Return to Gurukul values ::::: Post-1947 education policy produced a devastating shift !! :::: "Dronacharya did not promise to make every student Arjun"

As India pushes toward Viksit Bharat 2047, a veteran journalist argues that post-independence education policy replaced collective purpose with individual ambition — and only a return to Gurukul values can fix it -- (The Raisina Hills) 

By NIRENDRA DEV

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised the legacy of Macaulay’s 1835 education minute last November, he reopened a debate that goes far deeper than colonial influence. The real question India must confront is this: somewhere between independence and aspiration, did education stop serving society altogether?

Post-1947 education policy produced a quiet but devastating shift. Learning — once understood as preparation for service — became a transaction. 

First it split along economic lines: rich, middle class, neo-middle, and poor, each accessing a different quality of schooling. 

Then Covid-19 exposed the digital divide with brutal clarity. Geography added another layer of exclusion. The result: education became just for the self and at best for the family. The older idea of learning for society, for the nation, for the broader human race, quietly evaporated.  

The Gurukul tradition offers a corrective — not as nostalgia, but as principle. In that ancient residential model, a student lived with the Guru, absorbed knowledge through discipline and daily practice, and understood learning as the beginning of lifelong responsibility. 

Dronacharya in the Mahabharata did not promise every student that they would become Arjun. 

Each Pandava, and even the flawed Duryodhana, found their own path of mastery. Humility was not weakness — it was the method. The teacher-student bond did not end with the syllabus; it deepened after it.

Modern education has inverted almost every one of those values. Teachers carry crushing administrative burdens, face politically influenced postings and often work without institutional support or social respect. Students navigate a system built on fear — of marks, of failure, of falling behind. 

The result is a generation that did not abandon values voluntarily. Gen Z inherited a mirror held up by adults: competitive, transactional, and often corrupt. 

The fault lies upstream.

This is where the National Education Policy 2020 carries genuine weight — and genuine risk. Its recommendations are sound: flexible curriculum, reduced rote learning, mother tongue instruction through Grade V, a push for research and innovation in higher education. 

If implemented with integrity, NEP could reconnect learning to purpose. 

Mission Viksit Bharat by 2047 will not be built on degrees alone. It will depend on citizens who think critically, serve collectively, and lead ethically.  

But intent without accountability produces slogans, not change. India must shed its habit — noted at every level, from neighbourhood boasts to university presentations at global summits — of dressing up borrowed achievement as original work.

The Gurukul taught that knowledge carries moral weight. 

The NEP 2020 has the architecture. What India still needs is the will to mean it.

ends