The Kerala government has rejected the University Grants Commission’s draft curriculum framework, citing serious concerns about the “imposition of ideologically driven content under the guise of Indian knowledge system”, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

In August, the commission had released the draft framework for nine subjects and invited public feedback.

Kerala’s Higher Education Minister R Bindu described the draft as “regressive, unscientific and aligned with the ideological interests of the Sangh Parivar”, India Today reported.

The Sangh Parivar is a term used to describe a collective of Hindutva organisations linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Bindu specifically highlighted that themes such as “Ram Rajya”, or the utopian reign of the Hindu deity Ram, being linked to corporate social responsibility and environmental, social and governance were examples of ideological bias.

She further argued that “such an agenda could lead to intolerance and unrest in our academic institutions”.

A state government panel, chaired by economist Prabhat Patnaik, concluded that the proposed Learning Outcomes-based Curriculum Framework fails to meet the intellectual and disciplinary standards expected of university education, The Indian Express reported.

The state government panel included historian Romila Thapar and Rajan Gurukkal, the vice chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council.

It submitted a detailed critique to the Union education ministry, conveying that the framework would not be implemented in the state, The Hindu reported.

The panel’s report, made public on Thursday, said that the framework violates autonomy of universities in a way that “does not exist in any major country of the world” and is “unprecedented even in our own country”, The Indian Express reported.

The panel said that the document was an “admixture of material” drawn from British and American textbooks that do not highlight “the exploitative role of imperialism in the history of our society”.

It also criticised the “Hindu-exclusivist perception of the Indian knowledge system” in the draft framework.

Thapar, a special invitee to the committee, warned that the framework undermines academic quality and risks reducing higher education to rote learning, The Hindu reported.

She criticised the undefined use of the term “Indian knowledge system” throughout the draft, arguing that no clear definition or analytical framework has been provided.

“Even if some of the texts were composed in Sanskrit, there was, during the first and early second millennia AD, a considerable exchange of ideas on proto-science across India, west Asia, central Asia and China,” she said. “These ideas cannot be given a geographical boundary or a religious origin”.

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