Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics: ‘Hindus Least Educated In The World’? Here’s Some Perspective

The Huffington Post has come out with yet another sensational headline 'Hindus Least Educated Religious Group In The World: Pew Survey'.

However, a study of the original report reveals something different. The report says that 'Muslims and Hindus' (not Hindus alone) 'tend to have the fewest years of formal schooling' and puts both Muslims and Hindus as having an average of 5.6 years in school. It is quite understandable that The Huffington Post would not like to face the charge of 'Islamophobia' if it states that Muslims are the least educated religious groups. We all know what kind of attacks Richard Dawkins had to face when he made a similar charge against Muslims.

That Hindus need to do a lot in the field of education cannot be denied and the statistics should be studied, analysed, debated and used by Hindu groups like RSS which have been in the forefront of spreading modern education through cost-effective ways like the one-teacher schools. They also need to put these data in context of educational apartheid against the Hindus practised by the post-colonial government which is actually the continuation of the anti-Hindu educational policies of the British.

The British had always seen the national education movements, from Arya Samaj to Ramakrishna Mission, with suspicion. Their fears were, of course, not unfounded as the most troublesome revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh came from national education institutions like DAV (Dayananda Anglo Vedic schools network). In modern times, despite the Sangh schools having a track record of serving not only Hindu tribal children with the best education but helping Muslim children get state and district ranks in the state board school examinations, they have been constantly attacked in the media as if they are Hindu equivalents of Al Qaeda or ISIS. The previous UPA government tried to destroy them. These pseudo-secular wars waged against the Hindu efforts at education need to be seen in the context of the Pew report.

If one is to go through the entire report as reported by The Huffington Post, one would get a dismal picture. The Pew report seemed to have really damned the Hindus. Muslims are far better in literacy than Hindus, globally.

But what is not disclosed are two important things:

One is the historical and global context: There are many Muslim countries in the world. They are extremely rich and can run exclusive Islamic educational institutions on petro-dollars. In the case of Hindus, after being under alien rules and invasions that had ravaged their land, destroying their world renowned libraries, massacring their learned men and women, they are today under a supposedly secular government. This secular socialist regime, which was for most of the part under a particular dynasty, has made a mess of state-run educational institutions. State-run schools stand like the one constant eternal, changeless entities in towns and villages, while everything else around them changes drastically.

Despite all these handicaps, which should have left India completely illiterate, that Hindus have achieved even the present state of education is a miracle. But as Hindus, they should remember that they have light years to go to achieve their rightful place in the world of education and they need to do it at light speed.

The second important fact undisclosed in the popular Huffington Post sensational anti-Hindu attack is in the original report itself. One would expect a responsible journalist to have highlighted that aspect of the report. The report says that in the recovery of literacy, 'the number of years of schooling received by the average adult in all the religious groups' has been increasing 'with the greatest overall gains made by the groups that had lagged furthest behind.'

Thus the 'youngest Hindu adults' (born between 1976-1985) had 'spent an average of 7.1 years in school, nearly double the amount of schooling received by the oldest Hindus in the study (those born between 1936 and 1955)'. In fact, the report was responsible enough to make a separate heading and graphics showing 'Muslims and Hindus' as having 'made the largest gains in educational attainment over decades'. In this, Hindus actually marginally fare better than Muslims. Given the Nehruvian socialist corruption and anti-HIndu apartheid in education, Hindus have been able to perform this much in the education front shows the innate love for education that Hinduism has cultivated despite a thousand years of persecution.

The Modi government should study this report on the educational status of the Hindus. The Indian state owes its very existence to Hindus and as such it is duty bound to use the resources it has to make Hindus regain their old glorious days in education, and then excel that.