BY Subhash Gatade

"We historians are the monopoly suppliers of the past. The only way to modify the past that doesn’t sooner or later go through historians is by destroying the past."

"Mythology," Hobsbawm said, "is taking over from knowledge." He then mentioned the case of Italy, where, he said, a government commission has been ordered to revise history text-books in an effort to discredit the Italian Republic’s anti-fascist, communist roots.

It is worth noting that while Prof. Hobsbawm was delivering his speech in one corner of the globe, history was being "de-written" in a rather queer manner in this, another part of it. No sooner had the controversy surrounding the non-mention of Gandhi’s killer Nathuram Godse’s name in one of the NCERT text books died down, than a new controversy erupted over the ‘glorification’ of Hitler in one of the text books brought out by the NCERT. The portrayal of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as a "hero" and a "Nationalist" and as a man who stood for socialism and nationalism in NCERT books was put under scrutiny in Parliament. The text-books’ silence on the cold blooded massacre of Jews under his regime also became a cause of concern. (Furore in LS over TOI report on NCERT, PTI, Monday, April 28, 2003 03:24:05 p.m.].

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the weltanshauung of the Hindutva Brigade, knows that there is nothing new, or novel about their iconisation of ‘Hero Hitler’. Only four years ago the curriculum meant for Gujarat schools had raised a controversy because of the praise heaped on Hitler in a similar vein (see Communalism Combat, October 1999). In one of her detailed articles published in Economic and Political Weekly, the famous Italian scholar, Marzia Casolari, has even underlined the connections between the RSS and the experiments in Fascism/Nazism that were being unfolded in Italy and Germany respectively in the late twenties or early thirties. Even MS Golwalkar, the man who led the RSS for a significant period after the death of its founder, has, in countless articles, demonstrated his admiration for Germany of the thirties. It is another matter that the RSS has suddenly disowned one of his books, We or Our Nationhood Defined, after the book has been in the market for more than forty years, when they found that the rabid espousal of Hitler’s raison detre in the book was out of tune with the times.

The whole episode concerning Hitler’s glorification in the textbooks has at its backdrop the Supreme Court’s dismissal of a petition filed by a few eminent educationists over the ‘saffronisation’ of education last September. In this connection, it is worth noting that whereas the secular fraternity in this country is well aware of the unfolding agenda of "communalisation of education" two parallel developments on the education front, with equally dangerous consequences, have not received the attention that they deserve. If the first deals with the moves by the central government to open ‘Brahmin Schools’ with due assistance from UNESCO the other concerns the singleminded preparations underway for the militarisation of education.

Seven months ago, in January 2002, an interesting announcement appeared in a section of the media. It said that the BJP-led government had decided to open special ‘Brahmin schools’ supposedly for the popularisation of the Vedas. Through the good offices of a central minister, the UNESCO was persuaded to dole out Rs. 5 crore for this scheme. Under this scheme, 15 Brahmin schools are to opened in different parts of the country. To encourage meritorious Brahmin students, 10 students in each school would be a given a scholarship of Rs. 2,000 per month while 10 other students would be given Rs. 1,000 per month. The teachers would get a consolidated salary of Rs. 10,000 per month. These schools, to be called Gurukul Ved Pathshalas, would impart education through the oral tradition.

The rationalisation behind the founding of these schools is simple: they are purportedly an effort to counter the religious education being imparted through the madrassas! The government has conveniently forgotten that it has been more than fifty years since untouchability in all its forms was abolished and the commitment towards the formation of a casteless society in India was made. It also did not see fit to remember that the secular nature of the Constitution forbids the government from helping to propagate a particular religion.

If January 2003 saw the move to open Brahmin schools, the month of February was reserved for the stablishment of a high-level task force by the HRD ministry’s department of secondary and higher education to look into ways and means of introducing "compulsory military training, social service’’ and making "the national curriculum attuned to the concept of cultural nationalism’’. The aforesaid task force has been asked to submit its report within six months so that ( to quote a HRD ministry official "[s]econdary education is made more relevant to our times, needs and aspiration and help keep pace with the global demands. The task force is (expected to) examining a whole lot of issues, suggest a framework for better moral/physical enhancement of students,’’ The cash-strapped HRD ministry also hopes to garner funds from private sector and individual donors by freeing education endowments from income task hassles. (March 17,2003, Indian Express).

An article "Saffron Gastronomy" by Susan Watsons in the New Left Review (Sep-Oct, 2002), correctly explains the overall ambience in which the changes are being brought in: "The current Hinduisation of the curriculum, the stress on India’s contribution to world civilisation... also comes at a time of intense pressure from outside, with the country thrown wide open to the manipulations of international capital; a drastic reversal, in terms of the self-sufficiency of the Nehru years. While state universities exhibit the symptoms of advanced malnutrition, extra funds have been provided for kamarkanda courses to produce certified priests. The expansion of an elite layer of private education has been forcefully promoted by the World Bank. The recent Ambani report on private investment in education enthuses about the possibility of creating a competitive, yet co-operative, knowledge-based society, an environment that does not produce industrial workers and labourers but fosters (cutting-edge) knowledge workers... placing India in the vanguard of the information age."

A look at both these moves will tell us that they constitute the government’s moves to enter uncharted waters. And they cannot be construed as merely an extension of their project of ‘communalisation of education’. They seek to re-emphasise the supremacy of the Brahminical system and are also attempts to sow the seeds of jingoism at the college level itself.

It is an open secret that the sangh parivar has never wanted nor has taken any interest in the dismantling of the varnashram system, which is the essence of the Brahminical order. It has never shied away from expressing its admiration for the Manusmriti, the magnum opus of Brahminism. The mouthpiece of RSS, The Organiser, openly praised the Manusmriti when the new Constitution for an independent India was being given its final touches (November 30, 1949). There is another important angle to this episode which deals with the genesis of the RSS. Social scientists well versed with the formation of RSS would tell us that it was formed not only to fight the ‘internal enemies’, namely the religious minorities and the communists, but also to keep in check the rising movement of the subalterns, which had taken the form of a cultural revolt led by the likes of Phule, Jyothee Thaas, Savitribai, Ambedkar, Periyar etc.

The idea of compulsory military training also fits in well with the agenda of the RSS. Time and again, the RSS ideologues, ranging from the Hedgewars to the Sudershans, have lamented the ‘cowardice’ of the Hindus and have called upon them to be virile and (in the words of Golwalkar Guruji) resort to parakramwad. KS Sudershan, the present sangh supremo never loses an opportunity to reiterate his pet theme of the ‘coming epic war between the Hindus and the non-Hindus’.