The National Curriculum Framework (2000) has been widely criticised by educationists, historians and other scholars for its attempts to further the agenda of the Sangh Parivar through school education. Principally, the NCF lays down the foundational principles of the Parivar’s vision of a ‘national’ , ‘Indianised’ and ‘spiritualised’ education for children. In a significant
departure from earlier frameworks (1975, following the 1968 Education Policy; and 1988, following the 1986 Education Policy) which stressed the inculcation of democratic values and social justice, and national integration as achievable through appreciation and understanding of the commonalities of different subcultures, the principal focus of the NCF is ‘value education’. Value education forms the hub of the NCF, its main plank to launch the spiritual and moral renewal of India. It is through learning of the ‘lives of prophets, saints and the sacred texts’ (p.35) that children can achieve higher SQs (Spiritual Quotients) and EQs (Emotional Quotients) (p.13). Other problematic areas in the NCF are the focus on Sanskrit - spelt Samskrit in the NCF - ‘a living phenomenon …still relevant to the life and needs of the people of India’ (p.54) and ‘Vedic Mathematics’, and its pernicious position on gender (‘education
of women is an important key to improving health, nutrition and education in the family’ - p.20). The implementation of the NCF was stayed by the Supreme Court on 1 March 2002 on the ground that the NCF had not sought the mandatory approval of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). 

For those who for various reasons view critiques of the NCF with scepticism (as also those who believe that since education is a concurrent subject, the NCF may be rejected at the state level), it must be reiterated that it forms a blueprint for education, which can be adapted by states where the BJP is in power and where they have managed to put other Sangh Parivar agendas in place. With a BJP government and penetration of Hindutva ideology in all spheres of life, saffronisation of education in Gujarat did not have to wait for the NCERT’s Framework. Gujarat was one of the first states to request UGC funding for courses in Vedic Astrology (the Baroda Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda reportedly being one of the major grantees and all set to launch bachelor’s and master’s courses). On 26 January 2002, a year after the devastating earthquake in Gujarat, the
Education Department issued a circular to schools to observe ‘Dharti Puja’, and enclosed a list of shlokas to propitiate the Mother Goddess. In keeping with its role as a vanguard state, Gujarat had revised its textbooks along the lines of the NCF even before its official announcement. In fact, going by the details set out in Communalism Combat, October 1999, the Gujarat
social science textbooks may have even exceeded the expectations of Dr J S Rajput, Director, NCERT and his mentor, Prof MM Joshi. 

By February 2002, suggestions for curriculum changes in keeping with NCF guidelines were submitted to the government. According to a report in the Times of India (22 March 2002, copy attached), the Gujarat Education Minister stated that a state-level ‘campaign’ is necessary for implementing the ‘National Curriculum’ by June 2003, through seminars with principals and teachers. It is more than likely that the Vidya Bharati Educational Trust – the Sangh Parivar’s educational wing – will be entrusted with this task. (It may be instructive to remember that in 2001, Goa’s BJP chief minister Manohar Parrikar handed over 51 government primary schools in rural areas to them.) According to the guidelines, Sanskrit will be taught from Class 6 in all schools. The Sanskrit Bharati, an RSS organisation, has been entrusted with the task of developing the curriculum for Sanskrit. Readers on sacred texts and biographies of
selected ‘nationalist’ figures are also being developed. A book on the Upanishads has been written by the husband of the Education Minister Anandiben Patel, and a biography of Shyamji Krishna Verma by a former editor of the RSS journal ‘Sadhna’. 

In this planned saffronisation of education, emphasis on ‘value education’ derived from religion and ‘tradition’ (read orthodoxy) replaces that on social justice, tolerance and plurality (the slogan ‘unity in diversity’ is being given a quiet burial). This new thrust is of a piece with efforts in other spheres to manufacture a majoritarian view of society in which the cultural and political space for minorities will progressively shrink. What better place to begin than in school? Experience of the present carnage against Muslims in Gujarat begs the question whether a saffronised school curriculum will not provide a good setting in which intolerance and further injustices against minorities can be justified. 
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