RSS-linked bodies weigh in with suggestions on new education policy

NEW DELHI: As the official consultation process for the New Education Policy gathers steam with states and other stakeholders, non-governmental bodies are also reaching out with their template. HRD ministry officials said the most active are those affiliated to the RSS.

A senior ministry official said, "Many of these organizations have not limited themselves to sending their written note on what they expect out of NEP but on their own are reaching out to HRD institutions. It mostly goes unnoticed." He gave the instance of Nagpur-based Bhartiya Shikshan Mandal ( BSM) which came to the NCERT to discuss its expectations from the NEP. "Such interactions influence institutions," the official said.

The official said BSM's interaction with NCERT officials stressed on evolving an integral and holistic education policy for the entire country. "BSM representatives talked of inculcating 'sanatan sanskar' (time-tested values) among children. They gave an example from Dharampal's book 'The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century' that talks of how British officials resorted to survey of existing indigenous education network," he said. BSM argues that learning should be liberating, enabling and productive.

A senior NCERT official who attended the meeting with BSM representatives said, "Shikshan Mandal wants the NEP to factor in India's rich civilization, lessons learnt from its long history. They also want the central government to play a bigger role in school education by setting up more schools."

The NCERT official said the goal is to Indianise education. "BSM wants the NEP to give primacy to views of intellectuals and scholars who it thinks have been ignored for long," he said and cited an article on the BSM website which has reproduced a write-up from Organiser, the RSS weekly. The article says intellectuals like Satish Chandra Mukherjee, Swami Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, Lala Lajpat Rai, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Sri Aurobindo and their views on education should reflect in the NEP.