Think in India

PM Modi may not be pleased with his HRD Minister, who instead of working towards Congress Mukht Bharat, is seen following the path of the erstwhile Congress Minister for HRD, Kapil Sibal.  Smriti Irani is following the footsteps of Kapil Sibal who introduced his hair-brained scheme of abolishing X^th Board examinations within 100 days of taking over the Ministry in 2009. Little did he visualize its impact on young people, depriving them of taking challenges in life from their early years. For Smriti, the first decision within 100 days was to pressurize UGC to bend and reverse its earlier approval of FYUP introduced by the University of Delhi. Little did she bestow thoughts on the significance of FYUP and how it can be reformed to make university learning broad based and inter-disciplinary. But while Kapil stopped further policy changes on education beyond mouthing empty platitudes for a couple of  years (as he was shifted from HRD to the Ministry of Communications and IT after two years)  about the decline in our standards and the need to rejuvenate education and make India the knowledge hub of the world etc, it has taken Smriti Irani 180+ days to put her new ideas as HRD Minister.

She has come out with a new idea forged in the RSS foundry to ask Kendriya Vidyalayas to replace German by Sanskrit as the latter is a national language and the former a foreign language. Her rationale is simply this: “I study Sanskrit and therefore I am Indian/ Hindu” because the RSS and its compliant subordinates wear their Hindu identity with the slogan   “Hindu is Indian; Indian is Hindu”. Citing the Constitution and the three language formula, she says that the third language should be any language from the VIII^th schedule of the Constitution. Her argument in favour of studying Sanskrit(or any other local language) is that studying in a local language will increase the country’s GDP (no one can ask how GDP will increase).  No one argues against the inclusion of Sanskrit as a third language but not as a replacement for foreign languages. In fact the three language policy of the government does not exclude learning foreign languages while it includes languages recognized in the VIII^th schedule of the Constitution.

 Today we live in a globalized world and the PM is a globetrotting rock star mesmerizing businessmen and investors to come to India. While we can with great pride cry from the rooftops that Sanskrit is a modern Indian language, everyone knows it is only an ancient  classical language and that there are no text books in sciences and social sciences, in commerce and humanities written in Sanskrit. Even in UK the modern study of classics exemplifies the diversity of the field. Although traditionally focused on ancient Greece and Rome, the study now encompasses the entire ancient Mediterranean world, thus expanding their studies to Northern Africa and parts of the Middle East. But we seem to replace study of foreign languages in our schools .

 Sanskrit is not a spoken language today. Very few people converse in Sanskrit except in Mattur, a small village town in Karnataka.  Where are the teachers and researchers in Sanskrit who can bring alive this great classical language to meet the requirements of modern knowledge- especially modern science and technology and even modern political, economic and philosophical studies? German Ambassador Michael Steiner says “what is important is that you choose a foreign language because language is the tool to the globalized world. It is the tool to global confidence.” Smriti should remember the famous saying in Sanskrit from Rg Veda: “aa no bhadraah kratavo yantu vishwataah” (Let noble thoughts come to us from every side)

A majority of students presently enrolled in our National Sanskrit universities are more interested in studying Astrology and Vedic rituals to become astrologers and Purohits to earn good money. They do not find any use for Sanskrit unless one does a B.Ed to become a Sanskrit teacher in a school. To remove German or for that matter any foreign language from the school curriculum is a retrograde step. If Sanskrit is to be given the pride of place among language study, let there be a structural change in the study of this language at the graduate  and post graduate levels in our Universities so that we have scholars and researchers who  can think, write, articulate and conduct research in Sanskrit and make it the language of modern science and technology, modern medicine and engineering and modern thought. Only high proficiency in Sanskrit will enable writing  authentic text books on different disciplines to make the language come alive.  The present effort is merely to give students an elementary understanding of the language (to score high marks) and inject in the youth a warped and unscientific understanding of our tradition. The students will have no use for Sanskrit once they leave school as the language is not ready  and adequately modernised to absorb new thoughts, new scientific and technological developments and new concepts in economics and social sciences.  Change for the sake of change has no lasting advantage. Change to meet the demands of the time is what makes it worthwhile and useful.

The next foray of our HRD minister is into the realm of higher education. Paralleling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for “Make in India”, she has come up with the slogan  “Think in India”. We all know that imitation is the best form of flattery. But Smriti has no need to flatter or please the PM because she has been handpicked by him to head the HRD Ministry and she enjoys a reasonably good equation with the RSS as well. She had earlier arranged on Doordarshan a special session for PM to interact with school children on Teachers Day and received great praise for her effort.  Hence one wonders why she should attempt to flatter PM- who is known to maintain his distance from anyone and everyone except from  Amit Shah and his Man Friday, Arun Jaitley besides his four or five trusted bureaucrats.

Whatever may be the reason, HRD Minister has launched a campaign Think in India. The only difference between PM’s slogan and hers is PM’s Make in India mainly targets and woos foreign investors and top companies across manufacturing sectors in identified countries to make India a global manufacturing hub while his HRD minister’s slogan is unlikely to be addressed to foreign nationals to think in India. Hers is a slogan for Indians, by Indians and of Indians.

I tried to figure out what is meant by Think in India. As per the Media report, Smriti Irani explained: “Think in India would encourage students and researchers to come up with innovations and new ideas to keep the talent here from leaving for abroad”. In the first place in a democratic country, every citizen is free to choose his destination and move forward. The Minister feels that our young men and women who go abroad for study and work do so because they are not encouraged to think in India. Only when they think in India, they qualify for admission in foreign universities. It begs the question as to whether we need encouragement and endorsement to think in India! The reason for choosing foreign universities is because of the quality of education and research facilities offered there.

It is beyond comprehension to launch a campaign Think in India .  The famous Cartesian truth comes to my mind “I think, therefore I am”. Thinking is genetic to our existence. Even a mad person or an idiot does not cease to think. What s/he thinks is different, but the fact is one exists so long as one thinks. Even medically one is declared dead only after the brain is dead. So Think in India sounds specious as it equates thinking with a place and not with the person. What is the difference to my thinking in India and my thinking elsewhere?  Think India, Think about India  or Think of India or Think for India may carry overtones of patriotism and loyalty to the motherland, but Think in India means I shall cease to exist if I think in US or UK,  Europe or Singapore or Moon and the Mars.

The Minister of HRD must understand Indians think wherever they are just like Americans, British, Europeans, Africans and all other nationalities in the world. Kindly allow us to think- not limit us to think in India. If Amartya Sen or Venkatraman Ramakrishnan thinks in Cambridge, do we reject their findings as not applicable and relevant to India? If Swami Vivekananda took the world by storm by his Chicago address, did it amount to his thinking in US and not thinking in India? What about our hon’ble PM's rock star addresses in US and Australia?  Does HRD Minister feel that the PM should only think in India and not during his foreign visits? I hope Smriti does not refuse invitations to address in foreign nations because she wants only to think in India. Dear madam, please allow us  to continue to think irrespective of where we are. Let us also not think only as Indians as we are a part of humanity and a part of a globalized world.