Iqbal and hijab in Madhya Pradesh: When a bulldozer comes to school, we are all diminished

While celebrating the good performance in Class X Board Exams, it put up a poster outside the school premises featuring even non-Muslim students wearing headscarves (the headscarf, as the management has clarified, is part of the school uniform). The principal of the school was arrested; the education department derecognised the school; the self-proclaimed protectors of “Hindu culture” began to see the politics of forceful religious conversions, and even the presence of the “jihadi empire’ engaged with “terror funding”. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was angry because the school was teaching the poetry of Iqbal whom he didn’t hesitate to reduce as just a separatist who talked about the division of the country. No wonder, the bulldozer arrived with alacrity as the municipal authority seems to be over-enthusiastic to demolish parts of the school it considers “unauthorised”.

What happened in Madhya Pradesh cannot be seen in isolation. It is part of what we see in the changing landscape of the politics of knowledge, and the increasing assault on what I would regard as education for democratic citizenship and civic/inclusive nationalism. See the process — the attack on liberal public universities in the name of giving a tough lesson to the “tukde tukde gang”, the political appointment of vice-chancellors and the systemic erosion of the democratic culture and critical pedagogy; the deletion of select themes and chapters from NCERT textbooks; the removal of Allama Iqbal and the inclusion of V D Savarkar in the Delhi University Political Science syllabus and even the growing fascination with diverse packages of “deshbhakti” curriculum. The goal, it seems, is to create a “disciplined”/ “loyal” / “one-dimensional” subject because it is only through this sort of social engineering that the nation can find “obedient” citizens who do not question and see dissenting voices as dangerous and “anti-national”. Hence, for hyper-nationalists who dislike ambiguity, hybridity, and plurality, educational institutions need to be reduced into consent- manufacturing machines.

However, the assault on the otherwise unknown school in Madhya Pradesh can be resisted only if teachers, educationists, students and pedagogues with conscience come together, communicate with the larger society, and initiate a movement for saving education. Let it be clear that we need politically sensitive schools that nurture the fundamentals of democratic education: Say, the cultivation of the aptitudes and skills like the delicate art of debate and reflection, the willingness to listen to a plurality of voices with heightened empathy, and then move towards conflict resolution. And the capacity to live with heterogeneity and cultural/religious/ethnic/linguistic differences.

Otherwise, we will continue to be threatened by, say, a woman wearing a hijab, a Hindu boy making a presentation on the significance of Eid in the school festival, a teacher reciting Iqbal’s poem in the classroom, or young minds trying to equate the vibrations of Bismillah Khan’s shenai with the flow of Ganga in Varanasi. At this juncture, it is important to remember that the freedom struggle gave us a living and vibrant idea of India — the idea we saw in Tagore’s epic novels like Gora and Ghore Baire. An idea that came from Gandhi’s historic journey in communally charged Noakhali in 1946 for restoring peace and cross-religious dialogue, Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Discovery of India, and above all, the fundamental principles of the Constitution that B R Ambedkar and his colleagues decided to choose as the lampposts for giving us the light to overcome the darkness of religious bigotry, caste hierarchy and gender violence.

“The destiny of India is being shaped in her classrooms,” great educationist/scientist D S Kothari taught us. And Kothari – an embodiment of modern science, great civilisational ideals and the ethos of the freedom struggle — wanted young learners to evolve as democratic and sensitive citizens with the spirit of cultural pluralism and inclusive nationalism. And we also saw wonderful and pedagogically enriched schools — guided by the inspiring principles of Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Jiddu Krishnamurti — that sought to sow the seeds of compassion, global vision and scientific reasoning.

However, in the age of hyper-nationalism—or the unholy alliance of de-spiritualised religion and instrumental politics — we seem to have forgotten all these ideals and experiments. With the rise of totalitarian politics of religious nationalism, education is fast losing its libertarian potential, and getting reduced into a pure ideological apparatus — devoid of the intellectual/philosophic/cultural depth, and filled with the poison of physical and symbolic violence. Yes, what has happened to Ganga Yamuna Higher Secondary School in Madhya Pradesh is a symptom of the malice that characterises the politics of education in these toxic times. Is it possible for us to wake up, and say “no” to this violence?

Avijit Pathak writes on culture, politics and education