India. A row has erupted over the Indian government’s decision to rewrite the national curriculum in order to inculcate a sense of “cultural nationalism” among children.
Religious minorities and liberal groups have accused the education minister, Hindu hardliner Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, of pursuing a hidden agenda to promote aggressive nationalism.
They allege that at least two experts who have been commissioned to write the history curriculum - TP Verma, formerly of the Banaras Hindu University, and Makhan Lal, director of the right-wing Institute of Heritage Research and Management - are identified with the neo-Fascist Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The VHP questions the idea of multiculturalism and stands for the Indianisation of Islam and Christianity.
“Dr Verma’s only credential is writing pamphlets for VHP,” said Professor Arjun Dev, former head of the department of social science and humanities at the National Council for Educational Research and Training, the government body which prescribes the school curriculum.
The government of West Bengal has said it will not accept the new curriculum, claiming it is an attempt to “foist” a narrow view of nationalism on impressionable minds. The leader of India’s main opposition Congress party, Ms Sonia Gandhi, has denounced it as an attempt to “saffronise” education. Saffron is the colour of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party’s flag.
Ministers from 12 states have protested against the imposition of the history textbooks and the secrecy surrounding them. They say they will refuse to use them in their schools.
Dr Joshi says he is simply trying to update the curriculum, which had not been revised for 15 years during the the regime of Rajiv Gandhi. But the education minister’s views on history, and the secrecy surrounding the contents of the proposed curriculum, have prompted speculation about the government’s motives.
