The vision statement of the New Education Policy 2020, (NEP) formulated by a committee, headed by Dr. Kastury Rangan, foresees a paradigm change in the processes of generation, dissemination, and use of knowledge in society. It aims at a paradigm shift from the euro-centric monolithic structure of education to pluralistic contextual structure. The NEP envisions a shift from the stagnant knowledge society to a vibrant knowledge society. It is not an easy task to effect changes in a society which remain stagnant due to many reasons. Our knowledge society has been formulated by euro-centric conceptual frames formulated by the British experts on education. Eurocentrism is a belief shared by the intellectual community of the Europe, irrespective of their ideological differences. Euro-centrism is a theory which believes that, Europe is the center of wisdom, knowledge, and information. They believed that Europe is the center of science, social science, technology, art, literature, music, religion, and philosophy.
The euro-centric intellectuals, politicians, and religious spiritualists believed that everything that is European is superior to what remains in the rest of the world. Europeans, they believed that, were the chosen group of people to redeem the rest of the world. They subscribed the view that among the people of the world Arians are greater and among the Arians the Europeans are greater. Adolf Hitler extended the logic further and thought that among the Europeans Germans were the superior lot and he himself declared that he was super most among the Germans. Adolf Hitler was not an accidental occurrence but the historical necessity of euro-centric theory. The shades of Hitler was evidently seen in the behavioral patterns of those who subscribe euro-centrism. They believe in the monolithic structure of life and society. They believed in one God, one text, one son of god and one redeemer. This monistic dogmatism of the euro-centric outlook prompted them to believe in methodological monism, which is the hall mark of European science. They believed that inductivism was the only one valid scientific method and only those claims-to-know formulated by the method of inductivism alone could be considered as true science. They considered all other claims-to-know as fake knowledge. So, they argued that everything that was non-European should be replaced by the European models.
The unquestionable belief in the Eurocentrism was shared by Lord Macaulay and Karl Marx alike. Like most of the European intellectuals of his ere, Marx also believed that India was a land of uncivilized and barbarous people. He also insisted to replace the Indian patterns of life with the European models. The religious heads of the European church, ignoring their congregational differences, insisted that, the scientific Christianity should replace pagan religious practices. The euro-centric masters who preached colonialism, irrespective of their fractional feuds, desired to establish political authority using religious, commercial, and military tools. This was evident in the preface, written by Lod Macaulay, to the policy draft to implement English education in India in 1835, in which he wrote that India did not have religion, philosophy, science, social science, art, literature, culture etc. So, the superior European systems should replace all those inferior Indian systems of wisdom, knowledge, and information. He concluded that, the dissemination of the euro-centric wisdom could create Indians in appearance and Europeans in spirit and culture.
He did not hesitate to reveal the real intention of the introduction of euro-centric education in India, in his address to the British council of India, he said that, “unless we brake the backbone of this nation(India), which is her spiritual and cultural heritage” the British could never conquer India. He decided to use the English education as a tool to create the Indians in appearance and European in culture. Mahatma Gandhi could realize the hidden danger of the English education and the European patterns of life. He exposed the illogicity and impracticability of the English education and the European models of life-practice in his thought-provoking work Hind Swaraj in 1905. It was the first logically valid and intellectually sublime attack on euro centrism. He exposed the logical inconsistences of methodological monism and he preached methodological pluralism in every form of human knowledge. The euro-centric intellectuals’ severely criticized Gandhi in India and abroad. But Macaulay was absolutely correct because he could create educated Indians with unconditional submission to euro-centric enslavement. Pundit Nehru, the first prime minister of India was an ardent admirer of eurocentrism. Gandhi and his teachings has been treated as academic untouchables by the Indian academic community. Hence, we followed the euro-centric paradigm in the system of education.
The vision statement of NEP reveals that, it aims at a paradigm shift from euro-centrism to Indian contextual forms. The direct corollary of euro-centrism is anthropocentrism, which is belief shared by the Greco-Roman culture that man is the Centre of the universe and everything in the universe should be interpreted in terms with the interests of man. The Hellenic philosophy, the prophetic religions, and the euro-centric sciences unanimously advocate for the establishment of the man centered world. According to the Old testament, man alone was created in the in the image of God. Further it believed that God entrusted man to rule over the rest of the creations for and on behalf of god. Therefore, it concluded that, man is superior to the rest of the creations and nothing wrong in interpreting the universe to meet his interests. Aristotle defined man as the rational animal. He placed man at the top of the order of the hierarchy of the phenomena of the universe. The Greek philosophy and culture declared that man was the measure of all things. Science placed man at the top of the ladder of evolution and admitted that there was no creature equal to man in the universe.
So, religion, philosophy, and science unanimously spread the belief that, man enjoys unconditional rights over the natural phenomena and man was free to exploit nature to satisfy his unquenching thirst to enjoy worldly pleasures. The unfettered exploitation of the nature by the human beings, which has been glorified by the euro-centrism is the reason for the ecological imbalance. The vision statement of NEP designs a paradigm shift from the anthropocentrism to eco-centrism. Eco-centrism is the view that reminds human beings that they are not the masters of the universe but only one among the many phenomena. Man cannot ensure his survival ignoring the natural rights of the other phenomena of the universe. Nothing in the world should be controlled by anything other than the thing itself. Everything in the universe should be controlled by its own Centre, not by external force. It conceives the universe as the communion of self-regulated manifestations and a man is only one among the many not the master of the rest. The Swaraj or the Atma-nirbhara Bharath, aims at the creation of a world in which every phenomenon is being controlled by the force lying inside it. Hence, the much-celebrated dependence on the enslavement to euro-centrism of the Indian academic community should be replaced by the process of contextualization.
Naturally, there should be paradigm shift from the learning of the abstract ideas to concrete and contextualized pragmatic knowledge. The present system of education insists the students to mug up theories devoid of pragmatic use as part of curriculum which creates lethargic mind set in the students. There are many students, who do the job of an office assistant after securing a bachelor’s degree in technology, which never provides a chance to use what they have learnt as part of their curriculum, throughout their life. Such a state of affair creates alienation in the minds of them and they become lethargic in their life. This is one of the bad results of the present system of education and it bifurcates the courses of study into job-oriented courses and job-oriented courses. Hence it creates a false notion that the job- oriented courses are good courses because it guarantees good job. By good job it means that the job which ensures more security and financial gains to the candidate. This the reason for the rat race to get admission to the so-called professional courses. The NEP envisions to provide the students with the idea that only the job which ensures happiness to the performer is the good job. Only a person who performs his job with perfection alone deserve respect. This is the reason that a first-rate barber commands more respect in society than a third-rate professor.
(Dr. K. S. Radhakrishnan is a writer, Philosopher, Orator, Academician, Former Vice Chancellor, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit (SSUS), Kalady, Kerala and Former Chairman, Kerala Public Service Commission)
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