On the Draft National Policy on Education

One cannot but be struck by the tone of smug self-satisfaction that pervades this report, that India was the origin of most great ideas including the Pythagoras theorem and the Fibonacci series, that Indian universities like Nalanda and Taxila were unique and unparalleled institutions, and that Sanskrit has a literature that is larger than Latin and Classical Greek combined, and so on. In fact the report recommends the setting up of a Mission Nalanda and Mission Taxila to revive old glory. The point is not whether the claims are true or not; the point is the crass inferiority complex that informs the report, where past Indian glories have to be revived, without any reference to the context of common achievements of mankind in which India too had its own contributions.