This new generation, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, is more honest than our existing generation. That was RSS's sarsangchalak Mohan Bhagawat meeting more than 2,000 Gen Z and Gen Alpha students from across India. The timing, of course, was deliberate. It came right on the heels of protests over neat paper leak that forced Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. Now Bhagavathya, played the sympathetic elder, backing the youth, calling the protest a legitimate part of democracy and asserting that questioning power isn't anti-national. All this while not overtly criticising the government. Now many saw this as RSS reaching out to a new generation. there's nothing new about it. The RSS has always been about catching the mion that India's future must be shaped from its classrooms. In fact, one of the first major initiatives after independence wasn't political at all. It was educational. It was opening a primary school in Uttar Pradesh in 1952, as noted by historian Tanika Sarkar. That's why schools, colleges, textbooks, teachers and universities have remained central to Sang Pariva's long-term project. Today that influence extends far beyond the RSS's own schools. It reaches curriculum debates, NCRT textbooks, the national education policy, scenic schools, universities and even appointments to key educational institutions. So why has education always been such an important battleground? Let me explain. Now, let's take a quick moment before we go into the episode. Our freedom struggle was also a great example of what strong journalism can do. Some of our freedom fighters were journalists too, like Gandhi and Ambedkar. But that history is in stark contrast to what a large section of our media has become today. And it's also a reminder of why independent media is important. The time is now. It's your turn to fight for your journalist freedom. For just rupees 1947, you know, 1947, you get a six-month subscription to the News Minute and News Laundry. So get yourself a subscription. But if you already are a subscriber, then you can gift a couple of them to your friends and family. Scan this QR code and avail the offer now. Before we look at what happening today let take a step back and understand what happened a century ago The RSS was founded in 1925 by Keshav Hegdewar Unlike its electoral arm that the BJP the RSS describes itself as a cultural organization devoted to nation building. Because for them, nation building was not just about winning elections, because governments can come and go, policies can be reversed, but lasting political change comes only after cultural and social change. And education and children sit right at the center of that vision. Now, if you take an RSS shaka, it's divided into four age groups. The first two are Shishu Swayamsevak and Bal Swayamsevak. In her essay, Educating the Children of Hindu Rashtra, historian Tanika Sarkar has argued that education has never been a peripheral activity for the RSS. It's always been central to its attempt to shape society across generations. Political scientist Christophe Jaffelot also makes a similar point. He says that rather than focusing on winning elections, the Sangh Parivaar has spent many decades building institutions that shape everyday life. From labour unions and student organisations to schools and educational bodies. The thinking eventually gave rise to Vidyabharti, the RSS's education wing. It was set up in 1977 to devise curricula for courses that would teach RSS ideology. Later, Vidyabharti started running formal and informal schools. It now claims to have more than 12,000 formal schools with millions of students. It also runs informal schools. Almost 4,500 Saraswati Shikha Kendras and around 700 Sanskar Kendras. These include Saraswati Shishumandis, senior secondary schools, tribal schools, hostels and educational institutions spread across the country. Then there are around 19,000 Ekal Vidyalayas, single teacher schools in remote locations run by a non-profit called the Friends of the Tribal Society. This is linked to the RSS. It's been widely documented how these schools help spread the Hindutva ideology. The Vidya Bharti is straightforward in its objective. Its own mission statement says that it seeks to build a younger generation committed to Hindutva and infused with patriotic fervour. Walk into a Vidyabharti school and you'll find many things that would look familiar in other Indian schools. Morning assemblies, yoga, Sanskrit prayers, moral education, cultural activities and a strong emphasis on discipline. Look by itself operating faith or value aligned schools isn unique in India Christian mission schools Islamic madrasas Sikh Hindu and Jain trust institutions have operated like this for many decades But the difference as many scholars have argued, is the scale. Because unlike most educational networks, Vidya Bharti is part of a much larger ideological movement. Its influence extends into policy, politics and even the government. And its ambitions extend well beyond running private schools. Students in many Vidyabhati institutions study an additional series of books called Sanskriti Bodhmala. These books introduce children to what the organization describes as India's civilizational heritage. Supporters say that they correct a history that ignored India's intellectual achievements and overemphasize colonial narratives. But critics point to passages that describe the philosopher Kannada as the world's first atomic scientist, the sage Bharadwaja as the father of aviation, and the ancient surgeon Sushruta as the inventor of plastic surgery. The RSS believes that these books recover knowledge overlooked by colonial and Marxist historians. It's their effort to decolonize education. Now, decolonizing education by itself does not warrant a disagreement. Across the world, scholars have argued that education systems shaped by colonial rule should make more space for indigenous histories, languages and knowledge traditions. But the problem is that teaching such claims to children blur the line between mythology, philosophy, civilizational tradition and evidence-based history. The disagreement is also over whose idea of decolonization becomes the new curriculum. Historians such as Tanika Sarkar, Romila Thapar, Aditya Mukherjee and many others argue that what is being presented as decolonization often amounts to replacing one ideological framework with another, one that is rooted in Hindutva rather than academic consensus. So what should schools actually do? Should they simply teach knowledge that has emerged through academic consensus? Or should they also shape a particular cultural and civilizational identity? For the RSS, the answer has been clear a long time ago. Education is not just about producing skilled workers. It's about producing a certain kind of citizens. That idea has gradually moved from the margins into mainstream policy. A turning point came after 2014, within months of the BJP forming the Union Government. The Indian Express had reported then that Education Minister Smriti Irani held a series of meetings with organisations affiliated with the RSS Like Vidya Bharti ABVP Rashtriya Shaikshik Mahasang Akhil Bharatiya Itihar Sankal and Yojana Sanskrit Bharati and Vigyan Bharati and many others Collectively, these organizations have spent decades arguing for changes to school curriculum, textbooks, higher education and even research. Many of these ideas later found expression in National Education Policy or NEP that was introduced in 2020. Now this policy places much greater emphasis on Indian knowledge systems, Hindi, classical languages, indigenous traditions and India's intellectual heritage. Some educationists welcome aspects of the shifts but others want that Indian knowledge systems could become a vehicle for presenting ideological claims as settled academic knowledge. That concern has become more pronounced with changes to school textbooks. In recent years, NCERT textbooks have undergone extensive revisions. Chapters have been rewritten, condensed or even removed. Sections on Mughals, caste movements, secularism, Gandhi's assassination and the Gujarat riots have all changed in different ways across classes and editions. The Telegraph reported that an internal program office helping prepare new NCRT textbooks is headed by Gajanan Londe, the former executive director of the Samwith Research Foundation, which is an organization linked to the RSS. Now, NCRT claimed that it had no information about the program office, but ETSIL, a government-owned consultancy identified consultants working there and described their role in a curriculum preparation. According to the Telegraph, the program offers reviews, drafts, contribute content and suggest changes before textbooks are finalized. The episode raised serious questions about transparency. Who's writing India's textbooks and who's reviewing them and how much of that process should be made public? It's happened even in states governed by the BJP. For example, in Karnataka, when Basavraj Bommai became the Chief Minister in 2022, there were a slew of changes made to textbooks. The revisions included removing lessons written by several Dalit, progressive and minority writers, along with sections on figures like Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru. At the same time, new lessons on RSS figures such as Savarkar and Hedgewar were also introduced and some chapters were rewritten to place greater emphasis on themes such as Sanatan Dharma. But what's important to note here is that there was pushback. There were widespread protests from opposition parties, writers, historians, teachers, academics and civil society groups.
