Our civilisation is the result of many influences. Is there really a need to saffronise education?
Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu has stirred up a hornet’s nest by saying that there is nothing wrong with saffronising education. Speaking at an inauguration function at the Dev Sanskriti Vishwa Vidyalaya in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, the Vice-President said that the BJP was often criticised for saffronising education but there was nothing wrong with it and that “we need to come out of the colonial mindset and make the education truly Indian or Bharatiya”. This is not the first time that Venkaiah Naidu has advocated the overhaul of the education system. It has been one of the cherished goals of the RSS, which wants to rewrite the history books as well as the entire education system of the country. But when such utterances come from a person holding a constitutional post, it is indeed a cause of concern as it might go against the Preamble of the Constitution which clearly states that secularism is one of the cornerstones of the Indian Constitution. Of course, one could say that there indeed are problems with Macaulay’s education system that we follow and that it must be phased out to make more room for Indian content taught in Indian languages.
But the problem starts when you replace it with the saffron education system. Perhaps Naidu doesn’t make a distinction between Indianisation and saffronisation of education but there is as vast a difference as between chalk and cheese. Indeed, India has had great traditions in science, astronomy, maths, medicine, philosophy and many other disciplines and there is nothing wrong with teaching these. But all hell breaks loose when you start writing history books with Hindu perspective, demonising Muslims, obliterating other cultures and religions, discrediting the freedom struggle, painting freedom fighters in dark shades and creating new heroes based on a false narrative. The current Indian civilisation is the result of many influences. In fact, for instance, the word ‘Hindu’ itself comes from the Arabs, words like meiz and kursi from Portuguese, rangroot from the English ‘recruit’ and so on. If you want to teach Sanskrit, please do so; but also teach Pali and Persian as they also are part of the Indian civilisation. If the Bhakti cult is Indian, so is Sufism and Zoroastrianism. If you want to teach about Hindu culture, do so but also teach about Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist cultures and traditions. They are no less Indian. Green is no less a colour than saffron!