Provocative as ever, Madhu Kishwar, Director of Indic Studies at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, opposes the recent ministerial stances on educational and cultural matters, yet argues, controversially, that Union Minister Niranjan Jyoti spoke as she did because she is a "subaltern". Edited excerpts from an interview with Anjali Puri:



Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote the other day that Sanskrit has more to fear from its supporters than its attackers, and you tweeted, "Please save the Bhagwad Gita from being turned into a sarkari text." Are we seeing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s political-cultural agenda being promoted in an unintelligent way?



We have done ourselves great harm by having pushed Sanskrit to the margins and neglected it brutally. Today, if you have to learn Sanskrit properly you go to one of the American universities. You don't even think of going to Benaras, leave alone finding a good teacher in Delhi. If the BJP were serious about Sanskrit, the least they owed themselves is to have built world-class institutions for the study of Sanskrit in the states where they have been in power.

If the BJP didn't do this, as you point out, what is all the noise about now?



Forget what they didn't do, even today, if Smriti Irani were serious about Sanskrit, one of the first things she would do is start setting up a dozen world-class centres for learning Sanskrit. If you don't produce good teachers and scholars, how do you motivate children to learn the language?



Where do you weigh in on the Sanskrit-German row?



I was one of the first to say Narendra Modi had made a disastrous choice in selecting Irani as the human resource development (HRD) minister. She forced the rollback of the Delhi University four-year programme under the most humiliating conditions. Similarly, even if she is legally right that the three language formula demands an Indian language - and there is a point there - you don't do it mid-stream. You don't play with students' careers.

Perhaps you are laying too much blame at her door. Isn't the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) backing her? Modi, too, agrees with what she is doing, right?



Only a section of the RSS is backing her. Those who take education seriously don't want a joke… If he (Modi) agrees with it, I can only say that being at 7, Race Course Road has damaged his brain because he was not like that. If you look at his track record as Gujarat Chief Minister, which I have done very closely, what are the things he is known for? No knee-jerk reactions to situations, well-thought out moves, laying out a clear road map…



You're basically saying this is his agenda but he would not have implemented it this way?



In Gujarat, he made a promise to train 100,000 Sanskrit teachers and he went about doing it very well. They even began celebrating Sanskrit Mahotsavs. A Sanskrit university was set up. Things were set into motion in a dignified manner, and this is producing some results.

Yet Gujarat is not a world centre of Sanskrit…



No it isn't, not yet. I would really get the best brains in the world to come together, and then start branching out. I don't think he managed to do that, but the scale of what he did was remarkable. The effort was sincere. Yahan to nautanki chalti hai. (This is a drama.) There is real disquiet within the BJP about this. Notice that Baba Ramdev, who has been among Modi's most ardent supporters, has kept quiet on Irani and Sanskrit.

What about the Bhagawad Gita, which Sushma Swaraj wants to turn into a national scripture?



Sushmaji is trying to be more loyal than the king. It doesn't behove her to say these things, without understanding the implications of what she is saying. Even if there were no Muslims or Christians in India, the fact is there are many sacred texts. If you are a Shaivite, for instance, the Gita may not mean the same thing to you as it does to a Vaishnavite. And yet, there is a general consensus that it is one of the greatest texts. Nobody has challenged the reverence it commands and it has happened without Swaraj, or government patronage. Maybe Sushmaji thinks that Irani has become a darling of a section of the RSS, let me also try.

But what do you think of the Prime Minister giving Ganesh as an example of plastic surgery in ancient India?



I would not have used the Ganesh example, because an elephant head on a human body may or may not be the best way to drive home the point about plastic surgery. But plastic surgery certainly originated in India, much before Europe got to it. There is good scientific evidence. Look at the book by Dharampal on science and technology in pre-independence India, it is a very scholarly work.

As an academic, are you not disturbed by a flurry of statements from with BJP and RSS affiliations making claims for what happened in ancient India, citing events in the epics as real events and so on?



Statements don't do any great harm. If Romila Thapar can be allowed freedom of opinion, why not them? If they say it, you can challenge it, but to see it as such a threat doesn't make sense. Also, let there be high-quality scholarship around our texts. You do not need to take every word in them as a literal truth, but you do need to investigate. Let's have debate and discussion, not Rajdeep Sardesai or Arnab Goswami becoming the arbiters of destiny in these matters since they neither have the expertise nor the cool, calm temper.

Does it not dilute the government's stated commitment to promoting scientific temper if the HRD minister sits for hours with an astrologer?



You can't blame her for that. Everybody, including Indira Gandhi, went to astrologers. If reports are correct, even the previous HRD Minister, Pallam Raju, did not enter his office before he found an auspicious moment, and pujas were done. (Barack) Obama went to church before he took office, we don't consider that a sin.

What do you say to the argument that Union Minister Niranjan Jyoti said what she did because she is a "subaltern"? Is that not being unfair to subalterns?



When subalterns begin to speak for themselves, they are not going to speak the script that Gayatri Spivak or others have written for them. Their language and expression will be such that it shakes up. What about Mayawati? Remember tilak, tarazu aur talwar, unko maron joote char. (Beat up the Brahmins, Banias and Kshatriyas.) No one said anything then, because it was anti upper-caste. It is fashionable to be anti them. Look at the kind of abuse that Brahmins have taken from Dalit intellectuals, from the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam).

She is not the originator of the "ramzada-haramzada" coinage. It is said to have emanated around the time of the Muzaffarnagar riots.



Still, it is coming from these groups. These are the cultural subalterns of India, take it or leave it.