Syllabus Rationalizing in Indian Schools:Darwin’s Evolution

Rationalization is an ongoing process to correct the outdated, superfluous, and unproductive contents of the Indian primary education system. Revising syllabi is a global phenomenon to add new information in light of discoveries and contradictory findings to keep students updated with new knowledge. The National Curriculum Framework for School Education is developed with this primary aim under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. But, in the process, the government needs to avoid pitfalls like replacing one wrong with another wrong. For example, including both the negative and positive side of the Moghul rule, rather than removing a chapter would rationalize the biased Indian history. We all know history is written by victors and hence is not grounded in facts and is often distorted by vested interests. Recently, some media reports came out that a chapter in Biology on Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution has been removed from the NCERT textbooks for Class 10. The news created anxiety among the parents who are now worried about the standards of education for their wards in Indian schools. The government has to come clean on this news and explain the logic behind this action. But, if there is any truth in the news, then it is a bad idea that will kill the scientific temper in our younger generation and will render the slogan of Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan, and Jai Anusandhan, severely fractured with Jai Vigyan going for a toss.
Why do we teach about evolution in our schools? It is the same as teaching about germs, cells, microorganisms, and atoms in Biology; and by omitting evolution means crippling a child’s capacity to reason about life. Teaching Biology without Darwin’s theory of evolution is like teaching classical physics without Newton’s laws, geography without telling students that the Earth is round or calculus without mentioning the fundamental theorem of calculus. Teaching evolution in schools also allows a child to differentiate between evidence-based scientific approaches to explain our existence to that of religious beliefs that often confuse Darwin’s evolution theory with the origin of life that he never theorized. His book The Origin of Species is a rebuttal to the idea that God created each species, individually.
Children are influenced by what they learn early in life giving a perspective of our society with varied ideas and ideologies. Parents should not feel threatened by scientific facts of our existence and should avoid thrusting ideas based on their belief systems. Therefore, the right education at the primary school level becomes very important for a child’s growth and the nation’s future. To give some examples, the belief in an Intelligent Design for our creation is an idea of Western society that fought several battles between the Church and science in the last few centuries. Such a belief is also held by the other two Abrahamic religions that advocate a Designer Creator who created this world and designed the highest species of humans to cockroaches and ants and the mountains, oceans, trees, and jungles with wildlife, all in six days! Then the Creator God felt tired and took a day off on the seventh day to rest. Even today, the Jews follow a tradition called Sabbath, a day of rest in their daily life routine.
In Hinduism universe is believed to be cyclically created and destroyed coinciding with the most popular belief that Brahma created the universe, Vishnu, operates it and finally, Shiva will destroy it to complete one cycle of creation to annihilation. Vedas mention abstract notions of creation, which are much more philosophically titillating.
For example, the Rigveda sloka called Nasadiya Sukta says that nothing existed in the beginning, neither space and time nor truth and lies. Nothing. It says nobody knows what was there in the beginning because even consciousness was not created. Since, there was nothing, even God did not exist. Nobody knows what was there and nobody will ever know. The great thing about this sloka is that it defines Sristi or the birth of the universe in a very precise manner.
It imagines that before the birth of the universe, there was nothing, not even a Creator God and it accepts the intellectual incapability of human beings to comprehend true nothingness and so, does not go on to narrate a mundane creationist story, a ‘la scientific reasoning. So, it raises doubts in one’s mind about the intentions of the government if Darwin’s evolution theory is removed from the syllabus to promote pseudo-science beliefs of a particular theology in education. It further gives credence to these doubts with unscientific statements of politicians and some of the academia in Science forums, like Kauravas being tested tube babies or the availability of the Internet during Mahabharata times, to name a few. If the government wants to promote the rich heritage of Indian science then it needs to highlight the contributions of great Indian philosophers and mathematicians like Bhaskara, Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Varahamira, Ramanujan, Mahalanobis, Kaprekar, Satyendranath Bose, to name a few from the long list of Indian scientists who were emulated even by the world’s topmost scientist like Albert Einstein. This will promote scientific temper in our younger generation and will provide an incentive to carry forward the torch of Indian science. (The author is a former Chief Scientist at NGRI, Hyderabad)