Decolonising science in Indian education

Context: Education is central to the idea of modernity in independent India. In the Indian education system, a certain aspect of European modernity has lingered for a long time which has hampered the Indian intellectual discourse.

Measures Taken So Far

All Education Commissions have been headed by scientists to ensure advancement with scientific and technological development. For example, Daulat Singh Kothari, Yash Pal, and K Kasturirangan Commission.

What are the issues in the present education system?

The post-colonial science and science education is deeply mixed with the colonial hangover and practices.

In the current dispensation, the government is sceptical about all forms of western intellectual enthusiasm.

The entire developing countries including India are bowing to the western colonial thought in the post-colonial world. Once upon a time, India was receptive as well as productive. India possessed a mind of our own in India. In reality, India thought, India felt and India expressed itself.

The western element thwarted creation of thinkers that can help us understand the structure and foundations of our own scientific thought.

Globalisation is also a form of new-age intellectual colonialism which restricts development of the Indian intellectual.

Role and Importance of NEP

The New Education Policy 2020 has taken delightful steps forward in ensuring that we raise a generation of scientists and scientific thinkers through the education we provide to our students.

The policy has been designed to completely revamp our systematic education.  It may help to decolonise by inculcating a sense of nationalist commitment and Indian value-based education.

The NEP is important to boost indigenous creative thinking. It is also an attempt to unify our active engagement with creative thinking. It can help promote the true nature of the Indian mind

The state has a commitment to work on public policies and diplomatic discourses that localise knowledge of science and enhance the character of Indian scientific enterprise to counter the deleterious effects of globalisation in the 21st century.

Education must be intimately associated with the life of its people. However, our modern education at present serves professions of the English educated elite. This English based education system does not reach the farmer, the grinder, or the potter etc.

The NEP would promote Indianizing education and emphasising learning in regional languages.

The NEP might be able to raise a generation of Indian scientific thinkers. They would help us make sense of our ideas of scientific modernity rooted in Indian scientific thought.

The NEP aims of schools practising agriculture, dairy keeping, weaving on the best modern techniques, roped to culminate into Yatra Vishvam Bavatikanidam (where the world meets in one nest).

Way Forward

Science should be made available locally. It will help its acceptance and understanding in the masses. It will enrich the scientific temper and the spirit of inquiry among the Indian masses.

The modern schools, colleges and universities should focus on Indianizing education instead of becoming part of western thoughts.

Source: The post is based on an article “Decolonising science in Indian Education” published in the Indian Express on 25th May 2022.