Naional Pride in Indian Schools

While reading an opinion piece in The Hindu today, I was reminded of Khetaram, a Gramin Dak Sewak, of the dhaanis lying “some 120 km beyond the last railhead at Barmer, 50 km beyond the last phone and 10 km beyond where the Barmer-Chotan road directionlessly (sic) crumbles into sand so soft that even bicycles can’t ply…”

What does the article in The Hindu and Khetaram of the Thar desert have in common? NCERT, India’s official institution for manufacturing textbooks as well as the country’s culture, is the answer.

The article questions the worth of what NCERT calls the Indian Knowledge System (IKS). Khetaram is a postman in Rajasthan’s deserts and his story is one of the lessons in NCERT’s grade 9 English textbook, Kaveri. The article questions the worth of IKS. Khetaram makes us wonder whether the textbook is teaching the children English at all.

Even the highest institutions of learning in India such as the IITs are asked to do research in IKS on topics such as ‘consciousness,’ ‘reincarnation,’ and ‘Vedic biology.’ These are beyond the reach of verifiable, evidence-based science. IKS is a “farcical” effort to “decolonise the Indian mind,” argues the writer. [Read my previous post, The Colonialism of Hindutva, to understand the irony of this “decolonisation.”]

IKS is mistaking myth for history and tradition for science in the name of upholding the country’s ancient and glorious civilisation. Students can be taught about their cultural heritage. But the kind of overreach that NCERT and the government are indulging in will do more harm than good. Critical thinking that builds resilient minds is what should be fostered in educational institutions. Myth and science are totally different and they serve different purposes. Conflating them doesn’t honour heritage; it weakens our capacity to understand the universe.

Something similar happens to the English textbook mentioned above. There are eight major lessons in the textbook and none of them is written by a writer whose ‘native’ language is English. A few such writers do appear in the supplementary reading material attached to the main lessons. But all the main lessons are about people like Khetaram whose lives bring in more Indian vocabulary than English. [And that word ‘directionlessly’ grates against the grain.]

We can learn English through texts written by Indian writers or any others for that matter. That’s not the issue. Shouldn’t a student get minimal exposure to the culture behind a language when they’re learning a language? Yes, I repeat that there are a few lessons by English writers in the supplementary reading section. Are students going to read those, however? If those lessons are included in the assessments, students will read them. Otherwise, no. And then they will think that English is like putting together Gramin Dak Sewak and his dhaanis. I mean, they can put together words from their own language connecting them with English prepositions and conjunctions, and think they’re expert English writers, like those in their English textbook.

I must add, however, that the English textbook goes out of its way to inject cultural nationalism and patriotism into the veins of the students. The very first poem in Kaveri is ‘Bharat Our Land’ by Subramania Bharati. The mighty “Himavant,” “generous Ganga,” and “sacred Upanishads” with no parallel in the world, all belong to the great India where lie the roots of “Brahma knowledge.” 

The last question in the exercise is: “How does the poem foster a sense of national pride?”

How will CBSE assess the students’ patriotism in the exams, I wonder.