The History of Education in South Asia

An Introduction

Nita Kumar

ContentsSanskrit Education: The Vedic Period, c. 1500 BCE to 300 CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3The Buddhist Period, c. 500 BCE to 300 CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6The Classical Period, c. 300 to 700 CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Islamic and Vernacular Education, c. 1000 CE Onward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Modern India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Abstract

In this overview of the history of education in South Asia, the questions askedare: (1) regarding the sociology of knowledge: who produced it, who transmittedit, what spaces was it produced and transmitted in, and with the help of whichpatrons; (2) regarding the politics of knowledge: who was excluded from it, whobenefited from it, and who resisted or sought to subvert it; and (3) regarding theculture and meaning of knowledge: what were the normalized relations betweentext, meaning, teacher, student, and the rest of society and the world, and howwere these maintained, that is, with which discourses and rituals.

We ask these questions for the following periods: the Vedic, Buddhist, andClassical periods; the Sultanate and Mughal periods; and the Colonial andNationalist periods. Within these broad divisions into periods are some importantconfigurations not possible to label chronologically, such as the Bhakti tradition,which is a fount of learning for most Indians. In the colonial and nationalistperiod, questions arise that continue to today: such as question of “Change”versus “Continuity” and “Modernity” versus “the Indigenous or Vernacular.”What was the intention of the change? What was its technology? How far did it

N. Kumar (*)Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, USAe-mail: nkumar@cmc.edu; nita.kumar@claremontmckenna.edu

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020P. M. Sarangapani, R. Pappu (eds.), Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia,Global Education Systems, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3309-5_48-1

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succeed, and when change hit against an obstacle – was this deliberate oraccidental, “good” or “bad” for specific communities?

“Education,” it must be clear, is not being taken in the contemporary sense oflocated within four walls or part of a formal process of grades and degrees.Spatially, it occurs at a variety of sites. Intellectually, it consists of vocational,liberal, body-related, and ethical knowledge, as well as intellectual. It goesbeyond a division (nonexistent at the time) into “home” and “school.” It is pluralin its formation, medium, and reception.

Keywords

Vedic education · Mughal education · Colonial education · Nationalist education

The present nation-states of the South Asia region share a long common political andcultural history and were often part of one, or contiguous, empire, compositelyknown as “India,” in the colonial period. In the section, we will use “India” todesignate “South Asia.” This survey of the history of education in South Asiapresents the history with broad brush strokes, focusing more on what certainhistorical records consider the center or heartland.

This discussion uses a more complicated periodization of Indian History thanthe traditional one. (Historians who have questioned traditional periodization andproposed alternatives include Chakrabarty (1992), Chakravarty (1990), Chatterjee(2013), Doniger (2009), R. Guha (1987), S. Guha (2004), and Thapar (1974, 1989).)We will look at important themes and issues that run through the history ofeducation, even while staying with a normative periodization to elucidate the subjectunder discussion.

The questions to be asked in an overview of the history of education in South Asiaare: what was the status of “knowledge”? What was, in each period, the sociologyof knowledge: who produced it, who transmitted it, what spaces was it producedand transmitted in, and with the help of which patrons; what was the politics ofknowledge: who was excluded from it, who benefited from it, and who resisted orsought to subvert it; what was the culture and meaning of knowledge: what were thenormalized relations between text, meaning, teacher, student, and the rest of societyand the world; how were these maintained, that is, with which discourses and rituals?

The first period for which we ask these questions is in fact divisible into three: theVedic, Buddhist, and Classical periods. The same questions follow for the next: theSultanate and Mughal periods. Additionally, there are now two somewhat interwo-ven streams of inquiry, one regarding high Islam and the ulama’s knowledge and theother regarding Sufi knowledge, its spread and power. Related to this, while alsoindependent, is the Bhakti tradition, which is a fount of learning for most Indians andthe process of the vernacularization of knowledge.

In the colonial and nationalist period, the same questions continue. Additionally,there are now two related question of “Change” versus “Continuity” and“Modernity” versus “the Indigenous or Vernacular.” What was the nature of the

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change? What was its technology? How far did it succeed, and what again were thepolitics and technology of the actual change? What were the limits of its success,when change hit against an obstacle – was this deliberate or accidental, “good” or“bad” for specific communities? What larger historical processes, including thosecoming down to the present, can we discern in this period?

In this survey “Education” is not being taken in the contemporary sense of beinglocated within four walls or forming part of a formal process of grades and degrees.Spatially, it occurs at a variety of sites. Intellectually, it consists of vocational, liberal,body-related, and ethical knowledge, as well as intellectual. It goes beyonda division (non-existent at the time) into “home” and “school.” It is plural in itsformation, medium, and reception.

Sanskrit Education: The Vedic Period, c. 1500 BCE to 300 CE

The civilization that predated the Vedic civilization is called the Harappan or IndusValley civilization. We know little about the educational system of that period c.2500–1500 BCE, apart from the fact that as a highly structured civilization it musthave had provisions for the education of its young members. It had a script and it hadknowledge of topography, crafts, engineering, civic planning, administration, com-merce, mathematics, and art. We can deduce at least that the teaching of thesesubjects must have been decentralized just as the civic administration was and thatthe educational curricula had a robust component of the commercial and scientific,along with the spiritual and philosophical just as the civilization’s public life had.

In the Vedic period, c. 1200 BCE to 400 CE, education went through differentstages. The earlier Vedic period had nomadic polities of which we can only surmisethat the educational system was clan based and intended to reproduce the skills andethics of the clan. The later Vedic period of settled kingdoms saw education clearlydifferentiated according to classes. Classes of warriors, administrators, traders, andcraftsmen learned what their hereditary specializations required, and education itselfwas a partial key to mobility. The upper classes also learned, to different degrees,a world view based on concepts of dharma, karma, samskara, ashrama, yoga, andpravriti (loose translations of which are, respectively, duty, work, life-cycle ritualsand overall obligations, stages of life, self-discipline, and traits of the self.) These areconcepts that are much discussed as conceptual systems in the texts, giving us anidea of their salience (Hiltebeitel 2001; Karve 1969). Here we will focus on the laterVedic period, c. 400 BCE to 400 CE, and its impact up to the present.

The interesting questions about the educational system of Ancient India concernits structure; its patronage; its epistemology, or conditions of knowledge; and itsdiscourse about class, gender, power, and truth. Who set up the schools? Who paidthe teachers? The right to run the school in a certain site may have been given orconfirmed by the King, at the minimum as that he would have knowledge of it and atthe maximum as that he could be considered a protector of it. These schools werebased in ashrams or hermitages removed from settled areas and were the homes ofthe teacher and students. The teacher was the supreme authority, and the nature and

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culture of the school depended on his personality. In The Recognition of Sakuntala,Kalidasa has King Dusyanta tell us that he is very mindful of the ethos of the ashramthat he has stepped into and on no account will he let his followers disturb its peace –he calls it the “penance grove” and rebukes his General for imagining that becausethe ashram’s ascetics are calm, they will accept a violation of their ashram’s rules(Johnson 2010, pp. 24–25). The ascetics in turn ask him to protect them; they “needhim” (Johnson 2010, p. 33) and they bless him for fulfilling his dharma by givingthis protection.

The schools were set up by teachers themselves and protected by the rulersinterested in retaining knowledge and power in their kingdoms. As ideologiesfluctuated, a ruler could certainly prefer the educational philosophy of a particularteacher over that of others. It then happened that less protection was given to the lessfavored ones and stronger patronage given to those whose ideology was moreattractive. During the Maurya period, Buddhist schools, colleges, and seminariesflourished and Vedic ones declined. In the Gupta period, Vedantic ones flourishedand Vedic ones declined.

If we look at all the primary texts on the subject, we can make the followinggeneralizations about the culture or meaning of education in that period. Teacherswere paid in service. Their students worked for them, and there was no negotiationabout the work. The teacher liked to keep his knowledge hidden or secret. He couldbe enticed to share it, but of course, in the very nature of knowledge, no one couldtell how much he had actually shared. One teacher assessed the quality of another bycross-questioning the student of the other. A powerful teacher could have a separateschool that revolved around him. Sometimes a student changed from one to the othervoluntarily or through persuasion by the other teacher.

While studying, the student was completely under the control of the teacher.Knowledge was to be grasped only through the medium of the teacher. There was noconcept of a “text” or a “curriculum” apart from the living teacher. Anyone could bethe student, including a king or another teacher. Anyone could be the teacher,including a king or a woman or a young person who had been a student just recently.

The teacher could be given gold, land, cows, horses, slaves, wealth and power.The teacher asked directly for none of this. His ever-rising level of knowledge andthe prospect of good students was enough of inducement. The system continued toretain quality because of the competition between teachers for excellence in theirfields, for students, and for patronage.

The content of Vedic education consisted of the mastery of the hymns of theVedas, ritualism, astrology, philosophy, yoga, philology, logic, grammar, physiol-ogy, mathematics, and the arts, in different combinations in different schools andwith different teachers. The “textbooks” consisted of the Vedas, the Brahmans, andthe Upanishads, none of which were written down. The teachers were called rishis,“seers,” of whom some famous ones are Gritsamada, Vishvamitra, Vamadeva, Atri,Bharadvaja, and Vishishta.

We may look briefly at the teaching of each set of books. The Rig Veda, composedc. 1500–1000 BCE, was the oldest and longest. It included hymns to some 33 deities,mainly anthropomorphic ones such as Ushas, Dawn, or Agni, Fire; concepts such as

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rita or natural order; and ascetic practices in pursuit of truth. It emphasized from theoutset the importance of recitation, memorization, and the power of the word, alongwith grammar, epistemology, and rhetoric. The Samaveda consisted of hymns, theYajurveda dealt with rites, and the Atharvaveda consisted of rituals and incantations.

The Brahamanas were specialized texts on rituals for the practice of worship andprayer. Almost as a reaction were produced the Upanishads, the term literallymeaning “‘a session’ sitting at the feet of a teacher who imparts secret or esotericdoctrines in discourses to select band [sic] of pupils towards the end of theirstudentship” (Ghosh 2001, pp. 33–34).

Some characteristics of education in the Ancient period can thus be inferred. TheUpanishads give details about the teacher, the student, the site of learning, the ritualsof teaching and learning, the content of education, as well as giving some instancesof actual (or apocryphal?) interaction between teacher, student, patron, society,knowledge, and power. Another source of information is the contemporary teachingof Sanskrit and Vedic studies in India which enables a scholar like Edwin Gerow towrite a wonderfully eloquent and in-depth study of “Primary Education in Sanskrit:Methods and Goals” (2002).

The definition of “knowledge” was “the realization of truth,” which leads toimmortality. The secret of immortality was knowledge/experience of the atman orself. This, and the larger discourse surrounding “truth,” is expressed chiefly in theUpanishads. At the same time, other key relationships that must be marked are thefollowing. Knowledge is power. The power resides in both esoteric wisdom andpractical know-how. Knowledge must be acquired at a particular time of life, thatis in childhood, the definition of which is flexible and could extend into the 20s.This period should be marked by celibacy. (Most of this information may be derivedfrom discussions in Azhicode (1986), Hiriyanna (2000), Olivelle (1996), andSooklal (1990).)

There are diverse pieces of information on education for the post-Vedic and post-Buddhist period. On the one hand, we have a more established relationship betweenKings, with their military and regal power, and Brahmans, with their intellectual andascetic powers. There is evidence for the reciprocity of power, according to whichthe King bestows land and protection to the Brahman, as seen in Altekar (1967) andJohnson (2010), and the Brahman bestows ritual legitimacy on the King. On theother hand, we have the evolution of the Bhagavad Gita, as Minor (1995) and Vigne(2001) interpret it, “[as] that of a successful relationship between guru and disciple.At the beginning the disciple primarily sees his guru in his human shape, as a friend,or perhaps as a father. Then the disciple discovers the guru’s divine aspect” (Vigne2001, p. 28). The Bhagavad Gita has arguably emerged as the most popular andadmired textbook of the Hindus.

We do not know in detail about the regional differences or class differences andcan only speculate about caste and gender differences. With regard to both regionand class, there must have been a pattern of bilingualism in the medium of teachingand of two sets of curricula in the content. Sanskrit was the classical and elitelanguage, and all non-elite classes spoke one or more of the other South Asianlanguages. The canon of Sanskrit had fluid boundaries and could incorporate local

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and vernacular knowledge into it without self-questioning. As with Hinduism, themode of growth of Sanskrit knowledge was horizontal and geographic as well astemporal: every region and class could expect that its best learning would finda place in the Sanskrit canon in the guise of mainstream Sanskrit learning(Doniger 2009). The ultimate aim of the Sanskrit system of education was theproduction of a pandit, and this of course was always a narrow specialization andnecessarily one of the many professions that education was aimed at. It is these othertypes of education that we have less knowledge of, in the absence of objectifiedcurricula and textbooks. Needless to add that perhaps nowhere in the world was therewritten or objectified curricula and texts.

The influence of Sanskrit education was immense and is difficult to quantify. Rotememorization formed the core of it. It served to give the student control over thedictionary of the language and the rules of grammar and literary analysis. It culti-vated facility in pronunciation and respect for the structure of the language. Bydrilling in the discipline of the language, memorization allowed (in the best of cases,we may be sure) the possibilities of the freedom to create that comes with perfectmastery of rules. Memorization has received little respect in the present becauseit may easily be compared unfavorably to modern techniques of explanation andinterpretation. As Gerow (2002) shows, however, it was an intellectually lucidapproach appropriate to the aim of the system which was panditya or the totalmastery over the grammatical and literary paradigms of a language that “legiti-mated” itself to become “a matter of dharma” (Gerow 2002, p. 674; see also p. 682).

Emphasis on memorization came to be seen in colonial and modern times asresponsible for the rote learning that characterized modern Indian education ingeneral and the learning of English in particular. Whether this is true or whetherthere were other more important reasons why modern education in India failed tolive up to its ideal of liberal education, the meaning behind the pedagogic processesof Sanskrit education was certainly lost in modern times. We retained the shell of it inthe rote learning and not the holistic meaning of the technique.

The other ironic role that Sanskrit education came to play in modern times wasto provide a picture of a Golden Age of Vedic and Classical periods that becameonly more attractive with the progress of the nationalist movement and then withpro-Hindu politics. Instead of actually taking the ideas of Sanskrit education seri-ously – some of which could have been seen as modern or even post-modern ifunderstood sufficiently – this kind of nationalism made Sanskrit education a weaponthat was more destructive to the wielders than to those attacked.

The Buddhist Period, c. 500 BCE to 300 CE

In the Buddhist period, a role similar to that of the pandits was played by the monks,who were also teachers. We cannot be sure of the precise fate of different Sanskritschools in the centuries after the Vedic period, or c. 400 CE. We know that after theteaching of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (himself an exemplary teacher), tookroot, Buddhist universities were started, came to be well endowed, were carefully

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structured, and gradually became internationally popular. Vikramasila, for instance,taught numerous disciplines such as philosophy, logic, ritual, and medicine. TheChinese traveller Hsuan Tsang visited and wrote about Nalanda, and the IndonesiaKing Baladeva made a benefaction to it in 860 CE (Basham 1975, pp. 202, 449). Butwe simply do not know the detailed history or the fate of schools and higherinstitutions and their processes of teaching over the centuries.

This new learning was revolutionary in seeking to overcome caste and classbarriers and must have proved liberating. Women eventually obtained permission toenter the fold, but they remained inferior to their men peers as teachers and scholars.In both the Vedic and Buddhist knowledge systems, the emphasis is on philosophicalinquiry. While rituals differ, in both, they may be privately conducted. The Vedicsystem is often called Brahmanic because of the domination of the Brahmans. Thisdomination continues with greater and lesser strengths over the centuries into thepresent, but there have been several liberating movements, and throughout a possi-bility of private practice. Buddhism has been such a liberating movement attractingpeople in search of self-knowledge. Historically, Indian education has taught reflex-ivity and self-questioning.

In the time of the Emperor Ashoka, the role of patriarchal teacher was playedpartly by Ashoka who called himself the father of his praja or children. The spaceschanged, from Vedic ashrams with yajnas to monasteries and inns visited bytravelling monks, viharas, and Buddhist colleges. New and elaborate projects ofcodifying knowledge were undertaken, and for centuries there was generous patron-age from Indian rulers until the patronage shifted abroad.

The Classical Period, c. 300 to 700 CE

The Classical period saw a reversal of the power of Buddhism and a newentrenchment of practices that later were labelled Hinduism. The six schools ofphilosophy developed. State-sponsored and privately patronized texts were pro-duced and published. These texts are sophisticated in their beauty and meaning butare exclusionary. Caste and gender differences are reflected, either as entrenched oras sought to be. Unfortunately, they are often taken literally as emblematic of IndianPhilosophy or the Indian Classical tradition. We could speculate that even at thetime, steady criticism of the texts continued in educational sites.

Feminist readings have gone against the grain and sought, for instance, to re-define the very meanings of “male” and “female” embedded in the philosophy. Thishas produced another space for potential liberation. Dalit readings are more resistantto the implied, and direct, power of brahmanic patriarchy. They ask, rather, as towhat was the experience of exclusion – from a modern standpoint, as becomesinevitable.

In the Gupta period, the laws of caste came to be backed up by political policiesand actions of a new consistency and firmness. Royal endowments in the form ofrent-producing village lands were settled upon groups of brahmans to support themin lives devoted to Hindu learning. Sanskrit, which had been the language of

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brahmans and religion, became now also the language of civil administration, ofinscriptions, and of coins. The Dharmashastras were written and re-interpreted(Altekar 1967).

The meaning of Sanskrit education was also articulated and re-affirmed at thistime. At the heart of education lay the nexus between teacher and student. The twokeys to successful learning were (1) the commitment of the guru or teacher, and(2) the commitment of the student. An important lesson here was the absolute lack ofessentialism. Successful learning did not depend on any inherent traits in the student.It depended only on the hard work of the teacher and the hard work of the student.Any child could learn.

There are some stories in the Puranas which illustrate how empoweringand almost magical knowledge can be. In the story of Kacha and Sukracharya,the student and teacher are from opposite camps. The latter is obliged to part withesoteric knowledge to the pupil who has won him over by his devotion anddedication. In another instance, Ekalavya who was a student of Drona had torenounce his preeminence as an archer, by severing his thumb because his teacherhad another pupil in mind for this honor.

In these stories, we see that knowledge is like any other instrument of power.Those who have it would obviously be reluctant to share it with others. Sometimesa pupil may even practice deception to gain knowledge. Those who do share itshould be regarded as great in their generosity. Also the pursuit of knowledge is itselfnot magical or elusive. A very consistent discourse in India is of the pursuit ofknowledge as being tapas or an excruciating disciplining of the self. No tables can beleft unturned in this pursuit, and no hyperbole can describe the extent to whicha person may toil in order to gain knowledge. This pleases the teacher, who, uponobserving it, imparts his most cherished secrets, sometimes reluctantly. Good teach-ing consists of systematic guidance, but in an interactive relationship with thestudent.

If knowledge is power and education is empowering, there are also no essences.People are not unalterably fixed. The power is accessible to those who can practicediscipline, and people can become capable of, and learn to excel in, practicing them.Gods and demons can study with each other. This idea of the empowering nature ofeducation and of the child as potentially empowerable is all around us in everydaylife as part of “Indian culture” in its many layers.

Islamic and Vernacular Education, c. 1000 CE Onward

In the medieval period of Indian history, c. 1000 to 1750 CE we find some radicalchanges in educational discourse. Some changes were structural and functional andothers symbolic or discursive. The changes occurred largely because of the comingof Islam to the subcontinent. The various Islamic dynasties that held power over thisperiod sought to exercise power in a hegemonic way and saw this hegemony ascoming from Islamic values. Education was understood to be the central agent ableto produce and then reproduce a desired discourse of knowledge and power. “Theway a society selects, classifies, distributes, transmits, and evaluates educational

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knowledge reflects both the distribution of power and the principles of socialcontrol” (Bernstein 1996, p. 47).

Usha Sanyal has described the centrality of learning and knowledge to the Islamicenterprise and the kinds of curricula and institutions that were developed fromthe twelfth to seventeenth centuries. Maktabs and madrasas were plentiful. Ilm orknowledge was again not the exclusive privilege of a high class, the ulama. Therewas a rival order of knowledge, that of the Sufis. Among the many debates about thisperiod, there are some central to education. For instance, scholars agree that Islamwas carried to the far corners of South Asia by Sufi teachers, rather than militaryconquest. The first debate is therefore “the spread of Islam” debate, and it attests tothe importance of Sufi teaching. A second important debate is about “Syncretism” orthe synthesis of worldviews and concepts of Islam and Hinduism. Here, we have todistinguish between the “popular” and the “classical.” At the level of high, classicallearning, the learning of the Brahmans and the ulama stand aloof from each other. Atthe level of everyday, or folk knowledge, the philosophies and practices of Hindusand Muslims are similar, resulting in similar world views. This is attested to byspecific studies of texts, genres, performances, and routines of everyday life byscholars.

Regarding exclusions and power, one exclusion is that of folk or popular knowl-edge from the normative, high learning in Islam, leading to waves of reform andresistance. The Barelvi, Deobandi, and Ahl-e-Hadis movements described bySanyal, all seek to stand forth as the central and correct, and position the others asmarginal. Another exclusion, specially in high Islam, is that of women, regarded assecondary, who may study and teach but cannot preach. In popular Islam, womenare active as leaders, mastering and propagating texts, ideas, healing, mentoring, andguiding (Flueckiger 2006). It is important to recognize exclusion not as a religiouscondition – the recalcitrance of Islam – but as the confluence of class and status, withreligion being used as the rod of control. The very ashrafwho enjoyed the benefits ofa colonial education denied it to the poor. We have to see poor and illiterate Muslimsfor what they are: an underprivileged working class who has not chosen illiteracy.Indeed, they have parallel sets of knowledge that makes them excel in their ownvocations.

Let us look at the content of the teaching. The Qur’an was seen as the founda-tional and perennial source of knowledge. Teaching of the Qur’an, therefore,together with hadis or traditions and sira or biographical knowledge of the Prophet,became central to knowledge in Islam. To this were added disciplines such asastrology, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy. To travel in search of knowl-edge, teachers, and students was a familiar practice. To set up public libraries andspaces where learning could take place was an accepted type of patronage.

The institution of the madrasa, introduced by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni(r. 999–1030), gradually became the one legitimate source of teaching. Its curricu-lum included the Qur’an, hadis, fiqh (jurisprudence), and Arabic, together withgrammar, rhetoric, and logic, and excluded the “secular” disciplines mentionedabove which continued to be taught separately. Al-Ghazzali (d. 1111CE) systema-tized the scope and nature of Islamic epistemological dichotomies (Talbani 1996,

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p. 69). He has been interpreted as making a rigid interpretation of knowledge that ledto a curriculum that “was hostile to research and scientific inquiry” as a result ofwhich Islamic education became “static,” the student became “passive,” and Mus-lims became “apathetic toward scientific and philosophical matters” (ibid., p. 70).Some scholars consider any deterioration in Islam’s original “ethos of knowledge” tooccur later and to be a product of colonialism and the modern age (Albertini 2003, p.455). According to them “Both the Qur’an and the Hadith have many passagesexhorting believers to seek knowledge, broadly defined to include all there is toknow, whether it is of a sacred/secular, metaphysical/physical, or theoretical/practi-cal nature” (Albertini 2003, p. 457).

From the earliest centuries, there had been another kind of school as well. Theteaching of people, urban and rural, into both literacy and other skills, practical anddiscursive, was done by the Sufis. A Sufi teacher would be teaching and mediatingbetween followers and between them and the government. In later centuries, asthe Mughal Empire became stronger, the rule of the ulama expanded. To becomeeducated and to become an alim was a road to social and economic success.Education was open to all, and the status that came with being educated was freeof the privileges or disadvantages of birth.

In its structure Islamic education in the Mughal period was similar to Sanskriteducation in the Classical period. After studying the basics in a neighborhood schoolwith a family member or other teacher, the student attached himself to a teacher,having found that teacher as a result of a search and a decision. There were no fees,but there was an expectation of service and of gifts at recommended occasions.It was the teacher who decided on the curriculum and the pace of study and who atthe end declared the course over and the student competent.

In its content, however, Mughal education was different to Sanskrit education.The languages of study were Persian and Arabic. In Arabic, the manqulat or“transcribed” (from the Qur’an) subjects such as the hadis or Prophet’s sayingswere studied, and ma’qulat or the rational sciences, including grammar, rhetoric,logic, mathematics, philosophy, and jurisprudence. Different subjects and differentbooks were studied with different experts. The test of a scholar was how many bookshe had completed and under whom. The direction of the interests of successiveMughal emperors influenced the course of studies at the highest level, for instance,of emperors such as Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707). Thus,from the time of Abdul Haq Dihlawi (1551–1642), there was interest in the study ofhadis added to the existing interest in the rational sciences. As Barbara Metcalfsuggests, citing Aziz Ahmad, this was partly due to the sea opening to the Hijaz andpartly to “the challenge of Akbar’s eclecticism” (Metcalf 1982, p. 19).

The main subject area of study throughout the period was fiqh, or commentarieson the Law, specifically Hanafi law. Hadis, the Qur’an and commentaries on it werestudied only in the context of law. The technique of this study was not simply rotelearning and regurgitation. There were diverse texts to be sifted through, divergentcommentaries, selection and interpretation to be made, and study of primary sources.The graduates or alims could, together with Sufi teachers or Shaikhs, go on to beregarded as exemplary individuals demanding respect and devotion. In this respect,

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too, the Mughal educational system posited the same relationship between knowl-edge and power as did the classical Sanskrit system and as both continue to do in thepresent.

The ulama were associated with the state to different degrees and had anindependent status even when not thus patronized. The source of their power wastheir perceived closeness to God. This produced a moral authority that demanded anallegiance that could not be shaken by political changes. When Mughal authoritydeclined after 1707, the authority of the ulama and the Sufis proved its independentpower.

Sufis used a technique that crossed religious boundaries and was a powerfulhegemonic source of education across regions, languages, and sects in India for thewhole of the second millennium. This was the harnessing of local languages throughthe medium of poetry to cross over the sacred-secular, popular-elite divides to teachabout religious and everyday values simultaneously. Through both religious andcultural creativity, they provided hegemonic leadership and education on the groundwhen the organs of state power were relatively weakened.

We have interesting studies of two quasi-educational processes of the Hindus inthe Sultanate and Mughal periods. One is of the Bhakti movement that spread fromSouth to North, and all across India between the sixth and sixteenth centuries, andproduced a crop of saint-poets. They had disciples and followers who often thoughtof themselves as a “school.” Their beautiful poetry bears testament to the powerof these teachers and their teachings have profoundly influenced the consciousnessof modern Hindus, mostly through oral circulation over the centuries. (We cannotdo justice to the vast literature on Bhakti here, but at the same time, must includea few representative works in a discussion of education: Hawley (1981,1983),Hawley and Juergensmeyer (2008), Hein (1985), and Hess (1983).) The secondinteresting education-related process is that of vernacularization, or the deliberatedevelopment of vernacular languages as opposed to Sanskrit, making available andlegitimating an area of knowledge other than in Sanskrit.

The ulama found a center of intellectual power in Firangi Mahal, the name givento a school that emerged in Lucknow at the end of the seventeenth century. Officersneeded by the Mughal and Oudh courts were trained here. It also produced scholarswho wrote in excellent Arabic and Persian and did research and interpretation on theseveral branches of Islamic knowledge. The long-lasting contribution of the FirangiMahal intellectuals was the curriculum of study called dars-i-nizami that came todominate Islamic education in South Asia. It was respected and adhered to becauseof its rigor and seen as a bastion of intellectual integrity at a time of politicalinstability. Students who came there to study, carried the syllabus back to theirhome institutions. When Warren Hastings started a madrasa in Calcutta in 1780,he appointed as Principal a graduate of Firangi Mahal. The school’s combination ofmystical learning, legal studies useful for official employment, and the intellectualpursuit of the disciplines of Arabic grammar, logic, mathematics, philosophy, rhe-toric, and theology was a powerful combination. It served to act as a model forinstitutions into the nineteenth century (Robinson 2001).

The History of Education in South Asia 11

Shah Waliyu’llah (1703–1762) was the champion of intellectuals and religiousleaders and worked for the complementarity of such ulama with political leaders. Hewas the director of the Madrasa-i- Rahimiya and produced his own unique commenton the whole range of Islamic knowledge in his Hujjatu’llahu’l-Bali-ghah. Hestressed the importance of hadis and the Qur’an and encouraged their study directlyby all, even without the use of a commentary, turning only to a teacher if in doubt.

Shah Waliyu’llah’s injunction that Hanafi law should be followed in India wasinfluential. Similarly he spoke on the side of the wujudi position in Sufism that statesthat while creation is illusory, there is a reality behind it, that of God, and tauhidor unity consists in obliterating the former (the apparent) in favor of the latter (thetranscendent). His influence made this the dominant Sufi position in India. He waslater claimed as the main teacher responsible for the Ahl-e-Hadis, or “People of thehadis” movement. They founded well-endowed and well-respected madrasas.

Modern India

In the nineteenth century, colonialism “set the framework for what could or couldnot be done” in education (Sanyal 1996, p. 49). As in other spheres of colonialfunctioning, there needs to be a careful adjudication of the repressive and theempowering structures of colonial rule. The ulama used the transport and commu-nications network, and the models of administration and organization, constructedby the British. The colonial restructuring of law created a situation where the“Muslim law” put in place for Muslims was significantly different to that practicedby Muslims. As a result it followed that “only the ‘ulama could fill what wasevidently a troublesome legal void” (Metcalf 1992, p. 51). With their direction tothe people on various matters, and their ability to give meaning to the everyday livesof Muslims, the ulama came to play an enhanced role. The British support forlandholding elites enabled those members of the ulama who had property to feelstrong and legitimate. One such, for instance, was Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi. Hecame to be regarded as the exemplary Islamic intellectual of his age and hiseducational movement became a far-reaching and significant one. He lived up tothe model of the ideal scholar as celebrated in Islam for centuries. Riza Khan’sfollowers, accordingly, formed a movement called Ahl-e Sunnat wa Jama’at.A madrasa was started at Bareilly called the Jami’at-i Manzir-i Islam, followed byothers in other cities.

The difference between the older and the modern system of madrasa educationwas in structure, function, and meaning. Earlier the madrasa, like the Sanskritschool, had been coterminous with the teacher and not an institutionalized space.In the nineteenth century, educators found it important to build a specialized buildingand introduce features of modern schooling such as fixed curricula, final examina-tions, categorized departments and faculties, administration, salaried personnel,and so on. The best example of this is the madrasa at Deoband, discussed byMetcalf (1982) and other scholars. The madrasa became not an inseparable part ofa holistically conceived society and way of life but a separate institution underthe rubric of “education.”

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Similarly, the function of Islamic education in pre-modern and modern timesremained the same at the broadest level of preparing the individual for exemplaryparticipation in society. It became different because of the new idea of constructionor change, to be expressed best by John Dewey and his Columbia Teachers’ Collegecolleagues at the turn of the nineteenth century. According to them the very idea ofan effective education was to produce a radical change within an individual intoa new person. But most of all it was the meaning of education that was changed inthe modern period. As in many areas of life, Islam became “objectified,” that is,identified with “a precise. . .set of beliefs, values, and practices which are assumed toconstitute a normative and timeless ‘Islam’” (Hefner 2002, p. 51). Whereas in thepremodern period the ulama included an extraordinarily heterogeneous group, in themodern period even the teachers of religious knowledge came to be measured by adegree. Whereas “the very concept of what constituted ‘ilm—that is, knowledge ofsocial and religious significance—was itself porous and polymorphous” (Hefner2002, p. 47), there was now a categorization of knowledge. Whereas there had beendisparate authorities to decide on the boundaries of knowledge, and texts or codifi-cations of knowledge were regarded as “lived in” or “enacted” rather than fixed, nowthere were central authorities and negotiations were discouraged.

Meanwhile, Sanskrit learning and vernacular learning outside the madrasa hadproceeded in a decentralized way. Villages had their schools for elementary reading,writing, and mensuration, geared always to the career choice of the child. There werespecific centers of more advanced education, such as Pune in Maharashtra andVaranasi in the North. These were patronized by local rulers. In the second half ofthe eighteenth century when local patronage flagged as the whole economy shud-dered under the weight of East India Company oppression, these teachers experi-enced unsettled conditions and extreme poverty. This is described in Ishwar ChandraVidyasagar’s (1820–1891) autobiography.

When the British colonial state came to be established, there was an immediaterepercussion on Sanskrit and Arabic education. English became the most valuedeconomic and social, if not cultural, asset. The East India Company and thesuccessor British monarchy took almost a century to make a transition from givingrecognition and patronage, often reluctantly, to pathshalas and madrasas, to a statewhere these institutions were abandoned in favor of English language institutions.

Warren Hastings had instituted separate law codes for Hindus and Muslims, andthe need for maulvis and pandits arose. The first schools founded by the East IndiaCompany were the Calcutta Madrasah in 1781, the Benares Sanskrit College in1791, and the Sanskrit College in Calcutta in 1824. These were for providingexpounders of the law and were followed by the College of Fort William in 1800,to train East India Company officers in the languages and cultures of India. All threeinstitutions were important in setting up models for the new orientalist learning ofSanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and to some extent the vernaculars. Textbooks had to beproduced, curricula had to be devised, and the beginnings of a canon to be laid foreach language. Although the purpose of the institutions was to comprehend, control,and govern India better, Orientalists such as Warren Hastings (the first Governor-General, 1773–1785) and William Jones (1746–1794), the founder of the Asiatic

The History of Education in South Asia 13

Society of Bengal, were also deeply attracted to the languages and literatures of Indiaand infected many others with their passion.

Even bigger changes were brought about, however, by missionary schools.Missionary teachers such as William Carey (1761–1834) paid attention to thedevelopment of textbooks and teaching methods. They may be said to have laidthe foundations of modern education in India. The East India Company did notpermit evangelicalism inside its territories until 1813. Alexander Duff’s school,started in 1830 in Calcutta, to become the Scottish Church College, was an exampleof the attractions of modern schooling for Indians.

The Charter Act of 1813 that permitted evangelicals inside Company territoryalso made a provision for public education in India. Indeed, for both aims, it wasCharles Grant (1768–1771, 1774–1790) who, 20 years after he first proposed it,provided the vision for the improvement of the Indian population. “The true cure ofdarkness, is the introduction of light,” he proposed. Familiarity with the Englishlanguage would lead to acquisition of Western knowledge which, he maintained,“would silently undermine, and at length subvert, the fabric of error” that held Indiansociety together (Embree 1962, pp. 150–152). The double purpose of proselytizationand improvement, and the setting aside of one lakh of rupees per year for educationnotwithstanding, the East India Company did not move with an education plan untila decade later.

Meanwhile, many classes of Indians had found the new learning attractive andbegan to attend and open schools that taught English. RamMohan Roy (1772–1834)and Ram Camul Sen are excellent examples of early nineteenth century Bengaliintellectuals who wished to promote English education. The founding of the HinduCollege in 1816 is an example of a concerted move by members of a newlyprosperous middle class to offer to their youth Western learning. It is very significantthat most of these founders were socially conservative. That is, they looked onEnglish and Western knowledge pragmatically, as an instrument of material success,and did not glimpse that it would also act as a new culture that would seek toovershadow indigenous discourses. When young teachers such as Henry LouisVivian Derozio (1809–1831) seemed to present a threat with actual conversion ofthe youth to reason and iconoclasm (his motto supposedly was “He who will notreason is a bigot, he who cannot reason is a fool, and he who does not reason isa slave”), he was dismissed from the Hindu College. However, Ram Mohan Roy, inhis letter on education of 1823, pleaded that the British fund not more educationin Sanskrit and Persian, but the teaching of science and reason. He believed that hecould live successfully in two worlds, the world of his preferred taste and culture,and the world of English and modern Science, and he presumed that anyone whowould be educated in a British colonial school could do it.

The General Committee of Public Instruction, started in 1823, did not initiallyrespond to RamMohan Roy’s plea. Just like Thomas Munro in Madras (1820–1826)and Mountstuart Elphinstone (1819–1827) and John Malcolm in Bombay(1827–1830), H. H. Wilson and others in Bengal shared a commitment to preservingtraditional learning, at least insofar as the natives wished it. By the 1830s however anew educational policy for India was on the anvil, and it is this that has been

14 N. Kumar

inherited by contemporary India. The key player in this turn has been seen to beThomas Babington Macaulay, the Law Minister who cast the deciding vote in thecouncil of the Governor General William Bentinck. Macaulay did pen a notoriousMinute on Indian education in 1835 in which he roundly condemned Indian knowl-edge systems and intellectual formations as inferior to European ones and not worthteaching.

From that time onward, “knowledge” when used in South Asia without a qualifiermeant European knowledge, and “education” when used without a qualifier meant“British” or more accurately “British colonial” education. Over the next five to sevendecades, indigenous institutions that taught in Indian languages became marginal-ized into unimportant and unattractive institutions. They continued to exist, but inprogressively smaller numbers, and were not good enough for the “elite.” They werepatronized by either the poor, such as poor Muslims who chose madrasas overEnglish schools, or by the conservative, such as Brahmans who chose Sanskritschools, or old-style bankers and traders who chose mahajani (indigenous business)education without apology.

Public or government schools were matched right from the beginning by privateschools, demonstrating that the Indian elite were in favor of modern education. Suchsupport was based on a perception of the profitability of colonial education: all thehighest jobs in government service as well as in private business and trade were openonly to those who knew English. Gradually, the criterion for material success in lifebecame the standard at which one had passed school and then university examina-tions. Education was economic capital and, in Pierre Bourdieu’s term, became socialcapital as well.

Let us look at this system that has come down to the present under the rubrics ofstructure, function, and meaning. The three universities of Calcutta, Bombay, andMadras were incorporated in 1857 on the model of the University of London. Theyaffiliated and examined several colleges under each of them with no geographicallimits. Calcutta University, for example, affiliated colleges from Burma to Ceylonand Simla to Jaipur. The number of colleges affiliated to the three universitiesincreased from 27 in 1857 to 72 in 1882. Their aim was the preparation of thestudents for the final examinations to be conducted by the university in question. Theuniversities were governed by a Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, and Fellows, amongwhom the teachers of a college rarely found a place. Colleges had to be fed in turn bysecondary schools. By 1882 there were 1,341 secondary schools run by Indians and757 run by foreign missionaries. There were exactly two schools for trainingteachers in India at the time and the majority of teachers remained untrained.

This new colonial educational system expanded to include new universities inLahore (1882) and Allahabad (1887), followed by others in Delhi, Nagpur, Andhra,Agra, and Annamalai in the 1920s. The numbers of affiliated colleges similarlyincreased and the secondary schools feeding into them. There were efforts made bythe Hunter Commission appointed by Lord Ripon in 1882, the Calcutta UniversitiesCommission appointed by Lord Curzon in 1917, the Hartog Committee in 1927, theGovernment of India Act of 1935, and the Sargent Plan of 1944, to periodicallyreview and reform the most striking problems in this new system. But that it hadcome to stay in India was taken for granted.

The History of Education in South Asia 15

The biggest problems of the new education were:

(i) People were critical that the system was “foreign.” Earlier, local people hadsupported schools and teachers, by setting up, managing, or patronizing them.Now schools were part of the state machinery, and one could cooperate withit for pragmatic purposes but feel distanced nevertheless. Up to the end of thenineteenth century, there was talk of supporting, then reviving, indigenouseducation. After that the critique of colonial education took the form ofproposing a national system of education. The exact problems of colonialeducation, apart from its lack of an organic identity in India, were alsodiscussed and included the points below.

(ii) The elementary or primary education of the masses was neglected whereasattention was paid to the higher education of elites. Government had graduallylessened its support for primary education, and the public had not stepped in tofill the gap. Gokhale’s proposal for compulsory primary education was notenacted in law. The Government claimed that the prospect of compulsoryprimary education was untenable because of administrative and financialconsiderations.

(iii) The training of teachers remained throughout an incomplete project, dueprimarily to the shortage of normal or training schools.

(iv) The funds available to local boards to set up and maintain schools wereinsufficient compared to the needs of the country. The government did notshow the ability or the will to take on the project of public education in thewholesale way it was done in Western countries. Grants-in-aid were notplanned successfully. Private schooling that catered to those who could payfees burgeoned.

(v) There were never any clear or innovative policies adopted to attract morestudents of those groups that suffered from a skewed representation in schoolsfor various reasons: girls, Muslims, tribals, lower castes.

(vi) In the universities the weight of attention and funding was on courses in thearts and humanities as opposed to the sciences. Ironically it was the graduatesin the humanities who had difficulty in rising to the top of the ladder incolonial times. There were both unemployment and a growth of nationalism,specifically among these graduates.

(vii) There was little provision for technical, industrial, commercial, or agriculturaleducation for the masses, leading to an increasing number of unemployedand unemployable people with degrees. Others especially in the commercialor agricultural sectors felt alienated from a seemingly pointless education.Vocational and liberal education were both short-charged by this limitedpolicy.

(viii) Colleges continued to expand, but there was no regulation of academicstandards or student quality. There was no education department to supervisethis, as there was in Britain. The ideas of liberal education had not taken rootto replace older and stronger ideas and often remained on paper only. Thecolonial legacy of the educational system also meant that the smartest grad-uates and students of a college considered opposition to the state to be part of

16 N. Kumar

the educational agenda during the nationalist period. This, with some modi-fications, continued after independence as well and produced an unusualdegree of politicization of college education

(ix) Examinations, already important from the beginning, became so central to thewhole system that any kind of instruction or academic experience not suscep-tible to being examined was not admitted within the school or universitypremise. This legacy has continued.

(x) Primary schooling especially was trapped in routines of rote learning andexamination-dependence instead of relying on well-tested methods of hands-on activities, sports, arts, and applied learning. This has proved to be a difficulttechnical shortcoming to remove, in the absence of the effective training ofteachers.

Different people had different motivations to work in the system in the colonialperiod. Students and their families chose colonial schools because they could getjobs upon learning English, either straight after school or at a higher level aftercollege. Indian educators felt that in a colonial state, it was the only choice for howeducation could be structured. The state’s colonial educators had both a utilitarianoutlook regarding the necessity of having graduates with Western learning andEnglish competency and an ideological conviction that the new education promiseda social revolution as well, which was part of their civilizing mission.

Indeed, the new education did bring about the birth of a new intelligentsia.The professions of lawyer, doctor, engineer, journalist, and bureaucrat were newlydefined to be in sync with such professions in Britain. Older doctors, lawyers,journalists, and bureaucrats, educated in indigenous systems, were no longeraccepted. The first generation of the new-educated were more transformed andseemingly anglicized than their sons, who could often be found to be exploringtheir nation’s history, languages, and religions. The new education took root oversome seven generations to today. It did spread gradually, allowing social mobility,but mostly acted as a process of elite reproduction. Ironically, it was the castes andclasses who had been in comparable indigenous professions earlier who pursued thenew education that opened the doors to the new versions of the professions. The neweducation was challenging in its array of new texts and epistemologies for both thestudent and the family.

The difference between the new and the old intelligentsia, professionals, andsocial leaders was that, being bred under a colonial state, the new education grappledwith a dilemma of identity. In the process of resolving this they produced a creativesynthesis sometimes called the Bengal or Indian “Renaissance”with its developmentof literary genres such as the novel; its modifications of the vernaculars; its search forforms and content in the past to synthesize them with Western forms; and its belief inchange, progress, and improvement. The new education classes also often resorted toan essentialization of identity. “India” and “Indian” came to be defined in fixedcategories thanks to the general challenges to the definition of “Indian” by outsiders.One example was the legacy of history teaching. If history celebrated a Golden Agein Ancient India, Indians could find comfort in the past and use it to construct

The History of Education in South Asia 17

a nationalist idea in the present. If history lamented the darkness of the past, Indianscould isolate the problem and while working to reform it, emphasize their untouchedessence. Idolatry and caste divisions could be seen as unfortunate accretions to animpressive original religion, for instance.

Similarly, one of the dimensions of the new identity that emerged was a morestrongly delineated sense of masculinity. The female came to be seen as the symbolof tradition, of the authentic and pure nation, and her status in the Golden Age acause of celebration. The roles of both men and women became more circumscribedthereby, and it took a new social impetus to free them in new ways such as education.Girls’ education did expand gradually, mostly through the efforts of women them-selves, especially widows (Kumar 2000), but even today falls behind that of boys.

There has been an old debate on the question of how far British education wasresponsible for the rise of nationalism in India (McCully 1940; Guha 1987). Wecould extend it into the present by asking further, how far the new education mightbe responsible for the failures of the nation states of South Asia today to developmaterially, to hold their citizen bodies together ideologically, and to give theenrichment in life that should also be the job of education.

In the nationalist period before independence, c. 1885 to 1947, colonial educationundoubtedly taught the skills of protest through debate, association, and memoranda,thus building up the institutional and mental infrastructure necessary for a liberaldemocracy. The first generation of nationalists such as Surendranath Banerjea(1848–1925), Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901), and Gopal Krishna Gokhale(1866–1915) were all products of the new education in this sense, outwardlyanglicized, but enough in tune with the needs of their societies to allow them toadapt the nationalist European histories they learned to their own case. That theycould not go further than they did was a result of their dependence on the colonialstate, and the subtler controls internalized through their education. Their educationtaught a teleological view of history which suggested the normativity of progressunder the British. It taught them that liberal and gradual solutions to all problemswere best, that hierarchies were natural, and that discrimination and exclusion wereneeded in India.

The progressive frustrations of degrees not being rewarded with jobs and pro-motions, and the intellectual revelation that colonialism was predicated on economicexploitation and racism, resulted in a practice of nationalism in the twentieth centurythat had to un-learn many of the lessons of colonial schools. In this second phase ofnationalism, circa 1905 onward, new content for education, including self-education,had to be devised by Indians, otherwise educated in the same system as theirforbears. They took Indian languages, ancient history, mythology, and even popularpractices more seriously. They sometimes founded new schools to embody newsyntheses and sometimes simply acted as role models of synthetic identities.

Among new schools with new educational agendas were the RamakrishnaMission schools set up by the new association founded by Swami Vivekananda(Narendra Dutta) (1863–1902); the Arya Samaj schools set up by the new associa-tion founded by Dayanand Saraswati (1824–1883) in 1877 and called significantlythe Anglo-Vedic schools; Theosophical Society schools such as the Central Hindu

18 N. Kumar

Boys’ School and the Central Hindu Girls’ School in Banaras started by AnnieBesant (1847–1933), leading up to the Banaras Hindu University in 1916; andvarious gurukuls, vidyapiths, and national schools, colleges, and universities. Thisnew type of an alternative institution that self-consciously sought to make a breakwith the inherently Christian character of modernity was different in concept to theschools set up by Indians earlier, such as Ishwar Chandra Vidysagar’s, and theDeccan School Society’s. The new agenda was deliberately non-secular andmaintained, together with all Muslim schools, a belief that a non-religious educationwas a barren and useless one.

These schools sought to be alternative to the colonial ones. But if we are to ask theserious question, “What is an Indian or Indic education?” we would have to say thatthey did not represent an alternative at all. All schools after the 1850s used the sametechnologies and discourses of education, and even when they did not do sosuccessfully, they did believe in them and pay them lip service. There is everythingin common between all the schools, whether religious or secular, government orprivate, English medium or in Indian languages, and with “gurukul,” “pathshala,”“convent,” “Hindu” or “Muslim” in their names, set up after the 1850s, than there isin common between the schools called indigenous which predated colonial educa-tional policy and those supposed to be nationalist and alternative set up after the1850s.

Apart from explicit technologies such as buildings, classrooms, hired faculty,admissions, promotions, and examinations, what made the new system of educationa “system” was the curricula. Some schools did try to have an alternative curricula.Sanskrit and Arabic schools continued to be set up, mahajani pathshalas still taughtindigenous accounting and bookkeeping as well as munda script, and madrasasflourished in mosques and homes. Any school that sought to be commerciallysuccessful and popular, however, had to include English as part of its curriculum,and the new fields of science, social studies, mathematics, and to knit together toconstitute “education” a set of disparate subjects that would be examined separately.This was not supposed to be for the glory of god, for the self-realization of thestudent, for the holistic living of the correct life, or for the pursuit of knowledge ortruth. It was simply “education,” a norm that was now compulsory in the world andcontrolled by the discourse of the state even when it declared certain groups to havethe right to run their own institutions, as the colonial and the postcolonial statesin South Asia did.

The Indian system of education today suffers from some older problems such aslack of resources and poorly trained teachers. It also continues to suffer from aninadequately conceived notion of “What is ‘Indian’?” This is because the questionwas answered simply in the nationalist period as “Indian is whatever is not British orWestern.” Others who tried to dig deeper sensed that modernity was a threat that wasdisguised, but unable to pierce the disguise, they faulted Christianity. In retaliation“Indian” became “religious nationalism,” that had to adapt itself in practice to thesecular nationalism adopted by India and the everyday popular culture that was“beyond Hindu and Muslim” (Gottschalk 2005). In the absence of a clearer resolu-tion of the question, and a more vigorous debate about it, the absence of an enquiry

The History of Education in South Asia 19

into what comprises an Indian education leads to one of the biggest failures of Indianeducation. Schools teach a nationalism that is parochial, or religious, and, at any rate,exclusionary. Instead of every child who has gone to school emerging with a sense ofan Indian identity, we have a situation where elite children feel far more comfortablewith a global than a national identity, and no comfort whatsoever with a localidentity. Sectarian and confessional groups prefer school children to have a commu-nal and not national identity. Working-class children have simply a working classidentity. The empowerment that comes with a nationalist agenda in schooling, asdifferently followed through in various developed nations, has been absent in India.In the best of cases, the nationalism could be enriching in its nurturing of historicalnarratives and other products of the imagination set in the past. Indian secularschools have been so barren of stories, arts, and imaginative work in general thatIndian children have been singularly under-nourished spiritually or imaginatively.This is a loss in itself, and as Nussbaum (2008) and Kumar (2007) argue, it createsa vacuum that fundamentalist groups can fill with ethnocentric teaching.

Schools have failed their students in equipping them for the modern market place,which should have been the agenda both for the nation and for modernity. This maybe ascribed to colonialism in that the colonial state laid a weak and poorly conceivedinfrastructure of schooling and training teachers and a fairly explicit policy of“under-developing” India. English was supposed to act as the great lever of changeand progress but has arguably acted otherwise. The vast majority of Indians neitherlearn English well nor have the prospect of doing so in the future. It is simply toopoorly taught to be of service in what a language should do, and its learning standsfor a horrible waste of human resources. The learning of Science, Maths, Arts, andSocial Studies is similarly very poorly conducted for the masses.

What we have in India then is a literacy rate of 60%, which includes many schoolgraduates who will be unable to use their learning for any practical purposes. Itincludes wasted learning and wasteful learning. It includes learning that is somechanical and non-questioning and non-creative that it hampers the natural abilityof the individual to live and learn. Then we have an education that is patriarchal inthat its teachers are mostly women and mostly low-paid, and where less girls go toschool than boys and more drop out and fail to go on to complete degrees or pursuehigher learning. The patriarchal attitudes of society are not strongly fought byschools at the level of structure or curricula. Not only does the system fail to teachnationalism or citizenship, it fails absolutely to teach equality between classes andsects. Rather it separates and breeds ignorance and self-satisfaction, making richindifferent to poor, Hindus indifferent to Muslims, and each mutually suspicious ofthe other.

The very failures of modern education have also meant “success” for the indi-vidual projects of different groups. The elite has disproportionately gained fromaccess to English teaching and higher education and has succeeded in reservingsome of the scarce resources of education for itself. Because of the very weakness ofschools for the masses, ordinary people continue to be educated in local histories,practices, and narratives, leading to a strong “culture” that is fluid, meaningful andmost of all, un-objectified and lived-in. The elite also participate in this, and India

20 N. Kumar

demonstrates a case of being “alternatively”modern. It has –much as the nineteenthcentury liberal reformers wanted – Western science and Indian sciences, Westernworld-views and Indian philosophical systems, Western lifestyle practices andIndian values, all creatively and fluidly co-existent. One could argue that had moderneducation been stronger in its structure, content, and cognitive impact, all vestiges ofthe indigenous would have been in fact erased or re-defined in radically new ways.

There are certain pedagogic processes indigenous to India that continue withinteresting results, such as the teaching of music and dance. These pedagogicsystems are free of modern presuppositions and exert enough discursive and prac-tical power to ensure their continuity. The material success of students from withinthis system ensures that they will not be thrown overboard for a Western or modernalternative. That should give us pause. If an indigenous system works well materi-ally, politically, and discursively, and our modern system fails materially (except forthe elite), politically, and discursively, then why do we not question the latter in lightof the former?

Protest is voiced in the system at present in the following ways. The shortage ofschools is sought to be made up for by formal and informal schools set up bynongovernmental and nonprofit organizations. Unfortunately, much of the time,these are motivated by good will but not a professional understanding of howeducation works or what techniques could be used best to overcome problemareas. The problem of the quality of teaching is sought to be made up for by privatetuition, and at higher levels, coaching centers that seek to make up for what schoolsdid not accomplish. Unfortunately, these are expensive and beyond the reachof ordinary people. As with NGO schools, they are often not based on a betterunderstanding of education than the formal schools, although their expensive, one-to-one mentoring makes up for that deficiency somewhat.

The government has also tried reform. Its present expenditure is inadequateand its present setup to tackle the magnitude of the problem even more so. Thelast word should be reserved for the few educational philosophers and ideologuesthat modern India has produced: Ram Mohan Roy, already mentioned, SayyadAhmad Khan (1819–1878), Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), and MohandasGandhi (1869–1948). Each one of them deserves a separate chapter to himself.

In the following chapters, some of the most important issues introduced in thisIntroduction are discussed in more detail. We have a discussion of Islamic educationby Usha Sanyal, who shows the important continuities and breaks between theprecolonial and colonial processes. We are informed about a preponderant trend innationalist education by Lea Renold, who discusses the case of Banaras HinduUniversity and its founder’s belief that the proper “Indian” education had to bea religious and, specifically, Hindu one. Tim Allender looks at the efforts of colonialadministrators to constructively bridge the gap between British state and missionaryideologies and vernacular ones and in so doing sheds new light on both indigenousand colonial education. Finally, Catriona Ellis dissects the state of research on thehistory of education in South Asia, bringing to our attention the important shiftsin historiography as more attention is paid to technical, specifically educationalprocesses and not just to broad questions of colonialism versus nationalism.

The History of Education in South Asia 21

Conclusion

If we were to ask, “What has been a South Asian or Indic education that we mayidentify over the millennia of South Asian history?” we would have to reply that theanswer lies in the education’s multiple narratives. There is no way around but to tellthe story for every distinct period of political and socioeconomic formation, payingclose attention to the culture and politics of each period. That is because education isbut another name for fundamentally two processes: one, the control by age and class-based authority on the formation of the next generation; and two, the pursuit ofimportant questions that include existential ones as well as those more directlyrelated to power.

Even while looking at the huge panorama of South Asian history, it is particularlyinteresting to analyze these relationships in the last hundred years. From the nation-alist movement onwards, South Asian leaders have tried to wield an anti-colonialpolitics to establish a successful model of “South Asian” education. Their attemptshave been unsuccessful because they have actually replicated colonialism in severalways. The new postcolonial states have shown no progress from colonial tightness ofpurse strings in spending on their vast human resources. They have retained thecurricula and the pedagogic processes of colonial schools, distancing themselvesfrom all South Asian indigenous, vernacular conceptual models and resources.Finally, they have replicated the hierarchies of colonialism by differentiatingbetween children according to community background and status. Education couldcontribute to building up rich democratic states, but the states’ leaders lack the ethicsand political will – much as if they were still colonial figures catering only toa privileged class which supported them.

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