should be no compulsion in regard to the teaching of them for those who have not to go to the post-graduation stage and who may need to use this knowledge as that of a library language.

Publication of popular and high standard books in all regional languages in Devanagari script should also be taken by the Central Government both for making good books in all Indian languages known all over the country and also enhancing the chances of developing a common script for the whole ,country.

The importance of classical languages should not be ignored. Greater importance should be given to the teaching of Sanskrit, because Sanskrit, apart from being the mother of most of the regional languages is also the link binding the Indian culture and also all the Indian languages including those -of the South. Where fuller study of the classical languages cannot be provided for, composite course of regional languages and Sanskrit, should be the rule rather than an exception in the case of all languages.

V. M. CHORDIA

V. By Shri Digvijai Nath

I have gone through the report of the Education Commission at some length. I have Also attended the meetings of the State Education Ministers held on April 28, 29 & 30, 1967. And, I have also attended almost all meetings of the Committee of Members of Parliament formed to study the Education Commission's report. The statement on National Policy on Education, in its final form dated June 29, 1967, has also been received by me, and the signing of this report now remains to be done. I sign it with the following Minute of Dissent.

2. I feel that the objective of education mentioned in para I of the proposed "National Policy on Education" is not properly worded. I feel that it should be worded as follows:

1. Education is a powerful instrument of national development cultural, social and economic. The highest priority should therefore be accorded to the development of a national system of education which will:

-develop among the people of India a national personality based on its ancient civilization and culture;

while the rest of the para remains as in the draft.

3. I regret to say that I found much of unreality about the entire problem of education as it has to be re-organized after twenty years of our independence, as the basic problem about the character of education to be imparted to our children has not been examined by the Education Commission, as

it was expected to do. I am sorry that the Report of the Education Commission was not considered in detail by the Committee, thereby defeating the very purpose for which it had been appointed.

4. The real malaise with the present system of education in India is that it has been based on the infamous Minute of Macaulay dated February 2, 1835, the real aim of which was clearly defined by him in the following words: "We must at. present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English- in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect." This clearly shows that the basic aim of Macaulay was only to produce clerks, and this aim' has been carried through by the Government of India ever since March 7, 1835, when Lord William Bentinck got the Government resolution adopted which said that "the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India; and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone."

5. The objective which both Macaulay and Bentinck had before them was to convert the whole of India to Christianity, as is clear from the letter Macaulay wrote to his parents from Calcutta on October 12, 1835. in this, he wrote: "Our English Schools are flourishing wonderfully, the effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious. No Hindu, who has received an English education, ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some continue to profess it as a matter of policy, but many profess themselves pure deists, and some embrace Christianity. It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And, this will be effected without any efforts to proselytize, without the smallest interference with religious liberty merely by the natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the prospect."

6. Commenting on this letter of Macaulay, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in "Young India" dated March 29, 1928 thus : "I do not know whether Macaulay's dream that English-educated India would abandon its religious beliefs has been realized, but we know too that he had another dream, namely, to supply English-educated India clerks and the like for the English rulers. That dream has certainly been realized beyond all expectation".

7. Another objective Macaulay had in his mind when introducing this English education in India, was to denigrate everything Indian. He wrote in para 9 of the same infamous Minute that "I have never found one among them (the Orientalists) who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". This view of his has been impressed on the Indian. mind during the last seven generations continuously so much so that every Indian today considers everything Indian as inferior and everything English or Western as superior.

8. Under these circumstances, the basic aim of educational reconstruction in India must be to reverse this process, and every effort must be made through education to eliminate this inferiority complex from the minds of the new generations in India and also to produce young men with a fully developed national personality, based on the ancient civilization and culture of our great country.

9. I am really very happy to note that our present Education Minister, as well as the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, are fully conscious of this great need of educational reform. In the course of his address at the inaugural session of the Tenth Conference of the State Education Ministers, held in New Delhi on April 28, 1967, the Education Minister had stated: "Equally significant is the programme to promote national consciousness and to strengthen national integration and unity, Unfortunately patriotism has become the first casualty after independence. We must now make the schools assume responsibility for promoting national consciousness and for strengthening national integration and unity." The Prime Minister, while inaugurating this Conference clearly stated that "partly because of the system itself and partly because of unavoidable transitional factors, it has resulted in a certain degree of alienation and rootlessness. Many young people have been cut adrift from traditional values, without being provided the anchorage of an alternative set of constructive modern values." The Deputy Prime Minister, in the course of his address at the same Conference, went a step further, when he said : "We have a very ancient, perhaps the most ancient civilization and culture. In the realm of thought, which raises human personality to the highest fulfillment, I do not think any other country can beat this country. Today also, we are having all those thoughts and ideals but they are more in name than in action. Our ideals are the highest but our actions are probably the lowest. I must agree to this indictment, but if that indictment is rightly taken by us to heart, not as a criticism but as a statement of the present state of affairs from which we are suffering, we shall soon find a way to remove this contradiction between thought and action. We have not got to lower our ideals but we have got to raise the level of our action, so that it conforms with the ideals that we profess or believe in. I believe, education is the only instrument through which we can achieve this. There is nothing else which can make a nation integrated, strong and consisting of a real human society, because it is the purpose of education to enable us to see what is right and what is wrong and also to acquire a capacity to stick to what is right and to give up what is wrong. Judged from that standard, I am afraid, our education has been a miserable failure, barring a few exceptions here and there. That is because our education took a different turn during our days of slavery. am happy that those days are gone, but the effects of those days are not yet gone. Whereas we have become physically independent and free, I wonder if we are mentally yet free and independent. We are still being governed, and very strongly governed, by some of the ideas which were responsible for

putting us into slavery and keeping us there." These sentiments, expressed by the highest in authority in the country in regard to education, give a clear indication as to how our educational system should be re-organized for the future.

10. It is from this standpoint that I have stated in the very beginning of this Minute of Dissent that the Report of the Education Commission and all the proceedings held in connection with it, have appeared to me to be altogether unreal. I had expected the Education Commission to have pointed out how our re-organized educational system would reverse this process of de-nationalizing the people, so that a national personality might develop among the future generations. I feel that the very constitution of the Education Commission was faulty from the very start. It was most unfortunate that no less than 6 of the 17 members of the Education Commission were foreigners: two Englishmen, one Japanese, one American, one Russian and one Frenchman. Out of the remaining eleven, two represented the Muslim minority in the country. Out of the remaining nine, apart from the Chairman, who is one of the topmost scientists and educationists of the country, and the present Education Minister, a great engineer and educationist, most of the others were of a calibre which left much to be desired as members of an Education Commission, the basic objective of which was to reconstruct education in India, so as to raise it to the highest standards. It is most unfortunate that the Ministry of Education could not find a single North-Indian educationist from any of the many universities in the socalled Hindi region fit enough to become a member of this Education Commission. It is a result of this faulty constitution of the Education Commission that this lopsided Report has come before us, which seems to have been written with the deliberate objective of destroying the very national fabric of this country. All through this Report, an excessive emphasis has been laid on diversity among our people. For example, para 1.07 says: "Our people profess a number of different religions; and the picture becomes even more complicated because of caste, and undemocratic institution, which is still powerful and which, strangely enough, seems to, have extended its sphere of influence under the very democratic processes of the Constitution itself. The situation, complex as it was, has been made critical by recent developments which threaten both national unity and social progress. As education is not rooted in the traditions of the people, the educated persons tend to be alienated from their own culture. The growth of local, regional, linguistic and State loyalties tend to make the people forget India. The old values, which held society together, have been disappearing, and as there is no effective programme to replace them by a new sense of social responsibility, innumerable signs of social disorganization are evident everywhere and are continually on the increase." This by itself is a misstatement of the Indian society. There is hardly any big country in the world which does not have a small minority, but this minority does not change the basic character of the Nation. As such, to repeat ad nauseum, as has become

the fashion today, to call India a multi-religious polyglot country, is basically wrong. In this connection also, the Education Commission has put too much stress on the word "Secular" . This much-abused word is regarded as something sacrosanct, when the fact is that this word has a very low connotation, as it gives an idea of something mundane. It was for this very reason that this word does not find any place in the Constitution of India.

According to the "New English Dictionary" the word "Secular" stands for the "the absence of connection with religion." And according to the "Encyclopedia Britannica", the word "Secular" means "anything non-spiritual, having no concern with religion or spiritual matters-anything that is distinctly opposed to, not connected with religious or ecclesiastical, things, temporal as opposed to spiritual or ecclesiastical." These definitions make it perfectly clear that there is nothing in the Constitution of India to justify the application of the title "Secular" to the political system embodied therein. As against this, Article 25 of the Constitution provides for the right to freedom of religion, clearly declaring that "subject to public order, morality and the other provisions of this part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion." Article 26 of the Constitution further clarifies how these religious rights are to be exercised by the people. These Articles in the Constitution give religion a place in the political life of the country as hardly any other modern Constitution does. From all this it follows that India is not a "Secular State."

11. It is not a mere omission that the word "Secular" does not find a place in the Preamble to our Constitution, whereas social, economic and political justice, liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship and equality of status and of opportunity all find a place there. The fact is that the learned Constitution- makers of India were fully aware of the real meaning of the word "Secular" and they deliberately refused to countenance the addition of the word "Secular" in the Constitution, in spite of concerted efforts made by some members to introduce this word in the Constitution itself. While discussing the Chapter on Fundamental Rights, it was Prof. K. T. Shah, the great economist, who moved an amendment by which he wanted an additional Article, to be numbered 18-A serially, to be inserted in the draft Constitution, and this amendment was numbered 566 in the printed book "Notice of Amendments to the Draft Constitution of India, Volume One", and it ran thus : "that the following new Article be inserted under the heading 'Rights relating to Religion', occurring after Article 18 :

18-A. The State in India, being secular, shall have no concern with any religion, creed or profession of faith; and shall observe an attitude of absolute neutrality in all matters relating to the religion of any class of its citizens or other persons in the Union."

But, our Constitution-makers refused to accept this amendment and it was. duly rejected. The matter, however, did not end there. The same Prof. K. T.Shah also moved an amendment to the Preamble in the Draft Constitution, by which he wanted to add the word "Secular" between the words "Sovereign" and "Democratic Republic", but this too was rejected by the Constituent Assembly. This amendment was the very first in the list of amendments printed in book form: Then again, by amendment No. 96, printed in the list of amendments, Prof. K. T. Shah and Mr. Mohan Lal Gautam wanted Article One of the Draft Constitution running "India shall be a Union of States" to be changed into "India shall be a secular, federal, socialist Union of States", but this amendment also met the same fate and this too was rejected. These facts clearly go to show that the learned Constitutionmakers of India did not want India to be a "Secular State" in any shape or form. Under such conditions, it was most improper for the Education Commission to have gone out of its way to lay undue emphasis on secularism, as it has done in para 1 .79, wherein the Education Commission has taken undue pains to make a distinction between "religious education" and "edu- cation about religions". It goes on to say that "it would not be practicable for a Secular State with many religions to provide education in any one religion." As I have shown already, India cannot be called a Secular State with many religions. As ninety per cent of the population of the country follows the Hindu religion in one form or another'. the remaining ten per cent of the minorities remain minorities -and they cannot be permitted to act as if they had a right of veto on the rights of the ninety per cent nationals of this country. As to who is a Hindu has been made perfectly clear in the Constitution in Explanation 11 to Article 25(2)(b), which clearly says that "the reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jain or Buddhist religion, and the reference to Hindu religious institutions shall be construed accordingly." This explanation makes it perfectly clear that ninety per cent of the people of India profess a single religion in different forms, and as such there should be absolutely no ban placed on religious instruction in the schools. it is a tragedy of India that while all Christian institutions in the country have the liberty to teach Christianity to its students and all Muslim institutions train their children in their religion, it is only the Hindu students who are debarred from getting any inkling into their own religious beliefs. This attitude of the British Government in India all through the last 100 years before independence and of our own National Government during the last twenty years after the country's independence, has left a complete vacuum in the lives of the people of this country, and the present indiscipline among the students can largely be traced to this non-teaching of the tenets of the Hindu religion, because Hindu religion has always been a great check on sin and crime. I therefore strongly demand that this attitude must now change.. The ninety per cent nationals of this country have every right to have their children trained in the religious traditions of the country. I therefore,

demand that from the very elementary stages of education, all students must be imparted religious instruction in the sacred books of the Hindus, including the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Gita and other scriptures, so that when the children grow up as citizens, they may have a thorough knowledge of the background about the great past of this ancient land. It is here that Macaulay's work of denationalizing the people has to be undone and undone with a strong hand. Until this is done, no system of education, however scientific in the Western sense, imparted in our schools and colleges, can make them first-rate citizens.

12. It is in this same connection that I consider it necessary to emphasize that the attempt made by the Education Commission to dissociate holidays in educational institutions from religious festivals is most reprehensible. In para 2 -36, it has been stated that "the idea of vacation terms should be made secular and dissociated from religious festivals like Divali, Christmas or Puja." And in para 2 -37(1) the opinion has been expressed that "there is no need to close an educational institution on a religious holiday. Nor it is necessary, for instance, to close it on birth-days or death anniversaries of great Indians." I take the strongest objection to these statements in the Report of the Education Commission. In all Christian countries in the world, Christmas and Easter holidays are celebrated on a grand scale. In the same way, in all Muslim countries, Id-ul-Fitr and Id-ul-Zuha and Moharram are celebrated by the people on a mass scale, and the students are the -main participants in all these celebrations. Is it any crime for Hindus in India to be Hindus, that they must be debarred from celebrating their great days ? It is often said that there are too many festivals among the Hindus. The reason for this is not far to seek. In the words of Mr. Morarji Desai, our Deputy Prime Minister, (already quoted) "we have a very ancient, perhaps the most ancient civilization and culture." And, it is but natural that the -older a civilization, the more great men and great deeds it must have to celebrate, so that the future generations might follow in the footsteps of these great men. It is therefore not at all improper if the Hindus have a much larger number of festivals to celebrate, and the students must have every facility to participate in these festivals. This year important national holidays like Holi and Shivaratri were not declared closed holidays by the Government of India. This was a great encroachment on the rights of the ,people of this country, and it seems this action was taken on the basis of this Report of the Education Commission. The Education Commission seems to have been very particular about reducing the number of holidays that might be granted to students. The simplest procedure that should have been adopted by the Education Commission was that it should have suggested that only those festivals should be declared as closed holidays which concern a majority of the people, that is in which more than 50 per cent of the people participate, and all festivals which concern people numbering less than 50 per cent should have them as restricted holidays, with full pay, .available only to members of the communities with which those festivals