National Education Policy 2020 aims to build complete personality: RSS functionary

The objective of the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 is to build a complete personality of an individual, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) office- bearer said here on Wednesday.

RSS’s Akhil Bharatiya Sah-pracharak Sunil Ambekar also alleged that the British education system destroyed the system of education prevalent in the country before their arrival.

He was speaking on ‘Rashtriya Shiksha Niti Ujjwal Bharat Ki Aur’ at a two-day lectures series here.

“People think that there was no education system in India and that it was introduced in the country by the British, which is wrong,” he said.

“I feel that India has the oldest education system in the world. They had created such a system that the values they imparted remained the same for generations. We need to understand this objective. When we talk about the NEP-2020, we need to question why we need this education policy and what we are creating through it,” he said.

“Your education system will depend on how you look at the social life and humans…We need know how the education system was before the advent of the new educational policy and how it was years back.

“Many people believe that education came into the country only after British arrived and that it developed because of them. But we all know that there were many educational facilities in our country before the British came,” he said.

Ambekar said the education system in India was slowly destroyed after the British came to India.

“Actually, it was the beginning of destruction of our education system,” he said.

Citing a report, he said that in 1830 that there were one lakh schools in Bengal and Bihar, and similarly in Bombay, Madras and Punjab presidencies.

In 1858, British had enrolled only 20,000 students in 452 schools and colleges in 21 district of Madras presidency.

“On the contrary, 11,000 schools already existed before them and it had 1094 colleges and 1,57,195 students were studying in schools and 5,403 students were studying in colleges. It clearly indicated that they did not improve the education system, rather finished it,” he said.

He further alleged that the British education system was elitist and it was a vehicle to promote caste privilege rather than vehicle to improvement for all.

The schools prior to the British had teachers from all castes including SC and ST, he said.

On the NEP-2020, he said, “The aim of the new education policy is complete development of an individual’s personality.” The primary education will have two major components that is foundational literacy and numeracy, he said, adding, “Our ancient education system had three important sutras- reading, writing and arithmetic and after a long break, these three principles have been given importance in primary education rather than the weight of bags.” Similarly, importance has been given to languages and use of mother tongue or local language in primary education.

Besides, emphasis has also been given to research, Ambekar said.