Pedagogical Curricula and Educational Media: The Malignancy of Saffronised Otherisation in India

Abstract

Saffronisation, a neologism that is derived from the saffron robes worn in particular by holy Hindu men, is used to denote the conflation of linguistic, semiotic and political actions taken by the far-right Hindu nationalist brotherhood in India to mechanically alter Indian history so that it resonates with the rest of the Hindu nationalist propaganda and policymaking. The process of Saffronisation, when coupled with westernised pedagogical curricula, has been inculcated within and beyond the periphery of educational institutions since the early twentieth century. While education in India has remained a concentrated resource in the hands of the communities that constitute the upper castes within the social hierarchy, the exclusivity of available academic resources and intellectual capital in the hands of a selected few has come off as the result of intersectional crises that collectively act as a bridge in connecting class and caste politics. This paper explores the impact of Saffronisation as a socio-political movement on educational institutions, the changes that have been made in textbooks in the recent times and in a holistic sense, attempts to analyse the effects of a neo-Fascist governance on schooling and how it affects students hailing from backgrounds that have been marginalised for generations. It is also an exploration of the role of the saffron propaganda in enabling otherisation of non-Hindu identities in higher education institutions.