... As a senior Union Minister (Joshi) could not have been unacquainted with the provisions of the country's secular Constitution ... and hence should have known that any attempt to make the study of the Vedas and Upanishads compulsory from the primary to the university level would be legally untenable. Nor, as a leader familiar with the country's political realities, should he have failed to anticipate the sharp protest the move would provoke from a wide political cross section. Nor could he  be naïve enough not to realise that any move to make the study of Sanskrit compulsory from class three onwards would run into a squall since most states are already implementing the three-language formula.

(In virtue) a non-official, a businessman, PD Chitiangla, to address the Conference ... was not only unprecedented but also outrageous ... because Chitiangla heads an organisation close to the Sangh Parivar which runs a large number or private schools.

 Equally breathtaking was Joshi's decision to begin the conference with "Saraswati Vandana". His subsequent argument that there was nothing wrong in doing it since it represented an Indian way of praising wisdom, showed a lamentable confusion between the Indian and the Hindu. Saraswati is a Hindu goddess and by no means are all Indians Hindus. Surely, there could have been other ways of praising wisdom !... Viewed against glaring omissions, and the nature of the inaugural ceremony planned, the agenda of the conference was bound to rouse serious misgivings about the Government's intentions and spur talk about its "hidden agenda" ..