The Supreme Court’s unfortunate decision to entertain a public interest litigation on the new school curriculum has cast a shadow over the academic year, even as millions of students prepare to report to school next month. The petition has been filed by activists who will enhance their personal profiles with the publicity generated by the case. Hence the apex court would have done well to question their locus standi on a matter of such academic sensitivity.
On the face of it, the Supreme Court has spared students by permitting the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to go ahead with the publication of books in non-controversial subjects. Thus, Physics, Mathematics, Science and English, which are not in the eye of the storm, have been partially exempted from the stay on implementing the curriculum.
However, the stay on the overall curriculum continues and the new books proposed for Social Sciences and Hindi have been prohibited. It is not clear if the ban extends to private publishers who routinely bring out books based on the curriculum. As far as NCERT is concerned, the stay prohibits it from bringing out the combined Social Science book for classes six and nine. This means that four subjects – economics, geography, civics and history – cannot be taught to students of these classes. The stand-alone History book for class eleven is also encompassed by the ban.
Thus, in one stroke, Social Studies have been frozen at the upper primary, secondary, and higher secondary levels. The news reports do not clarify if the ban on Hindi covers all classes or merely one, in which illustrations accompanying the text on major festivals were labelled “Hinduization,” even though the book contained a whole chapter on Id! If communal parity is going to be calculated and enforced in such an unnatural manner, I fear we cannot but reap a harvest of aggravated disharmony.
The Supreme Court’s intervention gives rise to serious misgivings. In recent times several eminent lawyers have debated aspects of judicial functioning; hence it may be in order to make a few points. It would be fair to readers to mention here that apart from my known views on the functioning of academic oligarchies (Towards Freedom, Saraswati Vandana), I have a personal interest in the controversy. This is because the hullabaloo centres around the medieval India textbook for standard eleven, authored by my sister, Dr. Meenakshi Jain. I shall not defend her; should her work see the light of day, it will speak more eloquently than words can.
The critical issue is that the controversy is ideological rather than academic, and that not one of the litigants has a background in History, though they are trying to scuttle its new syllabi and books. What is more, for over six months, newspaper columns and television channels have been inundated with one-sided polemics against the new curriculum and books. Many of the articles and statements were by the authors whose books were being replaced; yet no attempt was made to balance the diatribes with a different viewpoint.
Some newspapers blacked out non-Left viewpoints completely, while some gave them minor space; some television channels were openly biased. Besides this, newspapers have permitted the complete misuse of their columns for regular denunciations of the Human Resources Development Minister, the ex-Education Secretary and the present NCERT director. In fact, even after the Supreme Court took up the case, a newspaper permitted a litigant to comment upon the proceedings, and quoted interested parties to malign the NCERT for lying to the Court! Surely there are some rules of conduct?
With such sustained bombardment on “saffronisation” of education, it is hard to believe that the learned judges were unfamiliar with the ideological considerations that motivated the petition. If memory serves me right, the petition was first rejected because it did not contain any substantive issue on which the Court could give a direction. It is a pity that with the academic session round the corner, the Court did not see fit to dismiss the appeal as a “nuisance petition”, but rather suggested that the petitioners amend and re-submit it. With the next hearing now slated for April 12, the case will eat into the academic year with deleterious consequences for students.
But even more painful than the bad timing and poor locus standi of the litigants is the fact that by de facto confining the ban to Social Science-History, the Court has joined a prickly ideological dispute. This is because without a shred of evidence that factually incorrect history has been written, the apex court has entertained the charge of “saffronisation” of education. Now “saffronisation” is a charge levelled by Marxist and Islamic activists whenever attempts are made to throw light on aspects that have been blacked out or distorted for ideological reasons. It is sad that the court has permitted a petition that does not make a single substantive point, and it is little wonder that many citizens today feel that justice has not been seen to be done.
These are strong words, and have been said with a heavy heart because of the fear that unrestrained judicial activism can bring the country to a sorry pass. In the case of the textbooks, for instance, it is legitimate to ask if there is a time-span in which the judges intend to decide the matter; else the case may play out over the entire academic year as is normal with due process of law.
Then, what are the academic parameters within which the decision will be taken? If the judges decide that knowledge in History is to be frozen and no critical review or rewriting can ever be done, shall we continue to teach impressionable minds about the Aryan Invasion long after archaeology has proved that it never took place? We will be the laughing stock of the international community if we continue with such inanities. More serious inaccuracies relate to the depiction of the Turkish invasions as causing the political unification of India! If this is the tainted History that the Court upholds, we are in danger of becoming a Marxist ideological theocracy.
It appears that the Court has unwittingly walked into a virtual minefield; it would be wise to exit without getting further embroiled. Parents of school going children have the right to know how the issue is going to be tackled. Will the learned judges go over the frozen textbooks themselves, line by line, and assess them on the basis of their own understanding of History? Or will they hear arguments from differing groups of historians and allow them to present their original sources and explain their interpretations in the manner in which lawyers present their briefs? How many original texts would be examined in this manner, and within what time-frame? Which historical sources will be declared acceptable, which unacceptable, and why?
Finally, does the Court believe that History must be a truthful record of the past (American textbooks have been revised to incorporate the erased history of Black slavery and genocide of Native Americans), or that it must be “secular” at the cost of the truth? The questions arising from this litigation amply demonstrate that the Courtroom is not the proper arena for academic grand-standing. It is sincerely hoped that the learned judges will spare themselves a walk in territory where angels fear to tread.
The Pioneer, 26 March 2002