wooAs Prime Minister Narendra Modi barrels around India to support allies running for state government elections, his war cry is: “Now ki baar double engine ki sarkar” Or this time a double engine government. At face value it means being side by side with the BJP at the Centre. BJP governments in each of the 28 states of India. Residents of the state are promised that two engines pulled together will give twice the power.
But the true meaning of Modi’s dual-engine metaphor goes beyond India’s state-level electoral politics. It is really about re-establishing the national ideology, culture and education. To understand why India currently stands so high on the world stage – and also how it could crash – let’s take a peek inside the two engines. The lesson for Pakistan is immediate and clear.
The first engine pulls India on the path of prosperity and modernity. It has sent Indian spacecraft to the Moon and Mars, built India’s IT and pharmaceutical companies among the world’s biggest, America’s best universities filled with professors who graduate from Indian universities, and built some of the world’s largest business empires. has done. Many of the top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are Indians.
President Joe Biden recently quipped that “Indian Americans are taking over this country”. He could also mean Britain where Rishi Sunak is new prime minister With personal possessions passed to the newly crowned King Charles III. Sunak’s Bangalore-based father-in-law is the founder of Infosys; The market capitalization of this Indian IT company has recently crossed $100 billion.
Arrogant Hindu nationalists say these are important, undeniable achievements that derive from their greatness as an ancient civilization. But wait! China still did better. And, although much smaller, many emerging countries in East Asia – Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Singapore – also claim to have performed better than India.
In every case, the secret to success is well known – robust systems of education that build skills, knowledge, attitudes and social behavior suited to modern times. Together, a strong work ethic in the labor force. Stated differently, high national achievement naturally arises from the rapidity with which a country universalises or ‘Westernises’ its education and builds a positive attitude towards work.
Here’s how India developed into the present. Empowered by the scientific and industrial revolutions, Britain colonized India and sought to spread Western education and values. The orthodox Hindus vehemently rejected this modernization but reformist movements such as the Brahmo Samaj under Ram Mohan Roy and others made deep inroads.
By 1947, under Jawaharlal Nehru – a Hindu atheist devoted to ‘scientific temperament’ – India was already intellectually equipped to enter the modern world. For the next 50 years, India’s education He sought to create a pluralistic, secular, scientifically minded society. It still reaps a bountiful harvest – which the BJP happily accepts as its own.
But Hindu nationalists now want India’s goal and its image to be drastically changed. Modi’s second engine, fueled by fiery fantasies, pushes India from a happy past to emulate some kind of Hindu Rashtra. My friend Prof. Badri Raina, now retired from Delhi University, says that “This backward engine will make us believe that in ancient times we had knowledge of plastic surgery, aeronautics, satellite vision, even white milk. Streams of foam flowed in our fields, and sleeping birds are sitting on the branches of the trees.”
What if people like Roy and Nehru never existed? Under Engine #2 India’s education would have been based on Sanskrit and only English would have been understood. Post-independence India would have become a garbage dump for all kinds of crackpot science. Medical research would have focused on drugs made from cow urine and dung, the celibacy of peacocks would have been thoroughly investigated, astrology would have been taught in place of astronomy, and Vedic mathematics would have replaced actual mathematics.
let’s turn now subcontinental muslims And then to Pakistan.
Two hundred years ago, it was quite clear that the sluggish daily rut of memorization in traditional madrasas was completely unsuitable for the modern age. Meanwhile, children of Indian parents in English-medium schools were learning trigonometry and logarithms, the properties of solids and gases, and experiments show that these obey certain laws. Instead of the greatness of kings and emperors, schools taught ideas of parliamentary and legal systems.
The Ulemas all over India strongly opposed the modern curriculum. Landlords and vassals also saw little use for it, whether they sent their boys to school or, as is sometimes the case, Oxford and Cambridge. Very few chose science, medicine, or other forms of hard education. Most only learned the wind and grace that would ensure their social status back home.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s strongest call for reforms in Muslim education was. SeminaryThey are completely unnecessary, he said. He argued passionately for science and modernity, using religious idioms. While their efforts led to some degree of functionality and jobs within the colonial system, they were nowhere near as deep or widespread as the Brahmo Samaj. The conservative response limited Sir Syed’s influence.
Thus, by the time the partition came, there was a huge Hindu-Muslim difference. Nevertheless, for the first few decades, Pakistan’s engine #1 continued to gain power and was consistently stronger than its other engine. among other things, Pakistan’s space program (born 1961, now defunct) Long before India.
The forward momentum slowed and then stalled after Pakistan’s Engine #2 took over in the 1980s. Standards and workforce capacity sank. Institutions and organizations continued to break down due to lack of modern minded people. Industrialization flopped despite billions of dollars of investment by the US, China and Saudi Arabia. It became harder and harder to find graduates from Pakistani institutions capable of performing even basic tasks. Attempts were made to throw more money at education but learning outcomes continued to deteriorate.
Pakistan’s regular schools now resemble Seminary With decreasing difference by year. Several surveys indicate that the education of students has reached a level similar to that of Somalia. The PDM government has accelerated the implementation of the retrograde, adding more fuel to Engine #2 single national curriculum Imran Khan’s government had conceived. Helpless, we move to the bottom. Will India eventually face the fate of Pakistan? It depends on which of its two engines can pull harder.
The author taught physics at QAU from 1973 to 2021, the longest in the university’s history.
This article has been republished with permission dawn,