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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Politics and Pedagogy The NCERT Texts and Cartoons by Valerian Rodrigues

Politics and Pedagogy The NCERT Texts and Cartoons by Valerian Rodrigues

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published Published on May 29, 2012   modified Modified on May 29, 2012

School texts that teach young minds that politics is a contentious and critical but reasonable activity, that it is not merely a set of demands and commands, and that politicians have to be responsive and accountable are naturally disliked by the political class. This is the tone of all the Political Science textbooks of Standards IX-XI brought out after 2006. The nurturing of a culture of critical public opinion seems threatening to the wielders of authority. Hence, the call to sanitise the entire range of texts.

Valerian Rodrigues (valerianrodriques@yahoo.com) teaches at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) Political Science textbook cartoon controversy has acquired a life of its own. What started with charges of insulting Babasaheb Ambedkar snowballed into complaints of insulting national heroes, and in its latest version, as demeaning the political class of the country as a whole. This shift of the alleged target does not seem to be innocent, even as, a lot of muck is thrown at two of the country’s finest political scientists and lower rung officials of the NCERT.

These two scholars Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav, happen to be among the few in the discipline, who have a feel for the nuances and subtleties of the working of Indian democracy, and have generally expressed much appreciation for the political class as a whole.

Scholarship and pedagogy are closely related. If politicians think that they know what is to be included in and excluded from textbooks, it is incidental that this round it happens to be books of a specific discipline that are under attack. They probably arrogate to themselves a power, whose full extent one shudders to think of. What is worse, hardly ­anyone from the political class has ­uttered a word of caution. But we all know that it is showmanship against the weak; a few academics do not really matter, because they cannot count their battalions. When the industry and the market have not shifted even an inch in their position, with regard to inclusive policies, for which Babasaheb Ambedkar fought throughout his life, a cartoon whose true import is highlighting con­sti­tutional morality is able to evoke ­massive commotion on the floor of both the houses of Parliament cutting across party lines. This is not just sad; it is shameful.

I had read the standard XI textbook in which Shankar Pillai’s cartoon on the Constitution is reproduced in the first lesson after a year or so of its publication in 2006 and admired the way the complexity and diversity of India’s politics was imaginatively woven and presented to young minds in terms of a set of nodular concepts. In the earlier texts of the NCERT, or for that matter in other texts for the age-group brought out by other agencies, significant figures who shaped India’s national life and democracy, such as Ambedkar, were either glossed over or pushed into a corner of their own, as dalits generally are in India’s yet to be redeemed countryside. In this text you see many of these hitherto ignored figures in conversation with one another. Along with agreements, disagreements and contentions too are brought to the fore making politics to look not as a placid natural object but with critical reason. In fact in the first lesson itself, Ambedkar, or a look-alike, appears in three representations, including in the controversial cartoon. The lesson itself is a statement without expli­citly stating so on the saga­city with which Ambedkar piloted the Constitutional Bill through the Constituent ­Assembly. There are few parallels in textbooks, where Ambedkar makes a central interlocutory presence as in this text. In most other texts he is a “Dalit Messiah”, as our leading newspapers are fond of calling him, or a stand-alone case dispensed as an exemplar. Do we then take the commotion on the floor of Parliament to reflect a pronounced new shade of thinking, and even prejudice, whose interest, for one reason or another, lies in keeping Ambedkar in a corner of our public life?

Constitutional Process

The cartoon, which initially precipitated the furore was sketched by Shankar in 1949.1 It was an important year in India’s national life when the long-drawn freedom struggle, the aspirations of its myriad diversities and its manifold oppressions eventually found a code to collectively and proactively engage within the Indian Constitution. India’s constitutional text was approved by the assemby on 30 November 1949 after nearly three years of debate and deliberation, in many ways as intense as the national movement ­itself. There was nothing even remotely close to this exercise in its breadth and scope, anywhere in the world. The constitutional text invariably happened to be long and Ambedkar defended it, ­including some of its other complex and often controversial provisions, with adroitness and sophistication, and the XIV books of the Constituent Assembly Debates bear witness to it. The role that Ambedkar played in this exercise was to elicit fulsome praise from across the learned, but not less haughty, benches of the House. He was a strong believer in constitutional morality and the rule of law, and disdainful of charisma riding roughshod over the heads of people as he highlighted in a powerful address ­delivered at the Gokhale Institute of ­Politics and Econo­mics, Poona, in 1942 entitled “Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah”. Being a democrat he was also disdainful of messiahs who thought that they knew what was good for people, binding the hands of future generations. At the same time Ambedkar believed in resolute mass action. He thought political demo­cracy had little chance of survival in the long run unless it flowered into social and economic ­democracy.

Nehru, as is well-known was the ­architect of India’s complex public institutions.2 At the same time he knew what the large masses of the country were demanding, acutely aware that sooner or later their patience would run out. It was important that the country move fast. At the same time Nehru understood that this process could be only through appropriate checks and balances. His comment that without them he could be a dictator remained his considered judgment in this regard.3 While there were many differences between Ambedkar and Nehru on several issues, they were basically agreed that India’s future can be ensured only through a constitutional and parliamentary democracy.

Cartoons are supple and are available for multiple readings, much more than a text. They also satirise and offer a ­perspective on an issue in a capsule which at the same time is meant to tickle us, bringing the high and mighty to our level in the process. In the cartoon under question, as reproduced in the text,4 we can see Ambedkar sitting on a large spiral mound with the words “constitution” inscribed on it which in turn rests on a snail. Ambedkar holds up a whip, urging the snail to move fast. An athletic looking Jawaharlal Nehru is standing behind holding a whip in a charging posture aimed at the Constitution as well as the snail. The witness to this performance, and the address of the charge of the ­dramatis personae is a massive gathering of people who have diverse emotions written on their faces from amusement to surprise. This gathering is made of a vast diversity of people as manifest in their demeanour and wear. While other readings of this cartoon are possible, such options are highly constrained: There is a paragraph that just precedes the cartoon that proposes the concept of public reason,5 as an outcome of the deliberations and contestations that arise from umpteen possible positions in society. The reader is initially led to understand that India confronted myriad ­diversities and inequalities, and the basic law of the land had to provide ground rules as well as norms on the basis of which all this complexity could live ­together over time as a political community.

The cartoon is acknowledged as having been published in Shankar’s Weekly in 1949. Besides, a Standard XI student in India, roughly at the age of 17 years, carries some ideas and impressions of Nehru and Ambedkar, as a legacy of his/her earlier learning and from the marketplace. These qualifying conditions may shift the interpretation of this cartoon a little here and a little there, but an ­informed audience would have a fairly clear view of what the cartoon is meant to convey: the challenge of governing a complex and open polity on the basis of rule of law while being committed to bringing about a radical transformation as fast as possible.

Continuing Challenge

While Shankar highlighted this paradox in 1949, in many ways this is the challenge that confronts the Indian polity even today. While Ambedkar and Nehru might have disagreed on certain details with regard to the appropriate strategies of handling these twofold challenges, there is no doubt that they were in agreement on the need to pursue both of them together. In fact, the lesson in question and the text as a whole draw our attention to this shared concern continuously. Were those who raised the furore on the floor of Parliament and later outside trying to drive a wedge between Ambedkar and Nehru, widening the cleavage between them? Whether they were or not, this was the consequence of the extent the cartoon and the accompanying text were broken down into its elements and discrete ­fragments of them were held aloft as ­unacceptable.

Dalit Public Sphere

Why attack this cartoon, and not others such as those poking fun at Hindu chauvinists or the authoritarianism of the Emergency interlude found in the texts of Class IX-XI? There is a major vacuum today in what can be called as the dalit public sphere, and it has many reasons. Dalits today are an all-India, large and politically vibrant constituency with most of them at the very margins of economic survival. For a few years this constituency had a pole of reference in the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government in Uttar Pradesh, even though many dalits across the country may not have agreed with its political agenda. The defeat of the BSP in Uttar Pradesh has had its bearing on this sphere. There are no alternatives around: The Parliamentary Left which mobilised sections of dalits on economic demands is today in a limbo. Unlike the adivasis in central east India, by and large dalits have not been attracted to the Maoists.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime has not kept its promise to dalits to carve out a space for them in the market economy. While a section of them were initially attracted to the Hindutva agenda, today that agenda has little to offer them. In this context one of the great concerns of the political class, and rightly so, is in which direction ­dalits are likely to shift. The furore on the floor of the House and the panic in the ruling party coalition on this account has much to do with this vacuum. Ambedkar is an iconic symbol who stands for the unified dalit constituency, the very embodiment in a way of the dalit public sphere in the dalit imagination. Therefore, any attempt to appropriate Ambedkar sends shivers down poli­tical parties across the board at this ­moment. Dalit or dalit-based parties are not an exception to it. Once Thol Thirumavalavan of the Viduthalai Chiru­thaigal Katchi, a constituent of the UPA, raised this issue in the Lok Sabha, the rest had to make more virulent claims to Ambedkar’s legacy, focusing, however, on distinct elements of the cartoon and disregarding their representational utility. Ambedkar’s argument that constitutionalism is a double-edged sword; that it is a defence of the rule of law and at the same time a struggle for a fairer system of rule of law has not been inscribed with great clarity within the dalit public sphere. The text and the cartoon became excuses here. Even on weightier issues, such as the Lokpal Bill and the Women’s Reservation Bill, Parliament was not in ­unison as they were on this issue!

There is, however, another reason for the chorus demanding the sanitisation of the texts. Increasingly politicians and other wielders of authority are called upon to show accountability. This has been propelled by the logic of demo­cracy in India but specifically the recent civil society movement. Being called upon to be ­accountable is a detestable thing to all wielders of authority. Naturally therefore texts that teach young minds that politics is a contentious, critical but reasonable activity and is not merely a set of demands and commands and that politicians have to be responsive and accountable, etc, become detestable. This is the tone of all the texts of the books on ­Political Science of Standards IX-XI brought out after 2006. The nurturing of a culture of critical public opinion seems threatening to the wielders of authority. Therefore, the call to sanitise the entire range of texts. By construing the issue as a demeaning portrayal of politicians, you can at the same time shift attention from Ambedkar and ensure that none is able to solely make a bid for the constituency that he represents. If this reasoning is correct, then should we not stress an “election-plus” approach to Indian demo­cracy rather than merely see it as the logical outcome of elections alone?

Attack on a Pedagogy

Behind such charges as the cartoon being an insult to Ambedkar, national ­heroes and politicians; that it instils wrong ideas in impressionable minds; alienates young minds from ­political interest and concerns; and that cartoons are unsuitable as tools of instruction for pre-college students, etc, lies an approach to pedagogy, especially directed at social sciences and humanities. The texts under question seem to propose that the best way to teach subjects such as political science is by nurturing among the relevant age-group a sense of enquiry and reason­ableness, and a set of concerns and commitments rather than by doling out a set of truths, or mapping processes, or enumerating facts and their internal linkages. The latter, a formalistic/scientistic model, makes the learner distance himself/­herself from social reality and remain affectively untouched by it. It tends to foster a sense of naïve objecti­vity, which even in the natural sciences scholars have increasingly come to discard. On the contrary the textbooks under question invite a student to engage with ­social reality although he/she may choose not to, or choose only a domain or two as sufficient. In this context we need to ­decide what kind of a discipline in social sciences and humanities we would offer to young students. Further, who is the better judge, on these questions: a duly constituted body of professionals or the floor of Parliament?

Political Orientation

Is there a political stance that infuses this text and other texts that the NCERT has prepared in 2006, in which “the gang of two”, is involved? Yes, there is a specific kind of political orientation that one can read between the lines. This orientation, however, does not seem to be a respecter of persons or authority qua persons and authority, but a set of principles. It neither deifies nor vilifies. And when it does, it is grounded in reason. Broadly, these principles are a belief and confidence in human reason, a respect towards human persons and appreciation of their dignity; equality of persons irrespective of their other differences and beliefs; a strong appreciation of ­diversity and difference; a respect ­towards culture and beliefs which in India invariably happen to be deeply plural, a certain suspicion of power and the need to bring it under responsibility and accountability; a strong endorsement of democracy and toleration; a marked sense of self-respect; a certain regard for rule of law foregrounded in the above values, and a respect for institutions as enabling devices.

Conversely this orientation counter-poses itself strongly against those who ­deify or close issues and concerns, set up a few universals as holding good for one and all, and claim that they know what the truth is all about. All the lessons in the texts from Standards IX to XI may not reflect all these positions but one can see that they more or less reflect them. This political orientation in political science texts may not be palatable to many, and some may have their genuine problems with them. Then, what do you replace them with in a text brought out by a ­publicly-funded agency? And, if you have a different orientation to offer, to what extent are you true to the spirit of the Constitution?

Notes

1 Incidentally, Shankar Pillai was a Padmavi­bhushan, and Shankar’s Weekly, a cartoon journal, was inaugurated by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru himself. Pillai himself never fought shy of poking fun at Nehru through his cartoons.

2 See Bhikhu Parekh, “Nehru and the National Philosophy of India”, Economic & Political Weekly, 5-12 January 1991; and Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (Delhi: Penguin), 1998.

3 Nehru appreciated the need for a stronger parliamentary opposition and once wrote provocatively under a pseudonym Chanakya, saying, “a little twist and Jawaharlal might turn into a dictator sweeping aside the paraphernalia of a slow-moving democracy” (cited in Hiren Mukherjee, The Gentle Colossus, New Delhi, OUP, 1964, p 222).

4 The cartoon appears in page 18 of the Political Science Text, Class XI, New Delhi, NCERT, 2006.

5 The concept of public reason as the basis of a democratic polity made of equal and free citizens, who are otherwise deeply divided with regard to their beliefs, values and ways of life is formulated in the text to make it lucidly intelligible to teenagers of 17 years or thereabout: “The Constitution drew its authority from the fact that members of the Constituent Assembly engaged in what one might call public reason. The members of the Assembly placed a great emphasis on discussion and reasoned argument. They did not simply advance their own interests but gave principled reasons to other members for their position. The very act of giving reasons to others makes you to move away from simply a narrow consideration of your own interest because you have to give reasons to others to make them go along with your viewpoint. The voluminous debate in the Constituent Assembly, where each clause of the constitution was subjected to scrutiny and debate, is a tribute to public reason at its best” (ibid: 17-18).

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLVII, No. 22, 2 June, 2012, http://beta.epw.in/newsItem/comment/191398/


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