I suppose there's nothing wrong in teaching your kids Ayurveda and Unani when those in other countries are learning bioengineering and eugenics.
But do you really want them to graduate in Vedic astrology when new explorations of space and astronomy have rendered it obsolete with the discovery of new planets?
In a nation where precious few get a quality education, the BJP's new education curriculum is not just dangerous, it is downright dishonest.
Here are some 'lessons' from the Sanskriti Gyan text books being circulated in their schools:
. Iran was first settled by Indians (Aryans).
. Homer adapted Valmiki's Ramayana into an epic called Iliad.
. The Egyptian faith was based on Indian traditions according to Plato and Pythagoras.
. The language of native American Indians evolved from ancient Indian languages.
. The cow is the mother of us all, in whose body Gods are believed to reside.
All these assertions are factually ludicrous.
Is the replacement of history and biology by mythology the BJP's idea of a contemporary education? Is such knowledge meant to equip the next generation of Indians to live in a globalised world?
If the Hindutva brigade gets to impose its curriculum, our children will be anachronisms in an era where high learning is within the grasp of anyone with a keyboard and an Internet connection.
Not surprisingly, the education ministers of nine states have refused to introduce these "revised" texts or the compulsory singing of the Saraswati Vandana in the morning school assembly. However, the government is not deterred by the resistance.
Is this the secular India we promised our minorities at the time of Independence?
True, the killers of Mahatma Gandhi were never a party to his vision of Muslim-Hindu unity but there are plenty of Hindus who would never dream of imposing their personal religious practices on friends and colleagues of different faiths.
No doctrine of Hindu ethnic supremacy can ever be imposed in a pluralist, democratic society - you have to be Hitler to do that.
Already, the nation's foremost historians like Dr Romilla Thapar are protesting against the government's desire to "Indianise history and show the real picture of India" to the younger generation.
According to reports, a new chapter, Religious Policies of Babar, will be added in sixth standard history books.
It will explain that Babar, a Muslim ruler of the 16th century, built a mosque over the Ram temple at Ayodhya after demolishing it.
Other proposed text book changes include replacing chapters on Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln in the 9th and 10th standards with one on Keshavrao Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Is he a greater man than Gandhi and Lincoln? Then so is Goebbels.
The bigger question of course is learning.
Do we want to teach our kids a received version of the past or one that stands up to scholarly scrutiny?
Apart from these and other historical anomalies, the new Vedic capsule proposed for Indian universities includes such courses as Yoga and Consciousness.
Yes, there has been a revival of interest in yoga in the last decade both at home and abroad but since we can't all be godmen with Rolls Royces, what livelihood can our kids earn as yoga or spiritual instructors?
Do we want to raise our children as Muslim-bashing hakims and sadhus? That's what our HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi wants.
And, he proposes to do it by stuffing all our apex educational institutions with members of the Sangh Parivar while pretending that he respects the reservations of his allies in the states.
In recent years, the Indian Council of Historical Research and the Council for Social Science Research have been reconstituted with RSS sympathisers; so has the National Elementary Education Mission, the NCERT and the Advisory Committee on Education where the reputed Prof. Suraj Bhan was removed for objecting to the Sangh's version of archaeology.
The Indian Institute of Advanced Studies has also not been spared, it has a new chairman and members one of whom is a member of the Ved Vidya Pratishthan and another who is an orthodox Sanskrit scholar.
Does the Minister really believe there is as much demand today for Sanskrit scholars as there is for Silicon Valley engineers?
To me it is simply unimaginable that anyone wants to turn back the clock and teach children "Vedic sciences" when every year brings newer sciences and specialisations in every sphere of knowledge.
By calling astrology a science, you don't make it one. By all means acquaint our children with their past but let's not do it at the expense of their future.
And let's not make them victims of the religious fanaticism of a bunch of self-serving old men who probably joined politics because they weren't professionally qualified to do anything else.
