Mathematics education under the new National Education Policy of India: A Janus-faced highbrow mathematics instead of a hydra-headed Bahujan mathematics

Publications

Mathematics education under the new National Education Policy of India: A Janus-faced highbrow mathematics instead of a hydra-headed Bahujan mathematics

Year : 2025

Publisher : Taylor and Francis

Source Title : Troubling Notions of Global Citizenship and Diversity in Mathematics Education

Document Type :

Abstract

The new National Education Policy, brought into force in the year 2020 (NEP2020) by the right-wing political party in power, makes repeated reference to the superiority of ancient Indian mathematical knowledge and calls for incorporating it into the school mathematics curriculum. Alongside this, it foregrounds the need to build competence in technocentric areas in mathematics for India to emerge as a global knowledge superpower. However, the document is silent on ethnomathematics and the need to research it, even though in India there is a lot of mathematical knowledge embedded in the work of different caste groups. This chapter discusses the dangers of casteism and religious fundamentalism inherent in the national education policy and the way mathematics education envisions the global citizen and its other in India.