Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government has rejected the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) draft curriculum framework, calling it ideologically biased and academically weak.
The UGC had released the draft framework for nine subjects in August and invited public feedback. However, Kerala’s Higher Education Minister R Bindu described the document as “regressive, unscientific and aligned with the ideological interests of the Sangh Parivar”, a term for groups linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, India Today reported. She criticized references such as linking “Ram Rajya”, the idealized rule of the Hindu deity Ram, to corporate social responsibility and governance, saying they reflected ideological imposition.
“Such an agenda could lead to intolerance and unrest in our academic institutions,” Bindu warned.
A panel set up by the state government and chaired by economist Prabhat Patnaik reviewed the framework and concluded it fell short of intellectual and disciplinary standards required in higher education, The Indian Express reported. Historian Romila Thapar and Kerala State Higher Education Council vice chairman Rajan Gurukkal were among those who contributed to the report.
The panel, which submitted its findings to the Union education ministry, said the framework would not be implemented in Kerala, The Hindu reported. Its report argued that the document undermines university autonomy in a way “unprecedented even in our own country” and unlike practices in other major nations, The Indian Express reported.
It also criticized the draft as a patchwork of material from British and American textbooks that ignore the exploitative role of imperialism, and for presenting a “Hindu-exclusivist perception of the Indian knowledge system”.
Thapar, a special invitee to the committee, cautioned that the framework reduces academic rigor and risks turning higher education into rote learning, The Hindu reported. She pointed out that the draft repeatedly invokes the term “Indian knowledge system” without defining it.
“Even if some of the texts were composed in Sanskrit, there was, during the first and early second millennia AD, a considerable exchange of ideas on proto-science across India, west Asia, central Asia and China,” she noted, adding that such ideas cannot be confined to a single religion or geography.