South Asia Citizens Web

What is being referred to as the saffronisation of education is, in effect, the de-intellectualising of education in such a severe way that little of academic value will be left in what comes to be taught in the next few years. Totalitarian ideologies are built on cynicism and the new national curriculum is immensely cynical.

This paper is a rather tentative examination of the shifts in the way sexual harassment has been classified in state records with the aim of regulating crime as an effect of the women’s movements (in India and globally). In Indian criminal law, sexual harassment of women has not been enunciated as a juridical category of crime. It was only in 1997 that, in the realm of juridical interpretation, the object sexual harassment of working women was named and defined (See Vishakha and Anrs v. Union Of India 1997).

Manipulating textbooks for children is unacceptable. India has suffered enough communalism. Leave textbooks alone.

The narrowing of knowledge is being attempted in part by giving a single definition to Indian culture and society, and projecting this through educational channels, and describing it as the sole heritage that is of any consequence to us as a society and a nation.

Teesta Setalvad on the history textbook controversy under the BJP government which raised issues of political control over historical interpretation, sectarian motives behind history writing and the marginalisation of local and regional histories.