Students in Rajasthan don't deserve the rubbish being peddled as education

It's natural for school curriculum to undergo change with changing times. But government schools in Rajasthan seem to be on a dangerous mission to propagate a regressive culture sullied with patriarchy, sexism, mythology and fiction passed off as fact.

Worst is, it doesn't stop there. These textbooks are also being used as a political party manifesto highlightling the BJP government's (both Centre and state) achievements.

In a latest, high school students are being taught that desirable physical attributes of an entrepreneur include “good height” and “beautiful complexion”.

According to a report in The Indian Express, the state’s curriculum change for secondary and senior secondary classes include a chapter on "Skill Development" in a Class 12 textbook that contains a list “physical attributes” desirable in an entrepreneur — "uttam swasthya, prabhavshali vyaktitva, acchi unchai, sundar rang, shaleenta, gambhirta (perfect health, impressive personality, good height, beautiful complexion, sobriety, seriousness)".

Rajasthan government schools have recently made major changes to the curriculum of secondary and senior secondary classes to include "socially relevant government schemes".

According to the same report a substantial part of the textbooks, highlights initiatives of Prime Minister Narednra Modi and chief minister Vasundhara Raje such as the Make in India initiative and the Resurgent Rajasthan investment summit besides budget announcements.

But this is not the first instance when the state government has attempted to use textbooks as an instrument to further their vision of a narrow, sexist, majoritarian Hindu nation — a phenomenon which has also spread to other BJP-ruled states like Maharashtra and  Chhattisgarh. 

In Rajasthan, it all began with a year-long "curriculum restructuring" exercise (revision of school textbooks) in 2015. The State Institute of Educational Research and Training is the academic body that worked on the new curriculum for schools under the Rajasthan education board. And by the time the new textbooks reached schools in the 2016-17 academic session, students got to read historical events, which were far removed from the actual occurrences — facts were replaced with fiction in accordance with the BJP's (read RSS) version of Bharat.  

First they attacked and erased Jawaharlal Nehru from textbooks, and added a chapter on Emergency. Then they started to omit works of celebrated Western poets like John Keats, William Blake and TS Eliot out of English textbooks. Hindi chapters which had Urdu words were dropped as these were "difficult for the students to read and understand".

Urdu author Ismat Chugtai's short story "Kamchor" and Hari Shankar Parsai's "Bus Ki Yatra" were also omitted. New books had poems such as "My First Visit To the Bank", "The Brave Lady of Rajasthan", "Chittor", "Sangita the Brave Girl" and "The Glory of Rajasthan".

Suddenly, Mughal emperor Akbar was not a great leader anymore. The words "the great" as suffix to Akbar was removed. BJP MLA Mohanlal Gupta proposed to amend university textbooks, which would state that Maharana Pratap had defeated Akbar at the Battle of Haldighati. 

There was no one to tell the students how Mahatma Gandhi died since the fact that he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse was conveniently deleted. In the new textbooks, students were exposed to new heroes such as Veer Savarkar, Deendayal Upadhyay and  Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

The government further extended its Hindutva agenda with the revised textbooks for Class 5 that included a chapter in which the cow "writes" a letter to students as a "mother". Interestingly, Rajasthan also has a ministry dedicated to cows (not to mention the growing instances of violence by cow vigilantes). The particular chapter has images of Hindu gods within a bigger picture of a cow, each signifying the benefits humans can earn if they consider cow as their "mother".

At the same time, patriarchy and gender-bais too crept in and were propagated freely. 

A report prepared by a group of academics based in Jaipur and Delhi pointed out that Class 3 Hindi textbook chapter "Games"  included three pictures showing only boys playing games, indicating that sports is meant only for boys. In most chapters, women have been introduced in reference to men.

"The previous books had decent representation of girls in all illustrations, if notequal," said Devyani Bhardwaj, one of the academics who scanned the revised textbooks. The new textbooks were reviewed by a team of educationists — led by prof Apoorvanand of the Delhi University, and prof Rajiv Gupta of the Rajasthan University — on the basis of content, knowledge acquisition, pedagogy and scientific temper.

At the time of the review, Apoorvanand had questioned the haste with which the textbooks were prepared. “These books were prepared in 45 days. Nowhere in the world are textbooks brought out in such a short time. This is why these textbooks have completely failed to achieve their pedagogical objectives. They help neither children nor teachers. They are not useful for developing analytical skills too,” he said. 

The professor also alleged that the textbooks introduced by the BJP government were modified to suit the "framework of the Hindutva ideology".

However, the SIERT had brushed off the concerns saying it hasn’t received any complaints regarding the content. “The textbooks have been distributed to all the schools. We will act when we receive complaints from teachers or anyone else,” deputy director Kanti Lal Damor had said.

Perhaps, no one will complain other than sporadic news reports in the media that will keep us reminding of the state of education in Rajasthan.

The government must remember that children are not playthings, nor is education. They are the future of this country, which certainly doesn't look too bright at the moment.

Also read: How the Rajasthan government is throwing children out of school