THE formation of a BJP government in Goa has given the RSS an opportunity to extend its activities into yet another state. One would have thought that the RSS would have to tread a bit carefully and hesitantly in a state like Goa that has a sizeable Christian population. (About 30 per cent of the people in Goa are Christians.) Nothing like that. The BJP has lost no time in saffronising the entire administration and education system.

The exercise began in early 1999 with new claims on churches, supposedly old temples, which must now be taken over by the RSS. It does not matter to the Sangh Parivar that India had, in 1962, successfully liberated Goa from the Portuguese. In the Sangh Parivar’s lore, Goa still remains unliberated because it retains signs of Christianity and a very big number of Goans are Christians by faith.

The claims may be new but the propaganda and methods adopted by the Sangh Parivar in Goa are old and well known. National-level summits were held in various parts of the state soon after the anti-church movement started dominating the Sangh Parivar's agenda, followed by a Dharma Jagaran Yatra, beginning from Goa on October 20, 1999 to reach Delhi on the eve of Pope John Paul’s visit to India. A two-day meeting of the Kendriya Margadarshak Mandal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad followed this up in 2000; here the Ram temple construction took second place to the issue of alleged conversions.

The speeches at these meetings projected the familiar anti-minority campaign. They claim that several churches were really temple sites, destroyed when the Portuguese conquered the coastal state in 1510. These meetings were organised by Ashok Chowgule, president of the VHP's Maharashtra and Goa unit, a leading local industrialist who has also succeeded in roping in two other leading mine owners --- Dempo and Salgaoncar --- as sympathisers.

The Sangh Parivar also released a six-page brochure on Konkan Kashi, saying that Goa was a major pilgrimage centre of Hindus in western India before the Portuguese rebuilt it as a pilgrim centre for Roman Catholics. "Goa is the Kashi of the west coast of India," says the brochure.

Changes in education are being hurriedly pushed through in the state, by the BJP that formed a government after manipulating large-scale defections in Goa assembly. According to an EPW (Economic & Political Weekly) report (Frederick Noronha, June 30, 2001) and a Deccan Herald report (Devika Sequeira, June 11, 2001), 50-plus primary schools have been handed over to various front organisations of the Sangh Parivar.

The matter needs to be looked at in some detail because it gives a very good picture of how the BJP is operating and what strong-arm methods it is adopting to push through its programme in education. The Goa experience clearly brings out the link between communalisation and privatisation of education also, with the RSS’ Vidya Bharati as the largest private operator on the national scene. The government is literally privatising and communalising through the same body, the Vidya Bharti Educational Society, an umbilical instrument of the RSS. The modus operandi says a lot.

The entire operation was carried out in near secrecy, with parents coming to know of the schools’ affiliation to the Vidya Bharati only incidentally and unexpectedly, when the schools opened after vacations in June this year.

Ramesh Gauns, an educationist who is on the frontline of the battle against the hand-over of these schools, says the whole exercise is illegal, since no procedure was followed. "Initially the chief minister (Parrikar) made a statement that the schools would be closed, due to insufficient students. Later on, he suddenly decided to amalgamate schools with one another. Suddenly, something fishy went on, and the 53 schools were handed to clubs, organisations or societies most of which never existed earlier or were simply unregistered bodies" (quoted in EPW). Some of these are simply bodies making papads and pickles, picked up just to act as fronts.

Rajya Sabha member from Goa, Eduardo Faleiro (Congress), has rightly pointed out that the schools being given at a rent of Re one a year, amounts to "a gift of government property to the RSS."

Interestingly, all the letters about allotment of these schools to various front groups were collected by one RSS functionary, S D Velingkar, who is vice-president of the Vidya Bharati Educational Trust. In the May 19 advertisements for teaching jobs in the schools, the Vidya Bharati blatantly stated that they required "nationalist persons with wide social contacts." The connotation is more than clear.

The move smacks of communalism and blatant discrimination in a state where the education system is an amalgam of state-run and private-run schools, with church groups also running a large number of affordable and fairly efficient schools, open to students of varied religious backgrounds. The take-over, seen along with the attacks on Christian schools, reflects how the intimidation of Christian missionaries and schools, and the state hand-over of government schools to the RSS, are mutually linked processes.

Resistance from parents and students has resulted in the government simply declaring a lock-out --- literally putting locks on the schools, particularly in rural areas. According to reports, most of these schools are Marathi-medium schools and are in Goa’s rural areas where private-run primary education is not widespread and citizens are dependent on the state-run educational infrastructure. The schools have not merely been communalised, they have been privatised without any public discussion. In addition, the government it trying to confuse people by giving it a linguistic touch, saying it is promoting Marathi which is a "majority" language, in opposition to Konkani of the minority. Despite opposition from parents and secular elements, the BJP chief minister is adamant that the schools will remain closed if they are not privatised and if they are not with the RSS bodies.

The government has also constituted a new school education advisory board, dominated by prominent local RSS ideologues, including Velingkar of the Vidya Bharati and some full time pracharaks. This means a large scale overhauling of the pattern of education and revision of textbooks, along the line of the other BJP ruled states. Such a process is already underway.

The Goa University too is being targeted in the name of weeding out "corruption." The administration routinely intervenes in the affairs of the university that should have been autonomous. Individuals with known RSS links are being nominated on the university bodies. Modassir, a state government officer, has been appointed "officer on special duty" (OSD) in the university, a post that didn't exist earlier, after registrar (D V Borkar) was given an unceremonious exit by the government. In fact, nowhere has one heard of an entire university being run by nominated OSDs. Such appointments are resorted to in order to temporarily hold fort in a particular department or college --- never in a whole university as such.

As elsewhere, the BJP has utilised its hold on the government to quickly recruit RSS people into various departments. The schools were handed over to the Vidya Bharati, ostensibly, on the plea of resource crunch and because the government schools were "unviable" with very poor enrolment. But while the schools have been given over to the RSS, yet the government too has made new appointments for schools. The BJP government announced its intention to recruit some 300 teachers for primary schools alone.

In the home department a hectic police recruitment drive has been launched, despite calls for reducing government expenditure. Over a thousand policemen have been appointed, expanding the existing police force of this state by a significant one-quarter. Its consequences do not need much speculation. The role of police during anti-minority riots is well known.

Opposition parties have come down strongly on the government for surreptitiously allotting schools to RSS bodies. But the NDA partners at the centre have not made any protest though they do not actively support the RSS agenda on education and culture. In the last elections, the BJP won just 10 out of 40 seats in Goa assembly. Even today, it continues in power courtesy the ambitions of former Congressmen who form up to two-third of the cabinet. Clearly, the Congress lacks political will to carry the opposition. The newly formed Sarkari Prathamik Vidyalaya Bachao Samiti (Committee to Protect Government Primary Schools) did make it clear that it found unacceptable Parrikar's stance that rural schools would face closure if their privatisation was opposed. Yet, in principle, the committee is not opposed to the schools being given to private bodies. It has confined its critique to stating that it objects to "the manner and criteria on which their management has been unscrupulously handed over to a select few bodies without experience in the field of education." According to the EPW comment, the Samiti has asked the government to appoint a committee of educationists to carry out a re-survey of the schools in question, in a transparent manner, on a case-by-case basis. There are a number of reputed educational bodies in the state willing to take over the government primary schools if given the chance, they point out.

Clearly, it is only a half-hearted critique, and not in the interest of the underpriviliged. Any concession to privatisation of primary education will make a mockery of any declaration about making education a fundamental right and will further push away the goal of universalisation of elementary education. Besides, privatisation of the existing government system of education in the present political context can only mean its take-over by the RSS. Which private enterprise could possibly compete with the RSS if it is backed by the BJP governments in the state and at the centre?