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South Asia Citizens Wire | 4 Nov, 2005 | Dispatch No. 2171 [Please Note there will be No SACW posts between Novmber 5 - 11] [1] Withdrawing troops from Kashmir (Mubashir Hasan) [2] India: Much more than just the bakery (Editorial - Hindustan Times) [3] India: NCERT's new history syllabus (Asghar Ali Engineer) [4] India: The national curriculum framework: A Comment (Vinod Raina*) [5] India:Book on 1931 Kanpur riots released ______ [1] The News November 3, 2005 Withdrawing troops from Kashmir by Dr Mubashir Hasan There is a talk of withdrawing the armies of India and Pakistan from the former state of Jammu and Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control. Such proposals are premature. The troops can only be withdrawn when the withdrawing parties are reasonably certain that the evacuated areas shall not fall prey to ethnic cleansing and widespread and bloody disorders. The probability of anarchical behaviour can never be ruled out in our culture. The imperial Britain left the subcontinent in 1947 and despite the presence of the greatest political leaders, subcontinent had produced, the remnants of the mighty Indian army could not prevent the horrible massacres taking place in Delhi and the former province of the Punjab. A serious study is required of the reasons that lead to great human tragedies which took place in Congo, Bangladesh of 1971, East Timor, former state of Yugoslavia, in the post-Shah Iran and even in today‚s Iraq. Our history is full of instances when the governments in the subcontinent had to quell breakouts of mindless frenzy in sections of our populace. Our masses, sometimes under the leadership of the classes, are prone to lose their sense of compassion, decency, logic and ethical conduct, once they gain the perception, rightly or wrongly, that the clout of the power exercising control over them has weakened; the moment of their freedom has arrived and they are free to avenge the wrongs, real or imagined, perpetrated on them and their past generations by members of the ruling elites, racial, ethnic or religious groups. Knowing no better how to overthrow the perceived yokes of oppression, they slip into the mould of their oppressors. They murder and torture, loot and plunder without mercy. In the affairs of state, the decision to withdraw the elements of physical power, maintained in reserve for aiding civil administration is a very delicate one if high tragedies are to be avoided. Ultimately, the military shall have to be withdrawn from Jammu and Kashmir following a settlement of the Kashmir Issue. However, the conditions necessary for post-withdrawal peace and tranquillity must be created first. The withdrawal of the military personnel from both sides of the Line of Control should take place only when a civil administration, which is capable of maintaining law and order, has come into existence. The prevailing balance of power in the Indian administered and Pakistani-supervised Kashmir leaves much to be desired. The administrations on both sides, responsible for maintaining law and order, are heavily dependent on the aid provided by the military, paramilitary and intelligence apparatuses of India and Pakistan respectively. Apparently the role of the Indian forces on the east of the Line of Control is far more weighty and decisive than the role of their Pakistani counterparts in Azad Kashmir. Considered qualitatively the roles are identical. The civil administrations cannot survive without the military backups, more so on the Indian side. The heavy military and paramilitary presence on the Indian side is only an exaggerated form of the requirements of law and order all over the subcontinent. More than half of the Indian military and a large of the Pakistan military are deployed on internal security duties. According to the 2004-2005 Annual Report of the Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi „at present, 76 districts in 9 States of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are afflicted with Naxalism. CPML-PW and Maoist Communist Centre-India (MCC-I) have been trying to increase their influence and operations in some parts of three other States, namely, Tamil Nadu, Karanataka and Kerala and also in certain new areas in some of the already affected States‰. In many Indian states and in some provinces of Pakistan, the law and order situation is delicately balanced. The social contract between the state and the people is conspicuous by its absence in both the countries. Only the physical coercive power of the state stands between authoritarian rule and anarchy. The people have little or no trust in police or magistracy. They hate police. The credibility of political and military leaders is very very low. The morale of the administration is far from high. The governments everywhere ˆ local state and federal ˆ are highly dependent on aid from non-civil sources. No chances should be taken in the two Kashmirs. It is time that political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir rose to the occasion. They must realise that there are grave lessons to be learnt from the failures of the great leaders like Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru and Liaqat Ali in getting the rights of self-determination for their peoples. Mujibur Rehman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto also failed to give their peoples the kind of the structure of governance for which they had struggled. The masses in the entire subcontinent remain under-nourished, illiterate, unhealthy and without proper protection against weather and natural calamities. The people at large, masses as well as classes refuse to cooperate with the institutions of the state and remain at odds with it and with each other. The governments of Pakistan and India must encourage and cooperate with various groups in the former state in evolving a new dispensation acceptable to all parties. The two governments must create conditions that dialogue to resolve the issues can begin. The civil societies in both the countries can also be of immense help in this task. If some form of reviving the unity of the former state is on cards, then attention has to be paid to sharing of power between the potential power centres such as Srinagar, Jammu, Leh, Muzaffarabad and others. What powers will be enjoyed by tehsils, districts, cities, provinces and by the central entity where every area will be represented. Understandings reached along these lines will enable the peoples of the former state to agree among themselves to decide their links with New Delhi and Islamabad. When they come to some agreement, they will also be able to form governments which have the confidence of the people and will be able to maintain peace and order. The military shall automatically become redundant. ______ [2] Hindustan Times October 26, 2005 Editorial Much more than just the bakery There is a spectre hanging over India’s secular democracy: the ghost of the 2002 Gujarat massacres. On Tuesday, when a fast-track court acquitted 108 people of the charge of murdering two Muslim men during the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat, we could hear the mocking laughter of the malign ghoul once again. That the judiciary — the moral backbone of the country — felt obliged, once again, to criticise the conduct of the Gujarat police in first failing to prevent the incident and then failing to identify the accused despite being present at the spot is yet another reminder of that, even three years after the riots, authorities in Gujarat are freely able to subvert justice without being made accountable for it. The Supreme Court’s severe indictment of the Gujarat government and police in the Best Bakery case had given us hope that the victims would finally see justice being done. Its order of a retrial of the case — in which 21 people were acquitted by the high court for lack of evidence — shifting it to Maharashtra this time round, was meant to serve as a clear warning to the Modi government that its ‘abuse and mutilation’ of the justice delivery system won’t be tolerated. However, this beacon of light is in danger of being extinguished. The Best Bakery case has been compromised by the inconsistency of key witness Zaheera Shaikh, and with other witnesses turning hostile. And, in the numerous other cases being tried within Gujarat — there were at least 2,000 left dead by the riots — authorities are actively conniving with the accused and threatening witnesses to make these trials a mockery of justice. In acquitting the accused for lack of evidence this week, the Gujarat court left no one in any doubt about this fact. For the sake of its own conscience and self-esteem, India needs to figure out a more efficacious way of delivering justice to the victims of the massacre. Failure to do so will encourage a climate of impunity whose consequences can only be malign. ______ [3] Secular Perspective November 1-15, 2005 NCERT'S NEW HISTORY‚ SYLLABUS by Asghar Ali Engineer The NCERT has recently announced a new history textbooks from V to X standards. It is a very welcome step, a step which, should have been taken decades ago. History textbooks have polarised Indians on the basis of religion. Nothing was changed all these years and history textbooks written by the British rulers to divide us continued to be taught with some changes here and there. This did us great deal of damage. What was worse that after independence Jawaharlal Nehru had dreamt of spreading science and technology through schools, never took any shape. The colonial education system was devised to conform to the authorities rather than to develop a critical mind capable of critical inquiry. However, after independence no attempt was at all made to change the education system qualitatively as our politicians too wanted conformist minds and not critical ones. Nehru had thought that within few years the scientific temperament would spread and communal forces will loose ground. However, quite to the contrary happened and communal forces began to consolidate themselves. The most important reason, among them, was our stagnant education system. It hardly responded to new developing situation. In small towns lower middle classes tended to be very conservative and in bigger cities, middle classes too continued to be orthodox for number of reasons. Only a new education system could have created new critical outlook among the educated. But neither our educationists not our politicians were prepared for any change. The Kothari Commission had produced very good report and made highly useful recommendations for changes in our education system. But it continued to gather dust. No politician even dared to have look at it, much less implement it. The Kothari Commission Report, though not revolutionary, but certainly could have introduced healthy changes and could have created better understanding of different religious values. In our text books religions are presented very sketchily and in place of values, rituals and certain institutions, which emphasise differences, are presented. It creates more misunderstanding about others religions. One can say it promotes hostility rather than proper understanding. In certain states textbooks display open hostility towards Islam and Christianity and are full of distorted information. How could such textbooks create enlightened or critical minds? And history textbooks, less said about them, the better. Most of them divided our past in periods based on religion i.e. the Hindu, Muslim and British period as done by the Britishers in their own interests. Later it was changed to ancient, medieval and modern periods. However, even then the contents did not change much. Now what the NCERT has proposed is far better. It now talks of "our pasts", past being in plural. According to the Times of India news on October 27, 2005 (Mumbai Edition, p-15) "For the first time post-independence, Indian history would have no divisions of ancient, medieval and modern period. Instead, from class VI, when history is introduced as a component of social studies, the subject would be taught as 'Our Pasts'. In class VI it would be mainly the ancient past with an inquisitive " when, where and how" as the introductory chapter. In class VII 'Our Past II‚ introduces new themes like "social change: mobile and settled communities‚ in which there would be a discussion on tribes, nomads and itinerant groups." Then in class VII other new highlights are teaching of popular beliefs and religious debates. In every section there is emphasis on case studies. In class VIII, new themes of women, caste system, education and post-independence India have been introduced." The report in Times further continues, "as a student progresses to class IX, history syllabus becomes choice based. Students can choose from the French Revolution, Russian Revolution and Rise of Nazism. But the big change is the introduction of the theme of 'Culture, Identity and Society.' 'Further in X history of novel would be introduced. By Senior Secondary, students would be learning 1857 and Partition through contemporary and oral accounts of victims and survivors. Even the importance of newspapers as a source of history would be taught.' Needless to say these are important changes as far as history textbooks are concerned. It would no more be divisive as it is today as the history textbooks are ruler-centred and not people centred. It appears from the report that it would be more people centred. Though there is no mention of composite culture in the report one hopes the concept of composite culture will be introduced. In a people-oriented or subaltern history peoples culture should play an important role. If history book is people oriented it would be integrative rather than divisive. There is another important question, which has to be taken into account. Generally the NCERT textbooks are taught in Central Schools and not state-run schools. Central schools are for children of Central Government employees and cover very few students. It is state-run schools which cover the bulk of the students are generally not covered by NCERT books and all the damage is done to these millions of students through textbooks very shabbily written and giving distorted version of history. Worse still is the way history is taught in Ekal Vidyalayas and Shishu Vihars run by the RSS. In these schools history is taught in most unabashedly communal manner. Islam and Christianity are demonised directly. However, the first step to teach 'Our Pasts‚ rather than Hindu and Muslim pasts' is very welcome with emphasis on people and their cultures. The second step should be to shape critical minds for which politicians may not be ready. Someone has to take bold initiatives. Much should also be left to imagination of students. One should not under-rate students‚ faculties. Our Centre conducts many children‚s camps and interactive sessions with children. We have always found that children are very creative and imaginative. If they are given freedom to think they display their ingenious talents. They do not display communal tendencies unless injected with it by parents, teachers or through textbooks. Unfortunately our education system does not allow freedom of thought and creativity to our children. They are burdened with shabbily written textbooks and made to strictly conform. That destroys their ingenuity and creativity. Another problem is teachers themselves. Often the teachers are more sectarian and communal than the textbooks themselves. Even if we introduce best textbooks and give it to narrow-minded or communal minded teachers, they will misuse it and distort its message. Thus teachers as human agents, are more important than mute textbooks which cannot give their message by themselves. Thus it is equally, if not more important, to train teachers from time to time to reorient their thinking in the right direction. At college level there are professional training courses for teachers in sociology, political science etc. but no courses for communal harmony, cultural and religious pluralism. And no course at all for schoolteachers. Like textbooks one should lay emphasis on orientation courses for teachers. At school level teachers generally come from lower middle classes with very narrow -minded approach. So it is highly necessary to reorient their thinking after recruitment and before entrusting them with teaching work. No facilities are available even in B.Ed. and D.Ed. courses. Our Centre approaches various colleges of education for workshops on communal harmony, religious and cultural pluralism etc. But our small organisation cannot do much in this vast field. It is for state governments to see that teachers are imparted such re-orientation courses. In fact this work needs to be done on war footing, if we are serious about promoting peace and harmony in our society. It is important to note that India is the unique country, which has been tremendously plural religiously, culturally and linguistically and yet remained peaceful for centuries. It was in modern times that due to British policies of divide and rule, on one hand, and, power struggle among various religious and regional groups, that cleavages became prominent and religious, cultural and linguistic identities became more and more important as an important resource for political mobilisation. Religion too, is more a source of identity than morality. Religion‚s role as an important resource for morality will have to be re-emphasised as in power struggle it has been de-emphasised. Thus a multi prolonged approach with sincere commitment to religious and cultural pluralism is needed to use our education system as an important resource for secular, scientific and rational thinking. It requires all out efforts and not disjointed half-hearted efforts as they are being made today to bring about communal harmony. The result is that we witness communal riots every now and then in some or the other part of the country. Any religious occasion is a potential danger for irruption of communal violence. It is a shame that we cannot stop this more than half a century after our independence. ______ [4] Seminar August 2005 The national curriculum framework: Comment by Vinod Raina IT has taken a year for the UPA government to produce its first promised policy document in education, the National Curriculum Framework (NCF). The build up and the processes that have gone into preparing the NCF 2005 would appear to be much more academically sound and wide-ranging compared to the ham-handed manner in preparing the previous version, the NCF 2000 by the NDA government. The NDA effort, that did not have the approval of the Central Advisory Board for Education (CABE) since it wasn’t even constituted by the then government, had elicited widespread criticism. The criticism was, however, most severe regarding the attempt of the NCF 2000 to redefine the approach to curriculum design in a manner seen by many as at variance with the values enshrined in the Constitution. The subsequent attempt to rewrite history books was only one of the questionable actions that followed the NCF 2000. NCF 2005 squarely locates itself within the rubric of constitutional values, namely democracy, debate, secularism, social justice, equity, scientific temper and so on. To that extent it seems to have corrected the distortions that had appeared via NCF 2000, thereby preparing the ground for the UPA government to claim that it has fulfilled the promise of ‘detoxification’ in a substantial manner. However, the major effort of the four volume NCF 2005 has been to deal with the question of school education from as many as twenty-one viewpoints, being the number of focus groups that have contributed to the effort. The first volume that delineates the framework is distilled from the twenty-one focus group reports that constitute the other three volumes, the total running into about a thousand pages! These reports cover subjects ranging from mathematics, social sciences and sciences, language, work, art and music and much more. A number of eminent people from various professions, from all over the country, were involved in the process, lending a degree of credibility and respectability to the effort. Anyone who has practised critical pedagogy stressing on understanding and problem solving, and an approach that stresses on construction of knowledge rather than its mere transmission as I have, or believes in it, cannot but endorse the NCF 2005. But those who did not participate in preparing the document, as I didn’t, need to look at it much more objectively while doing so, since those who did would naturally be more inclined to explain, defend and promote it. In that context the immediate question that arises is – What is the purpose of the document? One could ascribe two purposes to it – one to help initiate a national debate for a systemic change in the current school methodology and content, and the second to help institutions charged with the academic responsibility for school education – the SCERT’s, DIET’s and so on – to change their way of working and approach to the content and process of education. To me it is doubtful whether either of these purposes will be substantially served by the draft document. And that has essentially to do with the manner in which it has been written. The NCF reads as an exhaustive compilation of assertions and opinions for a particular approach to education. Much as one might agree with these assertions, the document does not seek to engage in a debate with those who have differing views, since it mostly /asserts/ rather than /argues./ One is not talking of ideological differences here, but pedagogical debates such as the question of using the mother tongue as a medium of instruction and the place of English in the primary stage; whether to have examinations or not; softening the borders of tightly defined subject areas at the elementary stage; legitimising local knowledge in order to connect the school to the life of the child, hence decentralising the teaching-learning process; linking education to the knowledge base and political economy of labour, in particular that of the informal sector; using conflict situations in the child’s experience as a pedagogy of learning; celebrating and negotiating plurality and so on. These are questions that confuse and exercise the minds of a majority of parents, teachers and even intellectuals. From this document they are likely get a particular viewpoint, that is if they can wade through it. But I wonder if it will engage with their apprehensions or fears about their children’s education. At best they can be reassured that these are the opinions of eminent men and women, coming from the premier school education institution, the NCERT. Hence, it has the requisite authority, and one may believe in it even without comprehension. It must be right – just as a medical doctor or a scientist is supposed to be for a common person. But that actually flies in the face of what the document is asserting – that education and understanding should not be based on the authority of the teacher, book or the expert, but must be transacted in a manner that takes into account the recipient’s questions, experiences and understandings. The promotion of the document also seems to violate what it tries to preach. At the CABE meeting where it was presented by the Director, NCERT on 7 June, great pains were taken to highlight the eminence of the people behind it. This might have been tactical, to list the academicians in order to deflect from the political polarity of the /sangh parivar/ and the other political parties. But that didn’t prevent the BJP ministers from staging the customary walkout and worse, did not prevent the condemnable vandalism of Vigyan Bhawan by the ABVP lumpens. To be true to what the document tries to preach and prescribe, the emphasis would have to be more on the quality of arguments rather than on the eminence of the people who made the assertions. However, as the draft stands now, as a document for debate till it finally comes back for acceptance to the CABE in August, one hopes its assertions would have been transformed to arguments supported by evidence and research in its main body that are comprehensible to the ordinary masses, parents, teachers and educationists within SCERTs and DIETs. That is important if different books, methodologies, processes and examinations are to be put into place for every child in India, rather than for a few that are directly covered by the NCERT and CBSE. Otherwise, like the Kothari Commission Report and many such excellent previous documents, the only purpose it may end up serving is to become a question for B.Ed and M.Ed students who will be asked to write a ‘short note’ or the ‘salient features’ of the NCF 2005! And that will be the ultimate insult to what it preaches ______ [5] Webindia123, India - Oct 27, 2005 *Book on 1931 Kanpur riots released* Hindu and Muslim communities have enjoyed inherently strong ties for centuries and all depiction to the contrary by colonial historians are untrue, according to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Vice Chancellor B B Bhattacharya. Releasing a book last evening on the 1931 Kanpur Riots in which a protest against the execution of Bhagat Singh and others turned into a communal conflagaration, Prof Bhattacharya said human beings were inclined to do more good than bad but bad thoughts compound into the worst outcome. ''All of us should believe in good and trust in good,'' he added. The book, titled 'The Communal Problem: Report of the Kanpur Riots Enquiry Committee', has been compiled by the National Book Trust and is a part of the report of the six-member committee appointed by the Indian National Congress (Karachi Session, 1931) to inquire into the riots. ''The book provides a broad perspective of the centuries-long association of both the communities and as a result, it puts at rest the deeply ingrained perception of their antagonistic relationship,'' Prof Bhattacharya said. ''It is not a typical inquiry report that talks about the violence that broke out in Kanpur in 1931 but it is one of the insightful analysis of the genesis and spread of communalism in India,'' he added. Eminent historian Mridula Mukherjee said apart from challenging the so-called irrational relations of Hindus and Muslims, the book also makes an impassioned plea against the ''perverted view'' of Indian history as portrayed by colonial writers and administrators. Among others present on the occasion were NBT chairman Bipin Chandra and director Nuzhat Hassan. NBT is an autonomous organisation under the department of Secondary and Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development. _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/ Sister initiatives : South Asians Against Nukes: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org South Asia Counter Information Project : snipurl.com/sacip Communalism Watch: communalism.blogspot.com/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. Yahoo! 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