Pay Greater Attention To Combatting Saffronisation

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

NOW that the UPA government is about to complete one year in office, one is naturally keen to know how far it has fulfilled the promises, which it said it would fulfil before it came into existence with the outside support of the Left parties.

One of the crucial issues on which, last May, the UPA promised to do something was that it would rid the various educational and cultural institutions of the pro-RSS elements with which the previous BJP led government had packed them. Needless to say, this penetration of the pro-RSS elements into these institutions was effected with a noxious goal in mind. The aim was to mould public psyche in favour of the communal fascist forces, and also to produce a generation of bigots who could serve as cannon-fodders for the diabolic project of these forces.

It was the seriousness of this task that had made the UPA make the following promise in its Common Minimum Programme before it took the reins of power in its hands: “The UPA government will take immediate steps to reverse the trend of communalisation of education that had set in (in) the past five years.” It is thus clear that the UPA recognised, or professed to recognise, the harm these pro-RSS elements could cause to our body politick and our syncretic culture.

NEGLECT OF THE TASK

BUT though the HRD ministry has taken some steps to desaffronise the institutions of national importance, much is still to be done in this regard. The recent uproar about the VHP run Ekal Vidyalayas in Jharkhand and Assam is a case in point.

One of the crucial institutions the UPA government has failed to desaffronise is the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), formerly known as National Open School. While the regime has taken some steps to rid the NCERT publications of the venomous communal ideas that were injected into its curricula and textbooks under the BJP regime, nothing of the kind was done in case of the NIOS. Was it because of the perception that open schooling is only peripheral to an education system?

There is no gainsaying that such a perception, if really entertained, is unfortunate. The fact that needs to be emphasised, as a letter written by seven historians to the HRD minister Arjun Singh says, is that the NIOS “has a very wide reach. It is the apex body in the country in the area of open and distance education at the school level…. Active enrolment at a given time in the NIOS is about 12 lakhs.” It is clear that while the BJP regime had focussed on the NIOS for its communal game, the UPA regime is yet to grasp the importance of desaffronising this institute.

NIOS UNDER RSS SHADOW

HOW the previous BJP regime tried to utilise the NIOS for its diabolic game is clear from the following facts:

1) Under the Vajpayee regime, as the historians point out in their aforementioned letter, there was “a systematic attempt to impose the ideology of the Sangh Parivar on the courses and study material of the NIOS.” This was done under the tutelage of former NIOS chairman N K Ambasht and former director (academic) Kuldeep Agrawal who were, according to the historians’ letter, appointed by the saffronite HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi.

2) K G Rastogi is a notorious person who once disclosed, with relish, how he and some others had killed a young woman during the riots at the time of the partition. He was removed from the NCERT’s committees because of the controversies surrounding him. But the Vajpayee regime appointed him to various course committees of the NIOS. Through him, RSS controlled outfits like Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati forged links with the NIOS.

3) The NIOS gave accreditation to a large number of RSS controlled institutions, without following the due procedures, and these were thus authorised to run various academic or vocational courses of the NIOS.  

4) Under Ambasht, the NIOS stopped the then ongoing development of history course for senior secondary classes, even though most of the work had already been done. The reason was that the historians developing the said course were not amenable to the RSS designs.

5) The course material for social sciences was redesigned and, often, new passages were surreptitiously added to the already existing material, to make them conform to the RSS worldview. This new material was nothing but crude RSS propaganda.

6) One of the changes in the course was the inclusion of Hedgewar’s supposed role in the freedom struggle. Special booklets on Shyama Prasad Mookerji and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya were also brought out.

7) The pro-RSS remoulding of books is evident from Part 1 of the secondary textbook of social science. In line with the RSS theory of supposed appeasement of the minorities, it says (p 305) that the “gains made by the Muslims under the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms further impressed upon the Hindus that they must organise and unite…. The necessity for organising the (Hindu) Mahasabha had arisen because the Congress, being a political body, could not deal with questions which affected various communities in social and other non-political spheres.” Thus, while the Muslim League used to dub the Congress as a “Hindu body,” significantly the RSS accused it of Muslim appeasement.   

8) The same book glorifies the RSS for its supposed role in the freedom struggle, in utter violation of the historical evidence so far available. The book (p 306) says the following about the RSS: “As a protest to extreme effort at dividing the Indian society a movement for greater organisation (Sangathan) was started to serve the nation….. This organisation is, today, making great contributions to India’s resurgence through its social wings like Vidya Bharati and Seva Bharati.” This RSS “contribution to India’s resurgence” we saw in Gujarat three years ago!

But the most significant thing, in this context, is that the book was published by the NIOS in September 2004, when the UPA regime was firmly in the saddle. One wonders what the UPA government and its HRD ministry have been doing all these months!

This lack of intervention by the UPA regime has only added to the gravity of the situation in the NIOS. One recalls that its present chairman, M C Pant, was appointed by former HRD minister M M Joshi towards the fag end of the Vajpayee regime but was not removed even after the UPA took over. This has so much emboldened Pant that he has, according to the historians’ letter to the HRD minister, intensified the victimisation and harassment of scholars and employees who do not subscribe to the RSS views.

MILKING EXCHEQUER FOR COMMUNALISM

ANOTHER aspect of the saffron brigade’s penetration into our education system has now come to light with a report on the functioning of Ekal Vidyalayas (single teacher schools) run by VHP in Jharkhand and Assam. The report was submitted by Avadhesh Kaushal on behalf of a committee constituted by the HRD ministry to go into the affairs of these schools.

After his observations in certain villages in Singhbhum district (Jharkhand) and Tinsukhia and Dibrugarh districts (Assam), along with persons belonging to the RSS controlled Friends of Tribal Society (FTS), Kaushal has brought to light certain appalling aspects of the working of these Ekal Vidyalayas (EVs). Below we give the gist of his findings from Jharkhand villages.

1) In Dinasai village, the EV register showed 40 children as enrolled but only 20 were sitting under a tree at the time of visit. However, these were children enrolled in a government run school and all the names shown in the EV register “were copied from the government run school.” The children said they had been assembled there only for the day. A similar pattern was observed in other villages the committee visited. For example, in Chirchi village, “The teachers of the government run school told us that all the children have been brought from their school to inflate attendance.” It is clear that the EVs are either inflating attendance or maintaining false registers in order to extract grant from the government.

2) In some areas, FTS was running schools in tea garden areas and the tea garden managements were skirting their legal obligation to run schools for their workers’ children on the plea that FTS schools were already there. It is clear that the FTS was helping the tea garden managements to avoid their obligation, at the cost of the public exchequer. To the committee’s surprise, “the tea garden owners and management are also office bearers of the FTS.”

3) As per the report, none of the EV teachers was able to show how they were going to impart education to their students. “The traineees said they were not taught how to teach!”

4) Even though the FTS has been getting grant from the HRD ministry, it “has not supplied any reading and learning material to the children of schools” it runs. Only in one school did children have five new slates, but “the teacher informed me that the slates had been supplied to the school only a day before,” evidently to show them to the investigating team. But then the question is: where has all the grant gone? And how and where has this money been used?

5) The level of teaching in these schools is so low that none of their children has so far got admitted to higher classes. Nor does any EV issue school leaving certificate to any child. “This casts a shadow on the FTS claim that they are preparing educated children capable of securing admission in higher education institutions. Thus the whole claim of FTS proves to be nothing but false.”

It is thus clear that in the name of running these Ekal Vidyalayas in Jharkhand and Assam, the VHP has been guilty of gross misuse of public fund.

HOW THEY PROTECT (!) HINDU CULTURE

AS for the question of how and where has this money been used, it is amply clear that the VHP and FTS are not running these schools out of any love for the tribal people. Instead, Avadhesh Kaushal’s final report says, “The public money granted and sanctioned by MHRD for education of tribal children was diverted to inculcate and spread disharmony against religious minorities, by not educating them but turning them into political fundamentalist(s). In addition, the entire process was to avert (divert?) the public money for creating a fanatic cadre trained in dividing and communalising people.”

This VHP-Sangh Parivar aim is borne out by the responses the EV teachers gave at the time of the committee’s visit. They told the team that their “main aim is to defend Hindu culture and to spread and inculcate it” (emphasis in original).

In this regard, the committee noted the case of Manney Singh Kandiyan, EV teacher in Chirchi, which is instructive. According to the report, this man “very proudly claimed that instead of imparting alphabetical knowledge for three hours he was more intent on protecting the Hindu culture.” And what this man and his colleagues did? According to his own claim, “they destroyed the half-built church” in the village in 2002. This was their way of protecting (!?) the Hindu culture.

However, what followed thereafter was still more shocking. After Kandiyan and his mates destroyed the church, the police arrested them, framed charges and launched cases against them. “However, later on, (at) the behest of the ruling party the charges were dropped and cases withdrawn” (emphasis in original). Does not it sound like a smaller scale repeat of what the Modi government did during the abominable massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in the same year?

In fact, this shows the danger the capture of power by the saffron brigade poses.

PLAYING WITH CHILDREN’S LIFE

THE way the Sangh Parivar unhesitatingly distorts everything is also evident from the English Primer for Class II, prepared for use by EV teachers. It tells them to teach A for Arjun, B for Brahma, C for Cow, etc, but has no word for the letters E, F, Q, W, X and Z. and what could the reason be? Simply that the name of no Hindu god or goddess starts with these letters. But the thing is that the brigade is playing havoc, without any qualms of conscience, with the life and future of these tribal children. 

That the Sangh Parivar is bent on utilising the EVs for its sectarian game is clear from a report in the May 1 issue of RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya. It says they will soon open 1450 new EVs in the north-western frontier areas of the country. Having no concern for the level of education in these EVS, the RSS top brass is glad that the EVs have helped curb the “missionary activities” and also countered the “Pakistani media’s disinformation” in these areas.

And the saddest part of the story is that the UPA regime has been, for months, oblivious of what has been going on in these VHP-FTS run schools. So much so that “Dr Rakesh Popli, who is the main thinktank and one of the implementers and designers of the training module, was nominated in the grant-in-aid committee by MHRD.” Further, Kaushal says, “I have ample evidence to prove that Dr Rakesh Popli played a significant role in granting funds as the member of the grant-in-aid committee and, as a beneficiary, was also using those funds.” 

There is, obviously, some powerful as well as crafty lobby in the HRD ministry that is pushing the RSS agenda ahead under the very nose of the UPA government!

The report concludes that there is ample evidence to show that public fund “was not used for teaching but rather to build a political cadre to further the interest of Bharatiya Janata Party.” The training imparted to the EV Preraks (teachers) is not meant to prepare them for teaching but “to create a cadre of a particular party for a particular goal” (emphasis in original).

Nay, the perpetrators of these misdemeanours have been so unabashed that the EV signboards prominently displayed that they were being run by the VHP and Van Bandhu Parishad, the RSS outfit for tribal areas. However, when the FTS office bearers were told about it at their Kolkata head office, they denied the existence of any such signboard. But, Kaushal says, “We have ample evidence that the FTS people are hiding the truth; in fact, in Assam just two days before the visit of the team, all boards were repainted to hide earlier names.”

UPA GOVT HAS TO MOVE

AND here is one more example of how the Sangh Parivar strives to defend (!) the Hindu culture. The Avadhesh Kaushal report points out, “In some places it was reported that Acharyas (teachers) are getting (as) salary only Rs 250 or Rs 350 per month. Payment of salaries is also reported irregular.”

But, to be true to facts, there is nothing new in this observation, nor is it confined to the schools the committee visited in Jharkhand and Assam. Go to any Saraswati Shishu Mandir in, say, Uttar Pradesh or some other state, and you will find the same kind of inhuman exploitation of teachers and non-teaching employees in the name of Hindu religion. Parents too are being similarly exploited in the RSS run schools that are part of the formal system of education.

The committee finally points out what offences the VHP, FTS and similar outfits have been committing under the Indian Penal Code. Here we are not going into the details of these legal provisions, but it is certain that the saffron brigade has been guilty of not only misappropriation of public fund but of its misuse for creating enmity against a section of our people on the ground of religion.

The imperative of this situation is thus clear. The government of India has, therefore, to swiftly move into action in order to prevent the ongoing communalisation in the said areas, which poses a grave threat to communal harmony and national unity. Moreover, it has to freeze the grant sanctioned to the FTS and similar bodies and initiate legal action against them, for which it has more than enough ground.

At the same time, the central government has also to stop treating the non-formal institutions of education as second grade things. In fact, this attitude has led to utter neglect of the mode of working of these institutions after the sanction of grants, and all sorts of dubious elements have been taking undue advantage of this kind of neglect in order to misappropriate public fund for ulterior motives.

This means a serious situation that has the potential to threaten our national unity and even our nation’s integrity. Thus the government has to see that proper guidelines for and monitoring of every aspect of the working of these institutions is evolved at the earliest.