The attitude of politicians towards the public mind is instructive. It is, in essence, characterised by attempts by those in power to control and shape collective thoughts. Autocracies, thus, have had their thought police. Democracies, including, it is being alleged, the mother of democracy, have gone about this nefarious design in a subtler manner — the weaponisation of institutions, especially those pertaining to education, seems to be the preferred option. Consider the recent criticism directed at the National Council of Educational Research and Training. The NCERT, which had earlier courted controversy on account of its role in snipping texts deemed ideologically inconvenient to the ruling regime, has now been accused of transforming itself into a propaganda machinery in all its finery. The Union education minister has announced, without batting an eyelid, that the NCERT will bring out modules that would screech about the accomplishments of the Narendra Modi government. Aptly, Mr Modi loomed larger than the nation’s scientific fraternity in the NCERT’s mint-new modules on Chandrayaan-3. The contamination of pedagogy is not limited to political imperatives: certain vector-like ideological strains, too, have been spotted in the NCERT’s content in recent times. For instance, another module, one for middle school children, threatens to blur the lines separating science and mythology.

These are worrying signs for several reasons. They are suggestive of the undermining of institutional autonomy. When the United Progressive Alliance was in power, the NCERT had published content, based on academic rigour and restrained in tone, that was not necessarily aligned with the political narrative of the day. The push for curriculum to be more receptive towards the ruling government’s claims of success is, of course, intended — this is another concern — to deflect attention from worrying ground realities. For instance, for students to learn about Mr Modi’s ‘effective’ management of Covid would be nothing but a travesty of the truth. The agenda, evidently, is to throttle independent thinking. This disconcerting motive has other dimensions in New India, such as the assault on the media and the parallel choking of the manoeuvring space — financial, administrative and pedagogical — of universities. If this devious programme succeeds, it is likely to produce a generation of Indians with passive minds that are incapable of asking searching questions. Such passivity would have deleterious consequences for democracy, rationality and the scientific temper.