Lassi and flying files

“An insult should be true to bite
Facts are heavy, fantasies light —
A truth is heavier than a lie
Hush, my darling, don’t you cry…”
From Gooftagoogle by Bachchoo

Do many people know who Zubin Irani is? The Indian human resources development minister uses her name with the Parsi nomenclatural nicety of a husband’s name and surname appended to your first. Smriti Zubin Irani holds under the umbrella HRD the schools portfolio and I point that out as I intend to compare her actions and possible fate to a UK minister who was in charge of schools.

I was probably in a minority of one when on Ms Irani’s appointment I raised a glass to a hope. Knowing she was married to a Zoroastrian, I thought there was a vague chance that she would have a natural respect for minority communities and their cultures and ways. If Mr Irani has a family into which Ms Irani has been integrated, she is bound to have come across Parsi practices, pretensions, prejudices, et al. My hope was that she would appoint a formidable committee to immediately formulate and implement a programme of multiculturalism into schools.

Such a programme would, apart from reinforcing the supremacy of Sanskrit as a second language, introduce firm ideas of the tradition and culture of all the regions and minorities of India. I realise that the diversity of the subcontinent would make this a massive task, but consider that maths in schools doesn’t include the theory of general relativity or when geography is taught it doesn’t mean that the planet is covered in complex detail. The object of the multicultural programme would be to instil a sense of enlightened, comprehensive, tolerant citizenship — most fitting for India’s democracy and progressive future. It was a hope. It hasn’t materialised, or at least I haven’t heard any announcement of such a programme.

Instead I hear about lassi being distributed in schools, of Sanskrit being substituted for German, of several senior civil servants in the ministry resigning, about a file being thrown at one of them and about some CCTV camera which was set up to spy on lady customers in the changing rooms of a clothes shop in Goa.

Let me categorically assert that I am for a good glass of lassi on most days when the wine runs out, I am against snooping cameras anywhere, and I am for Sanskrit. I don’t know precisely why her important civil servants resigned but am stubbornly against throwing files at them. A few years ago we in the UK were told by the newspapers that the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, used to throw mobile phones and other things at his civil servants. He was subsequently voted out of office by the British public.

I am not saying the projectiles were the reason for his dismissal but I now read comments in the Indian press that Ms Irani’s career as the HRD minister is possibly on the skids and she will be demoted in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s next reshuffle, something she will no doubt resent as the HRD ministry is a very high-level job. In the UK, in the last reshuffle of the present government, Michael Gove, the secretary for education, was demoted from this prestigious job to that of chief whip. Mr Gove was, during his tenure a radical education minister. Before he stood for and won a seat in Parliament, he was an intellectual columnist for the Conservative newspapers and so was, as was TV star Ms Irani, known to the public.

He was, as was Ms Irani, promoted rapidly by the Prime Minister to the post of education minister and began to implement what is considered the ideological position of the right-wing of his party. He introduced the concept of “Free Schools”, which means that a group of concerned people can start a school whose building and running costs would be paid for by the education ministry from its public budget. This would result in severe competition for the schools run by local government. The policy was a success at least within Tory circles and was often quoted as the central triumph of this government.

The ideology behind “Free Schools”, with any groups eligible to apply for support and funding, resulted in a few of them being initiated and run by religious combines. Some of these were openly Muslim schools and a few in Birmingham and London fell into the hands of radical Islamicists and caused a scandal when they were exposed. “Free Schools” were also under new regulations that allowed them to set their own curriculum within national limits and to appoint teachers who did not necessarily have formal teaching qualifications.

Now Ms Irani may have had the backing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the right wing of her party, and may have attempted to give policy shape to their ideology. But she didn’t initiate “Free Schools” or a national scheme whereby her ministry would fund RSS schools with a curriculum of Hindutva.

Mr Gove has, for the record, never thrown a file at anyone nor has he complained about peeping Toms when he was in a changing room — at a shop, a gym or at home. What he is perceived as having done is alienating teachers. The teaching unions professed themselves against his policies and his stance. Mr Cameron’s advisers wanted him to appoint someone less controversial and certainly less outspoken.

The point of comparing Ms Irani to Mr Gove is to get her, before she loses her job, to do something bold. I don’t mean starting “Free Schools” or nationalising all Indian schools and abolishing fee-paying ones — Doon downwards. But she could at least implement the multicultural approach and appoint the committee I suggested. Her very name proposes it!