Metanarrative & Curriculum
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: September 30 2015 -
Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju has recently stated that the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has decided to include subject about the Northeast region of India in the national education curriculum from next year.
He informed that by next year, chapters about the Northeast region will be included in the curriculum right from nursery school up to class XI and from degree, MA, M Phil to Ph D level.
While the announcement of the minister can only be appreciated by one and all, particularly by those who had always supported the same move for a along time, it is imperative to note that the curriculum has to be devised with certain amount of caution.
First, it should be prudently acknowledged that the idea of the Northeast, however qualitatively singular it seems, does not in reality represent the total dynamics of the region comprising of eight States with variegated social, cultural, religious and political moorings.
The actual qualitative worth of the proposed curriculum will depend a lot on how the authors of the chapters in their own conceptualize the idea of India as a multi-cultural entity.
It should also be noted that a debate on the history of political formation of India is fraught with the hazard of being sanitized by a metanarrative that totalizes varied historical experiences and social phenomena supposedly based on harped truth.
Moreover, the subservient mentality of the citizens that emerged out of historical compulsions has been wedged between the colonial past and the perceptible post colonial present.
Under such a backdrop, the different approaches adopted by the MHRD as an agent of spreading national consciousness should remember that the dynamics of post colonial history is distinctively different in each of the States comprising the Northeast.
One is not sure if contemporary socio-political dynamics would find a space at least in the curriculum proposed for the post-graduate level.
If the proposed curriculum could indeed accommodate the long drawn political turmoil, this could bring immense help in not only understanding the people of the region but also pave the way for providing some space for negotiation.
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