Educational institutions are being transformed into centres for promotion of hyper-nationalism and corporate-driven vocational training under the New Education Policy (NEP), Gandhian M.P. Mathai has said.
He was inaugurating the Education Protection Assembly organised jointly by the Thrissur Civil Society and the All India Save Education Committee at the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Auditorium here on Tuesday.
The meeting, held with strong demands to withdraw NEP 2020 and revoke the PM SHRI agreement signed by the Kerala government, saw sharp criticism of what speakers described as an ideology loaded with neonationalism agenda.
“Utility alone drives these new reforms. The NEP aims to turn the new generation into machines devoid of humanity, life and love,” poet Rafeeq Ahamed remarked.
Speakers, including literary critic Prof. P.V. Krishnan Nair, writer Shihabudheen Poythumkadavu and M. Shajar Khan, addressed the inaugural session chaired by senior journalist M.P. Surendran. The leaders jointly unveiled a draft alternative people’s education policy, holding it up as a counter-vision to the centralised NEP framework.
In a presentation on ‘federalism and the NEP,’ Left thinker Azad said the policy represented “a shift from Nehruvian nationalism to Hindu nationalism,” rooted in a spiritual-cultural majoritarian framework. The centralisation of educational authority, he argued, aimed at dismantling States’ powers and imposing a long-term ideological structure beginning from primary education.
This story was originally published in thehindu.com. Read the full story here.
