Ever since the RSS’s first entry into government via its political arm – the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1967 – as part of the Samyukt Vidhayak Dal (‘Samvid’) governments, where it shared power with socialists in a few north Indian states, its objective was always to first seek control of the education ministry. The Sangh Parivar acutely understood the ideological power of textbooks and syllabus. The fact that India’s first education minister was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a national movement luminary, eminent scholar and former Congress president, remained a lasting sore point with the RSS.While Indira Gandhi’s government may have also pushed to centralise education by shifting it away from exclusive state control during the official Emergency, the underlying ideological reasons for the RSS seeking such centralisation are starkly different.This ideological drive was highly visible in 2002 during the first BJP-led NDA government, when textbook revisions sparked massive furore, the matter ultimately reaching the Supreme Court. Petitioners argued that the National Curriculum Framework violated secularism and bypassed the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). The court ruled that while CABE’s role is advisory, precedent dictated its consultation to ensure smooth coordination between the Union and state governments on educational development.Who was the education minister? A heavyweight in the BJP, twice president of the party: Dr Murli Manohar Joshi.Fast forward to the Modi government’s 13th year in office, where Dharmendra Pradhan’s role within the RSS’s broader scheme was critical. Within the party, he was an invaluable asset as a potential OBC face for the party presidency, state in-charge for Bihar and West Bengal, and a prospective chief minister for Odisha, where the BJP recently formed the government. While his unceremonious exit is a severe blow to the BJP’s next-generation leadership face, the setback to the RSS’s long-term agenda is far more profound.That is the reason the RSS-man, Pradhan, whose father was also a Union minister under Vajpayee, was the longest serving education minister under Modi. He was trusted to implement the Sangh’s agenda in education loyally and completely.Pradhan became a symbol for the protestors under the Modi government, but they were organised against the education policy that the BJP is trying to put in place. The protests exposed the BJP’s ultimate goal of constructing a new educational universe, where IITs discuss the Indian Knowledge System, students go to Galgotias University and the like, parroting technological buzzwords and paying lip service to technology, while science and scientific temper are deliberately downgraded. In this system, logical and scientific foundations are systematically replaced by ideological priorities.In this model, independent student unions are effectively banned or discouraged, leaving a vacuum filled almost exclusively by the RSS-affiliated ABVP. The controversial National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 bulldozes states’ rights, with Pradhan’s ministry using central funding as a bargaining tool to coerce subservience from states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Pradhan ensured University vice chancellors are routinely appointed directly from within the RSS sphere, often very controversial.This ideological shift is accompanied by a systematic defunding of marginalised students and public education as a whole. Funding for minority and Dalit scholarships has witnessed a steady, deliberate decline under the Modi government. Most recently, the government of India announced that it will not renew the INSPIRE SHE scholarship scheme for science students, which has supported thousands of youngsters aspiring for higher education in science.Much has been written about the continued decline of public spending on education, most recently by Udit Misra who shows education was languishing at the bottom of the central government’s spending priorities. Ever since Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister, the share of the Education Ministry in the Budget has fallen by almost half, from 4.6% in 2013-14 to 2.5% in 2025-26.Source: Indian Express ExplainedIn independent India, education has been viewed as the definitive passport to social and economic mobility. However, that door is firmly shut under the Modi regime to fulfil the RSS’s ideological agenda. This was compounded by a series of systemic failures, including rampant paper leaks and the systemic mismanagement of over-centralised examinations by newly established authorities like NTA, and a severe drought in government job openings (no bharti) for years without proper entrance exams being conducted.With the Agniveer scheme replacing the traditional secure career in the armed forces, which candidates could aspire to join, education, earlier a matter of concern, now became a serious and popular focus of discontent.The risk the RSS confronts, with Pradhan’s departure and the massive anger on the streets, is the jettisoning of its entire education project in India and its desire to shape generations to come with suitable tweaks to policy. This is what Pradhan meant for the RSS, and he is thus being defended by RSS and BJP leaders to defend the stuff he did. NEP 2020 is invoked in nervous tweets, anxious to somehow salvage the Hindutva project for education before NEET leaks and this moment serves as the key trigger for the entire dismantling of this edifice. The Sangh Parivar fears the rejection of the Hindutva idea by Gen Z, where the young rebuff the attempts to craft them into obedient bearers of the past without any agency or ideas.Pradhan had to be sacrificed to prevent the Modi government from suffering irreparable unpopularity amid this burst of anger on the streets. But getting rid of him now leaves the RSS facing very uncomfortable questions about its entire education plot. Pradhan’s departure carries the seeds of a larger destruction for the RSS’s plans, which explains efforts to praise his work and relegating all his failures as administrative mistakes.However, the floodgates have been opened and the ultimate nightmare for the RSS and BJP is now unfolding: an energised youth movement, emboldened by a minister’s resignation, that may no longer settle for mere reforms, but will instead demand a ‘total revolution’ of the Indian education system.