[sacw] SACW #2 (21 August 01)
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex@mnet.fr
Tue, 21 Aug 2001 11:40:57 +0100
South Asia Citizens Wire / Dispatch No.2
21 August 2001
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex
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[1.] India: Coloured curriculum
[2.] Sri Lanka: Truth Commission begins work
[3.] India: Press Statement by All India Christian Council
[4.] Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA) condemns
recent acid attacks on women in Kashmir
[5.] Sri Lanka: Book by Union of Teachers for Human Rights (Jafna)
[6.] India: Book review of 'Riot' by Shashi Tharoor
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#1.
Hindustan Times
August 14, 2001
THE BIG IDEA
COLOURED CURRICULUM
Romila Thapar
Let me begin by asserting that those who do not understand the past,
or refuse to understand it, invariably end up by misunderstanding the
present and are unable to move forward into the future. We are faced
today with the makers of educational policy in the central government
who seem not to understand the Indian past.
There is a constant harking back to the remote past, encapsulated in
the phrase Vedic. Irrespective of its historical or civilisational
authenticity, this capsule is being forced upon us with the claim
that all knowledge is contained in the Vedas and therefore the Vedic
capsule amounts to a total education.
There is little recognition of the fact that in the course of Indian
history, various Indian thinkers discussed the knowledge contained in
the Vedic corpus, and some had doubts about various aspects. This
process of debate and questioning, the presentation of views and
counter-views, both within India and among scholars from other parts
of Asia, has been at the root of advances in knowledge in pre-modern
times. Much that we pride ourselves on, as Indian contributions to
world civilisation, often developed independently of the Vedic corpus
and occasionally even in opposition to it. Significant contributions
from the past are thus set aside in this obsessive concern with the
Vedic capsule.
In saying this, I am not denigrating the study of the Vedic past, but
am emphasising that the past has to be assessed in a historical
context, and I would further insist that the context has to be, that
of critical, rational enquiry. This is now being denied by replacing
enquiry with a received version of the past which is then treated as
the authentic version.
The claim is made that this is a return to indigenous knowledge, but
the new educational curriculum draws its legitimacy from 19th
century colonial views of India, and from the priority that European
Indologists gave to Brahmanical texts and world-view. Indigenous
systems drew not only on mainstream texts in the language of
learning but also on texts in a variety of regional languages, which
could question the former if need be, as also on observed knowledge.
A major pedagogical change in the last few decades has been the
professionalising of various subjects, particularly in the social
sciences. Each subject is preferably taught in such a way that it
also demonstrates its own methodology which draws as much as
plausible on evidence of proven reliability, on a logical analysis
and on rational generalisations. This demands an intellectual rigour
in setting out the structure of the subject. The training that
results from such teaching, as for example in history, enables both
the teacher and the student to be aware of the difference between
mythology and history.
There is now a retreat from these processes and mythology is taking
over from knowledge. Mythology has a role in creative imagination but
should not replace knowledge. Instead of further professionalising
the subjects taught at school and college, they are being replaced
with subjects that have virtually no pedagogical rigour, such as
Yoga and Consciousness or cultivating a Spirituality Quotient. These
cannot form the core of knowledge and replace subjects with a
pedagogical foundation, although yoga can be an additional activity.
The narrowing of knowledge is being attempted in part by giving a
single definition to Indian culture and society, and projecting this
through educational channels, and describing it as the sole heritage
that is of any consequence to us as a society and a nation. Yet this
goes against one of the fundamental concerns of the Indian
experience both of the past and of the present.
Among the more significant questions that have continually been at
the core of Indian activity, is that of the relations between the
needs of the central power in a state and the articulation of
variant forms of control manifested by regional and local powers. At
the most obvious level in the past, this relationship determined
various structures relating to administrative and economic policy.
But it is also evident in cultural expression where a distinction
was often maintained between the mainstream culture, and the culture
and language of the region.
Relations between the two varied from close interlinks on some
occasions,to tensions or even confrontations on other occasions.What
is relevant to us today is that in the past, cooperation between the
Centre and the regions needed an immense degree of sensitivity to
social and cultural variations and an understanding of why those
arose. We are facing a similar problem today.
The question is whether we should accept the kind of homogenisation
of education and culture that is being imposed on the country, or,
should we attempt to define the modern, educated Indian through an
educational policy sensitive to a range of social and economic
concerns, and to new systems of knowledge, a sensitivity that will
provide us with a worthwhile present and enable us to perceive the
inter-connections with the past?
Can the interface between the Centre and the states in a federal
polity, help us in this matter? Education is not merely about making
millions literate, it also involves teaching young people to cope
with a changing society, which today means being more aware of the
world than ever before, and to creating a worthwhile life for
themselves. Therefore, to impose a syllabus oriented to studying an
imagined past utopia is to erode the potential of the next
generation. Focusing on a utopian past is also a mechanism of
diverting attention from having to improve the present in order to
provide a better quality of life.
Accountability to the public and transparency in governance is
necessary in formulating educational policies. We must know who is
drafting educational policy and who have been consulted in doing so,
and what has been the participation of professionally qualified
persons in the determining of the curriculum in a subject. It
requires responsible people and these in turn have to be responsible
for what they are doing. Educational policy is both important and
sensitive and cannot be left to the whims of a small circle of
politicians and bureaucrats.
A sensitive understanding of the interface of Centre and region is
essential to any educational policy. Two states with high rates of
literacy are Kerala and Himachal Pradesh. Each is very different from
the other in terms of economic resources and the way they are used;
in the hierarchy of castes and the distribution of classes; in
religions and religious sects; and in languages. These aspects also
undergo change. Can we set aside all this and merely insist on
children in both areas studying Sanskrit, Vedic Mathematics, a vague
subject called social science, and Yoga and Consciousness?
The imposition of the Vedic capsule would be an educational
disruption in both regions, educationally negative for many people
and resented by others.
But what they do have in common, are the aspirations that result from
education. Schooling and curriculum would have to relate up to a
point to the local conditions and ethos, and these would involve a
degree of interest in regional concerns. The question is how best
these can be introduced without denying the importance of national
concerns a matter of some sensitivity. Educational policy has to be
such that the aspirations, at least of regional concerns, are
recognised as an intrinsic part of those that are of national
interest. This would ultimately be more viable than forcing everyone
to conform to a top-down policy.
Educational policies in states that do not have a BJP government have
a greater responsibility to defend secular education and the
continuance of multiple cultures. This is often easier at the state
level where multiple cultures are more visible, but would require
considerable thinking about education in terms of what is being
taught and which groups are appropriating educational facilities.
Where parties not belonging to the NDA, tie-up with the Sangh parivar
to harass those supporting secular education, the acts of such
parties should also be questioned. Education should not be made the
scapegoat for dubious political manoeuvres.
We may well be taking a risk with the future of the next generation
by giving them the type of schooling that will not equip them to
handle the complexities of our times. These are serious matters that
concern the future of an entire generation of young Indians and
should be critically discussed and reviewed. But then the Indian
middle-class is notoriously unconcerned about what is taught to its
children through schooling. All that matters is the game of numbers,
marks and percentages.
The new policy, it is said, will reduce social disabilities and the
replacing of subjects at school will reduce the burden on the child.
Social disabilities can be met to some extent by professionalising
what is taught in other words teaching mainstream subjects as
systems of knowledge, without mystifications. The way a subject is
taught has a social context and this has a bearing on social
disabilities.
For example, will Vedic Mathematics be taught through memorising
shlokas in Sanskrit or essentially as methods of calculation? In the
former case obviously upper caste children will have an advantage; in
case of the latter, the quality of what is taught will have to be
assessed comparatively with other mathematical methods. If it were to
be something more than a slogan, would this kind of mathematics
prepare a foundation for the child to handle contemporary
technologies requiring mathematics?
Excerpted from the paper presented in a seminar on education
organised by Sahmat at Delhi last week. (To be concluded)
____________
2.
Daily News (Colombo)
Friday 10 August 2001
TRUTH COMMISSION BEGINS WORK
The Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence will accept public
submissions on incidents of ethnic violence that occurred during the period
commencing from the beginning of 1981 and ending in December 1984, till
October 15 this year.
Retired Chief Justice S. Sharvananda, the Chairman of the three member
Commission yesterday said that any individual or organisation affected by the
violence or suffered as a result of it should make their submissions orally
or by written statement or by way of documents, photographs, video cassette
recordings, sound recordings or other means.
Persons living in Sri Lanka or abroad who are aware of or can speak of such
violence or incidents in connection with such violence or persons who could
assist in any way can also make their submissions to the Commission, he said.
He said President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga appointed the Commission
under the provisions of Section 2 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act (Chapter
393) to inquire into and report on the nature, causes and extent of the gross
violation of human rights; and the destruction of and damage to any property
committed as part of the ethnic violence during this period.
The commission inquiring into ethnic violence will report on the nature,
causes and extent of the gross violation of human rights and the destruction
of and damage to any property.
The commission will also report whether any person, group or institution was
directly or indirectly responsible for such violence, the nature and extent
of the the damage - both physical and mental suffered by the victims of such
ethnic violence and what compensation or solatium should be granted to such
victims or to their dependents or heirs.
The ultimate objective of inquiring in to these incidents is to recommend
institutional, administrative and legislative measures which need to be taken
in order to prevent a recurrence of such violations of human rights and
destruction or damage to property in the future and to promote national unity
and reconciliation among all communities.
S.S. Sahabandu PC, a member of the Commission said that the President has
appointed the Commission emulating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
South Africa.
The Commission will recommend remedial measures to prevent recurrence of such
incidents in the country. It is never too late to inquire into such incidents
of communal violence, Commission member M. M. Zuhair PC said.
_________
3.
All India Christian Council
79/B I&II Floors, Street 8, West Marredpally, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh
President: Dr Joseph D' Souza Secretary General: Dr. John Dayal
Please correspond with Secretary General at:
505 Media Apartments, Link Society
18 I.P. Extension, Delhi 110092 India
Phone (91 11) 2722262 Fax 2726582 Mobile 09811021072
Email: johndayal@v...
PRESS STATEMENT
NEW DELHI, August 20, 2001
PM's aspersions against Christian service unfortunate, will aggravate
communalism, violence against minorities, says All India Christian
Council
(The following is the text of the statement issued by the Dr Joseph D
Souza, President, and Dr John Dayal, Secretary General, All India
Christian Council, taking exception to Prime Minister Mr. Atal Behari
Vajpayee's reportedly telling Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)
cadres at a function at his official residence that in the guise of
service, missionaries have been working towards conversions to
Christianity.)
Secular India has been taken aback at the aspersions that Prime
Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has cast on Christian service to
the nation.
He is reported to have said missionaries are indulging in conversions
in the guise of service. What is the more serious is that Mr.
Vajpayee made these remarks at a function at his official residence
in front of the a gathering of leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh, who are, together with other members of the Sangh Parivar,
leading the hate campaign against the minority communities, and
specially against the small Christian community.
This remark comes when the country is facing a renewed violence
against Christian priests, nuns and religious workers. Many of these
acts of violence have been found by the police of the concerned
states to have been perpetrated by members of the Sangh Parivar. The
All India Christian Council had some days ago called on the Prime
minister to rein in Parivar vigilantes who, after the training in
fire arms they have received in recent months in some states
including Uttar Pradesh, have taken the law into their own hands the
law into their own hands and were assaulting Christian.
Government leaders, including the Prime Minister, have made no secret
of their membership of the Sangh, and of their admiration for its
ideology. But using the Prime minister's official residence to hit
out at the Christian community gives Mr. Vajpayee's statements an
official stamp. The apprehensive minority community calls upon
National Democratic Alliance partners in Mr. Vajpayee's government to
tell the nation if they agree with the Prime Minister's remarks
against the Christians, and his certificate to the Sangh.
In one stroke, Mr. Vajpayee has cast a dark shadow of doubt on the
entire Christian endeavour in national development, the uplift of the
Dalits and marginalised, the selfless care of the sick and the dying,
and the crucial task of building a new India through education to the
masses. He has stigmatized the work of more than 25,000 Christian
educational and health institutions in the country - the largest non
governmental effort in Asian history - which reach out to the people
in areas where even government agencies have not reached, or have
withdrawn in this age of privatisation.
Christian social work is inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ to
love one's neighbour. It follows in the footsteps of the pioneering
educational efforts of William Carey, the initiation of women's
emancipation by Pandita Ramabai, the spiritual journey of Sadhu
Sundar Singh, the great love that Mother Teresa had for the poor till
her last breath, and the late Archbishop Alan de Lastic's commitment
to the civil liberties dignity of the human person. This is the
essence of Christian service.
The powerful agencies of the government of India, which monitor
foreign contributions and much else, have not been able to fault
Christian institutions, though this has not prevented the harassment
educational institutions by vested political interests in many
states. The Church has denounced fraudulent and forcible conversions
as illegal and against our principles. Conversions by force and fraud
are a contradiction in terms. There is no conversion unless it is of
one's free will, a freedom guaranteed by the Constitution of India
and the codes of the United Nations.
Parallels will be seen between this statement of Mr. Vajpayee and his
call for a national debate on conversions in 1999 when the country
had just witnessed the desecration and destruction of three dozen
churches in the Dangs district of Gujarat, and the burning alive of
Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons three weeks later. Then, as
now, there was no statement of condemnation of violence, and no
effort to soothe the injury of the community whose members had
experienced coercion and intimidation.
Remarks such as the Prime Minister's are seen as condoning the hate
campaign and the canards, lies and half-truths that are being spread
in many parts of the country. They encourage communal and extremist
elements to greater frenzy. Above all, they directly goad hate
mongers to curtail Christian social inputs in education, health and
the uplift of marginalised segments, particularly the Dalits.
The governments at the Central and State governments must work
towards restoring the confidence of the minorities, which has been
rudely shaken. Governments must to bring to book all those who are
imposing an atmosphere of terror against the minorities, and thereby
damaging the cultural plurality and secular structures of the nation.
Nothing less will suffice.
_________
4.
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 11:01:09 +0530
Press Statement
August 13, 2001
Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA) condemns the
recent acid attacks on women in Kashmir who are being targeted by
crinimnals and miscreants, ostensibly because they do not cover their
faces and observe purdah. We denounce this heinous way of oppressing
women, which is tantamount to destroying their entire lives.
WIPSA maintains that in any armed conflict situation, women are the
worst hit victims. They are the ones who are forced, oppressed and
tyrannized. The incidents of acid-throwing in Srinagar last week, are
glaring examples of this. WIPSA calls on women all over South Asia
and indeed all over the globe to denounce this sinister action which
in the garb of religion is an attempt to place women in a
stranglehold.
WIPSA demands that the J&K government immediately arrest and punish
the real perpetrators of the gross crime. WIPSA also demands that the
government of India accelerate its efforts to find a peaceful
solution to Kashmir so that the people, particularly the women, can
live a life free from constant dread of such horror, which has become
a part of their daily lives.
Nirmala Deshpande, Mohini Giri, Kamla Bhasin, Syeda Hameed, Padma
Seth, Meera Khanna
_________
5.
FROM: UTHR(J)
Our book 'Sri Lanka: The Arrogance of Power - Myths, Decadence and Murder'
has just been released. What follows is the description of the book, which
appears on the back cover.
Written by a co-author of The Broken Palmyra, the focus of which was inwards
- within Tamil society - the present volume examines primarily the Sri
Lankan State. Sri Lanka: The Arrogance of Power - Myths, Decadence and
Murder is the story of how the State, its ideology and inherent violence
spawned the LTTE as its mirror image, a violently obscurantist JVP within
Sinhalese society itself, and continues to suffocate in that legacy.
The book traces the connections between major events in post-independence
Sri Lanka. It elucidates crucial aspects of the 1977 violence that have been
papered over. The central sections deal with the JUly 1983 holocaust and the
Welikade prison massacres that still form an elusive watershed in this
country's political history. Both published and unpublished materials have
been collated in giving an account of the JVP insurgency of 1987-90. A key
chapter deals with the dirty war of the mid-1980s, where the UNP
government's attempt at demographic transformation, with covert Western and
Israeli assistance, plunged the crisis to a point of no return and
irrevocably internationalised it. Other chapters deal with the
demoralisation in the security forces. Political assassinations and the
fascist drift among Tamils. A final chapter tackles the question of peace.
Although written for the general reader wanting to probe below official and
partisan obfuscation, the student of contemporary Sri Lanka will find the
book compulsory reading.
At Rs. 800/- per copy, the book is priced at the lowest compatible with
covering production costs. We are still in the process of making the book
available for sale at study institutes and booksellers in Colombo. The book
is also being made available at our webside w.w.w. uthr.com
_________
6.
Tehelka.com
Quiet Riot
Riot
By Shashi Tharoor
Viking
Fiction
Rs 295
By Nilanjana S Roy
It isn't usually kind to refer to an author as a puppeteer. It
implies that for all his pulling of strings behind the curtain, his
characters are wooden, his work little more than an evening's
entertainment.
But there are puppeteers and puppetmeisters. Shashi Tharoor's urbane
prose has always placed him in the second category as far as this
reviewer's concerned. Show Business, for all that it was an evening's
entertainment, was also a thought-experiment, if not one conducted on
as grand a scale as the book on which Tharoor's reputation rests, The
Great Indian Novel. His characters may be wooden, but they're
polished to such a high gloss that it hardly matters. And perhaps
it's Tharoor's diplomatic background, but very few novelists work the
strings quite as smoothly as he does.
With Riot, his fifth book, Tharoor is hard at work as he employs a
vast cast of characters and plunges them into a seething cauldron of
conflict that will eventually lead to the destruction of the Babri
Masjid in 1992. The multiplicity of voices does mean that Riot is a
page-turner, but no individual voice really emerges above the babble
of the crowd. Even so, everyone's got a story to tell, in a riot of
styles and narratives that makes you think of the early hypertext
novels, where authors threw in everything but the kitchen sink just
because they could.
Priscilla Hart, the American population worker who settles
in the small town of Zalilgarh, tells her love story from beyond the
grave through her scrapbook. District Magistrate V Lakshman tells his
stories--the love story he shares with Priscilla, the story of a
bureaucrat trying
to pull a town back from the brink of madness, the story
of a married man balancing
duty against personal happiness-in the charmless style of
officialdom, leavened only with dreary poetry. Randy Diggs, the
American journalist down to investigate the death
of his fellow countrywoman in the riot of the title, listens to many
stories, including one
that anatomises the riot, keeps faithful transcripts, but eventually
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tharoor has an agenda, a vaster canvas that sprawls behind the
surface jatra. One of the claims that was made for Riot at
its launch in Delhi was that it was a "necessary" book, and this
actually does ring true.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
will tell only Priscilla Hart's story, and not all of that either.
Katharine Hart's tale is a mother's one, interspersed with the faded
bitterness of a worn-out marriage. Rudyard Hart, Priscilla's father,
is a Cocacoloniser who hasn't got over either the first failure of
Coke in India or over the failure of his marriage.
The novel floats on a raft of minor characters, from seen-it-all cop
Gurinder Singh to Kadambari, who worked with Priscilla, and they all
jostle for their turn at the mike. As narratives change hands, the
style drops into repetition, in order to keep the reader abreast of
who's talking to whom. So that you have, on page 34, "I kept on
trying, Randy"; on page 45, "It's worked, Priscilla", and so on. But
Tharoor also manages to sneak in clever little parallels: Rudyard
Hart's marriage breaks up because he's doing the conquistador routine
with a representative of the exotic East; Lakshman's marriage almost
breaks up because the bureaucrat is exploring the enticements offered
by the equally exotic West. And while the cacophony of voices may not
be individually convincing, they're not monotonous either.
Riot rested solely on the backs of its characters, it would have come
perilously close to being dismissed as just a pacy read, a book to be
picked up lightly and tossed aside just as lightly. But Tharoor has
an agenda, a vaster canvas that sprawls behind the surface jatra. One
of the claims that was made for Riot at its launch in Delhi was that
it was a "necessary" book, and this actually does ring true.
At its heart, Riot is neither love story nor anatomy of a
disaster--it's a polemic on contemporary Indian history, a refusal to
let yesterday's headlines be forgotten. Two of the most stereotyped
characters in the book are also among the most important--Ram Charan
Gupta, who's a walking Hindutva cliche, a composite of the most hated
fundamentalists on every liberal thinker's hitlist, and Professor
Mohammed Sarwar, who incorporates the substance but not the style of
Delhi University's Professor Shahid Amin. The arguments that Ram
Charan Gupta trots out are familiar, if occasionally oversimplified;
the arguments that Sarwar employs are more deft, but delivered
practically in the form of a lecture. Nothing of what they say will
be new to an Indian audience, and some of it will be tedious going, a
back-to-the-basics lecture on contrasting visions of India.
What's important, though, is that Tharoor should have chosen to
present his vision of a beleagured, torn nation in danger of
exchanging the principles of secularism it was founded on for mutual
mistrust and narrow-minded thinking in the form of a novel. An essay,
or even a full-length non-fiction discursion, would have allowed him
to sharpen his arguments, perhaps. But fiction allows him to present
the stuff of newspaper editorials and seminar papers in a form that's
predigested, that's accessible to an audience which may not have used
its considerable leisure to think about these issues.
It's not that it hasn't been done before. I remember reading last
year, in a collection of short stories edited by Mushirul Hasan, a
story that encapsulated the conundrums posed by the Babri Masjid
demolition with far more irony and more attention to the shades of
grey than Riot has managed. It begins with Hindus gathering bricks
for the shilanyas puja, and the growing perception of threat in the
mind of one Muslim family. The tables turn when the street hesitantly
asks their Muslim neighbours to hide the bricks, since the police are
now raiding their houses. It captured the nuances of the situation,
but then again, Tharoor is drawing a broader picture, for an audience
he assumes is not completely familiar with all the issues involved.
The strongest brick in the structure of Riot is actually an absence.
Tharoor has enough authorial wisdom to know when to stop, which is
before the actual destruction of the Babri Masjid. A description
would have been pallid; its absence allows the shadow of the Babri
Masjid, crowned with "a howling, chanting mob of Hindu fanatics", as
Tharoor terms them in his afterword, to dominate the book. The riots
at Zalilgarh, the mystery of why Priscilla was killed, the efforts of
Lakshman and Guru to stop the bloodshed, all these gain an extra
dimension of pathos and irony from that final, unwritten chapter.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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