Page 42 - Education World September 2021

Cover Story

(L-R) Education ministers Joshi, Irani, Javadekar & Pokhriyal: RSS members and/or sympathisers

lectively known as the sangh parivar slash their already modest residential Although well-mannered, articu-
(RSS family), run hundreds if not tuition fees from Rs.1.5 lakh per year late and accessible to the media, Ja-
thousands of schools and even higher to Rs.30,000, to make the manage- vadekar was obliged to reject the New
education institutions whose focus is ments of these government-promoted Education Policy 2016 recommen-
valorisation of the glories of pre-Mu- B-schools abjectly dependent on Cen- dations of the high-powered T.S.R.
ghal India and highlighting atrocities tral largesse. Following strong criti- Subramanian Committee, which
and humiliation of the Hindu majority cism in the media (especially EW) the made sensible proposals to establish
by foreign, especially Muslim, rulers BJP was unexpectedly routed in Gen- an Indian Education Service, grant
from the 16th century onwards. The eral Election 2004 and Joshi lost his substantial autonomy to universities,
RSS and BJP have little time or re- Allahabad seat. and raise the national outlay for edu-
spect for the egalitarian and secular cation (Centre plus states) to 6 percent
values of the Constitution of India, UBSEQUENTLY, WHEN of GDP (first recommended by the Ko-
and believe it’s payback time for the S the BJP/NDA alliance thari Commission in 1966) “without
country’s Muslim and Christian mi- swept to power in 2014 af- further delay”.
norities. They should be cut to size and ter the collapse of the Con- These recommendations didn’t sit
reduced to second class citizenship. gress-led UPA alliance which served well with RSS priorities which were to
According to the grapevine in Del- two scandals-tainted terms in office at rewrite social science, especially his-
hi, right from the time the first BJP the Centre (2004-14), prime minister tory, school textbooks from the hindu-
government was elected to power at Narendra Modi whose own academic tva perspective and pack institutions
the Centre in 1999 and again in 2014, credentials are shrouded in mystery, of higher education with right-wing
when the party’s leadership made appointed former television soap op- sangh parivar under-qualified intel-
noises about pressing ahead with lib- era star Smriti Irani as Union HRD lectuals. Moreover with then Union
eralisation of the economy — anath- (human resource development, aka finance minister, the late Arun Jaitley,
ema to RSS top brass — initiated by education) minister. During her two- slashing the Centre’s 2015-16 educa-
the Congress in 1991, a compact was year term in Shastri Bhavan which she tion budget even in nominal terms,
made that RSS sympathisers would ruled with an iron hand, Irani (who it there was little chance of the Subra-
be awarded the HRD/education min- was discovered had falsely claimed to manian Committee’s Report being
istries at the Centre and BJP-ruled be a Delhi University graduate in her accepted by the then newly elected
states. Proof of this assertion is that election nomination form), a com- BJP leadership. Instead, the 217-page
since then, all education ministers mitted RSS sympathiser, resurrected report prepared by the high-powered
have been former RSS members and/ Joshi’s bid for backdoor takeover of committee chaired by former Union
or sympathisers. the IIMs, which again was fiercely cabinet secretary Subramanian,
The first of them, the late Dr. resisted by your editors (see https:// widely respected for his integrity and
Murli Manohar Joshi who served www.educationworld.in/hostile- plain-speaking, was reduced to a mere
in the Vajpayee government (1999- takeover-bid-2-0) and the media, and “input” for a new policy to be formu-
2004) introduced astrology as a de- prompted her transfer to the Union lated after wider consultations.
gree programme in universities and textiles ministry in July 2016. Subsequently in 2017 a new com-
made an abortive backdoor takeover Irani was succeeded in Shastri mittee was constituted under the
of India’s premier IIMs (Indian Insti- Bhavan by Prakash Javadekar, a for- chairmanship of outer space scien-
tutes of Management) by proposing to mer RSS karyakarta (foot-soldier). tist Dr. K. Kasturirangan, for-

42 EDUCATIONWORLD SEPTEMBER 2021