Sex education under attack in India

Shaikh Azizur Rahman, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: May 18. 2009 11:39PM UAE / May 18. 2009 7:39PM GMT

KOLKOTA// Health activists are concerned about a rise in sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers after a powerful government committee recommended that sex education in schools be banned.

India’s Parliament’s Committee on Petitions (CP), which responds to grievances against government policies, said in a report last month that the government-approved curriculum “promotes promiscuity” and “incites stimulation of instincts which is detrimental to society”.

Health workers are outraged at the decision and warned that it would have adverse effects on the health of the youth.

“The [sex education] programme has been very successful and even children in their early teens in our state know how HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are spread,” said Palanisamy Muthupandian, who has been teaching sex education in the southern state of Tamil Nadu for more than 15 years. “If the ban comes through, it will deal a disastrous blow to our HIV-awareness programme when lack of awareness has been the key factor for increase of HIV in India.”

It was only towards the end of the 1990s, when pressure from parents and health activists compelled government schools to also teach sex education and, in an effort to make sex education an integral part of school curriculum, the ministry of human resource development prepared special textbooks with the help of National Aids Control Organisation.

But as soon as the curriculum, targeting pupils between 14 and 18 years old, was introduced into schools in 2005 it provoked an outcry among conservative parents, educators and religious leaders, who said the programme was corrupting young minds and should be banned.

In 2007, a teacher from Mumbai and a parent from New Delhi filed a petition with the Parliament Committee asking the influential body to intervene and halt sex education in schools.

In response the CP – which consists of 10 upper house members of parliament drawn from various political parties and is headed by M Venkaiah Naidu, a leader of the Hindu nationalist BJP party – issued a report last month urging a ban on sex education in schools.

“There is no justification to introduce this curriculum to our schools. Our country’s social and cultural ethos is such that sex education has absolutely no place in it,” the CP report said. “[The programmes’s] real objective was to impart sex education in schools and promote promiscuity.”

In its report, the CP also suggested that the “indecent” curriculum be replaced with one that teaches the lives of Indian saints, spiritual leaders, freedom fighters and national heroes to “re-inculcate in children our national ideals and values which would also neutralise the impact of cultural invasion from various sources [outside the country]”.

The government has not yet responded to the CP’s recommendations, but it rarely ignores the advice of the body.

Giving his opinion to the committee, Joginder Singh, the former chief of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, warned that sex education lessons would lead to a rise in rape and related crimes.

Vidya Sagar Verma, a foreign ministry official, who also testified to the CP, said he feared it could lead to the sexual harassment of students inside the classroom. The report also concluded that there was no credible evidence that students in the 14 to 18 age group were a high-risk group and required education on HIV prevention.

But health activists who have been involved in sex education for years said the charges were “totally unfounded” and that the students were benefiting from sex education classes.

“These charges are just a load of rubbish. Students between ninth to eleventh standards in more than 70 schools have been receiving lessons from us on reproductive tract, health and hygiene, including issues on sex and sexuality. We have had only positive responses from students, parents and teachers. We have never come across a single case which reflected the negative outcome of our classes,” said Pinagapani Manorama Community, the director of the Health Education Society, who has been working in Tamil Nadu for more than 15 years.

Doe Nair, another New Delhi-based sex education specialist, said many students had told her they had received “a learning for life” in her classes and that she believed a ban on this type of education would severely limit a child’s understanding of sex-related issues.

aziz@thenational.ae