The ‘Left’ And The ‘Right’ Of Pedagogy

Nalini Taneja

IT is the Left’s strength, but also misfortune, that it cannot hide itself. A political leftist is a identified person, but even those with a broadly radical left perspective in academics, or sympathy for anti-imperialist positions, or a sense of conscience with regard to anti-people policies easily get branded Left. The Right on the other hand hides itself under various garbs, and easily slips into places as ‘liberal’ or ‘neutral’ in all debates and is happy to present itself as a ‘sensible third way’ between “saffron” and “red”.

It prefers to ignore the well understood categories of Left and Right, progressive and reactionary, pro-people and anti-people, pro-imperialist and anti-imperialist, because it sympathises with much of what the hard Right represents not only in terms of economic policies and its attitude to the organized Left, but also on questions of ideology. In the context of our country, its bridges with the “saffron” have been assiduously built over the years through a trenchant hatred of the left parties, and through an espousal of the indigenous ‘community’ as opposed to class, and through an anti-secularist critique of ‘modernity’ and the ‘West’, which ignores the existence of capitalism. It sees the root of today’s crisis primarily in ideology and in the adoption of western ways and paths and thinking and not in capitalism. For them the choice is not between capitalism and socialism or between imperialism and Third world interest but between the West (seen as one without its contradictions) and an imagined indigenous genius and path which would involve shedding everything that came with the modernity. In that it shares space with the worst of the saffronites even as it talks of ‘neither saffron nor red’.

This coalition of assorted ‘independent’ right elements with the hard political right is a coalition without any formal arrangement, which works very well at crucial times, with each member playing the role of, in footballing terms, a ‘libero’. They are free to play in any position, fire from any angle or pass the ball as they wish. Currently they seem to assume that the communal-fascist forces have disappeared from the scene, and the threat no more remains, and they have turned their guns on the Left already. They now want the new government to play their game for them.

WARNING AGAINST THE RED

No sooner has the new government taken over than they have become active in warning the government against the “Red”. In ideological terms, this is presented as detoxification - a neutral term that can as well apply to the left - or de-ideologisation of pedagogy.

Numerous articles have appeared in the press which warn against the old, largely secular, textbooks. Just as the pre-liberalization era has become synonymous with “licence-raj” in the vocabulary of the advocates of liberalization, and is used by them to justify the anti-people policies of today, the occasion of the new government in terms of changes in education policies is being used by the anti-left, to prevent the re-adoption of the old secular historiography by characterizing it as both left and establishment scholarship at the same time, by telling the Congress that it lost out the last time because it gave too much leeway to the Left in educational institutions that matter.

Therefore one direct method that this form of right wing has adopted is to create a red scare, and one can see its effect in the formation of new committees formed by the government, which pointedly makes a virtue of including only ‘independent’ and ‘unaffiliated’ scholars, and has in the process totally ignored some of our most renowned historians. It has easily fallen prey to the paranoia created in the press by this breed of intellectuals and journalists.

MORE SUBTLE STRATEGY 

Another, more subtle strategy, is to shift the terrain of debate from ideological perspectives to methodologies of pedagogy and even issues of child psychology; in other words, how to make books more interesting for students so that they do not see studies as a burden. Intellectuals therefore now insist that perspectives should not be thrust upon students through textbooks - let students decide from the various perspectives floating around, and that even facts are not important if they have a perspective. A perspective is thus confused with the ability to deal with sources and to arrive at interpretation - as if a Marxist perspective or a people’s perspective or any other perspective precludes this ability or possibility.

Apart from promoting de-ideologisation, such an argument is fraudulent, because any choice of facts involves a selection, and any set of facts can be interpreted in a variety of ways, depending on ones perspective. What these people are telling us is that not only should we not help the student by hinting at any interpretation (that would curb his independent creativity!), but that it is possible to have knowledge that carries no perspective other than promoting learning.

This set forms of course one extreme of the anti-left spectrum, but there is another set who recognize that no text or body of knowledge can be bereft of ideology are certain that new books should not push the secular perspective because that would amount to boring textbooks, and more than that, state interference in what is the preserve of the ‘independent’ intellectual.

RSS CONTROLLED SCHOOL EDUCATION 

This is not to argue against autonomy for academics and academic institutions, both of which are absolutely necessary for the advance of knowledge and a free and fair society. But we cannot have a textbook which is not able to convey to a student the evil of Nazism or untouchability, and do not recognize the necessity or urgency of doing so. We still live in a society very much subject to the same influences as before the elections, in terms of the market as well as political forces. The media is not going to change overnight. The set of appointees as teachers all over the country are going to remain where they are, and there whole range of sectarian, communal educational institutions like RSS-controlled Vidya Bharti schools have not even come up for discussion in the press or in the pronouncements by government officials, political leadership or even academics. The RSS remains the biggest private player within our school system, and the policy of privatization and informalisation of school education, from which the new government has shown no signs yet of retreating, will only strengthen this private player. In the last six years enormous government funds have gone into registering, recognizing and giving affiliation to RSS linked institutions involved in school education, not to mention the ekal (one teacher) schools throughout states with strong tribal belts.

With all this and a variety of other organizations formed by the Sangh Parivar to push through its agenda, and to transform popular consciousness along communal lines, we can hardly afford to water down secular perspectives in our textbooks even if it sounds like “talking” down to children. Can we talk about pedagogy today without putting this on the forefront?