India and Bharat Diverge on NEP’s Twin-track
Navneet Sharma | 06 August 2025 | Deccan Herald
The dichotomy carefully crafted in our country's political discourse, India versus Bharat, also reverberates throughout policymaking. The phrase 'India, that is Bharat' is a constitutional truism, yet it is often portrayed as if these are two entirely distinct entities. The NEP 2020 begins with this premise and asserts that the current education system, established during British colonial rule for mass education, is inadvertently 'Indian' and 'Macaulayvian.' It argues that this system does not cater to the needs and aspirations of Bharat, with its indigenous knowledge, values, and norms. The NEP 2020 takes it upon itself to chart the 'right' path to decolonise education, an enterprise it claims remained neglected even after 70 years of independence, because it believes that earlier governments were not Bhartiya enough or had a sinister design to keep Indians enslaved to an anglicised understanding of knowledge and knowledge construction…