Appeared in: Economic and Political Weekly, Nov. 16, 2002.
On saffronization of education
by Hiren Gohain
Exponents of Hindutva usually believe that theirs is a bold revolt against western hegemony, but in fact it is an imperfect and slavish imitation of that hegemonic system, a caricature.
The term 'saffronization of education' appears to denote a fairly innocuous, if dubious process. It is in fact both a treacherous and frivolous response to a grave cultural crisis, a kind of response that is typical of fascism, and fascists have made the most of radical impotence. Democrats with an inadequate sense of history, and leftists and radicals whose smugness is criminal in the light of their own historical consciousness, read in it a silly and disgraceful exercise, something like one of the numerous outcrop of ersatz Hindu cults of the moment. They fail to see that it is a combination of a confident appeal to a brutalized mass consciousness and a coercive imposition of a dogmatic view of national history and culture.
When the BJP, backed by the Sangh Parivar, detected slurs on communities like the Sikhs and the Jains in the impugned history textbooks of the NCERT, Congress stalwarts like A K Anthony and Digvijay Singh also murmured their assent to that reading, oblivious of the fact that those history textbooks (e.g. those by Romilla Thapar and Bipan Chandra, as well as those by Arjun Dev) had been written and approved during long years of Congress rule in the centre. Evidently there is now a change in the climate of opinion which makes critical references to traditions of different indigenous religion acts taboo. The change indicates far more than a turn towards populism. To put it bluntly, there is a confusion between legitimate pride in one's heritage and an oversensitive, indeed aggressive, attitude towards any critical interrogation of that heritage.
It is common to assume that such symptoms are passing whims and fads of those who occupy positions of power. On the contrary, when the Babri Masjid was turned into a heap of rubble, two of the most eminent and hard-hitting intellectuals among westernized orientals, Nirad C Choudhuri and V S Naipaul, well known for their pugnacious admiration for the west, hailed the barbarous act as a vindication of a dishonoured culture.
In this view at least there is no difference between the diehard saffron brigade and the most intransigent pro-western elements. What is the secret behind this incredible alliance?
J S Rajput, director of the NCERT, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, as well as in a circular letter introducing a new curricular framework for schools, affirms that the old and superseded framework had erred by overstressing a secular outlook and neglecting the spiritual heritage of the country. That balance was to be restored by introducing value education, and since values according to him are sanctioned by religion, ultimately religious education.
Such views are not exceptional. Sometimes Mahatma Gandhi, Radhakrishnan, and other leaders of both the political and the cultural awakening of India before independence appear to speak in the same vein. But the disturbing new trend is a narrow, bigoted verison of 'Spiritual Value', leaning explicitly on the Hindu heritage.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Indian Constitution bears the traces of an historical context of religious dissension and conflict, and it comes down resolutely in favour of a broad, tolerant humanism. The preamble declares among its sacred goals 'Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship'. The secularism implied by the Constitution not only indicates non-discrimination among citizens on the basis of religion, whether in matters of public employment, or in admission to state-funded educational institutions, or in the approach of public administration. But it does not stop there. It goes on to commit itself to protecting the right of all religions. Even K M Munshi, the orthodox Hindu leader, categorically insisted on inclusion of the Christian's right to proselytize.
Saffronization of education is part of a far-reaching agenda to reverse such historic trends. And it actually harks back to the period of turmoil to which the secularism of the Constitution had been an answer. As if the road not taken then again faces the nation at a point to which it has returned in the course of its wanderings.
Hence, the kind of spiritual education envisaged in the new curricular framework of NCERT is quite contrary to the spirit of the Constitution. The director of the NCERT in a press handout mentioned the inherent "bigotry and dogmatism" of "Semitic creeds" (read Islam and Christianity) as against the broad outlook of Hinduism. No doubt the spiritual education of the new curriculum would also carefully introduce our young people to this nugget of wisdom.
However, the problem is not simply that of historical regression. There may be some continuity in history, but never pure regression. What appears to be purely regressive is also determined in some way by larger contemporary development. Neocolonialism today requires of its success the prevalence of feudal or semi-feudal ideas and practices. However, such elements, being out of step with the present, and failing to answer the genuine needs of the present, are bound to be overlaid with deliberate self-hypnosis, irrationality and savagery.
In any case it is an oversimplification to say that it is only a question of reactionary revival and regression. The ideology that has hypnotized the masses drawn by the saffron brigade had its genesis in early colonial times during the colonial transformation of Indian society, the introduction of modernity under colonial auspices.
In is this form of modernity that has failed to solve some of the outstanding problems of our social heritage, but it is this form that acquires a dangerous attraction whenever out society and culture enters a blind alley. The uncritical and fanatical worship of a chauvinist version of our past is a product of the same mindset. And it is natural for such a mindset to submit to the hegemony of neocolonialism.
This requires some explanation. How does colonialism continue to shape our consciousness? It manifests itself first in a lack of confidence in one's own creativity and a dependence on western centres of learning for the very conceptions of academic and cultural excellence.
This mental dependence is also actively promoted by western powers and their lackeys for obvious reasons. Ours is a cruel dilemma as we can neither snap our link with the colonial type of modernity at one go, nor find answer to many of our present dilemmas in tradition. But that hardly excuses a supine surrender to the poisoned charms of a reactionary solution from the past.
That there is an overriding need for thorough revision of the structure of education all over the world has been known for several decades. The International Commission on Development of Education constituted with the world's leading educationists by the UNESCO, stated in its report of 1972: "Education follows the laws of every human undertaking, growing old and gathering deadwood. To remain a living organism, capable of satisfying with intelligence and vigour the requirements of individuals and developing societies, it must avoid complacency and routine. It must constantly question its objectives, its contents and its methods." (p xvii)
One of the problems the commission had warned all developing countries about had been the strong colonial traces in the present education systems of their countries. "And just as the political and economic effects of colonialism are still strongly felt today, so most educational systems in Latin American, Asian and African countries mirror the legacy of a one-time mother country or of some other outside hegemony, whether or not they met the nations present needs..." (pp 10-11)
The legacy of colonialism in the system of education and conceptions about education in these unfortunate countries has been succinctly summed up by J N Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh in their introduction to The Decolonization of Imagination (OUP, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, 1997): "Although the effects of British colonialism on different aspects of Indian life and thought varied a great deal, and led to much critical self-questioning, colonial rule did distort India's understanding of its own past, present and future.
It also weakened India's self-confidence and capacity to explore and experiment with alternative ways of life and thought. Above all, it encouraged heteronomy, the tendency to judge itself by western standards and to make western approval the basis of is self-respect and self-esteem, especially among the modernists for whom the west represented almost all that they valued." (p viii-ix)
The way out of this predicament has been charted by the editors on following lines: "To be autonomous is to break through the categories of thought constructed by others, to think afresh and analyze one's predicament and make one's choices in terms one has rationally and independently arrived at." (p ix)
Fortunately for us, Pieterse and Parekh caution against rejecting modernity tout court as it is "deeply inscribed in all areas of its life (or nation) and is integral to its identity..." and advocate critical appropriation of its legacy in various fields so as to liberate the mind from the unconscious colonial constraints.
Colonialism had thus made over the inherited social and mental structures of traditional Indian society in a fairly drastic manner and in the process sapped the confidence and self-reliance of the native. It is usually believed by exponents of Hindutva that theirs is a bold revolt against western hegemony, but my thesis is that it is an imperfect and slavish imitation of that hegemonic system, a caricature.
It is at this point that I propose to deal with a surprisingly sensitive topic - the role of the church in colonial economy and society. Surprising because modern historians of India do not care to attend to it at all. I pick up at random a book, which happens to be Ranajit Guha's Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Oxford University Press, paperback, 1997).
The copious indices include not a single reference to the church, in spite of the fact that the church had been quite active on the margins of Indian society, particularly among tribal subsistence farmers. And sensitive because the biased and motivated work of people like Arun Shourie has virtually made objectivity on the issue impossible.
Now the church had been a herald and agent of modernity in many parts of India. Through the selfless labour of countless volunteers, many of whom had laid down their lives in this kind of service, it brought about striking improvements in health, education and general standard of living in many communities. It restored a measure of self-respect to them by protecting and nurturing their languages and introduced them to modern ways of thought at a time when both decay of traditional society and aggressive colonial exploitation had left them prostrated. Even a relatively advanced regional language like Bengali cannot easily forget the services of William Carey, nor the Assamese the work of Miles Bronson in defending the rights of their language and escorting it into the threshold of modernity. But when all is said and done such services had been rendered within the ambit of colonialism. The other side of the coin was a softening up of the mental fibre of independent communities in order to encourage their voluntary submission to colonial rule.
It can hardly be overlooked that the Church had the support of the colonial government in its mission. When the European powers launched the 'Opium War' in China in the 19th century to open up the country to the deluge of opium to be released by them, the Chinese rulers resisted for the most natural of reasons. China's defeat enabled the European powers to force on her a vastly unequal treaty, with provisions like drastic reduction in customs tariff, cession of territory, and significantly "freedom for missionary activities".
When the hard-pressed peasantry of Phuloguri, Nagaon district in Assam, driven desperate by a steep hike in land revenue and imposition of taxes on their wretched little kitchen gardens, rose in revolt, they were condemned outright in harsh and brutal language by the Arunodoi, the first newsmagazine in Assamese, an organ of modernity, published by the American Baptist Mission.
There has been some recent attempts to exonerate this conduct with the plea that the rates of taxation had been insignificant, a matter of only a few rupees. These later champions forget how scarce money had been among these peasants, and how in the following century many 'rayats' of Assam became landless for defaulting on land revenue at the rate of one rupee per 'bigha'. (It must be made clear that we here criticize the church for its association with the colonial system, and not Christianity itself.)
What hurt educated native sentiments in Bengal most was the ceaseless and vehement campaign of the church in early colonial times against Hindu religious ideas and practices. And Bengal was the pioneer of the Indian awakening into modernity in colonial times. No doubt many of their strictures on Hindu superstitions were just and well founded. But their tone was hardly calculated to persuade, as it was a combination of loathing, outrage and patronizing pity. Besides, these often betrayed a woeful ignorance of the finer spiritual speculations and intellectual achievements of the ancient Hindus.
As early as the first decades of the 19th century Raja Ram Mohun Roy faced the hostile propaganda of missionaries like Carey and Marshman against Hinduism. Ram Mohun brought out Precepts of Jesus, Guide to Peace and Happiness in 1820, explaining the irrationality and hollowness of certain teachings of the church which he considered contrary to the gospels of Jesus. He also brought the war into the camp of the enemy by pointing out in An Appeal to the Christian Public that beliefs like that in the Holy Trinity were not warranted by the Bible. But even Alexander Duff who received Ram Mohun's help in founding his school in Calcutta made a frontal attack on Hinduism including the Vedanta in his India and India's Missions in 1840.
The Tattva Bodhini Patrika, the organ of the Brahmas, replied to these charges in a series of articles (Ram Mohun Shmaran, published by Raja Ram Mohun Roy, Smriti-Raksha Samiti, edited by Pulin Bihari Sen et al. in 1989, pp 84-88). But the climax was reached in the attack by Reverend Hastie, principal of the General Assembly's Institution, run by Scottish General Missionary Board. In the pages of The Statesman he attacked Hinduism as betraying "mere animal licentiousness", "senseless mummeries", "loathsome impurities, and bloody barbarous sacrifices". He went on to say that "debasing idolatry" produced "a mass of shrinking cowards, unscrupulous deceivers, of bestial idlers, filthy songsters, and degraded women", and their only hope of salvation lay in embracing Christianity. It is significant that Reverend Hastie in the same of breath referred to the benefits of the "English sense of justice", "the invincibility of the new power", "our English enlightenment" and "powerful scholars of Europe".
It appears that Revered Hastie's conviction about the inferiority of Hinduism had been strengthened by the confidence derived from association with a conquering power. If his campaign persuaded some Hindu youths, it provoked an even more powerful tide of Hindu defensive passion. Among the numerous educated Hindus who protested against Hastie's sweeping and ignorant indictment, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the first great novelist of modern India, and the first systematic exponent of "Hindu nationalism" was one (Tapan Raychaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp 6-9, p 122). And his views had a wider and deeper appeal than the modern, scientific, secular outlook of the 'Young Bengal' movement inspired by European rationalism.
Bankim Chandra's notion of a Hindu nation was a major cultural response to the ethnocentric European propagation of modernity. The favourite and loaded term for modernity in early colonial Bengal had been 'Sabhyota' (an extended connotation of 'civility') (See Hiren Gohain, The Idea of Popular Culture in Early 19th Century Bengal, K P Bagchi and Sons, Kolkata, 1990) and Bankim Chandra had had resort to contemporary European ideas of nationhood and nationalism to construct a collective Hindu identity as a counterweight to the pressures of European ethnocentrism.
It is significant that he excluded Muslims from its fold, and indeed identified the Muslims as the source of defilement and degradation of the Hindus. Significantly his opponent Reverend Hastie also invoked the Muslim bogey in his rhetoric, and reminded the Hindus how English rule had freed them from the Muslim yoke. Evidently the idea of Hindu nationhood emerged out of an intellectual compromise with the reality of colonial power.
It is hardly a matter for surprise that in his powerful fictional work, Anadha Math, translated practically into every modern Indian language, where he proclaims the gospel of Hindu nationalism, he also identifies the decaying Muslim rule as the chief obstacle to Hindu regeneration and perceives the colonial regime as "a divinely ordained tutelage" for the rise and education of modern Hindus as a nation.
Thus, both a growing sense of inferiority, and of mortified self-respect, combined with an aspiration for new strength in a newly and narrowly constructed nationhood, had been legacies of a hegemonic colonial culture. And even in the heyday of swadeshi terrorist offensive against British rule, Bankim Chandra's Ananda Math had as much prestige with the revolutionists as the Gita.
The excluded Muslim elite naturally took to the ideal of a pan-Islamic qaum, largely under Wahhabi influence. It is significant that Maulana Mohammed Ali categorically rejected nationalism as the path of salvation for India during the heyday of the Khilafat movement.
He went on to assert stoutly: "God made mankind and the Devil made the nation". Most significantly he warned against the temptation of a revival of the lost domination of any community, be it Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs. (Amalendu De, Samaj O Sanskriti, Kolkata, 1981, pp 47-49). But the Muslim reaction had little impact on the powerful under-tow of Hindu revivalist thought in the course of Indian nationalism.
This is the excruciating dilemma of modernity in India. It had awoken into consciousness with a profoundly confused notion of national identity, under the manipulative pressures of colonial rule.
In my little monograph on early 19th century Bengal I had had an occasion to underline the fact that the potentiality of a truly democratic, revolutionary and secular nationalism implicit in the 'Young Bengal' movement did not find much favour with the educated modern intelligentsia of Bengal, primarily because of middle-class opposition to extension of democracy and to true radicalism.
The continuity of the colonial class structure into independent India reinforced, and was itself in turn reinforced by, Hindu chauvinism. In the meantime, the erstwhile revolutionary later reconciled to British domination, V D Savarkar, invoked Hindutva as the basis of Indian nationalism, and the mentor of the RSS in the 1950s and the 1960s, Guru Golwalkar, reiterated the same ideas in We, or, Our Nationhood Defined.
From imperialism the enemy had quietly changed shape to turn into Islam. Then as now, the erroneous and fatal identification of the enemy has been the product of a collusion between colonialism and native ruling elites.
The idea of a "composite nation" proposed by Gandhi had a greater popular democratic potential, but perhaps his lack of revolutionary class-outlook failed to instil it with transforming power.
The only viable and healthy response to the cultural crisis of modern India was popular and radical democracy. Instead of which we are imbibing a concoction brewed under colonial patronage, with predictable consequences. And a mechanistically oriented left movement, unable to discern the traces of colonial consciousness in modern Indian culture, can find no antidote to this poison. Attempts to correct the error are met with a volley of foul and vulgar abuse, which after all is a hoary defensive mechanism.
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