CBSE drops core concepts like democracy and secularism from its syllabus on the pretext of crunching an academic year

The pandemic has undoubtedly given Governments across the world reason enough to be supremacist and a pretext to decide what their people need instead of what ideally should be working for them. In general, the democratic spirit has been undermined as the leadership revels in its moment of totalitarian control. And as examples in the US, Russia and China have shown, governments here have used the crisis profitably to push policies that have nothing to do with public health but everything that’s justifiable under the umbrella term of “distressed times.” Even India isn’t an exception. But what is exceptional though is the Modi Government’s decision to drop the very ideas and philosophies that form the basis of our Constitution, ethical integrity and Indic identity from the CBSE syllabus as part of crunching an academic year. So Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal justified the decision, saying, “Considering the importance of learning achievement, it has been decided to rationalise the syllabus up to 30 per cent by retaining the core concepts.” It matters little that the core concepts have been themselves dropped, the Ministry completely deleting sections on citizenship, nationalism, federalism, secularism, understanding Partition and democratic rights across multiple subjects. In other words, he has transposed the BJP’s idea of education, rather its manifesto, on our national education policy. This involves the acquisition of clinical learning skills and a moronic submission to a COVID-modified brain factory that upends the very idea of seeking knowledge, that of the spirit of inquiry. And it reverses the civilisational truths about our plurality and the nation-state. Anything that remotely legitimises the idea of debate, dissent and inclusivity has been dropped rather unceremoniously. Among five chapters scrapped from Social Science in Class IX is Democratic Rights, something that is integral to grooming future citizens. For Class X, chapters on Democracy and Diversity, Gender, Religion and Caste, Popular Struggles and Forest and Wildlife have been done away with. For Class XI, chapters on Peasants, Zamindars and the State, Understanding Partition and sections on riots and revolts, which are based on farmers’ agitation against moneylenders, have been removed. And the Class XI political science syllabus has conveniently dropped subjects like Federalism and The Need for Local Governments, all of which usually feature under a section titled Indian Constitution at Work. Citizenship, Nationalism and Secularism, too, usually form a part of this section but were clearly found to be antithetical to the BJP’s idea of a monolithic India and its brand of identity politics. Additionally, sub-sections like ‘Why do we need Local Governments?’ have been merrily chopped so that we do not talk about devolution of power at the grassroots level but only believe that rights are given as a largesse, not earned, and real power flows from the top. Chapters on Social Structure, Stratification and Social Processes and Environment and Society have been scrapped from the Class XI sociology course simply because they encourage a holistic life philosophy and the need for a harmonious co-existence. Of course, should a student question the teacher about subjects left out, the CBSE has made a minor concession and left it to the teacher to explain their relevance but not test the student’s understanding of it. That, too, would be administered like a clinical dose.  

If one thought that the pandemic would lead to ennobling self-realisations, then our policy-makers are clearly an exception. Of course, CBSE defended itself saying this was just for the current academic year but it is unmistakably a test run for an ambitious overhaul of the education system. If we had thought that cooperative federalism — which was on display the last three months with the Prime Minister consulting Chief Ministers and each sharing templates — would prevail, then we were highly mistaken. Or perhaps many State Governments have stolen the Centre’s thunder. And if we thought that dialogue would be the order of the day going forward, the brutal and targetted crackdown on protesters against the citizenship law and student agitators in the middle of a pandemic shows that the BJP has not winced on pushing its core divisive agenda. The BJP’s ideological anchor, the RSS, has been pushing for a cultural shift in the country’s education policy ever since the NDA had assumed power. In the Modi years, it has made several recommendations to the NCERT on the removal of English, Urdu and Arabic words, the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore, extracts from painter M F Husain’s autobiography, references to the Mughal emperors as benevolent or to the BJP as a “Hindu” party. Its goal has consistently been to justify medievalism as Bharatiyata and undermine scientific temper as its gravest enemy. Yet Bharatiyata will always be bigger than the BJP’s forced imposition of it, based on the very tenets it would like to dissolve. The voice of democracy can perhaps hardly be heard as we try to live through the pandemic but it doesn’t mean it is silent. It is for us to decide to be force-fed and literate or educated in the real sense.