Lets learn Hatred

 

 

Perhaps Nostradamus may have appeared in Russell’s dreams, waving a leaf or two from the textbook of either a private madrassa or from a Sangh Parivar school in India, prompting him to write those remarks about education. With those textbooks becoming a reality in modern India, the time has come for the government to look beyond trivial agendas so that the nation does not turn into a bad case study of educationists worldwide. Here is what we mean.

“It is a shame; few communities worship millions of deities, even the dirty part of their bodies.” This is not an excerpt from a Lashkar handbook, found in a terrorist hideout in Kashmir or elsewhere. This is a line taken from page 32 of Tarikh Islam, Part I, taught in various madrassas across the country. In another textbook, Talqin Jadid, the students are taught that it is a crime to celebrate Hindu festivals like Diwali, Holi and that if they do, Allah will never forgive (page 44). In Rasul Arabi, the author says, “Few communities worship cow, cow dung, and they think it i s very pure. It is such a ridiculous thing to do; whether it is cow dung or any dung it is dirty and unhygienic” (page 34). No wonder, many have raised concerns about how some madrassas are becoming breeding grounds for terrorists.

45 men were arrested in the 2006 terror blasts in Varanasi that claimed sixteen lives. One of them was a man identified as Mehboob Ali Mandal. He later confessed to have studied at the Deoband Madrassa, where, he said, he was motivated by a Maulvi (religious teacher) to undergo arms training in Pakistan and ‘sacrifice’ himself for the Muslim cause. He also revealed that during his training in Bangladesh and Pakistan, he had met many boys from various small towns in Uttar Pradesh. The biggest irony in this case are the findings of the CABE (Central Advisory Board on Education) committee on RMTB (Regulatory Mechanism for Text Books), set up by the HRD ministry to look into the syllabi taught in various madrassas and RSS-run schools. The RMTB committee, co-headed by JNU’s (Jawaharlal Nehru University) Zoya Hasan gave a clean chit to madrassas, absolving them of the blame of teaching communalism. The committee claims that it has prepared its report after studying the primary and secondary class books of government and private madrassas and schools run by RSS in 11 states. “Why are you so obsessed with madrassas?” said Zoya Hasan, when TSI tried to contact her. “And moreover, the report is old now. I don’t quite remember it,” she added as an afterthought.

The committee, however, did mention that the books taught in educational institutions run by the RSS contained matters which promote communal feelings that in turn may lead to religious conflicts. It may have ignored or missed the overtones in the madrassa syllabi, but the committee’s report about RSS affiliated schools is not off mark. The committee’s investigations suggested that while the extent of control varies, the procedures for textbook production by various State governments and private publishers tend to be followed mechanically without really addressing the core curricular concerns. According to the report, hostility is mobilised into outright violence in the texts of religious organisations. This occurs through judgment (Ashoka is called a coward for adopting non-violence, Vidya Bharati), description (Muhammad bin Qasim died the death of a dog, Vidya Bharati), the interpretation of historical motive (Guru Gobind Singh used a pen and a sword, Vidya Bharati) and direct appeal (“We must make our enemies weep”, DAV). Students taking Vidya Bharati’s Sanskriti Gyan Pariksha are made to memorise that 350,000 ‘Rambhakts’ sacrificed their lives to ‘liberate the temple.’ Dharmashiksha Class Three (DAV College Prabandhakartri Samiti) gets away with the claim that Allah and God are linguistically derivative from OM (in a book claiming the religion it represents is ideally not confined to one community). Reports from most States provide examples of how communal and caste divisions are emphasised upon and reinforced in often crude ways. Gender inequities and prejudices also are perpetuated, and the social issues underlying women’s inequality are typically not adequately explained. In many privately produced textbooks, the problem is more intense. Thus, a Moral Science guide in Karnataka states that a woman should put up with her husband’s violence in the hope of happiness when her son grows up. “Out of 1600 students, 200 students are Muslims in Saraswati Vidya Mandir in Delhi,” says Dina Nath Batra, Vice-President, Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan. “Please read these books and tell me what is it that we are teaching is wrong. We teach our students about Indian culture, being Indian, to respect our motherland, our Vedas. We also teach them about Muslim revolutionaries. We have an off on Eid. Arjun Singh will have to prove his allegations now. We are already in the process of filing a criminal case against him,” Batra adds.

The CABE Committee has suggested a range of measures, including procedures for approving curricular materials that would include a serious appraisal by academic experts of their adherence to the core principles of democracy and secularism. The committee also recommended the setting up of a National Textbook Council (NTC) to monitor textbooks. “We are seriously looking into this matter; discussions are on and soon we will set up NTC,” M.A.A. Fatmi, Minister of State in the HRD Ministry told TSI.

The RSS feels that the Congress is targetting their schools specifically and ignoring madrassas to gain political mileage. “Mahatma Gandhi would have died a thousand deaths if he was alive today. He died with the name of Lord Rama on his lips. And now Arjun Singh feels that the very name of Lord Rama spreads hate,” RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav told TSI.

A third of India’s population was aged below 15 in 2001. In 2021, the average Indian will only be 29 years old, compared with 37 in China and the United States, 45 in Western Europe, and 48 in Japan. For this demographic change to work in favour of India, the government has to make sure that the gross inaccuracies, which are very much a part of our curriculum today, are no longer there. After all, we are still sending young boys from a boatman’s family as the President of our country. What if he had read a madrassa textbook? Designs on Darwin

It is happening in America as well. At the centre of the debate is whether Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is right or not. Teaching creationism in American public schools has been outlawed since 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of modern science education. It termed the inclusion of religious material in science education as unconstitutional. But in the last few years, opponents of Darwin’s theory have rechristened themselves as the proponents of the theory of ‘intelligent design.’ Unlike traditional creationism, which claims that God created the earth in six days, proponents of intelligent design say the workings of this planet are too complex to be ascribed to evolution. They think that a creator is behind the design of the planet.

In many schools across the United States, science educators and moderate parents and politicians have been fighting for many years to overturn the challenge to the theory of evolution. In the American heartland state of Kansas, for example, school authorities voted 6-4 to banish language challenging evolution. It has reversed the decision taken by the same authorities two years ago to include language which undermines Darwinism. But despite such setbacks, the people behind intelligent design remain active. In the last five years, anti-evolution legislation has been introduced in 24 state legislatures and similar policies were under consideration in at least 20 states, according to the National Centre for Science Education in California. Given the challenge, the proponents of intelligent design are unlikely to let go their campaign against scientific teaching.