RSS: Mainstreaming the Indianized Curriculum
It is indeed a sad reflection on the state of mainstream curriculum that it breeds an attitude of ridiculing anything that is Indian in origin, our ancient culture, rituals and indigenous knowledge system. — Prof. Nandini Sinha Kapur
This brief essay is presented with reference to Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle’s work, ‘The RSS: A View to the Inside (Gurugram, 2018). The authors in an important chapter, ‘Indianizing Education ‘traces the history of the schools set up by Rashtriya Swayamsevak from time to time since the 1940s. RSS has encouraged its affiliates to encourage the message of Hindutava to make it more relevant and with a contemporary appeal. The curriculum included sports, music, art, skill oriented courses and coaching classes. This kind of curriculum definitely appealed to the youth. Why did RSS want to set up its own school system? This action plan was taken to counter the deliberate attempt of Congress Govt’s role in denying RSS affiliates and their focus on indigenous culture and history in the educational system. The very image of the educational role of the shakha (character building) to train a future nationalist leadership was often ridiculed by anti-Hindu messages coming from the Universities, press, the Government and much of the intellectual class. It is indeed a sad reflection on the state of mainstream curriculum that it breeds an attitude of ridiculing anything that is Indian in origin, our ancient culture, rituals and indigenous knowledge system. RSS had supported first formal education in a private school in Kurukshetra in Haryana in 1946. RSS chief MS Golwalkar (Guruji) took part in the ground breaking ceremony of this school.
My humble submission is that if the Madras as have been permitted to teach their own curriculum (Dars–i-Nizami). So there is nothing wrong in teaching Hindu traditions in RSS affiliated schools. There was a rapid expansion in the number of schools in the 1960s and 1970s. A separate affiliate, the Vidya Bharati was established in 1978 to manage and supervise 700 schools. A report of 2016 states that that there was a rapid growth of schools under Vidya Bharti. 13,000 schools had come up with 32,00,000 students and 1,46,000 teachers. It turned out to be the largest private school system in India. Another significant step was taken with the establishment of Ekal Vidyalaya in 1986 for the students of remote and tribal areas. It has about 1500000 students in some 54,000 one-teacher, one-school facilities. These chain of school systems have given rise to markets for books on history and ethics for use in Shishu Mandirs and other RSS affiliated schools. One of its affiliates Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas ensures that the Ministry of Education recommends text books with value orientation to the states.
“Controversy over the content of textbooks, especially on subjects related to culture and history, have existed from the time of India’s independence when the Congress party was in power. A parliamentary committee appointed in 1966, for example, reported that textbooks in some states ‘were over weighted with Hindu mythology’ and ‘Hindu beliefs are presented in a manner Education Commission in 1964, in reference to this issue, stated, It is necessary for a multi religious democratic State to promote a tolerant study of all religions so that its citizens can understand in 1972 of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) in the federal bureaucracy triggered a reaction from the right of a growing Marxist bias in the history texts that it commissioned” (Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle, Page- 65).
The tragedy of the educational policy under the Congress Govt was that it failed to promote a centrist history of India. A history in which Ancient Indian achievements in terms of political, economic, cultural, Science and technology had to be show-cased. In contrast, they promoted agenda of the left oriented political parties in their educational policy. Historian Dinesh Raza writes in the analysis of the debate on the teaching of History, ‘Historians on the left undervalue the culture and civilization and focus on class and economic factors’ Dinesh Raza, ‘Saffronising Textbooks: Where Myth and Dogma Replace History’, Hindutan Times, 8 December 2014, (http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/saffonising-textbooks-where-myth-and-dogma-replace-history/story-CauM4dmmsPGrjZAPAvNxO.html - accessed 18 August 2017). Akhil Bahartiya Iytihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY), is the association of Historians of the Sangh Parivar. It has published 350 books since it was formed in 1984.
We as students of Indian History were never taught any topic on science and technology including mathemetics and astronomy. In other words, Indian Knowledge System was ignored. We were largely taught socio-economic history with reference to exploitation of the people by states, kings and the landed ruling classes. Common people/village folk were supposed to be burdened by the long list of taxes those appeared in the land grant charters (Sanskrit inscriptions). We were taught to critically look at State and political elite. As I said it was the political agenda and ideology of the left parties supported and promoted by the Congress Raj in the curriculum of history discipline. Political history was entirely empire-centric. We were trained to ignore small or regional states as splinter states of the big empires of Ancient and Early Medieval India. Regional states were looked down upon as ‘Feudatory states’ and that India witnessed centrifugal forces. Indians were never united and lived in dark ages inherited from the British colonial historiography. We missed out on the indigenous political processes of regional state formation in our curriculum. We forgot that the Guptas, Pushyabhutis, Pratiharas, Palas and Rashtrakutas had begun their political career in early Medieval period with local and regional roots. We forget that the regional cultures and identities across the contemporary Indian subcontinent go back to the political, social and cultural processes in early Medieval India. We must not forget that the regional states of India dated between the seventh and fifteenth centuries gave us the rich mosaic of India today. Author has proved this point in her case study of Rajasthan in her Ph.d thesis published as, ‘State Formation in Rajasthan: Mewar during seventh—fifteenth Centuries’, New Delhi, 2002. Swadeshi Patrika has published a series of this work for the past two years.
