BJP is altering education to suit their interests, it is ruining institutions

Ruckus on the campus of the universities in Uttar Pradesh seems ongoing. The latest news reports of violence on the campus of the Allahabad university and before that ruckus in the Benaras Hindu University and the Lucknow University speaks volumes of the political rot intruding into these once-upon-a-time great educational institutions. Alas no longer! Political mafia holding sway in the university departments, intruding right into the classrooms and hostels. Writ large the fact that hired political goons are made to enter campuses to cause rifts and with that less of academics and more of a war like situation. Complete with maar-kaat-dhar…Not to overlook the needless controversy that was made to erupt by vested political groups over the portrait of Jinnah on the campus of the Aligarh Muslim University.

It’s simply shocking to see young students getting thrashed or rounded up or attacked. A complete failure of the system. In fact, in the last four years, the government of the day has caused tremendous damage to educational institutions and with that to the academic future of hundreds of the young of the country. Today, state tyranny has reached campuses where the students are treated like criminals.

What had happened at the Hyderabad Central University campus and also on the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University or even at the Delhi University were grim reminders of the level to which the state machinery could be used to crush young rebellious voices. Right-wing’s intrusion was more than writ large after Rohith Vemula’s suicide on the campus of the Hyderabad Central University. It carried serious offshoots; students protesting outside the RSS headquarters in New Delhi were assaulted by not just the cops but also by the so called ‘unidentified men’—goons with Right Wing connections.

And exactly a year back goons had wreaked havoc on the campus of BHU, when girl students were molested. This, when the Yogi sarkar had flaunted the anti-Romeo squads or brigades they had set up to crush all possible Romeos. In the process several hapless students were crushed. The academic mahaul has been wrecked, with sheer muscle power overtaking the campus.

Compounding the mess, the fact that there have been instances when students have been booked for speaking out or based on morphed videos and images. No criticism is tolerated. Are we living in a democracy or in the Raj days! I’m reminded of Professor Mushirul Hasan’s volume -The Avadh Punch: Wit and Humour in Colonial North India (Niyogi Books) where he writes of the Raj days when Indians could criticise the Brit rulers only through indirect and discreet ways - through cartoons and verse! The take off for the Lucknow-published ‘The Avadh Punch’ was to lampoon the Brit rulers through ‘safe’ ways. So heady was the outcome and response of the Avadh Punch that within a short span 70 Punches were published in several cities of this country. Don’t tell me we have reached that phase when the Avadh Punch or for that matter the Rajasthan or Madhya Pradesh Punch will have to be revived so that students can ‘safely’ relay their anger and disgust and hit out at the political rot.

Not to overlook another vital fact – the fact that Kashmiri students who have traveled all the way from the Valley to study in the different universities and colleges of the country have been not just humiliated but even attacked by the so called ‘outsiders’, who were allowed to enter the campus to spread around violence. And in the last four years instances of Kashmiri students being hounded have gone up; perhaps, matching the communally charged atmosphere prevailing in the country. Have we bothered to track and arrest the culprits or just bypassed and overlooked are all these cases of sheer violence?

When the rulers of the day lace their speeches with words like ‘kashmiriyat’ and ‘insaniyat’ and ‘jamoriyat’, the real question is if they ever put these words into practice and reach out to the Kashmiri students who are studying here and are likely to be facing a harsh and hostile mahaul.

No talk connected to students can be complete without mentioning the changes in the syllabi right at even the school level. Blatantly dangerous onslaught on the very text, changing of historical facts if not deleting chapters from the syllabi. Pointers to the fact that there is a well-planned strategy to change the very history. One news report after another, talks of the Rajasthan government planning to remove an entire chapter from school text books, on the maker of modern India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

In a similar move, the Maharashtra government plans to remove history texts that focus on the Muslims rulers. And the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, headed by Dina Nath Batra, had sent a long list of recommendations to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) demanding a host of changes in its textbooks: to remove English, Urdu, and Arabic words, a poem by the revolutionary poet Pash and a couplet by Mirza Ghalib, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore, extracts from painter MF Husain’s autobiography… Batra also wants references to the Mughal emperors as “benevolent”, the BJP as a “Hindu” party, the National Conference as “secular”, an apology tendered by former prime minister Manmohan Singh over the 1984 riots, and a sentence that “nearly 2,000 Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002” to be removed.

Lurking in the background is the fact that the earlier demands of Nyas were fulfilled and these were for the removal of AK Ramanujan’s essay -Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation- from the BA syllabus of the University of Delhi. Yes, Ramanujan’s essay was removed from DU’s reading list.

I’m not being very original in stating that a sarkar that cannot take care of its young is damned. And this sarkar together with its offshoots in Uttar Pradesh is turning out to be nothing short of destroyers!

And as the 2019 elections near there’s worry cum apprehension that the educational institutions and the students could be used by the political mafia. Setting one group against the other! The administration rendered all too weak and run down to veto the political rulers, hell bent on ruining institutions.