A SYMPOSIUM ORGANISED BY the Akhil Bharatiya Itihaas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY) — a subsidiary organisation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founded in 1978 with the objective of rewriting Indian history from a nationalist perspective — in Delhi on October 5, has sent a chill down the spines of liberal academics countrywide. It has resurrected apprehensions that the BJP-led NDA coalition which swept to power at the Centre five months ago, is set to resume its hindutva agenda interrupted by its shock defeat in General Election 2004, to infiltrate Hindu mythology into school curriculums.
The symposium was convened by ABISY at the National Museum to commemorate Maharaja Hemchandra Vikramaditya (1501-1556), described as the forgotten Napoleon of India and “last Hindu emperor of India”. A former general of Sher Shah Suri who revolted against the Afghans and Mughals, Hemchandra reportedly won 22 battles in quick succession and declared himself Emperor of Delhi in 1556. “We are always in favour of recognising and remembering our forgotten real heroes who were deliberately ignored by biased historians of the Mughal and British era,” says B.M. Pande, organising secretary, ABISY and convenor of the symposium.
At the packed-to-capacity symposium, speakers rubbished reputed historians with BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy “in a nakedly communal speech,” positing that it was “due to the struggle of people like Hemu that Muslims and Christians failed to convert 80 percent of Hindus,” reports Pragya Tiwari in firstpost.com (October 9). Moreover, Swamy opined that “books written by Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra, and other historians of Nehru must be burnt in a bonfire”.
Quite clearly, drawing inspiration from the comprehensive electoral victory of the BJP — widely regarded as the political arm of the RSS-headed sangh parivar and the fact that prime minister Narendra Modi is a former RSS pracharak (foot soldier) — in General Election 2014, Pande believes ABISY’s time has come. “The Indian Council of Historical Research receives an annual grant of Rs.20 crore from the Central government. Earlier, all grants used to go to the leftist Aligarh, JNU and Calcutta universities. Now it must go to the correct places,” he says.
In this context, it’s pertinent to note that one of the new government’s first appointments was of Dr. Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, a former history professor at Kakatiya University, Telengana whose current research project is to discover the definitive date of the Pandava-Kaurava war described in the Mahabharata, as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Delhi (estb. 1972).
Within months of the BJP-led government being sworn-in, liberal intellectuals in academia and education regulatory organisations are feeling the heat. On October 9, Prof. Parvin Sinclair, director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), who had acquired a reputation for standing up to the diktats of the Union HRD ministry, put in her papers reportedly because of a written allegation made against her by Dina Nath Batra, a leading light of Vidya Bharati, the education wing of RSS.
The octogenarian Batra, who forced the Congress-led UPA government to proscribe American historian Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History, also prompted Union HRD minister Smriti Irani to issue a statement to the effect that ancient Indian history and Hindu culture need to be included in school textbooks.
These fast-moving initiatives are contributing to a growing sense of unease in Indian academia. “With support of sangh parivar ideologues, the BJP is attempting to rewrite a new iconology which starts with Vivekananda, goes through Patel and passes on to Narendra Modi,” says Shiv Vishwanathan, professor of social sciences at O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana.
For the academy, it may well be
a time of reckoning and back to the future.
Somdev Thakur (Delhi)
Education sector booster
ONE OF THE FIRST constructive initiatives of the new BJP-led NDA government which assumed office in New Delhi on May 26 was to give a booster shot to vocational education and training (VET) in the administratively backward education sector. On October 15, the Union ministry of human resource development notified a 24-member education sector skills council with immediate effect. A chairman will be nominated by the Union HRD minister with the chairman in turn nominating most members of the council for a period of two years. 
The members of the council will include the chairman of the University Grants Commission, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), National Council for Teacher Education, director NCERT, chairpersons of CBSE, National Institute of Open Schooling, six vice-chancellors (two each from Central, state and private universities), three directors of centrally-funded institutions including the IITs, among others. The council will be housed in AICTE Delhi with its vice chairman/member secretary serving as convenor.
The brief of the education sector skills council is to define roles of all personnel in education institutions other than academic faculty in universities and colleges and teachers in schools. Its main task will be to set up a labour market information system to assist planning and delivery of training to administrative and back and front office personnel including receptionists, administrative clerks, registrars and security personnel; to identify their skill development needs; prepare a catalogue of skills required in education; develop an education sector skills development plan and maintain a skills inventory while developing skills competency standards and qualifications. The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) will provide necessary assistance to prepare the manual(s).
The skills council concept is a systemic approach to raising standards and scaling. Therefore, because it will set specifications for supplementary jobs (librarians, lab assistants, etc), prepare a catalogue, prescribe competency standards and qualifications and maintain inventories, it can give a huge boost to raising administrative and delivery systems in education. “This is certainly good news for the education industry, which is huge but unorganised. It’s an elaborate plan but if the country has to realise the prime minister’s vision of a skilled India, such a framework has to be created,” says Tehsin Zahid, chairman of the skills committee of the PHD Chambers of Commerce, Delhi.
The operationalisation of the education sector skills council is likely to result in the skilling of education support staff, who after acquiring experience could be upskilled under the National Vocational Education Quality Framework to become master trainers to mentor non-teaching support personnel. This will raise administration and governance standards in education institutions across the board.
However, entrepreneurs in supplementary and skills development question the linkage between the education sector skills council and the newly established Union ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship announced by prime minister Narendra Modi on May 27 immediately after the new NDA government assumed office. “With the formation of the new skills ministry, the concept of sector skills councils has lost relevance. In NCERT, we have such a wonderful content provider, why not build from there? The education sector skills council should be brought under the jurisdiction of the new ministry to ensure integration of operations and avoid overlapping,” says Navin Bhatia, promoter-director, Navkar Skills Pvt. Ltd, which has established 34 skills development centres in Bihar and Assam.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)