target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_5b98eb2e-7628-58b4-8b76-5d8daf205e00">52 José Manuel Groot, Historia eclesiástica y civil de Nueva Granada, vol. V (Bogotá: Casa Editorial de M. Rivas, 1893), 122.
53 Manuel Bilbao, Historia de Rosas, vol. I (Buenos Aires: Imprenta ‘Buenos Aires’, 1868), 69.
54 José María Ramos Mejía, Las neurosis de los hombres célebres en la Historia Argentina (Buenos Aires: Martin Biedma, editor, 1878), 14.
55 Ibid., 15.
56 Ibid., 17.
57 Felipe Barreda Laos, Vida intelectual de la colonia (educación, filosofía y ciencias). Ensayo histórico crítico (Lima: Impr. “La industria”, 1909), 145.
58 Antonio Isidoro de Pascual, Apuntes para la historia de la República Oriental ddel Uruguay desde el año 1810 hasta el de 1859, vol. II (Paris: n.d., 1864), 474.
59 Prologue in: Rafael Aguirre Cinta, Lecciones de Historia General de Guatemala (Guatemala: Impreto en la tipografía nacional, 1899), XII.
60 Thomas Koinzer, “ ‘Lehrfahrten für die Gesamtschule’. Educational Borrowing, Transfer und Externalisierung auf die amerikanische Comprehensive School,” Bildung und Erziehung 62, no. 1 (2008); Jürgen Schriewer, “Vergleich als Methode und Externalisierung auf Welt: Vom Umgang mit Alterität in Reflexionsdisziplinen,” in Theorie als Passion, ed. Dirk Baecker et al. (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1987).
Parimala V. Rao
Imperial Roots of Nationalist Education Model in India 1880–1947
If you give education to the poor -
It “would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture” (Tory MP Davies Giddy 1807)1
“The student may be unhappy and discontented in his peculiar position […]” (Governor-General Auckland 1839)2
“teach him to be discontented with his lot.” (Bal Gangadhar Tilak 1881)3
“do you wish to make a peasant discontented with his cottage or his lot?” (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 1909)4
Abstract The roots of decolonial projects reach far back to the colonial policies and experiences. The chapter analyses the strong links between the colonial and the post-colonial in the history of nationalist educational proposals. The emergence of the first nationalist educational discourses – particularly from Bal Gangadhar Tilak – appear as a re-elaboration of an ‘imperial idea’ that critically continued the practice of establishing modern education along the lines of class and gender hierarchisation. The author shows that its underlying aim was the (re)construction of an imagined pre-colonial social order disrupted by British colonial rule. Similarly, Gandhi’s famous educational proposals represented the spiritualization of this very imperial idea and did not pose an emancipatory alternative with regard to the questions of hierarchy and discrimination. The chapter highlights the character of nationalist education as an elite project. Education constituted ←43 | 44→a primary tool in the fabric of independence and liberation. But this tool was still both imperial and socially conservative in outlook and purpose.
Keywords: India, independence, nationalism, women, low castes
Introduction
The similarity in the ideas of a conservative member of the British parliament, the British governor-general of India who laid the foundation for its colonial education policy5 and the most vocal anti-colonial leaders who have assumed an iconic status is quite extraordinary. Popular writings about the history of education in India assert that the British colonisers imposed English education while anti-colonial nationalism rejected it and that M. K. Gandhi produced the most original and revolutionary alternative.6 The terms ‘English’ and ‘English education’, as used in the colonial records and the nationalist writings, denote modern education.
During the first ninety-three years (1757–1850) of its rule, the colonial state did not establish a single modern educational institution. It established Arabic and Sanskrit colleges and issued stipends and scholarships to study these languages. It incorporated nearly 70,000 indigenous vernacular schools by giving a small salary of five rupees to the teacher and established several schools where a “pre-colonial” vernacular curriculum was taught. Though the British liberals forced the colonial government to earmark 100,000 rupees a year for Indian education in 1813, the amount remained unutilised till 1823, and partially utilised till 1852–1853. During this period, few English schools were established by individual British officers, which were regularly closed down soon after the death or departure of their respective founders. Indians themselves established most of the modern educational institutions like the Hindu College at Calcutta, The Elphinstone College at Bombay, Pacheyappa College at Madras.
Two models of national education
The imperialist and nationalist historical narratives create binaries by side-lining the areas of convergence, co-operation and trans-national connections. In fact, ←44 | 45→the origin of the anti-colonial agitation itself was rooted in a transnational connection. Alan Octavian Hume (1829–1912), son of the radical Scottish member of British Parliament Joseph Hume, was the moving force behind the establishment of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885. The liberal Indian and British leaders who joined Hume opposed oppressive agrarian policies and campaigned for the introduction of compulsory and free education. They were idealists, rationalists, and humanists who refused to turn a blind eye on the traditional social disabilities suffered by women and lower castes and the abject rural poverty. They believed that economic and social transformation achieved through universalisation of education and political agitation for India’s liberation from colonial rule should take place simultaneously.7
A group of leaders who called themselves as nationalists opposed this liberal agenda of the INC. The most prominent among them were Lajpat Rai (1865–1928), Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948). These nationalist leaders could be divided into two categories: those who did embrace modern education and those who opposed it. Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh supported modern education but insisted on teaching cultural, religious, and philosophical achievements in ancient India. Lajpat Rai was the first to raise the issue of “national education in 1883” two years before the establishment of the Indian National Congress. His primary concern was peculiar to his province of Punjab. When the British conquered Punjab in 1849, they rejected the Punjabi language which was spoken by the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs as ‘a dialect’ and imposed Hindustani or what came to be later called Urdu in Persian script as the official language and the medium of instruction in schools.8
