The perils of schooling the nation in Centre's ideology

Many education and educational institution issues have received ‘national media’ covergae in recent years, from broad topics like replacement of German by sub-continental languages in Kendriya Vidyalaya schools, ideological slants in NCERT textbooks to micro-issues like four-year degree in Delhi University (DU), students union elections in universities of Delhi, dropping of an essay on Ramayana from DU History department, library entry in AMU and so forth. What’s common to these maximum media spotlight issues? To use a Bangla expression, all are related to the super-subsidized set of institutions (compared to those funded by state governments) whose tiki/shikha/hair-tuft/choti is tied to the central government at Delhi. 

An overwhelming majority of Indian Union’s citizens have nothing to do with central boards or central universities. They accomplish education and research based on mettle alone, without money props to heighten or brighten them – the kind of subsidies that central institutions take for granted. The disproportionate focus on these institutions tells you that the beneficiaries from such a tiki system skew reality and have a stake in the perpetuation of this skew. The skew is from years of centralization of education by the virulently rootless (intellectual roots situated in 1960 Europe or 500 BCE Saraswati river-bank are equally alien). The favourite media ‘concerns’ in education aren’t accidental. For instance, it’s never about geographically differential resource allocation. Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala and Odisha together have as many central universities as Delhi. 

In its purest form, Delhi isn’t a place but an ideology of power, being the apex of clientelist networks. Not everyone follows Delhi ideology, but due to subsidy-powered differences, it creates a hierarchy that forces others to align themselves with it or be left out. Central government policies punish those state boards, institutions and universities that don’t fall in line. Deracination is the ultimate objective, well hidden under the Delhi ideology’s call for ‘national integration’, as if a Tamil, in Tamil Nadu, sticking to Tamil in daily interactions and considering herself only a Tamil is an inadequate human being. The ideology first instills inferiority complex and then parades the fruits of converting. Language is crucial to this ideology.

I never studied Hindi in school. In West Bengal, Hindi is not mandatory except in schools that import boards and syllabi from Delhi. In school, my first, second and third languages were Bangla, English and Sanskrit, corresponding to a decreasing order of breadth and toughness of the syllabus. English was school’s ‘medium’ – a tool to decipher certain kinds of knowledge. Those confident in their own limbs' power didn’t use the alien but useful tool as a crutch for daily walking. This is hard to explain to those who can afford to be rootless ‘world citizens’ by dint of affluence, connections and the bright light of alien tongue erudition, all of which act as filters, resulting in the creation of a psychologically largely homogenous contemporary urban class. This set of consumers has money and the right kind of ‘taste’. Big business, swadeshi and videshi, loves them. 

The non-diverse crowd loves the subcontinent’s diversity like my very cooking-skill-challenged self likes good biryani cooked by others. With the right kind of ‘erudition’ and connections, people-like-us can reinvent their skill-less self into a biryani ‘aficionado’ or a ‘specialist’. Diversity celebrants consider it degrading to be even distantly comparable to the multitude actually producing and renewing diversity. Knowledge is not power, power differentials passing off as knowledge differentials is. Modi’s lovers and haters are united in this attitude. They try to hide this unity by condemning each other in territory marking battles. All condemnations are ‘Made in Delhi’. 

The author is a commentator on politics and culture @gargac