Arjun Award

Arjun Singh has finally achieved what he set out do when he joined the Government as the Minister for Human Resource Development. He has cleaned up some of the blatant actions that the previous Government had taken towards giving a saffron color to Education and History, at times going to the extreme in reaction to the pseudo secularism that had been practiced in earlier years.

True, the previous Government had enough reason to try and correct the distortions in the History of India, that is Bharat, which have unwittingly crept in by placing reliance on history as seen through foreign eyes in the past. True also, that it had every reason to introduce the elements in Education that would portray and project the intrinsic cultural values of our rich heritage.

They went about it in the wrong way, however, and lost a golden opportunity to set right what was not right. Overcome by over-enthusiasm, they tried to change history textbooks to depict history as they saw it. In all probability, their view of history may be closer to the reality of the past, but apparently the changes were done without adequate back-up and authoritative evidence. When a particular view of history has found its way into our knowledge base over such a long period, to refute and disprove it would require serious work and, at least, some solid evidence from past works about the validity of the correct history as the Government saw it.

On the Education side as well, the over-enthusiasm to depict the Hindu face was palpable. For example, to depict the pictures of our Deities to teach the letters of the Alphabet was going too far in their effort.

Arjun Singh rightly focused on undoing some of the actions that were patently wrong and not in keeping with our Indian Secular Ethos, the firm base of which is provided by the principles of Sanatan Dharma- the Hindu Dharma - of Bharat.

For wielding the hatchet and achieving all these results, Sonia Gandhi could not have found a better person in Congress than Arjun Singh who, in the eyes of the many, is a rabid anti-Hindu and fake Secularist. His actions with regard to Reservation in AMU recently, speak a lot about the kind of politics of Secularism practiced in our country - actions which even the Left parties are agitated about.

All this said, he has excellent administrative abilities and political acumen which have enabled him to accomplish the tasks at hand.

Beyond this, however, The Human Resource Ministry needs a real visionary who has the capability to conceptualize the contours of Education and Human Resource Development in the country for the future generations. The Education system is in a far from satisfactory situation. The syllabi prescribed for creating the future citizens are far too narrow as far as building the national character is concerned. For achieving the changes needed, the country needs a Dynamic and visionary person who is shorn of the Congress-style pseudo secularism and who is not shy to project the Ancient Indian Culture, something which the other Congress Governments have been afraid of doing, lest they be termed anti-secular. The Religion and Culture of the country are inextricably linked with our history and that link cannot be obliterated.

The successor to Arjun Singh should have the foresight to build upon all that is good in our Culture and combine it with the appropriate Education system that will enable our future generations to withstand the inevitable challenges they are set to face.