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KOLKATA, INDIA, April 14, 2003: A few states are resisting efforts made by HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi to implement reforms in the field of education. Using “value education” as a starting point, he initiated what he hopes will stimulate a campaign to encourage the Marxist government of West Bengal to accept the new NCERT curriculum, a Hindu-friendly revision of the national school curriculum by the BJP government. Addressing a meeting organized on Monday by the West Bengal Education and Educationalists’ Association, Joshi set aside Hindutva to promote value education’s secular goals. Though the Leftist lost their case against the religion-value linkage in the NCERT curriculum, the Bengal government has nevertheless decided not to implement it. “I don’t know of any religion which does not say it is wrong to lie or steal. It is a tragedy that the country which taught universal humanism to the whole world does not teach values in its schools,” Joshi said. Joshi described the Marxists’ turnaround to the NCERT curriculum as “unfortunate” and pointed out that a nationwide consultation had preceded its adoption. The suggestion to include value education in the school curriculum, he said, was made by a parliamentary subcommittee and had specifically asked for teaching the main tenets of all religions. Joshi faces a challenge as West Bengal’s Marxist government has always followed an independent track when it came to deciding on the school curriculum.

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