There appears to be a strong risk that a policy measure in the field of senior school education may ensue from nothing more thoughtful than a din created by Lok Sabha members cutting across party lines in the Zero Hour on Monday. This is a sad day for our parliamentary life.
Policy-related pronouncements by ministers should follow reasoned debate in Parliament, preferably even consultation with the wider public. The irony is that the ad hoc announcements by HRD minister Kapil Sibal on the issue of cartoons and school textbooks came in response to posturing by senior MPs a day after Parliament celebrated 60 years of its existence, an occasion on which high-falutin speeches were made.
When MPs protested last week against a 63-year-old cartoon depicting B.R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru that was included in a political science school textbook published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), there may have been a basis to their cause, although a somewhat shaky one, in the light of dalit sensitivities, which has become a potent political factor in recent years, unlike when the caricature was made by its famous creator. From that our political class has proceeded downhill to demand the removal of all political cartoons from school texts.
Using frail logic that does not stand up, they have laboured to argue that contemporary cartoons taken from newspapers and incorporated into school textbooks show politics, political institutions and the political class in poor light. This seems to be a false representation of reality. The institutions of our democracy and the notion of politics have not been sought to be disparaged. But it is true that the practitioners of politics in the country have been at the receiving end of satire. If the class of politicians wishes to change this perception, it must work in a positive direction to change its public image and reputation, with political parties taking the lead role. This is not done by censoring children’s textbooks post-facto.
Merely because Sonia Gandhi applauded Yashwant Sinha’s speech, and Pranab Mukherje and Sharad Yadav used identical words to decry the cartoons in question, that does not make the caricatures unfit for scholastic use. That judgment must derive from educational specialists. But Mr Sibal has already announced the withdrawal of the textbooks that were denounced, and the insertion of fresh material as replacements for the cartoons. It would be craven of him if he were to punish those who planned those books. Remember, the cartoons were brought into school texts following wide and nuanced debate on changing pedagogical methodology a few years ago. They are not written in stone but they cannot be changed just because politicians are made unhappy.