Nationwide Campaign on Social Justice in Education

suchandra · June 20, 2008

Strong words against vedic culture in India in the name of Reflection of the Truth, "they breed irrationalities and superstitions, and evoke the worst forms of parochialism in the name of akhand bharat. Superstition like Vedic maths and Vedic astrology is being justified and injected as real science. Sectarianism is the prime agenda of saffronisation of education".

Nationwide Campaign on Social Justice in Education

http://www.sahilonline.net/english/news.php?catID=nationalnews&nid=2472&viewed=0

S.O. News service, Friday, 20 June 2008:

New Delhi : Students Islamic Organisation of India is all set to launch a nationwide campaign on the topic "Social Justice in Education Sector". The programmes of campaign will be organised through out the country between June 20 and July 10, 2008. The campaign will address issues in the national educational arena like universalization of education, commercialization of education, reservation, FDI in education, saffronisation of education and various state issues related to education and students.

It is quiet unfortunate that the urgent priority of union and state governments has become setting up world class universities and schools with world class libraries, laboratories and classrooms, in a world class building making a world class infrastructure for education. Where as the real stress must be to ensure that every child up to 14 is in the school and learning. 11 million children in India have to be provided elementary education in every single town, village and habitation, irrespective of geographical area, community or ethnicity. There is indeed serious rural-urban imbalance in the education sector that cannot be resolved by mere reservations. There must be also a thorough scrutiny on the quality of education. It is a fact that good quality education in schools and in higher education sector has been limited only to those few who were born in the right side of economic affordability. It must be ensured that Right to Early Child Care and Education is rightly implemented.

Education and knowledge must not become items of sale in the student market. Since almost all private educational institutes in the country are busy with education business, a situation has evolved where in only the financially better class is able to attain education. SIO had never been averse to private parties entering the field. However, the Government must evolve a mechanism to check commercialization and help easy access of higher education for poor and deserving students.Holding on to the capitalistic policies in education sector, education has been divided in to courses which have got market value and courses which have got no market value! It has been recommended by different committees piloted by the central government that those courses which has got no market value (All streams that come under humanities), must be eliminated from the curriculum of the universities since it doesn't fulfill the needs of the production or service industry. This also will create serious imbalance in the social structure of our country.

Reservation is one of the many tools that are used to uplift the socially and economically backward class of the society and it must be ensured in a country like India. Even after the recent Supreme Court verdict to provide 27% reservation to OBC in higher educational institutes has not been implemented in many parts of the country. SIO believes that reservation is not the only solution for the upliftment of the socially deprived classes including Muslims in India; But since reservation has through out the history played a key role in strengthening the marginalized sections of the society, it has to be implemented without any manipulation in all the sectors especially education.

It is a matter of great concern that after signing of MOU by certain state governments, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in education is going to be a normal trend in the educational arena. SIO regards that FDI in education will lead to imbalance in the education field of the country closing the doors of higher education to a large number of common students. The impact on the cultural and social values of the country may also be in danger if foreign universities are allowed to enter the country freely.

The declared agenda of the sangh parivar of "Indianisation, Nationalization and Spiritualization" of education is a great threat for brotherhood and secular environment of the country. The textbook being published especially by states run by BJP, has been relentlessly pushing through the RSS agenda. The history texts are nothing but unadulterated illustration of RSS view of history for its sectarian agenda. It tries to convince repeatedly that Indian (Indus) civilization is Aryan civilization and that Aryans were not invaders but truly Indian. It teaches that the first man was born in this land. Castism, child marriage and sati are defended. Muslims, Christians and Parsees are called foreigners. Urdu is claimed as foreign language.

They breed irrationalities and superstitions, and evoke the worst forms of parochialism in the name of akhand bharat. Superstition like Vedic maths and Vedic astrology is being justified and injected as real science. Sectarianism is the prime agenda of saffronisation of education.

Seminars, symposiums and public meetings will be the major tools of this National campaign. Vice-Chancellors of different universities and government level policy makers have been invited for different programmes.