Editor,
The editorial “ Keep education out of politics” (ST April 6, 2023) is timely and requires a nationwide discussion. How can important parts of our history be obliterated just to suit the political motives of a political party in power? Is there any other country with a similar penchant for erasing parts of the curriculum simply because the ruling party is party embarrassed by some parts of the history such as that a member of the Sangh Parivar had actually assassinated a person who led the freedom movement – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who was later given the prefix ‘Mahatma.’ Or the Father of the Nation. The BJP seems to specialise in iconoclasm (the action of attacking or assertively rejecting cherished beliefs and institutions or established values and practices). Now the NCERT has also dropped parts of the Moghul rule from the curriculum. In this case the excuse is that there is need to reduce the curriculum as it is too heavy for students. Students have always been taken on study tours to Delhi and Agra and their regular stops are the Qutub Minar, Humayun’s tomb, the Taj Mahal and the red fort – all vestiges of the Mughal rule. How do teachers explain these to students if they are not learning the history of the Mughal period?
Above all, how can Gandhi and his assassination not be part of history or political science anmy longer? How do teachers explain about the freedom movement without bringing Gandhi into the picture and without naming the person who killed him. Let’s take the history of Germany. Most Germans are embarrassed about that part of their history when Hitler kept his enemies in concentration camps and subjected them to the worst treatment. Also the Holocaust -a systemic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by Hitler’s Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators, but the Germans have not erased this part of their history and have on the contrary learnt lessons on how not to repeat such instances which have defaced their past.
In fact, every country has its share of inglorious past incidents. Cruelty and despotic acts by certain rulers marred their histories. From Australia to Canada the aborigines were pushed into the margins by colonisers but there are attempts to redress these past insensitivities, but not by rewriting history. I now feel as if we are conspiring to hide the facts of history from our young ones but while the NCERT can change the curriculum, they cannot pull down from the internet the entire history of this country no matter how much the powers that be want that to happen. The young will be even more curious now to find out why the NCERT wants certain chapters out of the text books.
Overall, I believe what is happening to our education system is an assault on the freedom to discover our past no matter how ugly. I hope that the Meghalaya Board of School Education will not impose the NCERT text books on our students. After all, education is on the Concurrent lists and the Centre cannot impose its will on the states without adequate consultation.
Yours etc.,
KR Lyngdoh,
Via email
Whither waste management
Editor,
The other day a leading RJ of the city who champions the cause of cleanliness in Shillong city landed at a place that is part of Umpling but is also at the border with Nongmensong. The video of him focussing on a certain place that the locality seems to have treated as a garbage dump and trying to identify who the polluters are from the packets that were delivered by e-commerce companies. He managed to read out a few names of those polluters and one can only hope that those people have been heavily fined by the Umpling Dorbar Shnong. However, the RJ while asking people why they dumped their garbage at that place got the reply that the garbage collection truck never comes for months together. Often the people living within the Umpling dorbar go and throw their garbage into the trucks collecting garbage from residents of Nongmynsong. It’s now nearly two weeks since the said RJ visited the temporary garbage dump but neither has the Dorbar Shnong taken any action nor have the residents stopped dumping garbage there. The Wahkdait river flows a little away from the garbage dump and a lot of the garbage flows down that river into the Wah Umkhrah. This is the state of all the rivers in Shillong. They have become garbage dumps, septic tanks and drains for kitchen waste.
Does all this not affect the environment? Is this not part of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)? When will the Government take cognisance of this continued depredation of our river systems? The less said about the District Councils the better. They have lost their objectives completely and the reason for their existence. They just don’t care what happens to the rivers, or forests. They watch without concern as people quarry wherever they want; cut all the trees they want to make charcoal and violate every rule in the book. Do such institutions need to continue when their existence makes no difference to our lives. Perhaps their only concern now is to issue trading licenses; collect tolls and exist on a shoestring budget without getting their books of accounts audited. Talk about dead wood institutions! Who will save this State is the existential dilemma.
Yours etc.,
Charisdon Wahlang,
Via email
Rural schools serve multiple functions
Editor
Rural schools are not just centers of education in India. They also serve as venues for continuing adult education, state, central and panchayat election camps, emergency ration and relief centres and cyclone shelters during natural calamities. The rural schools also serve as make-shift police stations and security force camps under emergency situations. Furthermore, they also serve as village community centres, discussion platforms or meeting places for both government and non-government social workers, makeshift medical dispensaries and rural health camps as well as emergency relief and medical support centres. Although many of these services outside the educational sector have been severely criticized, yet in a highly populous country with bare minimal infrastructure in remote locations schools serve as important locations for social services for the needy communities and have to be used for those broader social roles and responsibilities.
Yours etc.,
Saikat Basu,
Via email