Thursday, November 7, 2024
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Threat now real for cultural values

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 Censor Board is now a RSS shakha

By Amulya Ganguli

The Haryana education minister, Ram Bilas Sharma’s categorical announcement that the state is going in for the saffronization of the education system is one of the boldest and most uninhibited declarations of intent made by the BJP in recent years. Usually, it softens the blow by claiming that it is only undoing the Leftist biases of the previous regime. But, the party’s success in the parliamentary and assembly elections appears to have emboldened it more than at any time in the past.
Considering, however, that the minister’s statement was in the context of the proposed teaching of the Bhagwad Gita in schools, he can be said to be guilty of a faux pas since the holy book is supposed to be above partisan politics and is meant to enrich the mind. By including it in a political agenda, like the teaching of Sanskrit, he has done a disservice to the revered text.
Similarly, by converting the film censor board into a virtual RSS shakha, the Narendra Modi government has done a grave injustice to the concept of autonomous institutions which are the bedrock of a democracy. The haste with which the vacancies caused the resignations of the former censor board chief, Leela Samson, and several others has been filled suggests that the government was eagerly waiting for an opportunity to plant its own people in the organization.
The appointments, therefore, of a film producer, who made a campaign video for Modi, as the board chief along with other saffronities denote an egregious display of political muscle which can hardly be justified on the ground that the Congress did the same. For the BJP, however, the problem is that its cupboard is rather bare where talent is concerned. For instance, the new chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, is hardly known outside the Bollywood film circles whereas Leela Samson was a well-known artiste.
However, nothing has exposed the poverty of the BJP’s talent pool more starkly than the nomination of a virtually unknown historian, Y. Sudershan Rao, as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). As the somewhat better known historian, Ramachandra Guha, has pointed out, Rao hasn’t published a “single scholarly paper in a peer-reviews journal”.
It is possible, of course, that the Hindutva brigade will describe such journals as the handiwork of the deracinated left-liberals whereas Rao may have risen in their estimation by his inquest into the “application of the pendulum theory of oscillation between spirituality and materialism based on the cosmic phenomenon and Indian yuga (epoch) systemic approach to the historical research”.
But, it is the bizarreness of the subject of Rao’s thesis which is liable in course of time to show up the absurdity of such appointments of camp followers just as the claims about the prevalence of aircrafts, plastic surgery and nuclear explosion in ancient times, as made by saffron “scientists” at the Indian science congress, expose not only the fake scientists but the entire country to ridicule.
The elevation of such unworthy people to positions which they evidently do not deserve is likely to call into question the norms which guide the government. Whereas most of the ministerial appointments, except perhaps that of Smriti Irani who studied only up to Class XII, can be seen to be in keeping with the prime minister’s image of “modernity and progress”, to quote Congress M.P. Shashi Tharoor, the packing of institutions like the censor board or the ICHR, which carry a great deal of prestige, with virtual hangers-on bring no credit to either the government or the BJP.
From its inception, the Jan Sangh-BJP has been deemed an outsider since their worldview is at variance with the standard formulations about history and society as it  evolved from the pre-independence period.  However, the Jan Sangh till 1977 when it merged with the Janata Party, and the BJP since its formation in 1980, have always had a distinctive Hindu-oriented outlook which saw the majority community as a victim of Muslim and British dominance since the 7th-8th centuries.
It has been the longstanding desire of the Hindutva lobby to do away with the syncretic interpretations of history implanted earlier, and mould Indian history and society in accordance with its preferences, which is behind the “capture” of institutions like the censor board and the ICHR. The saffronites could not do it during their earlier stints in power because, for one, Atal Behari Vajpayee was too much of a moderate to push the majoritarian line and, for another, his government was too intent on survival – after quitting after 13 days when it first came to power in 1996 – to tamper with the institutions although the education minister of the time, Murli Manohar Joshi, did undertake saffronization of the system.
Now, however, the BJP is much better placed under a “strong” leader to implement its long cherished agenda. In the process, however, it may reveal its weaknesses rather than its strengths. (IPA Service)

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