Being more Indian in Education

 

I guess this is what is needed. Its important to be an Indian and feel like an Indian.  Its just not the graduation gown but the entire modern education system is “a sign of colonial slavery”.

 

Its so funny that the vendor who provides these gowns and mortarboards gives it on rent for a day. Its big business I must say. Everyone who wears it looks like a clown of the day.

Jairam Ramesh yesterday gave the graduation gown a dressing down.

The environment minister declared at a Madhya Pradesh convocation that the academic square hat and gown worn at such events was “barbaric”, almost echoing the state’s ruling BJP whose ministers had dubbed the dress “a sign of colonial slavery”.

Ramesh rooted for “some- thing more Indian”. “Why do we stick to the barbaric dress? Why can’t we have a simple dress for such functions?” Ramesh asked the organisers of the convocation at Bhopal’s Indian Institute of Forest Management where he was the chief guest.

The dress, which Indian

universities would have pick- ed up from the Oxford and Cambridge tradition, does not suit the Indian weather, he added, before going on to question the need for such ceremonies.

“Such convocations are boring. We must live with the times,” Jairam said, discarding his square hat and red-yellow gown.

Later, he declared that the tradition of throwing the mortarboard in the air was also “uncalled for”.

Inspite of all the comments made by Jairam Ramesh, students were, nonetheless, seen doing exactly that in celebration.

For an education Indian middle class family, 1/3rd to half of the family income goes in educating their kids. 

There is hardly any such family that doesn’t proudly flaunt the picture

of at least one of its members in graduation gear in the living room cupboard or on the wall.