Modi sarkar's policy to saffronise education much too dangerous for India

Ram Shankar Katheria, Smriti Irani's deputy in the ministry of human resource development, asserted at a public function held on June 20, 2016 to commemorate the 342nd anniversary of the coronation of Chhatrapati Shivaji, that saffronisation of education and the country is the core agenda of the present government.

In the interest of clarity and accuracy, here are the exact words of the MoS, "Some journalists ask me if we are promoting the saffronisation of education. I am saying, yes, there will be saffronisation of education and of the country." The occasion perhaps warranted such a war cry, and it was issued in the august presence of the governor of Uttar Pradesh, Ram Naik.

Katheria identified the purpose of this saffronisation in the offing. It involves, in the main, the crafting of a curriculum that will promote the country's "samman" (honour) and "swabhiman" (self-respect). These are goals with which no one can have any quarrel. Indeed, they are, or should be, dear to the heart of every Indian.

Also read - Modi government's biggest battle set to begin in the warfield of education

Having spent a lifetime in higher education, I am in earnest agreement with Katheria on the need to radically reorient higher education. My greatest unhappiness with the current practice of education is that it promotes, in a crass and cancerous way, aggressive self-interest as the sole driving force in the character and outlook of the educated.

Education is seen almost by every one of its beneficiaries as the licence to turn the country into a happy hunting ground for self-interests. The idea of serving a national cause, of making oneself socially relevant or responsible, or contributing to the commonweal of a people, is wholly alien to the outlook of the educated at the present time.

It does not have to be argued that no country can realise its full potential if its citizens do not participate, and participate sacrificially, in the nation-building process. The strength of a nation cannot be an aggregate of the fierceness with which each citizen pursues his own interests.

Such a tacit assumption underlies the present myth about education and it is derived almost entirely from the capitalistic economic canard that assumes, wholly arbitrarily, that facilitating the unbridled pursuit of private interests would, somehow, also maximise the welfare of the nation. It does not. All it does is to widen social cleavages and undermine the health and wholeness of a society.

Katheria is quite right - if indeed that is his concern - that the mindset formed through such an approach is incompatible with national honour and self-respect.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi would know, if nobody else does, that there is, clearly, a need to bring about a radical change in the national character, if the full potential of India is to be unleashed, as he seems keen to do.

Citizens have to be trained to be mindful of public and social purposes, which simply does not happen as of now. To do that, however, we have to confront the current, widespread cynicism about human nature. It is assumed, purely arbitrarily, that human beings are, by nature, selfish and self-centred and that it is too much to expect them to act out of altruistic and philanthropic sentiments.

This is not true! Human nature, like everything else human, is proverbially ambivalent. Our penchant for self-centredness is only as strong as our capacity for self-transcendence and altruism. Behavioural psychologists, sociologists and social anthropologists have been telling us repeatedly that the need for transcendence is not only native to human nature but also that it is the highest and noblest of all human needs. Do we not, after all, appeal to this very sentiment, and urge citizens to make the ultimate sacrifices, in times of war? Or, do we insist that such stirring appeals are a waste of breath because human nature is incorrigibly selfish?

The problem is not with human nature, per se. The problem really is that the institutions, enterprises and ideologies we have evolved over a period of time - especially in the modern era - are founded and structured on a cynical and one-sided view of human nature.

Also read - By giving students 95%, we're failing them for life

Encouragement to individuals to get obsessed only with their self-interests to the neglect of all social and shared purposes is widespread in everything that citizens experience day by day, month after month. "The deep-rooted selfishness, which forms the general character of the existing state of society," wrote John Stuart Mill in his autobiography, "is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it. The occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity."

The most formidable stumbling block in the path of our "samman" and "swabhiman" is the exaltation of socially debilitating self-interests of individuals for which alone the current practice of education prepares them. Fissiparous group self-interests are even more disruptive and crippling in their impact on national samman and swabhiman than that of individuals. Decisively so, if it is the honour and self-respect of the country as a whole that Katheria has in mind.

In the days to come, Katheria will reveal how educated he is, as he unfurls, under the watchful eyes of his senior colleague, Irani, and, beyond her, of the PM, his idea of promoting these laudable goals via reinventing higher education.