The education system of any country or nation is considered to be the backbone for its all-round development. Hence, conscious and living nations try to adapt their education system to modern requirements from time to time. The British, after their arrival in the subcontinet, had changed the old system of education under the aegis of Lord Macaulay (1800-1859). Therefore, the education system developed in the British-ruled subcontinent was aimed at propagating its own ideologies and culture here as well as creating talented government servants for its government who could prove to be useful to the British government.

Post-independence, a commission was established in India to formulate a new education policy under the leadership of its first Education Minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Therefore, the first National Education Policy was formulated in 1968 during the Indira Gandhi’s era, and the second was formed in 1986, during the Rajiv Gandhi regime.

On July 29, for the third time in India, the Modi government announced the new National Education Policy 2020. Preparations for this had begun in the previous term of the Modi government. A committee was constituted under the chairmanship of E.S. Subramaniam, which submitted its report in May 2016. But perhaps their recommendations did not go down well with the government. Therefore, another committee was constituted in 2016 under the chairmanship of Dr. Kasturi Ranjan in 2017, which submitted its report on May 3. Suggestions were invited from all over the country. About 2.5 lakh suggestions were received. The government claims that a new education policy has been formulated on the basis of the above report and suggestions. But the government’s claim is unfounded from many angles. The main reason for this is that this national policy was not introduced in the parliament but was passed only by the cabinet, while the previous two national education policies were passed after debate in the parliament. It is clear from this that the intention of the government in this regard is not clear. Since it is a national education policy, it had to be debated in the nation’s largest democratic institution, the parliament, and then must have been passed there.

The new education policy, on the one hand, advocates a complete overhaul of India’s existing education system and structure, and on the other hand, includes clauses that would prove to be simperative in the course of saffronization of education in Indian.

Changes in the current education structure
The important features of this policy are as follows:

• 20 million school-dropout children will be re-connected to the education system under the open school system.
• New system of education 5 + 3 + 3 + 4 will replace the existing education system of 10 + 2. That is, 5 years of foundation phase, 3 years of preparation phase, 3 years of middle school phase, and 4 years of secondary phase. Thus, school education will now consist of 15 years instead of 12 years.
• Vocational education will start from class 6.
• Education will be based on creativity, experimentation and innovation rather than teaching children lessons by heart.
• All universities will be multi-faceted.
• More than 100 foreign universities will be allowed to open their campuses in the country.
• 6% of GDP will be spent on education.
  
  Saffronisation of education
  A closer look at this new education policy reveals that it has included vague clauses that will make it easier to saffronise the education system in the future. In both the Constitution of India and previous national education policies, it was acknowledged that constitutional, democratic and secular values would be promoted through the education system here in India. But in this new national education policy, the emphasis is given to ancient Indian values and culture, ancient Indian arts and sciences, and ancient Indian history. Therefore, the preamble to this education policy outlines the motives and objectives behind the formulation of this new education policy in the following words:
  
  “The rich heritage of ancient and eternal Indian knowledge and thought has been a guiding light for this Policy.”
  
  Therefore, nowhere in this draft of the new education policy the word ‘secular’ or ‘secularism’ is used. The word ‘constitution’ has been used only in one place. There is no mention of the preservation and promotion of India’s multicultural and democratic values and ideals, whereas India is a multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-cultural country. And all nations have played a role in its development. In particular, it has completely ignored the middle ages, the golden age of Indian history.
  
  Similarly, it has been said that textbooks for e-learning would be prepared in eight regional languages, from which Urdu is missing, while Urdu is the seventh most popular national language. Similarly, despite acknowledging the importance of international languages in education policy, Arabic was not included in the list, while even smaller international languages than Arabic are included. In all these respects, the anti-Muslim tendencies in this new education policy are clear.
  
  It should be borne in mind that India is not a country of any one nation, race or religion, but modern genetic research has proved that every nation living here, including Aryans, has come from outside. Therefore, no one has any privilege over other in this regard except Dravidians who are the oldest people of the sub-continent.
  
  However, this new education policy needs to be studied and analyzed in more depth by experts of various fields in order to expose its shortcomings and to formulate a collective response and strategy in this regard.
  
  National Education Policy and Islamic Seminaries
  The new national education policy does not say anything about Islamic seminaries. However, since this education policy is not a law but a broad framework under which various laws will be enacted in the future, it is possible that the government might enact a law in this regard later, which may cause problems for Islamic seminaries.
  
  Therefore, it is important for the heads of Islamic seminaries, realizing the delicacy of the situation, to be cautious and try to harmonize the curriculum of their seminaries with modern schools to the extent of at least basic education (tenth grade). The best suggestion, in this regard, would be to formulate a comprehensive curriculum from the first standard to the tenth in which all the basic necessary religious and modern sciences will be taught gradually and which will be taught not only in Islamic seminaries of the country but in all modern schools as well. It has many benefits. The first is that the introduction of such a comprehensive curriculum will not only benefit the students of the Islamic seminaries, but will also provide a golden opportunity for majority of Muslim children who stereotypically stay away from the madrassas and religious education to receive a basic religious education. Secondly, it will also provide a good foundation for the students of Islamic seminaries who lag far behind the school children in terms of obtaining essential modern sciences. In this way we can hope that in the future we will have engineers, doctors, lawyers who will be at least half religious scholars.
  
  After the tenth standard, each Islamic seminary will be free to teach its students a specific curriculum according to its own style, domain, and
  
  specialty or different specialty departments can be established in the same Islamic seminary in different Islamic subjects such as specialization in tafsir, hadith, theology, literature and history, etc., and students will be free to achieve specialization in these sciences. The students who are inclined towards modern sciences can turn to colleges and universities after the tenth standard. If this model of curriculum and education system is adopted by Muslim seminaries and schools, it will, inshallah, prove to be a viable model, and it will have far-reaching positive effects and implications. The application of this model won’t harm us in any way; instead it will prove to be an all-encompassing step forward towards the upliftment of Muslim Ummah.
  
  It should be borne in mind that Islam has never distinguished between religious sciences and worldly sciences. It is an invention of the period of decline of Muslims. Rather, knowledge is a single unit in Islam. Islam encourages the acquisition of any form of knowledge that will benefit mankind in this world or in the hereafter. That is why the scholars of Islam have made it obligatory ‘farz kifaya’ for Muslims to acquire all sorts of knowledge of the world.