The Chaddi Assault on Indian Education: Indian secularism under attack

School textbooks have been rewritten. Akbar is no longer great because Maharana Pratap defeated him at Haldighati. Students perform ‘surya namaskar’ (sun salutation) during morning prayers at government schools. From July, the colour of their uniforms will be same as that of RSS trousers. There is a minister for cows and university is setting up a cow research centre.

As the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine colour the country saffron with BJP’s victories in state elections, the party is imposing the right-wing ideology in Rajasthan through various symbols.

People opposed to this “use of Hinduism as a political agenda to institutionalise aggressive nationalism”, say there is a sinister design, but those at the helm say it is a cultural reform.

Experts say by ignoring a parochial caste group which vandalised a film shoot to uphold Rajput pride, and the attacks on Christians in tribal Rajasthan, the BJP is trying to create a psychopathology that mauls “the other” viewpoint under the garb of political power. “The values of composite culture and secularism are under attack as the BJP uses an aggressive nationalism to expand Hinduism as a political agenda,” says Professor Rajeev Gupta, a member of Janwadi Lekhak Sangh. The symbolism of ‘surya namaskar’ in schools and saffron bicycles for schoolgirls is not lost on observers. They see a design when the government sends senior citizens on pilgrimages to famous Hindu shrines, when the colour brown is chosen for the new school uniform, same as the one RSS chose for its trouser, while replacing its old khakhi shorts.

For Prof Gupta, it was an attempt to belittle Akbar, whose contribution to all areas of social lives made him a distinctive figure in medieval India.

“Without ignoring Pratap’s bravery as a warrior, we can say that Akbar symbolised multi-religious composite culture. Similarly, values such as gender, equality, liberty, democracy and socialism are products of the freedom struggle and Nehru, to a large extent, symbolised these. So, both of them are villains for the Hindu outfits,” he says.

“This government doesn’t want our future generations to study about the medieval India because, for it, the
medieval history is a dark phase of history in which it doesn’t find any Hindu icons,” he notes.

In Akbar and Pratap, they see a Muslim and a Hindu and therefore, the Mughal ruler is a villain for the BJP-RSS combine even outside textbooks.

In October 2015, a monument in Ajmer, Devnani’s constituency, became Ajmer Fort even though it is recorded in history as “Akbar’s Fort or Magazine or Daulat Khana”. The plaque carrying the Mughal emperor’s name was replaced with one carrying the new name.

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