Our knowledge society has been formulated by Eurocentric conceptual frames formulated by British experts on education. Eurocentrism is a theory which believes that Europe is the centre of science, social science, technology, art, literature, music, religion and philosophy—of all wisdom, knowledge, and information. It is a belief shared by the intellectual community of Europe, irrespective of their ideological differences.
The vision statement of the new National Education Policy 2020, formulated by a committee headed by Dr K. Kasturirangan, foresees a major change in the processes of the generation, dissemination and use of knowledge in society. It aims at a paradigm shift from the Euro- centric monolithic structure of education to a pluralistic contextual structure. The NEP envisions a shift from a stagnant knowledge society to a vibrant one.
It is not an easy task to effect changes in a society which has remained stagnant due to many reasons. Our knowledge society has been formulated by Euro- centric conceptual frames formulated by British ex- perts on education. Euro- centrism is a theory which believes that Europe is the centre of science, social science, technology, art, literature, music, religion and philosophy — of all wisdom, knowledge, and information. It is a belief shared by the intellectual community of Europe, irrespective of their ideological differences.
Eurocentric intellectuals, politicians and religious spiritualists believed that everything that is European is superior to what remains in the rest of the world. Europeans, they believed, were the group of people chosen to redeem others. They subscribed to the view that among the people of the world, Aryans are greater and among the Aryans, the Europeans are greater. Adolf Hitler extended the logic further, and thought that among the Europeans, Germans were the superior lot and declared that he himself was the most superior among the Germans. Hitler was not an accidental occurrence but the historical necessity of Eurocentric theory.
The shades of Hitler were evidently seen in the behavioural patterns of those who subscribe to Eurocentrism. They believed in a monolithic structure of life and society. They believed in one God, one text, one Son of God, and one redeemer. This monistic dogmatism of the Eurocentric outlook prompted them to believe in methodological monism, which is the hallmark of European science. They believed that inductivism was the only one valid scientific method and only those claims-to-know formulated by the method of inductivism alone could be considered as true science. They considered all other claims to knowledge as fake knowledge. So, they argued that everything that was non-European should be replaced by European models.
Such an unquestionable belief in Eurocentrism was shared by Lord Macaulay and Karl Marx alike. Like most of the European intellectuals of his era, Marx also believed that India was a land of uncivilised
and barbarous people. He also insisted on replacing the Indian patterns of life with the European models. The religious heads of the European church, ignoring their congregational differences, insisted that scientific Christianity should replace pagan religious practices. The Eurocentric masters who preached colonialism, irrespective of their fractional feuds, desired to establish political authority using religious, commercial, and military tools. This was evident in the preface, written by Lord Macaulay, to the policy draft to implement English education in India in 1835, in which he wrote that India did not have religion, philosophy, science, social science, art, literature, culture, etc. So, the superior European systems should replace all those inferior Indian systems of wisdom, knowledge and information. He concluded that the dissemination of Eurocentric wisdom could create people who were Indians in their appearance and Europeans in their spirit and culture.
Macaulay did not hesitate to reveal the real intention of the introduction of a Eurocentric education in India. In his address to the British council of India, he said that “unless we break the backbone of this nation (India), which is her spiritual and cultural heritage”, the British could never conquer India. He decided to use English education as a tool to create a population which was Indian in appearance and European in culture.
Mahatma Gandhi realised the hidden danger of English education and the European patterns of life. He exposed their illogicality and impracticability in his thought- provoking work Hind Swaraj in 1905. It was the first logically valid and intellectually sublime attack on Eurocentrism. He exposed the logical inconsistencies of methodological monism and he preached methodological pluralism in every form of human knowledge. The Eurocentric intellectuals criticised Gandhi severely in India and abroad. But Macaulay was absolutely correct because he could create educated Indians with an unconditional submission to Eurocentric enslavement. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, was an ardent admirer of Euro-centrism. Gandhi and his teachings came to be treated as academic untouchables by the Indian academic community, and hence, we followed the Eurocentric paradigm in our system of education.
The vision statement of NEP 2020 reveals that it aims at a paradigm shift from such Eurocentrism to Indian contextual forms. The direct corollary of Eurocentrism is anthropocentrism, a belief shared by the Greco-Roman culture, which says that man is the centre of the universe and everything in the universe should be interpreted in terms of the interests of man. The Hellenic philosophy, the prophetic religions, and the Eurocentric sciences unanimously advocate for the establishment of the man-centred world. According to the Old Testament, man alone was created in the image of God. Further, it believed that God entrusted man to rule over the rest of the creations for and on behalf of God.
Therefore, it concluded that man is superior to the rest of the creations and there is nothing wrong with interpreting the universe to meet his interests.
Aristotle defined man as a rational animal. He placed man at the top of the order of the hierarchy of the phenomena of the universe. The Greek philosophy and culture declared that man was the measure of all things. Science placed man at the top of the ladder of evolution and admitted that there was no creature equal to man in the universe.
Religion, philosophy and science unanimously spread the belief that man enjoys unconditional rights over natural phenomena and that man was free to exploit nature to satisfy his unquenchable thirst to enjoy worldly pleasures. The unfettered exploitation of nature by human beings, which has been glorified by Eurocentrism, is the reason for ecological imbalance. The vision statement of the NEP, thus, designs a paradigm shift from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism. Ecocentrism is the view that reminds human beings that they are not the masters of the universe but only one among its many phenomena. Man cannot ensure his survival by ignoring the natural rights of other phenomena in the universe.
Nothing in the world should be controlled by anything other than the thing itself. Everything in the universe should be controlled by its own centre, not by an external force. It conceives the universe as the communion of self-regulated manifestations, where man is only one among the many, not the master of the rest. Similarly, the concepts of Swaraj or Aatmanirbhar Bharat aim at the creation of a world in which every phenomenon is controlled by the force inside it. Hence, the much-celebrated dependence on the enslavement to Eurocentrism of the Indian academic community should be replaced by the process of contextualisation.
Naturally, there should be a paradigm shift from the learning of abstract ideas to concrete and contextualised pragmatic knowledge. The present system of education insists that students mug up theories devoid of pragmatic use as part of their curriculum, which creates a lethargic mindset in the students. There are many students who secure a bachelor’s degree in technology only to do the job of an office assistant, which never provides a chance to use what they learnt as part of their curriculum. Such a state of affairs creates a feeling of alienation among them and they become lethargic in life. This is one of the bad outcomes of the present system of education as it bifurcates the courses of study into job- oriented courses and job- alienated courses. Hence, it creates the false notion that job-oriented courses are better because they guarantee good jobs. ‘Good jobs’ usually mean the jobs which ensure more security and financial gains for the candidate. This is the reason behind the rat race for getting admission to the so-called professional courses.
In this regard, the NEP en- visions providing students with the idea that only the job which ensures their happiness is a good job. Only a person who performs his job with perfection deserves respect. This is the reason that a first-rate barber commands more respect in society than a third-rate professor.
Dr K.S. Radhakrishnan is a writer, orator and academic. He is the former Vice Chancellor of the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, and former Chairman, Kerala Public Service Commission.
The views expressed are personal.