A recent report on the abysmal state of education in India, a nation of a billion people, should have made the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government sit up and take notice. But, like everything else, the government is more interested in sweeping aside such damning reports in its pursual of a predetermined agenda.

The Star TV report raked the government over the coals for its inability in providing basic education. It said that about 300 million children are not receiving a proper education. And the country needs at least six million teachers to provide sustainable education.

In addition to this, of the 70 million disabled people in the country, less than one percent receive education of any kind, and an even fewer number qualify for higher studies. Many of these disabled people have proved their capability and have excelled in higher education and in professional courses. But a few do not make a success story.

Ironically, about half of the children of school-going age do not attend classes due to one reason or another. Some girls are forced to take up household chores, while many boys are victims of circumstances and are reduced to forced labor or self-sustaining jobs, like shoe-shines or roadside vendors.

Despite these periodic eye-openers, the government prefers to continue at its own slow pace in the field of education. As if this was not enough, the government has now embarked on a new phase in becoming the “guiding” force in education. The BJP-led coalition at the center revealed its true “saffron” color when it got the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to delete a number of passages from four history textbooks.

This move has shocked one and all, and has also set a precedent which could rip apart the secular fabric of the nation. The fact that the “moderate” Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has also backed the move is all the more shocking.

Along with this fresh controversy, the government is also pushing to include astrology and Vedas as subjects at university level. These changes at different levels of the education system are being made in direct opposition to the policies of the Central Advisory Board of Education.

As far as the constitutional aspect is concerned, the center cannot take unilateral decisions on concurrent list subjects, like education. The central government is transgressing the limits set by the constitution. This decision taken while bypassing states has been seen as an alarming development.

At a time when India should be encouraging studies in biotechnology, information technology and other modern sciences, the University Grants Commission (which funds universities and colleges) has taken a giant leap backward by introducing subjects like “jyotirvigyan” (Vedic astrology) and “purohitya (Vedic rituals) — science fiction — at the university level. It will certainly undermine whatever scientific credibility the country has achieved so far. The whole framework proposed by the government, whether related to changes in the courses or to include a particular subject in the syllabus, is centered on religion and the spreading of religious activities.

The changes already brought about in school textbooks in the BJP-ruled states are causing havoc. Sati (the outlawed practice of burning widows on their husbands’ pyres) is presented as a tradition.

The NCERT finds a place for “Buddha at Bamiyan”, which was demolished earlier this year in Afghanistan, in its syllabus of Grade VI; but not the demolition of “Babri Masjid”, which took place in the country in 1992.

The inclusion has given rise to misgivings in certain quarters that it was a “deliberate” attempt to put the blame of the demolition of “Bamiyan Buddha” on a particular religion.

Human Resource Development Minister M. M. Joshi has refuted allegations that the government had any “hidden agenda” in changing the curricula in schools. However, many still feel that it is a diabolical attempt by forces of disunity, communalism and obscurantism to influence impressionable minds and spread communal hatred. Brushing aside attacks, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has come to the rescue of the government over the issue.

“What is wrong in saffronization? Saffron denotes piety, purity, activity and renunciation, the values of Hinduism. Education should be value-based and not inculcated from a foreign perspective,” the RSS said.

The RSS says much of the school curricula, including history, was written from the British perspective. This is what Vajpayee has also said.

But the authors whose textbooks are to be changed have slammed the move as fascist, and the opposition has mounted an attack on the government, accusing it of promoting a “communal agenda” to give the traditionally secular school educational system a Hindu color.

Congress party President Sonia Gandhi has alleged that the government was quietly injecting into the syllabus “obscurantism, irrational prejudices and bigotry”.

A meeting of the 11 chief ministers of non-BJP-ruled states had recently warned the central government against any attempt to break the national consensus on the education policy, saying that parliament approval was needed for any change in curricula.

But it seems that the BJP is taking desperate measures in its bid to retain power in Uttar Pradesh, which is facing fresh assembly polls. Raking up issue after issue in its bid to unite Hindu votes, the BJP is just managing to do the opposite.

The secular forces have come out in the open against any moves to tamper with the textbooks. This is an indicator of the mood of the people. The BJP, at least in the UP polls, is likely to be brought to book.