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        In order to conquer the world in this tremendous era of ever-widening privatisation and globalisation, the Human Resource Destruction (I mean HRD!!) Minister has heroically declared to the world that 'We want to create a weak and disunited India of the dunces, by the dunces, for the dunces.' He has announced with great pseudo-secular gusto that reserved seats in educational institutions funded by the Central government will increase to almost 50 per cent when the government decides to have a quota for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The decision will impact 20 Central universities, the IITs, IIMs and colleges supported by the government. The government is considering accepting the Mandal Commission's suggestion of 27 per cent reservation for backward classes in Central government educational Institutions and the quota increase is a part of this process. HRD Minister Arjun Singh has stated that his Ministry would announce the decision after Assembly polls end in five States The new policy, if implemented, would take the overall reservation in the Central government-funded higher education institutions from the current 22.5 (for SC and ST students) to 49.5 per cent. The Centre has already directed State governments to increase reservation for backward categories in the State-level institutions. Arjun Singh has also written to the States to frame laws in the light of the 104th Amendment, passed in the winter session of Parliament, which gives them the right to take steps that would ensure advancement of socially and educationally backward classes, SCs and STs in private educational institutions as well.

        The disgusting thing in our dirty democracy is that there is complete unanimity among all political parties on the question of endless enlarging of the area of caste-based reservations. This kind of political unanimity was not noticed even in the days of the 'Quit India Movement' in 1942. For example, the great Communists of India did not support the Congress party at that time because it was led by Mahatma Gandhi. Today their attitude is different of course because they are supporting the revolutionary (!) Congress led by pseudo-secular and anti-Hindu Sonia Gandhi.

When the Constitution of India was drawn up, it provided for Fundamental Rights. It also provided for hereditary Funda-Mendel Rights to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes based on the well-known Mendel's Law of Inheritance in the field of biology. This situation was altered by V P Singh in 1989 when he accepted the Mandal Commission's Report on Backward Classes. I call the rights conferred on the Backward Classes following this report, as Funda-Mandal Rights. In the light of this three-fold classification, it should be clear that the Indian Constitution originally provided for the two pillars of Fundamentalism and Funda-Mendelism in the field of public employment and education in government institutions. Then came the grand and massive pillar of Funda-Mandalism. The great work of educational reform and social upgradation through government quotas started by V P Singh (Arjun Singh I) has been completed magnificently by Arjun Singh (may I say V P Singh II ) today.

They  are together

        We cannot expect our third-grade politicians to study Aristotle. Aristotle may have had Indian political scoundrels in view when he said: 'Democratic education ought to mean, not the education (or more precisely non-education!) which democrats like, but the education which will preserve democracy'. Until we have realised that these two things do not necessarily go together we cannot think clearly about education.

        Rajaji spoke against the 'Licence-Permit-Control-Quota Raj' in the 1950s and 1960s. If he had been in our midst today, he would have spoken against the 'Licence-Permit-Control-Quota Raj' created by our politicians in the field of professional, higher and university education. This ARAJ has been created in the name of casteless society raised on a fraudulent superstructure of caste-based structure of quotas. Funda-Mandalism has uprooted and overthrown the original Constitutional pillars of Fundamentalism and Funda-Mendelism erected with noble, lofty and good national intentions

        I would like to give an example in this context. An education which gives the able, diligent and brilliant students (without any reference to their caste, colour, religion or creed) no advantage over the stupid and idle ones may be in one sense 'democratic'. It would be egalitarian and democrats like V P Singh & Arjun Singh love equality on account of their infatuation with the allurements of vote-bank politics. The caucus-race in Alice in Wonderland, where all the competitors won and all got prizes, was a 'democratic' race. This is the kind of race, which all the politicians in India want to create in the crucial field of higher education in India today. If this logic is accepted, there will be a growing demand from all 'Mandalised' and 'Mendelised' students that subjects in which some boys do very much better than others should not be made compulsory. This will be like changing the rules of international cricket which will confer rights on countries like Bangladesh and Holland to demand that players like Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Shewag and Dhoni should not be included in the Indian team playing against them in the larger interest of creating a level-playing ground on grounds of compassion and equality!! DOWN WITH MERIT AND UP WITH QUOTAS!!

        On V P Singh /Arjun Singh's basis, 'communal' subjects like physics, chemistry and mathematics — the so-called difficult and troublesome subjects — should be made democratically optional. I am not referring to English in this context. English is slowly becoming an extinct language. There is no need for any elaborate discussion on this endangered species.

        There is going to be complete political unanimity in India on the question of abolition of all compulsory subjects and making the curriculum so wide that every boy will get a chance at something. Even the boy who can't or won't learn his alphabet can be praised and petted for 'something'. Then no boy, and no boy's parents need feel inferior. And education on those lines will be pleasing to the throbbing democratic feelings of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and the like who earnestly subscribe to the philosophy of inheritance in every sense of the word.

        It can be argued that the new and revolutionary quota system of Arjun Singh might go a long way in repairing the dastardly inequalities of nature. But it is quite another question whether it will breed a democratic Indian nation which can survive, or even one whose survival is desirable at all. The impossibility or improbability that a nation thus educated could survive need not be laboured. Obviously it can escape destruction only if its enemies (like Pakistan or Bangladesh or China) are so obliging as to adopt the same system. A nation of dunces can be saved only in a global world of dunces. But the question of desirability is even more interesting.

        THE DEMAND FOR EQUALITY ARISES FROM TWO SOURCES. ONE OF THEM IS AMONG THE NOBLEST, THE OTHER IS THE BASEST, OF HUMAN EMOTIONS. THE NOBLE SOURCE IS THE DESIRE FOR FAIR PLAY. BUT THE OTHER SOURCE IS THE HATRED OF MERIT AND SUPERIORITY.

        All the political parties in India today are pitted against any system founded on merit and superiority. There is in all men a tendency to resist the existence of what is stronger, subtler or better than themselves. In uncorrected and brutal small men like V P Singh and Arjun Singh this hardens into an implacable and disinterested hatred for every kind of excellence. The kind of democratic education which is being advocated by all political parties in India today is bad because it endeavours to propitiate evil passions, to appease envy.

        Two reasons can be advanced against this mad approach or movement. In the first place, you will not succeed. Envy is insatiable. The more you concede to it the more it will demand. No attitude of humility which you can possibly adopt will propitiate a man with an inferiority complex. In the second place, you are trying to introduce equality where equality is fatal. Equality can exist precisely only in the field of mathematics. Outside the field of mathematics, equality is a purely social conception. It applies to man as a political and economic animal. It has no place in THE WORLD OF THE MIND.

        As C S Levis beautifully puts it: 'Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many, more to the persistent and disciplined seekers than to the careless. Virtue is not democratic; she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men. Truth is not democratic; she demands special talents and special industry in those to whom she gives her favours'.

        In my view, political democracy is doomed if it tries to extend its demand for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical, intellectual or aesthetic democracy is death. A truly democratic education - one which will preserve democracy — must be, in its own field, ruthlessly aristocratic, shamelessly 'highbrow'. Our democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it will die when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.