NEW DELHI: As the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government gears up to prepare a new education policy for the country, its ideological fountainhead is also in the process of firming up inputs for the proposed revamp as part of a long-cherished project to inculcate what it considers to be the proper Indian nationalistic values among students.In December, a national-level conference of close to 200 academics and experts invited by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed Shiksha Bachao Andolan (SBA) will review the recommendations of all the previous panels on education — such as the Radhakrishnan, Mudaliar, and Kothari commissions — to identify the deficiencies of the current system in practice.Based on the two-day deliberations in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, SBA will then submit a report to the Union human resource development ministry on what is desired in the new education policy. SBA convener Dinanath Batra has already called for changes in the school curriculum to better reflect what he refers to as Indian values. Batra is renowned for having forced Penguin India to withdraw academic Wendy Doniger’s book for allegedly causing religious offence.According to SBA co-convenor Atul Kothari , the curriculum currently taught in schools lacks focus on values and spiritualism as recommended by the Radhakrishan and Kothari commissions. “CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), for instance, has some component on value education but it’s all in theory. How do we ensure this translates into practice? There has to be a greater focus on values. During the conference, we’ll look at other suggestions of previous commissions of education that have not been implemented because of lack of political will,” he told ET.Nationalism, Kothari added, is another element that is missing from the curriculum. “There has to be a greater sense of pride in our history and our national heroes,” he said.The Narendra Modi government has welcomed inputs from the RSS and its affiliates on different issues including education. Recently, HRD minister Smriti Irani met senior RSS leaders along with representatives of six of its affiliated organizations working in the field of education. SBA was among them. Sections of academia have criticised the government-RSS interface as they suspect it will lead to the saffronisation of education.“As far as nationalism, spiritualism and values are concerned, curriculum makers have engaged with these ideas and school textbooks have brought it out effectively. I think all this is a matter of interpretation,” said Anita Rampal, professor of education at Delhi University. “The Mudaliar commission of 1952 talks of patriotism as a value that helps us understand our country and its diversity. The commission spoke against jingoism. When people say the current education system lacks these elements maybe they see nationalism, spiritualism and values differently.”The two-day conference on December 13 and 14 will be held just before the government’s own deliberations on the new national education policy. Irani had recently announced that consultations on the new policy will be held at state and national level starting January 2015. According to ministry sources, the government will have consultations even at the gram panchayat level and seek feedback from all sections of society, as advocated by the RSS. However, there is no clarity on how such exhaustive consultations will be facilitated as the Modi government is yet to set up an education commission for this purpose.