Macaulay and the Indian education system

 Thomas Babington Macaulay was a British historian who was instrumental in introducing English medium education in India. However in the process the original Indian education system was gradually replaced with English education system. When Macaulay visited India, he was astonished at the prosperity and cultural richness of India. He noticed that the basis of India's cultural strength was in the strong spiritual roots of India. So he concluded that in order to rule over India, her cultural and spiritual roots have to be weakened, and hence the English-medium education was introduced in India. According to wikipedia, a word was coined called "Macaulayism" which means the conscious policy of liquidating indigenous culture through the planned substitution of the alien culture of a colonizing power via the education system. That is exactly what was done in the erstwhile British India.

With the above premise in place, the irony is that after India became independent in 1947, the then ruling party and people continued the use of Macaulayism in India and till today the same education system is being systematically promulgated. Though the current education system has metamorphosed with tid-bits of different Indian regional cultures, if one looks at the text books of C.B.S.E/NCERT one would find that the history has been considerably manipulated. The ancient Vedic civilization is hardly properly described. There is very little emphasis on "Vedanta" which is millions of centuries old. There is absolutely no mention of spiritual history and scriptures. Ramayana and Mahabharata are considered as mere mythology, which in reality are actual historical events.

Also Sanskrit is being systematically kept at a lesser importance level. Today people from different states cannot converse with each other because there is  no common Indian language that is being popularised across India. English is the only common medium of communication across India, but it is only the middle/upper class who can converse fluently in English. The lower and poor class cannot converse in English and they constitute 70% of the Indian population. So lower classes are always behind in terms of access to developmental information. Hindi though is popular in few of the north Indian states, is not at all popular in the southern Indian states. Hence just because of the systematic elimination of Sanskrit, today the regional mindset is becoming more predominant in India. In ancient days pilgrims from south India would visit north India like Varanasi etc., and they could easily converse with each other in Sanskrit. Hence Sankrit served as a source of national integration as well as gave people the tool of convenience in communication across entire India.

India being a secular country is an amalgamation of various religions i.e., Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and many more different religious sub-categories. And all the religions are equally respectable. Hence Indian education system should have the gist of all religions being taught at the secondary education level, so that each and everyone should be able to appreciate every religion in its essence and should be able to develop a harmonious intellectual concept of all religions. And the essence of every religion is nearly the same. Hence there would be no religious conflicts in the society.

As a summary I would like to put forward three important changes in the Indian education system that can transform the Indian society as a whole :-

1. Nurturing Sanskrit as a national language all across India and giving Sanskrit the importance of a national language
2. Reviving ancient Indian knowledge which is being lost and updating the curriculum with this knowledge
3. Gist of all religions being made part of the curriculum

The benefits of the above three points are :-

1. National integration and a sense of oneness being developed among societies irrespective of diversity in religions and regions
2. Poorer sections being able to come to mainstream development
3. Revival of ancient knowledge and culture

What about eradicating helplessness

They say that India's GDP is growing at a very high rate. The statistics look very impressive. The IT sector is picking-up and manufacturing will soon follow. Everything sounds great. But there is a flip side to this story. This is a country which has cross border terrorism from at least two sides of its borders. This is a country where there is something called Naxal movement and many of its counterparts, spread across different regions in different forms. The general view is that these are the main threats. But this is not all. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This is a country where the system is so useless that if anything goes wrong, an individual cannot do anything about it but accept it as his/her ill fate and move on with it. Indians do not expect justice or redemption for anything. We just go ahead, take our chances and pray to God that we should be able to deal with the injustice. If someone has a little more money, probably life is a little more comfortable. But truly speaking, the ones at the down side of advantage, just live each day, one at a time, trying to wrap-up their little left self respect in the corners of their hearts, thinking that probably they are richer than those who have compromised.

There is a lot that is written about corruption and injustice etc. etc.  There are a lot of social and economic evils that the country is going through. Just think about the "girl child" phenomena. Think about dowry versus lives. Think about incidences where women are insulted in public and the whole crowd just looks at it. Truly speaking those of us who truly believe in God, just pray. For those who don't, I am not sure what they cling to.

The true enemy of humankind is not poverty, or inequality or injustice etc., the true enemy is "helplessness". We all encounter this phenomena many a times in our lives. My observation had been that many a times when people are at a positional advantage, they use it as a means to achieve pleasure by tormenting someone who doesn't have that advantage. All said and done, the bottom line is that we cannot change a person's attitude towards his fellow beings. Those who have to do evil, they will eventually do it. Instead what we should focus on, is to create social groups amongst ourselves, which are not based on affiliations, but which are based on humanity, to fight for the members the group. And if there would be more such groups, then more people can have at least some means of fighting against injustice in any form. History has proved time and again that there is no greater power than the power of human integration. In today's scenario, this thought sounds quite idealistic and unrealistic. But fundamentally it is "helplessness" that gives the strength to the unjust to inflict miseries on the weaker ones. The moment we human beings will unite with each other with a spirit of integration and humanity, there will be end to inhumanity and social injustice.

Sixty years in a developing country

Today is the day of my life, when for the first time I have decided to share my thoughts with the world. Not that I am a great philosopher or a scientist etc., but I am a very common man of this humble country. And the beauty is that I am still able to do it, in a constructive way. Five years back I couldn't even dream of it. Technology has changed the destiny of this country. I remember the days before liberalisation. Life was restricted. We had to just accept what was offered by the market. Choices were few, in some cases there were none. My life was not affected though at that time, I am talking about the late 80's. I was a kid and was happy with my cricket bat and my bicycle. And then came the year 1991. USSR disintegrated. I was sad not because I was a communist or anything like that, but I was afraid I would not get to read the MIR publisher books from Russia, on so many topics, specially of science. They were tanslated into so many Indian languages, and were low priced and affordable. I revered USSR not because of the communism thing, but because of their approach to science and technology. And today when I am sitting in front of my laptop, writing this blog, with a wireless router pumping the TCP-IP bits into it, I wonder what life would be after ten years. Do I have the luxury of growing old? Today the kids are smarter than me. The point is that change has come, and in a big way. What caused it ? I would say liberalisation. Thats my view. I don't know of any such thing as powerful as economics. Economics drives the society and not vice-versa. I used to think that social structure drives the economics, but we all know that its not the case. Otherwise communism would not have collapsed. Social structuring could not do much with the dynamics of the moolah.

If I try to understand it in this way, lets say, the more the idealistic approach is taken for social structuring, the more the chances are for chaos. A concept very similar to entropy in thermodynamics. Thats my premise. So the most effective way to deal with the social structuring problem would be to give people as many choices as possible. And that is what liberalisation has facilitated. I would say in the last 60 years of Indian independence, this was the most revolutionary step towards the country's development. And we can very well see how the world economy is benefitting from this. Corporations in the west are getting a great deal of work done at a much cheaper rate. The myth here is that Indians are taking away jobs from Americans. But the reality is that it is giving these corporations the much needed vital capacity to breathe. The truth is that economy is growing beyond the borders. The impact on the society is very prominent. We are not only thinking beyond borders, but we are gradully losing our regional identities and developing a much wider global identity. And this is what I can see in our cafeterias when I see Americans or Europeans enjoying the vegetarian meals with their Indian counterparts. We all, irrespective of our regional identities are mutating towards becoming global citizens of the world. And a day will come when finally economics would be able to provide the solution to the problem of social restructuring.

The crux is that freedom of thoughts is necessary for social development. An individual can think freely when his/her basic necessities are fulfilled.