Rightward ho!

With help from RSS and affiliates, the Modi government is slowly yet steadily institutionalising a right-of-centre approach in governance and culture.

- Pratul Sharma

On September 22, more than a dozen members of the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas (SSUN) met Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar to give suggestions for bringing a “nationalistic” perspective into the proposed New Education Policy, likely to be unveiled by December. When they pointed out the “factual errors” in school textbooks, Javadekar asked them to write to him with specific examples and assured them that after bringing out the education policy, the Union government would start working on a national curriculum framework to look afresh at textbooks.

Based in Delhi and headed by retired schoolteacher and RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra, SSUN had led the campaigns that resulted in the banning of American scholar Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History and the removal of A.K. Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayan from the curriculum of Delhi University. “Earlier we had to fight our battles through courts for getting things done,” its general secretary Atul Kothari told THE WEEK. “Now, the government listens.”

Halfway into its tenure, the BJP led National Democratic Alliance government is focusing on reshaping the Indian knowledge and governance ecosystem. And it is all ears to suggestions from outfits such as SSUN. The big difference is that, unlike in the times of the previous NDA government, headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the approach this time round is subtler and more effective. “Unlike earlier times, the government has not been defensive about working with the RSS. Modi, whom former Vishva Hindu Parishad president Ashok Singhal hailed as a Hindu king after 1,000 years of foreign rule, is trying to leave his mark by replacing the Nehruvian model of governance and culture,” said an RSS leader.