“There is a process for everything. If a new government comes into power, it doesn’t mean that they have started something (the process of forming an educational board for Vedic studies),” said Roop Kishore Shastri, former secretary of Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan (MSRVVP), Ujjain, the organisation that has been given the responsibility to form the Vedic education board. “ It was my idea.”

Given how the National Democratic Alliance government has been aggressively appropriating everything that has anything to do with ancient India, one would think that the creation of a Vedic education board on the lines of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) would be a brainchild of the current administration. Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani suggested as much when she spoke of “Ved vidya” in May. Irani said that the government would set up a board along the lines of CBSE and it would be for learning through an oral “Vedic” tradition. “We are in the process of looking at some aspects containing Vedic education and challenges which are attached to it,” Irani told The Indian Express.

However, it turns out that the idea of a Vedic education board is as much the NDA’s initiative as the Anti-Cow Slaughter Act or Goods and Services Tax. In actual fact, Irani setting up a committee to set up this board brings to full circle a process that was started in 2013, by Kapil Sibal during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)’s second tenure.

At present, the creation of the board has been assigned to MSRVVP, an autonomous body formed in 1987 by the then HRD minister PV Narasimha Rao. The body was formed for the “preservation, conservation and development of Vedic Studies”.  It is officially headed by the Union HRD minister; organisationally, MSRVVP is run by its Secretary.

Currently, MSRVVP has around 450 institutes across India where students spend seven years memorising the Vedas as well as studying subjects like Sanskrit, English, Maths and Social Science. Since Vedic education is currently not recognised under a board, they face difficulty when trying for admission into colleges.

The process of creating a Vedic education board started under the tenure of Shastri, who thought that an official board would do away with the uncertainty surrounding the future of Ved Vidya students. “When I joined as secretary, many ved vidya students could not get admission anywhere, could not get jobs,” Shastri told Newslaundry, adding he felt their pain and started working towards getting the board set up. According to Shastri, a general body meeting of MSRVVP took place in Ujjain back in 2013 and it was presided over by Jitin Prasada (the then Minister of state for HRD). It was at this meeting that the proposal for the creation of the board was approved.

However, much to Shastri’s frustration, even though his proposal for the formation of a board was passed in 2013, the board didn’t materialise in 2013 or even 2014.

Finally, Shastri who’d have been the actual founder of the board, could not see his pet project to completion. His tenure ended on January 5, 2015, more than a year before Irani formally set up a committee under Swami Govindadeva Giri, which met in Bangalore and agreed that there is a need to set up a Vedic education board. Current MSRVVP secretary Devi Prasad Tripathi admitted that the project was in the pipeline for a long time, but credited the present administration, and in particular Irani, for forming the committee of which he is a part. “The demand to form a board was raised from time to time and the issue was going on. But it could never really take off before this time,” he said.

The committee also proposed that the condition of existing Vedic schools should be improved in terms of facilities to students as well as the remuneration for teachers. “A professor of a Ved Pathshala (institute) is paid Rs 11,000 for the first five years and Rs 15,000 for the next five. The highest slab, that of Rs 17,000, is paid after 10 years of teaching,” Tripathi told Newslaundry, adding that salaries are paid bi-annually and can be revoked in case a minimum of five students don’t pass in the teacher’s class. “People who are trying to preserve the vast knowledge of Vedas are paid so little,” he lamented.

Currently, the institutes under MSRVVP appoint professors and associate professors of Vedic studies from recognised universities. This set-up will stay even after the formation of the board, which will be similar to the CBSE and have a syllabus designed by these professors as well as traditional Veda scholars.

The proposal sent by MSRVVP asks for funds to the tune of Rs 6 crore, which exclude infrastructural expenses. Right now, the ball is in the government’s court. “It all depends on the ministry now,” said Tripathi. Bringing roughly 10,000 students currently studying Vedas, most of whom come from a non-affluent rural background, at par with the rest of the students is a noble move. However, the same cannot be said of Irani publicising a UPA initiative as her government’s. Yet with Congress keen on maintaining its ‘secular image’, chances are they will not be shouting ‘copycat’ any time soon.