In God We Trust

Does a profession of spiritual values in state-run school curricula violate the secular principles of our Constitution, asks Kartik Sharma

Bangalore, April 6: Recently Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chauhan announced that his government will give a thought to including key learnings from the Bhagwad Gita in the state’s primary school curriculum. Already students in all government schools in the state recite a bhojan prarthana, a Sanskrit shloka or prayer before sitting down to eat.

But Chauhan is no pioneer here and propagating Hinduism through education by BJP governments isn’t exactly novel. The human resources development ministry in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government was repeatedly accused of attempting to ‘saffronise’ school and college education in India. But the controversy over the inclusion of the Gita in primary education is more than just a ‘political’ or partisan issue, it raises substantive question of constitutional law.

The Gita is considered a rich source of management principles by many universities in India and abroad. Asks Darada Krishna Das, president of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, when we have a great scripture such as the Gita as part of our indigenous traditions, why should we rely exclusively on only western sources of learning for our intellectual growth? He says the Gita can teach a way to live life and it can help establish the principles for doing so.

The operative word here is ‘scripture’. Critics point out that while the Constitution of India protects the fundamental right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion, the State cannot actively promote any religion. Thus, Article 28.1 expressly states, “No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of State funds.” 

Further, Article 28.3 states, “No person attending any educational institution recognized by the State or receiving aid out of State funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted … unless such person … or his guardian has given his consent thereto.” Thus, a student belonging to a minority community would find the inclusion of instructions from the Gita a religious imposition which the Constitution expressly forbids.

Votaries of including Hindu traditions in education argue that this is not religious instruction but the promotion of traditional Indian moral values. To which secular scholars retort: What else is religion but a system of ethical values and codes?

One argument to sidestep the ‘religion’ tag is to argue that the Hindu tradition is ‘scientific’. For example, some claim Vedic shlokas like Surya Mantra described in detail the solar system of the sun and the planets revolving around it, millennia before Galileo “proved” it. In Mahabharata, they claim, there is a description of the atom (Paramanu) long before Democritus posited its existence. Astrology and aeronautics are described in detail in the Vedas and are based on detailed astrological and mathematical calculations. That is why the subject of Vedic mathematics has been introduced by various education boards like Central Board of Secondary Education. It is claimed that Vedic math makes for faster and easier computation. 

Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages in the world and is the root of the Indo-European languages. Although in today’s globalised world, we cannot ignore English, knowledge of Sanskrit opens up entire field of knowledge whose relevance and worth are only being discovered. For example, the challenges our economies are facing were forecast in Arthashastra. It is claimed that Kautliya anticipated the emergence of markets, of stocks and shares and the consequences of the uncertainties of the market that is so relevant in today’s economic system. Thus, the Vedic system of economic and social management is certainly relevant.

Today’s education is sufficient to train a person vocationally but it fails to make a complete a person a complete human being. Although it may not be fashionable to talk about the need for spiritual and intellectual development, to conserve the best of the scientific western tradition it is essential to combine it with the wealth of the Indian moral tradition.

According to Yatindra Shastri of Arya Samaj, the pursuit of a secular polity must not come at the expense of depriving young minds of exposure to the great epics of India, which he says do not just teach about the standard of living but the standard of life. When religious education is permitted and widely disseminated in schools runs by religious missionaries of every persuasion, Hindu, Muslim or Christian, why should children studying in government funded schools be denied knowledge of Indian mythological classics?

So while everybody would agree that a scientific temperament could be founded on a defined moral or religious worldview – after all Albert Einstein believed in God – the issue is what constitutes a ‘religious’ education? After all there is no bar to instruction about religion, only on instruction in religion.