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The gravest political mistake any authoritarian outfit or leader makes is to start a debate on education. Their entire efforts are usually designed to subvert education and to create an anti-intellect society. Their obsession with education is for destruction of true understanding; they distort history, hype up myths about a great past, inculcate chauvinism and sectarianism in students, resort to falsification and erasure of established facts and devalue rational thinking. Far-right Hungarian nationalist Viktor Orban, who lost power earlier this year, condemned educational institutions as “sites for liberal indoctrination”.

The Gen-Z protest has now compelled Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat to enter the debate on education. That’s like stepping on a landmine for RSS. Bhagwat looked desperate not to rub the younger generation up the wrong way and tried to align himself with their sentiment. Conceding that the education system needed reforms, he offered bizarre solutions, arguing that improvement depended on people’s mercies and patronage.

“Society should bear the financial burden”, he suggested, instead of asking the government to initiate structural changes and reach the desired budgetary allocation of 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for education. He didn’t utter a word on rising cost of education, autonomy of institutions, academic freedom and reckless ideological interventions.

The RSS wants students to conform to a set pattern of ideas. The purpose of education is to allow students to clear the cobwebs in the mind, step out of seclusion and orthodoxy, and freely wander in the uncharted realms of creativity and knowledge. The RSS doesn’t want students to revolt against the existing order and be respectful to tradition and authority. Obedience for them is a greater virtue than reasoning and inquiry. Education shapes a student’s outlook to life, creating an integrated thought on society, politics, philosophy and history.

But RSS wants students to know what it has concocted. Shouldn’t students correctly know who won the battle of Haldighati – Akbar or Rana Pratap?........

© The Wire