Educating the Children of the Hindu Rashytra - Notes on RSSa Schools - Sarkar

8/11/2019 Educating the Children of the Hindu Rashytra - Notes on RSSa Schools - Sarkar

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to overcome the impasse and to stretch out in un-

tr ied directions. Sho rtly afterward s, in 1954, the

RSS supremo Golwalkar pronounced a revised and

refined ideological package, on the basis of which

the Right would venture into hegemony format ion

in the era of democra tic polit ics.

Uttar Pradesh was for qui te some t ime in the

initial stages the seedbed for the educational ex-

per iment .

A

Shishushiksha Prabandh Samiti was se t

up here to coordinate the Saraswat i Shishu Mandirs

at pr imary school level and th e Bal Mand irs at h igh

school level. Delhi, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh

picked up the ente rprise, each with i ts s tatewide

com mittee. An dhra Prad esh was the f irst place in

the So uth to develop its Sa raswati Vidyapith.6

A significant expansion occurred in the 1970s

especially during the Emergency period, when a

ban brought about an enforced lull in the RSSs

usual activities. In 1977 Vidya Bharati was set up

to coordinate efforts at the all-India level, and to

devise curricula for the additional course s that pro-

vide the main content of RSS pedagogy. In

1978

af ter the fal l of the Indira Gandhi government , an

all-India childrens camp w as org anized in D elhi for

three days in November and the Pres iden t inaugu-

rated i t . Ut ta r P radesh, Mad hya Prad esh, Delhi and

Andhra Pradesh started regular, f ive-yearly state-

wide camps. By the end of 1991 Vidya Bharati

claimed that i t was running the second largest

chain of schools in the country, next only to the

government schools. About 4000 schools were ei-

ther directly ru n or w ere affi liated to i t a nd ov er ten

lakh (one mil lion) chi ldren were being taugh t . I t

also ran

40

colleges and the teaching at various

levels was done by

36 000

teachers. I t was said that

the schools existed ever yw here in India, except in

Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram, where the

Christian affiliations of the people and missionary

success in the educational field were holding up

RSS entry . T o force i ts way in this region, and es-

pecially to undercu t Christian educa tional influence,

Vidya B harati developed the H aflong Pro ject. Vidya

Bharatis plans call for an in crease in the total num-

ber of its schools to 10,000 in the next f ive years,

and a school for every block in the country. Uttar

Pradesh retains the highes t concentrat ion of

schools, with 1325 schools and three lakh students

under the Vidya Bharati system at the end of 1991.

In Delhi , a t present , the Samar th Shiksha Samit i

( the Delhi wing of the Vidya Bh arat i ) runs

44

schools: there is one senior secondary level school

at Hari Na gar, s ix at the second ary level, f ive at the

middle school level and 3 at the primary level.:

Apart from regular schools, Vidya Bharati has

two othe r kinds of semi- formal program s. There a re

Shishu Vatikas for pre-school infants which have

been developed in reaction to the success of

wes ternized Mon tessor i schools w hich el iminate

the mother as the p r imary pedagogue a t a very

ear ly s tage. Having cr it ic ized them for doing

so

Vidya B harat i then proceeds to displace the m other

far more completely , wi th wide-ranging plans for

cultiv ating th e physic al, men tal, social, and spiri-

tual qualit ies of pre-school infants .

In backward areas of the country, where few

schools exis t and where most chi ldren do not at -

tend them , Vidya Bh arat i sets up Sa mskar Kendras

to imp lant the r ight qual i t ies and noble vi r tues in

children w ho are ta ug ht for a few hours a week by a

single teacher who looks after a locality. Inciden-

tally, the consti tuency of this project is not de-

scribed in terms of economic deprivation or caste-

based disadvantages which make children stay away

from school . Th ey are pol i te ly descr ibed as remote

areas wi tho ut an y ne arb y schools-that is, geo-

graphically inaccessible places rather than socially

deprived ones . Thi s coyness about men t ioning

so-

cial contradictions and problems is , as we shall see,

a marked characteristic of

RSS

discourses, and the

pedagogic designs have developed interesting ways

of handl ing i t .

T h e syl labus of these p ar t - t ime schools cons is ts

of elementary l i teracy and lessons in religion,

patr iot ism, Indian cul ture. The y exis t in four

kinds of locales, carefully selected by Vidya Bharati.

There are some rural ones , though the Vidya

Bharat i manuals say very l i t t le about thei r exact

locations and their social base, or their spread in

recent years . Th ey ment ion only projects and plans

in Ut t a r P radesh and Madhya Pradesh . There a r e ,

however , 500 such Kendras in urban s lums. They

also exists in urban localit ies which are centers of

convent and miss ionary schools . Abou t a thousand

have been set up in tr ibal areas, especially in the

Chhotanagpur region in Bihar , expl ici t ly to coun-

teract missionary educational influence, and to

teach H induism and nat ional ism to m isguided

tr ibals . Clear ly , th is i s the h ear t of the s t ruggle .*

T h e RSS sees i tself as contesting an alienated

and denationalizing heritage left behind by

Macaulay and the colonial masters which, i t says,

cont inues to inform the present educat ional main-

s t ream. I t a ims to replace this w i th a sys tem whose

single minded aim is to implant in the childs mind

a d om inan t s logan-Bharatmata

k

ai . T his i s , they


3/6

say, the true national education that teaches the

s tuden t to be p roud o f h i d he r Hindu her i tage . Th a t

is why, instead of calling themselves schools, RSS

educational insti tu tions call themselves M and irs or

temples. Th e Indian ization of concep ts is obviously

taken to mean their s imultane ous Hindu ization

since a mandir is a Hindu place of worship. In othe r

words, education begins with planting a basic and

primary confusion and conflation between the

Hindu and the Indian.

The professed primary aim also includes the re-

making of the nation. Here th e pedagogical aim be-

comes explicitly and very directly political and im-

mediately l inks up with the RSS design of Hindu

rashtra. This is to be achieved through a combina-

tion of ancestral values and knowledge-i.e., Hi nd u

knowledge-with highly mod ern techno logy. Edu-

cation, therefore neatly selects and sti tches tog ether

two isolated and unrelated streams and excludes

everything else. Western knowledge, which has

repeatedly been denounced as alienated and cor-

rupting, is brou ght in to form o ne of the tw o consti-

tutive elements of knowledge, in the form of tech-

nological know how. Y et, it is delinked from associ-

ated developments in critical rationalism and sci-

entif ic explorations wherein i t is embedded. Thus,

cleansed and tamed, and debarred from intellectual

curiosity and qu estioning, i t is safely reinserted in to

approved modes of learning as mere mechanical

skills . Hindu knowledge, of course, is a tradition

that has necessarily to be invented in mode rn t imes

and contexts s ince the very notion of a s ingle, ho-

mogenized Hindu is an a-historical, ideological con-

struct. Since the RSS has promo ted itself as th e self-

appointed guardian of all matters Hindu, Hindu

knowledge by definit ion becomes knowledge pre-

scribed by the

RSS.

Since the aim is to compete wi th mains t ream

education and to su bve rt i t insidiously from w ithin,

rather than develop a comprehensive alternative,

Vidya Bharati fun ctions within the established for-

mat of syllabus and exa mina tion pattern of the dif-

ferent s tates. At middle an d h igh school levels, for

instance, i t even prescribes and uses the NCERT

social science textbooks which the

RSS

otherwise

maligns at every opportunity as false and pseudo-

secular . Th e reason is tha t these a re regarded in the

textbook market as the most comprehens ive and

successful books that are available and the Vidya

Bharati s tudents cannot afford to ignore them if

they are to compete wi th s tudents f rom dif ferent

kinds of schools. Howeve r, i t inserts i ts own unique

and indelible signature within the schools in three

distinct ways.

In all the schools in Delhi that we visited, there

is a s tr iking visual display of Hindu polit ical sym-

bols tha t blend m il i tancy wi th sacredness . T h e two

are then contained wi thin a f ramew ork that i s ex-

plicit ly polit ical and unmistakably oriented towards

the RSS. Rams pictures are ubiquitous and several

headmasters and headmis t resses spor ted VH P pos t -

ers and prints , calendars and small icons in their

of f ices . Hindu leaders who had fought agains t

Mu slims, l ike Rana Pra tap and Shivaji , were also

omnipresent as were por t rai ts of Hedgewar , the

founder of the RSS and Golwalkar , i t s ideologue.

T h e RSS map of undivided India, s traddled by a

divine Bharatmata was also much in evidence.9

Th ere are , fur thermore, annual inter -school events

with compet i t ions in knowledge of the epics and

oth er sacred te xts and in Sanskrit .10

At assembly t ime, the school head often make

speeches about current polit ical issues in which the

San gh combine have been act ive. Th e Ayodhya

temple issue was of ten brought up wi th such a

weal th of emot ion that , a headmis t ress told us

proudly, even five year-olds wou ld clenc h their f is ts

in anger and vengeance. Som etimes o vertly politi-

cal act ivis ts were brought in f rom the outs ide to

address s tuden t s on cur r en t themes . T h e head mas-

ter of the Har i Nag ar senior secondary school we nt

to Ayodhya as

a

kar sevak in October,

1990,

and

several s tudents of the school accompanied him.

The i r exp loi t s and the i r encoun te r s wi th Mulayam

Singh Yadavs law and order forces were elabo-

rately recounted and became part of the cherished

collective me mo ry of the sch ool.

There are certain carefully insti l led r i tual and

extra-curricular practices that reinforce proper

Samskaras among s tuden t s . No t on ly a r e a number

of Hindu ri tual occasions an d festivals meticulously

observed, but there is a lways a tem ple ei ther wi thin

the school premises or in close vicinity. They are a

par t of regular school l i fe for every s tudent . Stu-

dents a re expected to touch the i r e lders feet every

morning , to be dr i l led into habi ts of deference and

into proper ly Hindu forms of greet ing. Since chi l -

dren of the new generat ion f ind w es tern ways of

bi r thday celebrat ion, wi th cakes , candles and games

more fun, the school has an al ternat ive mode of

celebrating birthdays that is observed for each in-

dividual s tudent. In a public ceremony, the sacred

lamp is r i tual ly l i t , the s tudent i s gar landed and

blessed by teachers who recite Sanskrit holy chants,

and an audio casset te

of

patr iot ic and rel igious

son gs is played. The se cassettes a re for sale in every

school in the hope that they will travel beyond

school events and take their place within familial

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ones. Th e point of the a l ternat ive format i s not t o

counter the forces of conspicuous and competit ive

consumerism that bir thday celebrations often in-

volve, but to shield students from anything foreign

and non-Hindu. Even during school picnics, a

somewhat disenchanted ex-student of the Hari Na-

gar School told us, entertainment was l imited to

devotional music.12 Th er e is also a con sta nt en-

deavor to mix the domestic space of the student

with the insti tutional space, s ince the student must

carry school instruction into familial interaction.

This is , of course, furthered by very frequent par-

ent-teacher meetings and the cultivation of close

ties between stud en ts families and ind ividual teach-

ers who visit s tudents at their homes.13 The stu-

dents , who are recrui ted f rom neighborhood areas,

are entry points for the

RSS

ins t i tut ions and or -

ganization s into larg er localit ies .

Th e s t ronges t ins t rum ent for the making of de-

s irable s tuden ts are th e addi t ional courses that a re

compulsory in these schools. There is a s trong, al-

most mystical emphasis on physical cul ture , includ-

ing yogic practices that are considered to be in-

vested w ith extra-physical, moral properties. Not

only are they meant to tu rn s tudents into formida-

ble soldiers of the Hindu nation, they also impart

spiritual qualities. Yo ga, especially, is considered as

a uniquely Hindu way of developing physical and

spir itual s t ren gth in m utual harm ony. Th e Yoga

Room at the Hari Nagar school is also used for

meditation.

There are special courses on Sanskrit that fea-

ture modern Sa nskrit publications, prom oting R SS

values and teaching spoken S anskrit , brou ght o ut

by the Daivavani Prakash an at Kurukshetra . Inter -

estingly, s tudies of classical Sanskrit l i terature are

entirely neglected, modern pieces on suitable

themes are publicized.* T he re is also a special de-

partment of music that has a program graded ac-

cording to age. Again, train ing in classical music is

discounted in favor of mode rn dev otional music and

patr iot ic songs . T he cul tural ins t ruments of the

Sangh Combine unite with pedagogic tools to pro-

mote an exceptionally totali tarian and monochro-

matic ideological orien tation .

There are, f inally, courses on Indian civil iza-

t ion, again graded according to age, wi th text -

books for each year and compulsory examinations.

The textbooks are in brief question-answer format,

providing informat ion about geography, cul tural

features, historical eve nts and even science that , in a

seemingly objective, terse manner, not only distort

real events in c onte mp orary and historical l ife, but

also H induize each feature of our cou ntry. Heroes-

wh eth er historical or mythological-are uniformly

Hindus and overwhelmingly upper cas te . Rivers

and mountains have sacred associations. Cities are

given approximate ancient Hindu names , whether

the identif ication with modern places is accurate or

not. Each modern city is described with the nearest

Hindu pilgrimage site carefully mentioned. Scien-

tif ic information-whether on physics o r mathe mat-

ics-is alway s conclud ed wit h Hi nd u textu al ap-

proximat ion ment ioned as the real source of that

know ledge. History is full of brave upp er caste men

and women w ho have fough t Mus l ims . There is a

confident disregard of authenticated detail , and of

boundar ies between m yth and real i ty that pos tmod-

ernists would appreciate. Heroes include epic,

mytho logical, historical f igures and deities in equal

propor t ion wi thin the same category, wi thout any

men tion of the differences. Aga in, thro ugh a judi-

cious process of mixing and blurring, s truggles be-

tween divine f igures and demons, between colonial

rule and nat ional is ts , and between Hindus and

Musl ims are depicted in such a way that demons ,

colonialists an d M uslim s occupy th e sam e undiffer-

ent iated space wi thin a cont inuou s nar rat ive s t ruc-

ture. The textbook for Class IV also includes an

account of the pol ice f i r ing on the mob that had

tr ied to demolish the Babr i mosque in October-

November 199 with photograp hs of mar tyrs . A

whole lot of seemingly precise informat ion about

disjointed qu eries is actually systematically organ-

ized to project a communal myth as sacred narra-

t ive and nat ional is t h is tory, wi thou t any dis t inct ion

between the tw o. This o r ientat ion is conveyed

through a wide range of topics which methodically

produce an overarching Hindu supremacism dis -

guised as nat ional ism. Photographs of Sangh

mar tyrs are integral t o this or ientat ion and p ar t

of the syllabus for children.

The syl labus is genuinely ungendered and

courses are the same for boys and gi r ls . Gir ls are

given add itional train ing in dom estic science which,

however is common to most other schools . Gen der

ideology is inculcated th rou gh an insistence on th e

supremacy of parental decisions that must prevail

over the gir ls choice in educational, professional

and marital decisions.15 Home-grown gender no-

tions yet manifest themselves in essays writ ten by

s tudents for Vidya B harat i magazines . A s tud ent of

Class VIII wr ote ab out th e wife of the mythological

sage Atr i . Some gods wanted to tes t her chas t i ty

and demanded that she should s t r ip completely and

breast-feed them . She, wi th he r husbands consen t,

did jus t that , but wi th such a maternal aura that her

chas t i ty remained inviolate and the god s drank her

3


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milk with blameless filial emotions.16 Again, given

the uniformly h eroic mold of self-destructive and

necessarily violent ways of proving individual

wor th, e i ther agains t the Mu sl ims or the Br it ish , it

is not out of place that either a demonstration of

chasti ty should be demanded of the woman, nor

that i t would take the form of an act of great vio-

lence to her own disposition and sensibilities.

Again, the same value is upheld in textbooks on

Bharatiya Sanskrit? which ab ound w ith ex amp les

of Satis or wom en, whose self-destruction as proof

of their love for their dead husbands f i l led them

with supernatu ral pow ers that could then be used to

dest roy their enemies.1

Mainstream schools also use textbooks that are

equally marked by a ubiquitous accent on martyr-

dom in a nationalist and religious cause as the high-

est value in hum an life. And here, too, there is only

a short s tep from dying to kil l ing, and goodness is

often equated with the will ingness to kil l . History

becomes a way of asserting the greatness of ones

country, uncritical and unque stioning celebration of

i ts many great m en (and a few great w omen) , and a

masking of the problems of poverty, exploitation,

inequality and corruption in high places. Many of

the poems in the Hindi textbook used in a progres-

sive Delhi school, for instance, are also part of an

RSS songbook that is prescribed in the

shakhas.18

Heroes, in any case, in all schoolbooks, are almost

always upper caste and Hindu. I t is a s trength of

the RSS pedagogical system that i t does not really

have to force a departure from established main-

stream nationalist think ing. I t s imply closes

off

t he

multifarious possibilities and alternatives that are

also available within i t and brings to their logical

extre me some other possibil it ies that are laten t.

RSS schools in Delhi a re almo st invariably situ-

ated in a distinctive milieu. They are either in

neighborhoods that are filled with shopkeepers,

petty traders, small factory owners and business

people, or they are mostly occupied by middle

ranking service people. Their s tudents are drawn

from these areas and few come from distant places.

The monthly fees are about Rs .

100

for primary

schools and Rs. 150 for higher schools. The aim is

to have a fee structure that will occupy a middle

position between the expensive and exclusive public

decision to implement the Mandal Commission rec-

ommendations for affirmative action for backward

cas tes . A num ber of s tuden ts are f rom RSS families

and at tend thei r daily shakhas. A very l a rge number

of teachers and almost all the school heads are

similarly recruited from

RSS

famil ies . The others

are methodically trained at regu lar teach ers train-

ing camps that are meant to provide or ientat ion in

San gh values. Th ere is, then, an except ional ly high

deg ree of social cohesiveness and hom oge neity .

T h e broad purpose is to give the pet i te bour-

geoisie, even now the most f irm and primary social

base of the S ang h, a sense of purpose and confidence

in relat ion to the s tudents of more assured upper

middle class backgrounds who have access to and

ease in dealing w ith a m ore ex clusive Anglicized

educat ion. I t i s a lso to inte grate s tu dents f rom RSS

milieus more closely with their family training and

values . W it h school hours in day t ime and shakhas in

ear ly morning or evening, the whole day is disci -

plined by various agencies of the Sangh, s tretching

from family to school and

shakha

in an unbroken

and totali tarian circuit of influence and training.

T h e schools , wi th a c omm it ted lot of teachers and a

good record o r discipline, also act as pivotal po ints

of RSS influence within e ntire localit ies, wh ere they

funct ion in conjunct ion wi th other

RSS

facilities.

All these areas are usually also equipped with RSS

and VHP offices and therefore operate within a

broader orbi t of Sangh act ivi ty which they help to

deepen and ex tend . W e have r emarked e l s ewhere

that a di f ference between the Sangh Combine and

the classic fascist org aniz ation s is tha t t he accent is

on recrui tment at an infant i le rather than at a

youthful level.*O T h e school is , therefore, a n impor-

tant ingredient in the making of the r ight-wing

Hindu whose basic disposit ions need to be struc-

tured f rom th e t ime of thei r ear l ies t t ra ining. If the

first RSS shakha had been funded pr imar i ly to t rain

the upper cas te Hind u in leadership qual i t ies and to

prepare him for hegemonic funct ions wi thin a

deeply divided Hindu community at a t ime of social

turmoi l and communal t rouble, the schools serve

the same purpose, adding academic t raining to the

reper toi re . They have been planned to occupy

larger sl ices of the t ime and the minds of the chil-

d ren o f the Hindu Righ t w ho canno t be caugh t too

y o u n g .

schools and the cheaper model schools run by the

Government . 19 Notes

There are practically no non-Hindus and few

Th e research was done jo in t ly by Tan ika Sarkar and Tapan

low cas te s tudknts , fact the s tudents had been

very agi tated over the V .P. Singh Go vernme nts

Basu, and the mater ial has been analyzed and written by

Ta n ik a S a r k a r . Th i s i s p a r t

of

a l a r g e r o n g o in g wo r k o n RSS

i n D e ,h i ,

14


6/6

Organzser N ov . 11

1978.

9 Tapan Basu , Pradip Da t ta , Sumit Sarkar , Tanika Sarkar and

Sambuddha Sen, Khaki Shorts and S a f ro n Flags (Delhi, 1983 .

4 Ibid. p. 3 2

5 Ibzd.

Organiser

op.

cit.

7 Vidya Bharati, Akhil Bharatiya Shik sha Sammela n, Alternative

Model

of

National Education Dec. 1990-March

1991.

8 Ibid.

9

Saraswati Shishu Mandirs at Sabzi Man dir and Jhandalwalan

and Saraswati Bal Man dirs at R amak rishnapu ram, Jhandal-

walan and Hari Nagar .

1 Sama rth Shishu Samiti, Sama rth Sandesh Delhi 1990.

11 Saraswati Shishu Ma ndir , Sabzi Mandir .

I* Interview with an ex-student, then a postgraduate student of

Delhi University, March 1991.

1s

IntervieM with teachers at schools mentioned above.

4 Alternative Model of National Education op. cit.

15

On th is , see Tanika Sarkar , The Woman as Communal

Subject: Rashtrasevika Samiti and Ramjan mabhum i Move-

ment, Economic and Political Weekly 3 1Augus t 199 I

I Sandip Arora, Saraswati Bal Ma ndir , Jhandalwalan, Samarth

Sandesh. Th e tex tbook a lso abounds w ith accounts of satis and

of the submissive chastity of ancient women, sadly missing in

the modern world.

1 Th e example of sati Kannegi is of ten invoked. See, for ex-

ample, textbook for Class IV, Sanskriti Gyan Parekha Series,

crp CZt

I s We owe th is in formation to Neera j Pant and Aditya Sarkar .

Y Interviews with the headmistresses of Saraswati Shishu

Mandirs of Sabzi Mandir and Jhandalwalan.

Po

Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags op. cit.

South Asia Bulletin/Compara tiue Studies of South Asia Africa an d the Middle East

VOL 11

NOS. 2

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Is Modern Science a Western, Patriarchal Myth ? A Critique of the Populist O rth odo xy b y Meera Nanda

Communalism and the Indian Polity by Harbans Mukhia

O n Provincialism and Popular Nationalism : Reflections on Samir Amin's Euroce ntrism by Vasant

Gender and National Agency in Frantz Fanon and The Liberation Tigers

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(Re)Writing Women's Wor(l)ds: Fact And Fiction by Arati Rao

Khawateen Mahaz-e-Amal and Sindhiani Tehrik: Two Responses to Political Development in Pakistan

A Justification of Affirmative Action (Reservations) for Backward Castes in India by M ihir Desai

The Legal Machin ery and Its Inability to Guarantee Democratic Rights by Ila Pathak

Nuclear Weapons, Resistance, and the Nation-State System by Lawrence S. Wittner

Hum an Rights in Sri Lanka: An Interview with Barnett Rubin

Two poems of Sivaramani-translated from Tam il, with an introduction by Sitralega Maunaguru

Kaiwar

Ismail

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Educating the Children of the Hindu Rashytra - Notes on RSSa Schools - Sarkar

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