Nehruvian Ideas in NEP

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which is otherwise known as the New Education Policy, has given rise to multiple debates in the recent past with one section, defenders of NEP, arguing that if Macaulayism destroyed one half of the education system by thrusting English at the cost of Sanskrit and Arabic, and also by undermining indigenous and traditional knowledge systems, the destruction of the other half was completed by Nehruvianism. Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideas on education and his wisdom have been accused of converting the higher education of postcolonial India into a hierarchy of bureaucratic babus, the latter has taken away the required scientific temper and replaced the same with a bureaucratic socialist hierarchy.

Incidentally, neither in the shortened version of the policy document, nor in the earlier draft policy document was there any reference to Nehru. Nehru is missing.