(This story originally appeared in on Dec 22, 2015)

NEW DELHI: RSS ' pet theme of teaching ancient Indian knowledge in science, mathematics, peace, values and environmental education and integrating it with the present system has made its way into the NCERT 's consultation documents that were discussed at the regional level for evolving the New Education Policy.This is surprising since 13 of the 33 themes for school education proposed at the beginning of the consultation had absolutely no mention of this theme and were broadly non-controversial in nature. Thirteen themes focused on issues like learning outcomes, vocational education, school examination systems, inclusive education, promotion of information & communication technology in school and adult education, child health and some others.But when NCERT began regional-level discussion, only 10 themes were to be discussed including the new theme of ancient Indian knowledge. NCERT's detailed document shows that while in case of most themes to be discussed at the regional level, a brief summary of recommendations made at the district level was included. However, no such recommendation exists for ancient Indian knowledge. "It was introduced for the regional level. There was no push for it at the district level," said a senior NCERT official. However, NCERT director Hrushikesh Senapaty said, "Regional meetings took place before I joined as the director. May be it was an outcome of district-level meeting."A senior NCERT official said theme on ancient knowledge system has also made its way to the apex national committee that will finalise the policy by early 2016.The detailed theme on ancient Indian knowledge says there is a need to find how to promote researchers to find out ancient Indian knowledge; what steps are required for exploring it; how ancient Indian knowledge can be integrated in the present education system; steps needed for disseminating ancient Indian knowledge and utilisation of research results; and study substantial contribution by Indians from ancient times in the peace, values, science, mathematics and environment.