Natha Singh-Prem Singh, one and the same thing”.

(Mani Shankar Aiyar is former Congress MP, Rajya Sabha.)

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