The Supreme Court judgment in the NCERT case condones Hindutva's loathsome campaign to saffronise textbooks; it is inconsistent with the constitutional imperative of secularism and the fundamental values of citizenship.
THE Bharatiya Janata Party has pursued no other agenda since it came to power at the Centre as obsessively as the communalisation of education. Indeed, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) acknowledges that Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi is the one functionary of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) who has pushed for "saffronisation" with single-minded determination and zeal, undeterred by considerations of decency or consensus.
The fullest reflection of Joshi's endeavours is to be found in the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2000 (NCFSE) drawn up by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the syllabi based on that. These documents have offended and outraged India's intellectual community as few other texts have. The NCFSE, and the devious and opaque processes through which it was formulated and approved, have been challenged by India's mainstream social scientists. A majority of political parties, and one-half of India's State governments, also joined that challenge.
At the level of ideas the secular intelligentsia has clearly won the debate, although at the level of power that has made no more difference to the BJP than the States' opposition. But now, at the legal level, the debate has been partially and temporarily lost thanks to the Supreme Court's September 12 judgment in the NCERT case.
This verdict will go down as a starkly negative landmark in independent India's judicial history. It is internally inconsistent, logically inadequate in its treatment of issues, and incompatible with the principles of secularism, equality, and the fundamental right to education that are embedded in India's Constitution. It also has negative implications for the rights of children to unbiased information, and to education based on genuine respect for pluralism and difference in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society such as India's.
The effect of the judgment is to permit the NCERT to produce and release communally coloured, prejudiced, shabbily written or otherwise philistine textbooks based upon the NCFSE. These can now be imposed upon the vast majority of India's school students through the Central Board of Secondary Education, which sets the benchmark. Once the NCERT releases the textbooks, which were stayed six months ago, it is only a matter of time before the bulk of the States adopt them.
WHAT is wrong with the NCFSE as it was evolved and "finalised"? The short answer is, the process, the content, and the likely impact on a host of matters, including the Rights of the Child, Centre-State relations, and the fundamental right to education.
The NCERT wilfully short-circuited the established step-by-step process through which the NCFSE is meant to be evolved, beginning with the National Policy on Education (NPE), last adopted in 1986. The NPE lays the foundation for the NCFSE, which must reflect its philosophy and pedagogical principles. Syllabi for different classes and courses are derived from the finalised NCFSE. And textbooks are derived from the syllabi.
Pivotal to the process is the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE), a 104-member body consisting largely of State representatives and independent experts which forms a structured and competent forum for serious deliberation on the implementation of the NPE. NPE'86 is explicit on this issue: "CABE will play a pivotal role in reviewing educational development, determining the changes required to improve the system and monitoring implementation." The Programme of Action 1992, based on NPE'86, states that CABE is "the historic forum for forging a national consensus on educational issues". Of the utmost importance here is a consensus on the NCFSE.
The NCERT is charged with the task of drafting the NCFSE, but CABE is vested with the authority to approve it. CABE is not a statutory body (nor is the NCERT). But it precedes the NCERT in chronology and in hierarchy.
The NCERT on its part has always held extensive, open and democratic discussions with teachers, scholars and educationists both at the state and Central levels before drafting and revising the NCFSE; CABE has always discussed and approved the NCFSE.
That is, until Joshi stuffed the NCERT, like other institutions under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), with Hindutva supporters, in order to stage a saffron coup. This meant deliberately bypassing CABE. The Board never met to discuss the NCFSE drafted in 2000. Indeed, the government did not bother to convene CABE. The NCFSE was declared "approved" without CABE's mandate.
This is not a minor procedural lapse. At its core lies the sabotage of an entire process of discussion, consultation and deliberation, usually spread over years. Bypassing CABE meant keeping out the States, whose presence is surely mandatory while finalising an issue that is on the Constitution's Concurrent List. Without the States' involvement, properly and logically achieved through CABE, there could be no national consensus on the NCFSE. Such consensus is a precondition for the NCFSE's recommendation to the CBSE.
The NCERT, once it was taken over by J.S. Rajput and his Hindutva band, had no use for authentic consultation, discussion and debate on the draft NCFSE, which was mostly formulated on the basis of odiously communal, and largely "internal", "discussion papers" (see this Column, Frontline, December 24, 1999)
The NCERT has repeatedly claimed that it had "consulted" numerous intellectuals, State governments, and so on. But putting the NCFSE draft on the website and mailing it to various people for "comments" (rarely received) does not amount to a serious and structured discussion of the kind implied in building a "national consensus". The NCERT has been devious and furtive on this, and avoided opening up drafts of the NCFSE or the syllabi derived from it to wide scrutiny. This makes a mockery of "consultation".
The NCFSE's content is even more questionable. It subtly insinuates religion and religious and spiritual notions into the very core of school education. Thus it says: "What is required today is... education about religions, their basics, the values inherent therein." It roots its own philosophy in these. It holds that religion is "a major source" of "universal" or "essential" values to be inculcated through education.
Besides representing one (debatable) interpretation of religions and their contents, this is a major departure from NPE'86, the NCFSE's sole legitimate foundation, which speaks of "universal'' values, without mentioning religion.
THERE are other kindred formulations in the NCFSE and its background papers, which also depart from the secular basis of the NPE's thrust on "value education". The NPE refers to "constitutional" and "secular" principles, "national goals", "universal perceptions", "scientific temper", and says, "in our culturally plural society, education should foster universal and eternal values, oriented towards the unity and integrity of our people". By contrast, the NCFSE derives "value" from a "major source", namely religion.
This violates the constitutional imperative for secularism, which is an inviolable part or constitutes the "basic structure" of the statute. Secularism means the separation of religion from the state. The Supreme Court has itself held in any number of cases, including S.R. Bommai (1994), that "religion cannot be mixed with any secular activity of the state. In fact, the encroachment of religion into secular activities is strictly prohibited... the state... [cannot]... [allow citizens]... to introduce religion into non-religious and secular activities of the state".
The NCFSE draws an extremely thin line of demarcation between "religious instruction" or "religious education" and "education about religions, their basics, the values inherent therein'', including "a comparative study of the philosophy of religions''. It holds: "Students have to be given the awareness that the essence of every religion is common, only the practices differ."
It is relatively easy to draw a distinction between "religious education" and a study of the history or sociology of religion. But it is hard to say when "education about religions" along with "a comparative study of the philosophy of all religions (all religions!)" shades over into "religious teaching" or religious education and instruction.
Now under the Constitution the state cannot support religious instruction. Article 28 prohibits "religious instruction" in educational institutions fully managed out of state funds. The NCFSE comes close to qualifying for such prohibition. Its prescription that all such subjects should be taught "right from the primary years'' certainly does that.
Even more egregious is the undercurrent of communal and Hindu-supremacist premises running through the NCF and the syllabi based on it (Frontline, December 21, 2001). The NCERT-censored textbooks a scandal of no mean proportions only explicate and elaborate what is in the NCFSE's core. Their recurrent theme is the depiction of Hinduism as the "essence" of Indian culture and of other religions as "alien" or "invading" faiths, and the glorification of ancient India as the world's "master" civilisation, denying the validity and value of other civilisations.
NCERT-doctored textbooks depict Rama and Krishna not as mythological, but historical, figures. Portions of them exclude Islam and Sikhism from the list of "major religions". They censor out the social construct of caste. Instead of sexual equality, they talk of "gender".
Such jaundiced and erroneous views are not limited to history, but extend to social science and languages, as documented by the Delhi Historians' Group.
The effects of such a warped notion of "education" are bound to be disastrous. For one, it will promote narrow-mindedness, hubris about India's "uniquely" great civilisation, and rank ignorance (for example, about caste and varna) among children. For another, it will privilege one religion (Hinduism) and culture (of the upper castes) within the notion of Indianness; instead of broadening the child's mind, this will imprison it into xenophobia and provincialism. And for a third, such "education" will open the floodgates to vicious forms of national chauvinism and Hindutva virulence towards the religious minorities and India's neighbours. Such is the stuff of which fascism is made.
THE Supreme Court turns a blind eye to all these considerations, and also to the NCFSE's context the saffronisation of the MHRD and the packing of numerous cultural-educational institutions with Hindutva fanatics as part of a well-worked-out agenda of "cultural nationalism". Its judgment upholds the exclusion of CABE on the mere technical ground that it is not a statutory body. (But nor is the NCERT.) There is no reference to the exclusion of the States or to the absence of genuine consultation in the NCFSE process.
On the NCFSE's context, and its loaded premises, the judgment is either elusive or approving. For instance, it takes no cognisance of the causal link among the Framework, syllabi and textbooks, and is wholly agnostic about the obnoxiously elitist idea of demarcating children on the basis of their "spiritual quotient" (a bizarre concept that is defined nowhere), and "intelligence quotient" (a concept thoroughly discredited in the West)! Worse, the verdict legitimises the NCFSE's anti-secular premises by itself sanctifying religion and the importance of rooting "values'' in religious teachings, defined arbitrarily. The majority judgment, written by Justice M.B. Shah, abounds in formulations such as:
*"Further, for controlling wild animal in human beings and for having civilised cultural society, it appears that religions have come into existence. Religion is the foundation for value based survival of human beings in a civilised society. The force and sanction behind civilised society depends upon moral values."
*"Past five decades have witnessed constant erosion of the essential social, moral and spiritual values and increase in cynicism at all levels. We are heading for a materialistic society disregarding the entire value based social system. Bereft of moral values secular society or democracy may not survive."
*"All the values are derived from ultimate reality supreme power or self-consciousness to which man orients himself.''
* "Further, no one can dispute that truth (satya), righteous conduct (dharma), peace (shanti), love (prem) and non-violence (ahimsa) are the core universal values accepted by all religions.''
* "Value-based education is likely to help the nation to fight against all kinds of prevailing fanaticism, ill-will, violence, dishonesty, corruption, exploitation and drug abuses."
* "How to co-exist, not only with human beings but all living beings on the earth, may be animals, vegetation and environment including air and water, is thought over and discussed by Saints and leaders all over the world which is reflected in religions''.
* "May be that basics of all religions may help in achieving the objects behind fundamental duties."
* "It is crystal clear that the word "religion" has different shades and colours. Important shade is dharma (duty). Therefore, in our view, the word `religion' should not be misunderstood nor contention could be raised that as it is used in the national policy of education, secularism would be at peril.''
The court's obiter dicta on "spirituality" and the "essential" unity of all religions are equally disputable. Many pious people, as well as agnostics and atheists, will be thoroughly dismayed by these woolly formulations. It is possible to respect religious sensibilities without founding social morality on faith. The "essential unity" of all religions imposes a false homogeneity upon different faiths. It offends the fundamental right of a citizen to practise any faith of her or his choice irrespective of whether it conforms to one interpretation.
The judgment is equally flawed because it quotes from documents selectively. For instance, in supporting "value education", it relies on the report of a parliamentary (S.B. Chavan) committee. But it omits to mention the same committee's key recommendation of 2001 directing the NCERT/MHRD to take the NCFSE to CABE.
The Supreme Court verdict belongs to the same category of retrograde verdicts as the 1996 "Hindutva-as-a-way-of-life" judgment, or those in the Narmada and Balco cases. It is a major setback to secularism barely six months after the Gujarat pogrom. It must be challenged in a review petition. More than one-half of Indian States are ruled by non-BJP parties. They must get together with citizens' groups and demand a review. The Supreme Court will enhance its own dignity by reviewing its verdict as it did by restoring Union Carbide's criminal liability in the Bhopal case. At stake is the future of generations of Indian citizens.
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