Ten Lectures On Education

Ten Lectures on Education
Pedagogic and Sociological Sensibilities
Avijit Pathak
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CONTENTS
Preface 5
1. Education and Enlightenment 9
2. Beyond the Parameters of a Schooled Society 19
3. Seeing Through the Sociological Lens 29
4. Contextualizing the Educational Debates 46
5. Science, Secularization and Education 66
6. Euphoria of Success, Stigma of Failure 86
7. Ideology, Curriculum and Educational Dilemmas 100
8. Skill Learning and Liberal Education: Overcoming
the False Duality 115
9. A Society That Has Lost its Teachers is Dead 125
10. In Search of Feasible Utopias 140
References 158
Preface
Touch a book. Feel it. It whispers in your ears. It begins to speak

of its origin and its inspiration. Yes, the present book too has a
story to tell. It emerges in the process of a sustained interaction
with my students. As I teach a course in Sociology of Education,
the classroom becomes vibrant—a source of inspiration for me
to work on my lectures. However, these foundation lectures
do not aim at ‘covering’ a fixed syllabus, dictating notes or
narrating what is popularly regarded as ‘review of literature’.
Instead, the lectures, I assume, are enabling. The goal is to invite
my students to the world of ideas, and inspire them to raise
new questions and see the world with their own eyes. No
wonder, these foundation lectures create the ground for
constant dialogue— reflections on books and articles,
celebration of classroom diaries, and creative research projects
uniting theory and practice. In a way, if you read the book
carefully, you will feel the vibrancy of the classroom, which, I
have always believed, is sacred.
These ten lectures seek to create a new academic
environment that believes that the art of knowing is about
thinking and feeling, rigour and care, reflexivity and criticality,
and theory and poetry. It is not about becoming a mere ‘expert’
or a ‘knowledgeable’ man; it is essentially about positive life-
affirmation. That is why a careful reader would find a different
flavour in the book. It cannot be read as something ‘distant’;
instead, it is you; it hugs you; it talks to you. You are bound to
think of the deeper meaning of education, its sociological
context, critical pedagogy, and the issues relating to science,
6 Ten Lectures on Education
religion, market, nation and diverse ideologies of education. It

makes you interrogate the existing pathology; and at the same
time, it makes you dream and strive for a new possibility. And
it is inherently inclusive in its nature; Illich and Freire, Buber
and Weber, Gramsci and Gandhi, Kant and Buddha, Tagore
and Eliot, Jidu Krishnamurti and Michael Apple—the book
makes you converse with them, and leads you to ask a series
of questions on the very purpose of education.
Well, I work on my lectures (and for me, there is no better
research than teaching), and make a tentative outline for each
lecture. However, the classroom has its own dynamics. Yes, my
preparation helps me; but I speak freely, spontaneously without
looking at my papers. The presence of bright/curious students
inspires me; ideas and discourses begin to flow; possibly,
something possesses me. I feel the ideas that have emerged
from my classroom conversations should reach a wider
audience. This is not arrogance; this is essentially my urge to
build a bridge between a privileged university and the larger
community of young learners, researchers and teachers. That
is why I have chosen to reformulate my spontaneous lectures
without altering the basic tone and spirit of the arguments. The
book has emerged out of this effort. Since these are lectures, I
have not followed the tradition of writing ‘research papers’ with
detailed notes and references. Yes, I have engaged with many
books; but then, in the text you do not find the technicalities of
references (in the spontaneous flow of lectures you do not
mention the year of publication or the page number). The sole
idea is to invite the reader, and she/he would find everything.
I am grateful to my students—the cultural landscape of the
class, its heterogeneity and internationalism. The relaxed
environment of my university inspires me to keep
experimenting with pedagogic practices. I am indebted to the
university—its trees and butterflies, its peacocks and migratory
birds, its sunrise and sunset. My family and particularly, my
daughter have always encouraged me to write. My discussions
with Vikash—a creative soul working in the field of education
Preface 7
and alternative publications—have enriched my ideas. Nothing

is possible without the feminine grace. From the clouds, my
mother and my wife have blessed me. The book belongs to
them. My readers, I hope, will find this exercise most
meaningful.
Jawaharlal Nehru University Avijit Pathak
New Delhi
December 04, 2017
1
Education and Enlightenment
It is always good to begin with a simple question. What is

education? I know all of you would say that there is no point
in raising this question in a postgraduate class. The answer is
simple and well known. Any Standard English dictionary
defines education as bringing up or training of a child; instruction;
and strengthening the powers of body and mind. You would agree.
Education does try to train the child. And these days it is
beginning quite early—right from ‘play schools’. Toilet habits,
dietary practice, and the ability to remain outside the protective
context of family, and mix with others—the instruction goes
on. Again, it tries to strengthen the powers of the body and
mind. What else do school assemblies, timetable, and other
rituals seek to fulfil?And with your experience you would add
further. From nursery class to postgraduation—you would say
that education is a formal training in a legitimate institution
with prescribed curriculum, codified texts and professional
subject experts as teachers. You would say that education
implies acquisition of information, knowledge and skills; it is
graded learning one passes through a process of examinations
and evaluation. Recall the day you learned ‘A’ means apple;
or ‘Z’ means zebra; and now after passing through a ladder
you are learning ‘Durkheim’ means division labour; or Foucault
means discipline and surveillance. Meanwhile, many have
fallen from the ladder; they are not privileged like you. Some
of them failed to memorize that the Kalinga war led to the inner
transformation of King Ashoka; or failed to calculate the area
of a trapezium. They could not come to college or university.
So you have learned that education is also about competition,

success and survival strategy. Not solely that. You would say
that education enhances the possibility of upward social
mobility; the skills that you learn—intellectual as well as
technical—help you to get a job, which gives you, to use the
management vocabulary, an attractive package. As I recall, the
Bengali primer that I studied when I was a child contained a
revealing message: Those who are good in studies are the ones
who ride horses and elephants.
You are not wrong. Because this is what prevails. However,
there is another meaning of education, or, as I love to say,
another quest which is no less significant, which takes us
beyond the obvious—beyond information, knowledge and
skills, beyond jobs, success and failure in the phenomenal
world, beyond transmission of social heritage from one
generation to another. In this lecture, I wish to inspire you to
recall this quest. Can education enlighten us? What is
enlightenment? Once again the dictionary meaning is act of
enlightening; and ‘enlighten’ means to lighten, to give light to,
to elevate by knowledge or religion, or to free from prejudice
and superstition. Let us go deeper and explore it through two
windows—(a) the modern Kantian notion of enlightenment,
and (b) the age-old Eastern notion of enlightenment.
I invoke a revealing essay by Immanuel Kant written in
1784: What is Enlightenment? ‘Enlightenment’, wrote Kant, is the
human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority.’
Here by ‘minority’ Kant meant our inability to make use of our
own understanding without direction from another. And this
is self-incurred when its cause lies not in understanding but in
‘lack of resolution and courage’ to use it without direction from
another. You can understand that Kant is insisting on freedom—
man’s ability to trust his own judgment, and the courage to
stick to it. But it is not easy. It needs tremendous responsibility,
and perpetual alertness. But we tend to carry the burden of
laziness and cowardice. It is so comfortable to be a minor! As
Kant said, ‘If I have a book that understands for me, a spiritual
Education and Enlightenment 11
advisor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides a

regimen for me, and so forth, I need not trouble myself at all. I
need not think, if only I can pay; others will readily undertake
the irksome business for me.’ In fact, man has become a victim
of this comfort and dependence; he is afraid of walking alone.
In fact, he has become fond of this—the refusal to make use of
his own understanding. That is why, for enlightenment,
according to Kant, ‘nothing is required but freedom—freedom to
make public use of one’s reason in all matters.’ What does he mean
by the public use of one’s own reason? To quote him: ‘By the
public use of one’s own reason I understand that use which
someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the
world of readers.’ He gave an apt example. A citizen cannot
refuse to pay the taxes imposed on him merely because of his
private use of reason, but he does not act against the duty of a
citizen when as a scholar he publicly expresses his thoughts
about the inappropriateness or even injustice of such decrees.
In other words, it is a responsible act—not for one’s narrow
private interest. And it leads to innovation, to new ideas. ‘One
age’, wrote Kant, ‘cannot bind itself and conspire to put the
following one into such a condition that it would be impossible
for it to enlarge its cognitions, and to purify them of errors.’
That would be a crime against human nature. Enlightenment
demands that ‘succeeding generations are perfectly authorized
to reject such decisions as unauthorized and made
sacrilegiously.’ On September 30, 1784 when Kant wrote the
article he felt that it would not be absolutely correct to say that
‘we at present live in an enlightened age; but he would not
hesitate to say that ‘we live in an age of enlightenment.’ He saw
a trend: ‘The hindrances to universal enlightenment or to
humankind’s emergence from its self-incurred minority are
gradually becoming fewer.’
It was the age of hope. Reason, freedom, the courage to
question, public responsibility and progress—the values of
enlightenment, it was thought, would enable us to create a
better world. The ideal educated person, it was thought, would
be truly enlightened in this sense. Yes, the modern age did

evolve, come out of many orthodox dogmas, rituals and
practices. But did we become really enlightened? You know—
or you would eventually study—there was a paradox.
Modernity, as I would like you to think, became more and more
focused on the outer parameters—material wealth,
technological progress, infrastructure development; but the
inner light of enlightenment was not given adequate attention.
Science became part of the military establishment; technology
led to ruthless manipulation of natural resources and their
destruction; secularism degenerated into impoverishment of
inner light; freedom was reduced into its lowest common
denominator: self-centric individualism obsessed with the
gratification of physical/vital needs. No wonder, war,
environmental disaster, authoritarianism, reckless competition
and conspicuous consumption became the distinctive features
of the 20th century. Gandhi called it a ‘satanic civilization’; and
the critical theorist Adorno saw it as a reflection of the ‘dialectic
of enlightenment’. You may think I am becoming too harsh.
But think of it. We could see ‘educated’ people coming out from
modern universities engaged in all these practices. Are they
enlightened in a way Kant was visualizing? Possibly not.
Instead of freedom, courage, public use of reason, we see
submissiveness before technocracy, bureaucratic establishment,
market-dictated creeds, media induced notion of good living.
True, our universities are producing a skilled work force,
technical professionals, scholars, specialists and experts. But are
they cultivating an enlightened soul? Kant gave us a clue. And
I think you and I would continue to raise this question.
At this juncture, I need to talk about yet another notion of
enlightenment—the old eastern notion of enlightenment, and
see its significance in terms of what is called education. I wish
to take you to a moment of mythical history or historical
myth—Ananda, Gautam Buddha’s closest disciple watching his
master’s last moment. Ananda could not control his tears. True,
Buddha did not forget to acknowledge Ananda’s selfless
devotion: ‘For a long time, Ananda, have you been very near
to me by thoughts of love…that never varies, and is beyond
all measure. You have done well, Ananda.’ But then, Buddha
reminded him: ‘Enough Ananda! Do not let yourself be
troubled; do not weep! Have I not told you that it is in the very
nature of all things most near and dear unto us that we must
divide ourselves from them, leave them, sever ourselves from
them?’ In fact, in this reminder we realize once again the eastern
meaning of enlightenment. The material/phenomenal world
is temporal; but our attachment to it leads to ignorance; we tend
to equate the temporal with the eternal. No matter, how much
we seek to hold or possess the phenomenal reality, it is bound
to wither away; and that is why, this ignorance leads to dukkha
or pain or suffering. Salvation or enlightenment or nirvana lies in
deep realization of this profound truth, and leading a life characterized
by the middle path—neither the mortification of body nor indulgence
with its pleasure.
In fact, before the arrival of Gautam Buddha, there was the
Upanishadic awakening of vidya or true knowledge and its
distinction from avidya or incomplete knowledge. I am using
the word ‘incomplete knowledge’ rather than maya or illusion.
An example will make it clear. Suppose I want you to describe
yourself. Possibly you would say: ‘I have this body, this
physical embodied existence. I belong to a family, a religion, a
nation; I am a student of JNU. I like this or that.’ Not all that
you are saying is an illusion. However, as an Upanishadic sage
would say, it is not yet complete. Because beyond all these
phenomenal realities—body, ego, finite space, religion,
nationality, occupation, hobbies—lies the all-pervading energy
that manifests itself in you, in everything. It is the same energy
that makes you study, a bird fly, a flower bloom, a tree giving
its shade. Your body will disintegrate; your money will come
and go, you will pass through success and failure; but what
remains as eternal and absolute without beginning, without end
is the all-pervading energy. So true knowledge or vidya is an
awakening of this truth; and avidya means when one is fixated
at the finite, limited and temporal without realizing that what

is finite is essentially the manifestation of the infinite. Vidya
unites because it is about connectedness; avidya divides because
it misses the connection. Vidya makes one free from fear of
failure and death because the eternal does not die, does not
fail; whereas avidya leads to possessiveness, egotistic attachment
and fear of death. It is not easy to have vidya and get
enlightened. Instead, it is much easier to acquire the
specialized/fragmented knowledge of the phenomenal world.
Ananda spent more than forty years with Buddha; yet, even
at the last moment of his earthly existence, Buddha had to
remind Ananda of the meaning of enlightenment or nirvana.
But if you are in a modern university for forty years, you will
have several publications, awards, and many research students
working with you and so on and so forth. A PhD in Physics or
a book on linguistic philosophy, it seems, is an easy proposition
compared to an awakening of enlightenment. Because it is not
about mere intellectual cognition, it is an awakening. At this
juncture, let me tell you yet another mythical history—an
Upanishadic story. Svetaketu Aruneya became a pupil at the
age of twelve, and for the next twelve years, he studied all the
Vedas. He, however, became arrogant, and began to consider
himself well-read. One day the great sage Uddalaka—who was
also his father—asked him; ‘Svetaketu, since you are now so
greatly conceited, consider yourself well-read and arrogant, tell
me by which the unhearable becomes heard, the unpredictable
becomes perceived, the unknowable becomes known.’ Well,
Svetaketu knew only words; but never did he truly realize and
internalize their deeper significance. He had no answer to his
father’s query. Eventually, because of his father’s role as a
catalyst, he could realize what ought to be understood: ‘By one
clod of clay all that is made of clay becomes known, or by one
nugget of gold all that is made of gold becomes known, the
modification being only a name arising from speech, while the
truth is that it is just clay or gold.’ See how difficult it is to
realize this. You have a PhD in Physics; you think you are
different and superior to a mechanic. As a specialist in

information technology, you earn a great deal, and you think
you are different and superior to the cook who works in your
kitchen. Is it not what education does to us? It breeds ego,
separates one from others. But an enlightened self realizes that
these differences are merely outer; at a deeper level the physics
professor and the mechanic, the information technology expert
and the cook are all diverse manifestations of the same energy
that is absolute, eternal and infinite.
So friends, you can see where we are moving with our
education. We are neither enlightened in the Kantian sense
(freedom, courage, responsibility) nor in the Buddhist or
Upanishadic sense (non-possessiveness and an awakening of
the distinction of the transient and the eternal). Did education
fail us? There seems to be no escape from this question. T.S.
Eliot—a great poet in the 20th century—expressed this anguish
quite powerfully:
Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us further from God and nearer to the dust.
In fact, Eliot was apprehensive about unlimited industrialism
because, as he felt, it would create ‘bodies of men and women—
of all classes—detached from tradition, alienated from religion,
and susceptible to mass suggestion’; it would create a mob; and
‘a mob will be no less a mob even if it is well-fed, well-clothed
and well-disciplined.’ The drive for ‘educated manpower’ in
our times, he believed, is associated only with ‘technical
efficiency’. It is possible to see ‘elitism’ in Eliot—his inclination
to ‘high culture’. True, he was interested in the training
necessary for a man of letters. He pleaded for the maintenance
of a ‘classical education’. You should be cautious of this elitism.
However, the deeper point Eliot was making—you ought to
see. Education ought to enchant our souls. Take an illustration
from our own situation. The other day a leading newspaper

published a report on Kota—a town in Rajasthan known for
its education market, its coaching centres for admission into
medical/engineering colleges. Yes, every year youngsters from
all over the country come here because they are expected to
fulfil their parental aspirations; they are trained to believe that
there is no other meaning in education except the possession
of the necessary skills for becoming a doctor or an engineer.
There is no light in education, no deeper quest, no cultural
sensibilities. No wonder, it causes tremendous mental agony
and stress. Neurotic disorder, obsessive anxiety, aggression,
anti-depressant drugs, suicidal tendencies—Kota has
everything. Kota, you might say, is preparing the ground for
the ‘technical manpower’ that the nation needs. Kota, you might
add, is indicating democratic aspirations and social mobility
because people from small towns and villages send their
children to become technical professionals, and thereby
challenge the hegemony of the select elite. But then, the
question is: At what cost? The way youngsters come to Kota
look like a mob, and was Eliot entirely wrong while arguing
that ‘a mob will be no less a mob even if it is well-fed, well-
clothed and well-disciplined?’
But friends, I do not wish to end this lecture on a pessimistic
note. Because there will always be a search for enlightenment.
Repeatedly great educators and pedagogues have reminded us
of this search, this possibility. It is in this context that I wish to
take you to a Panchatantra story. Do not be angry with me. You
may feel that you are a JNU student studying complex texts,
and their professor is talking about children’s stories. But
believe me, children’s stories are not just children’s stories; they
are for everybody; they reveal something very deep and
profound. You know the legend behind Panchatantra. A king
who had three sons hired a versatile teacher, Vishnusarman
who taught them how to be happy and successful in life. It
means five doctrines of conduct—confidence or firmness of
mind, creation of prosperity, earnest endeavour, friendship and
knowledge. And his pedagogy involved the art of story-telling.

I wish to tell you one such story. We live in an age in which
greed is normalized; it is a world that trains us to demand
‘more’—more money, more technology, more cars, more
gadgets, more electricity, more internet connection, more sex,
more television channels, and more entertainment. And we are
led to believe that with more degrees, more diplomas, more
certificates we ought to demand more—more power, more
prestige, more wealth. Under these circumstances, when we
invoke this story, we realize what this ‘more’ business can lead
to. In a way, it seeks to enlighten us.
It is the story of a poor Brahmin. Poverty and struggle, and
at times even no food for many days. However, one day he
got a potful of flour. With absolute happiness, he took the pot
and hung it up near his bed. Then he lay down on the bed and
gazed lovingly at his pot of flour. “I wish I were rich,’ thought
the Brahmin. And then he began to dream… There is a lot of
flour in the pot. There is a famine in the land, and he is selling
it for a very good price. With this money, he starts a business,
buys a pair of she-goats, feeds them well, and in a few years
from these goats comes ten more goats. He buys them in the
market, and earns a great deal. And this time with this money
he buys a pair of cows. They give birth to calves, and these
calves become cows. He gets lots of milk; he sells milk and
sweets. In his dream he becomes richer and richer. This time
he starts a business of diamonds, and becomes excessively rich.
He builds a palace, and the king chooses him for his daughter;
the beautiful princess with her long hair and lovely eyes
becomes his bride. The dream does not end. They now have
three children. They become naughty, and disturb him while
he rests. He gets angry, picks up a stick, and begins to beat
them. See the consequences of this dream— dream of more and
more. Thinking that he was beating the children, the Brahmin
began to beat the air with his hands. Suddenly one hand struck
against the pot of flour; the pot fell, and was smashed into
hundreds of pieces. There was noise; the Brahmin jumped out
of bed. He looked around. No princess, no palace, no children.

Only the broken pot, and the flour spilled all over the sandy
floor. Friends, what does it mean to rediscover this story in our
times when consumerism intensifies the dream of ‘more’? If
we keep asking this question, we are likely to move towards a
state of enlightenment.
2
Beyond the Parameters of a
Schooled Society
I have a friend. His name is Uttkarsh. He is hardly four years

old. Naturally, he is full of life; his laughter is pure; his cry is
intense; he is non-pretentious. He plays with his younger
brother; imitates his father and uncle, does a lot of role-playing.
At times, he imagines his toy cycle as a bike; he looks at
aeroplanes, stray dogs, neelgais. When he comes to me, he
observes me intensely; he asks all sorts of questions. He is in
tune with life. But then, I have to remind his parents: This is
the month of January; there is a huge rush for school admission;
move around, collect application forms from as many schools
as you can, and ensure that he gets admission for the nursery
class in a school. Yes, Uttkarsh has to go to school. He sees
birds; but he doesn’t know that ‘p’ means parrot; he knows his
father’s name, my name, my daughter’s name; but he doesn’t
know that there is something called national anthem, and
Rabindranath Tagore wrote and composed it; he has an idea
about his immediate locality—the road that goes to his father’s
shop, the house where his friend stays; but he doesn’t know
that we live in a nation called India, and it is part of Asia, and
Asia is just one continent among many other continents; when
I offer him biscuits, he knows that it is better to have two
biscuits rather than one; experientially he knows that 2 is bigger
than 1; but he does not know the mathematical symbol of
‘bigger’/’lesser’; he loves to play with football; but he does not
know that that football is a sphere, and mathematicians want
him to calculate its volume. Words flow like a fountain from
his mouth; but he does not know that there is something called
‘noun’, ‘verb’, ‘adjective’, ‘adverb’, ‘preposition’. And in our
times, it is said, all these pieces of information and knowledge
are important, and informal socialization—this spontaneous
interaction with grandparents, parents, friends, birds, trees,
dogs—is not adequate. He has to come to a formal place called
school, and learns what a complex society wants him to learn.
And it is believed that learning takes place only in formal
institutions—from schools to universities. Education is
formalized and institutionalized. Hence, as part of a schooled
society, I remind his parents: Do something for your child’s
admission. So one day, Uttkarsh will go to school. With school
uniform, water bottle and tiffin box he would look different.
And of course, his school bag will carry more and more weight.
Mathematics, history, geography, science, language, computer,
drawing, grammar, home tasks, summer projects, parent-
teacher meetings, exams and evaluation—with this culture of
learning he would grow, and eventually learn a lesson that a
schooled society wants him to learn: there is no education
outside formal institutions and their certification, and hence
those who have not gone to school are not ‘educated’ at all, or
those who have spent less number of years in formal
educational institutions are ‘less’ educated. So he would learn
after a couple of years of schooling that he is more ‘educated’
than his father or mother because they have not gone to school
although they have experienced the world, nurtured their
children, taken care of their village land, cultivated rice and
wheat ,earned their livelihood through hard labour. In fact,
Uttkarsh would learn to believe that schooling is a must; more
schooling means more ‘progress’, and it is measurable and
quantified.
Now I want you to imagine what would have happened
had Uttkarsh been born in a South Sea island as a Samoan child
at a time when Margaret Mead—a leading anthropologist—was
visiting the island and writing her field notes. Mead wrote a
beautiful chapter: Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan
Beyond the Parameters of a Schooled Society 21
Contrasts. Yes, Mead saw the process of growth of American

children and adolescents in America—the turmoil, restlessness,
identity confusion they pass through. However, Mead with her
ethnographic gaze found no such stress among Samoan
children. One of the important reasons is that ‘Samoa is a place
where no one plays for very high stakes, no one pays very
heavy prices, no one suffers for his convictions, or fights to the
death for special ends.’ In fact, as Mead told us, ‘no one is
hurried along in life or punished heavily for slowness of
development. Instead, the gifted, the precocious are held back,
until the slowest among them have caught the pace.’ And Mead
knew that in a speedy/hyper-modern society like America
children could not grow up in such a casual/relaxed manner.
Why America? Even in contemporary India, it seems
impossible. Imagine a situation. If Uttkarsh doesn’t get through
a ‘good’ school, if he doesn’t feel like going to school, and
instead wants to play with his bat and cricket ball, or if Uttkarsh
doesn’t fulfil his teacher’s expectations—good handwriting,
memorization of nursery rhymes like Mistress Mary or London
bridge falling down, he will be in trouble. Constant comparison
and evaluation would cause a great psychic damage to him.
However, had he been a Samoan child, nothing of that kind,
as Mead would say, would have happened to him. He would
have played ceaselessly, he would have seen the elders working
and learned how to make the oven and weave mats. No home
tasks. No school projects. Not solely that. He would have grown
with ‘many years of casual love making’. Love and hate,
jealousy and revenge, sorrow and bereavement, are all a matter
of weeks because, as Mead reminded us, ‘from the first months
of its life, when the child is handed carelessly from one
woman’s hands to another’s, the lesson is learnt of not caring
for one person greatly, not setting high hopes on any one
relationship.’ There is another important insight that we can
derive from Mead. Think of American children. They are
bombarded with a number of choices. ‘Our children’, wrote
Mead, ‘grow up to find a world of choices dazzling their
unaccustomed eyes.’ For instance, in religion they may be

Catholics, Protestants, Spiritualists, Agnostics or Atheists. This
bombardment has its price. To quote Mead: ‘The more severe
the choice, the more conflict; the more poignancy is attached
to the demands made upon the individual, the more neuroses
will result.’ In contrast, the Samoan child is free from this
danger. Because there is one set of gods, one accepted religious
practice, and if a man does not believe, his only recourse is to
believe less than his fellows, but there is no new faith to which
he may turn. I take this analogy of choices and resultant conflict
in our times.
Think of Uttkarsh. As he begins to go to school, he too will
be bombarded with choices: Whether to opt for science,
commerce, or humanities; whether to prepare for law,
engineering, or medicine, and so on and so forth. And for the
choice he makes he has to bear its consequences. But had he
been a Samoan child, life would have been different. No
compulsory schooling. No anxiety over subject matters and
disciplines. Instead, without much anxiety and choice burden,
he would dig for bait, collect coconuts, carry water, sweep the
floor. And that is why, Mead said, unlike American or modern
children, the Samoan child doesn’t feel that work is for adults,
and play is for children. For them, there is no special period of
childhood free from work. Instead, work is something, which
goes on all the time for everyone; no one is exempt; few are
overworked. Planting, harvesting, house-building, mat
making—these are the necessary activities of life in which every
member of the community including the smallest child has a
part. No wonder, a Samoan child has any desire to turn adult
activities into play. Moreover, there is always leisure. Their play
includes dancing, singing, games, weaving necklaces of flowers.
However, for a modern child, school segregates him from the
everyday domain of work, or from spontaneous play as part
of everyday normal activity. Therefore, he has to be given
special toys for play, or for imitating the adult sphere of work.
But for a Samoan child, there is no such need. As Mead said,
‘they never make toy houses, nor play house, nor sail toy boats’.
Instead, ‘little boys would climb into a real outrigger canoe and
practise paddling it within the safety of the lagoon.’ But
Uttkarsh is not a Samoan child. He is here amongst us in this
schooled society. He has to go to school. He cannot learn in
his own way what his father does: arranging bread, eggs,
biscuits, and selling these products in the small roadside shop.
Instead, he would go to school, study geography and science,
distance himself from everyday work like storing drinking
water in the kitchen, repairing the electric switch or plug point,
and create a separation between the ‘intellectual’ and the
‘manual’, between school and the world. He would come back
exhausted, and sometimes would borrow the mobile from his
father, play a Honey Singh song and dance in the way adults
do on the television screen. Modern society would consider him
‘literate’ and ‘educated’.
The question is: Why is it so? Why is this overarching
dependence on schooling? Why is it that we equate substantial
education with formal/ institutionalized education? Let us try
to find answers. One obvious answer is that we live in a
complex society with its heightened division of labour,
specialized occupations, and more and more advanced forms
of knowledge; and hence we need to send our children to
formal institutions for training/educating them so that they can
fit into the modern system. To use standard anthropological/
sociological vocabulary, it is a movement from a kinship/clan-
centric community to a highly differentiated society governed
by a legitimate authority called the state. Its demands cannot
be fulfilled by mere family-kinship socialization. It is like saying
that one cannot know trigonometry or three- dimensional
geometry merely through an informal interaction with parents
and siblings. One needs a skilled mathematics teacher located
in a formal institution. Another reason that can be put forward
is that a modern/complex/state-centric society needs some
abstract/universal principles, which are not particularistic
values one learns from one’s family or clan. For example, the
principles of citizenship, the adherence to universal legal/

constitutional principles are important; and for this one’s
perception of the world has to go beyond the particularistic
values of family socialization. It is in this sense one can say
that school is a mini world where the child is learning how to
interact with an elder who is not his parent, or with others who
are not one’s own siblings; the child learns to celebrate, say,
Independence day or Republic day which is not his or her
parents’ birth day. It can be said that school prepares one for
the larger society. I think John Dewey while commenting on
the ‘school as a special environment’ expressed it beautifully:
‘The intermingling in the school of youth of different races,
differing religions and unlike customs creates for all a new and
broader environment. Common subject matter accustoms all
to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon that is not visible
to the members of any group while it is isolated.’
But I believe –and this is what I wish to share with you—
we cannot go deeper into these issues relating to formalization/
institutionalization of education or schooled society unless we
travel with an extraordinarily sensitive thinker named Ivan
Illich. I am sure you are aware of the pulse of his worldview.
Yes, he was a Roman Catholic priest; and he was a gifted social
critic. In a way, he interrogated the fundamental logic of
modern Western civilization —its bureaucratic/formalized
structure with its techno-scientific knowledge system. No
wonder, he saw the limits to modern medicine, its absolute
control over our lives, its power politics. Likewise, he was for
more enabling human ‘convivial tools’ for the creation of an
egalitarian society that truly empowers people. In his writings,
you experience a search for freedom—something beyond the
parameters of the formal structure. It is the same feeling you
experience in his celebrated Deschooling Society. Schooling, for
Illich, designates ‘a form of child care and a rite de passage which
we take for granted’. Illich reminds us that this institution—
this cult of compulsory schooling which is imposed on all
citizens for a period of ten to eighteen years—appeared on the
scene only with the growth of the industrial state. Illich

expresses his anguish; he says that it is difficult to challenge
the school as a system because we are so used to it. To quote
him: ‘Our industrial categories tend to define results as
products of institutions and instruments. Armies produce
defence for countries. Churches procure salvation in an afterlife.
Binet defined intelligence as that which his tests test. Why not,
then, conceive of education as the product of schools? Once this
tag has been accepted, unschooled education gives the
impression of something spurious, illegitimate and certainly
unaccredited.’ It may not be easy for most of us trained in
schooling to accept or understand his radical plea for
deschooling. Yet, we ought to listen—and listen carefully—the
way he demythologized schooling. In this lecture, I wish to
share with you three such arguments. First, schooling is based
on the ‘myth of institutionalized values’; it is like believing that
for everything we need to rely on specialized institutions; all
non-professional activities are rendered suspect; and the idea
of a self-taught man or woman is discredited. See its
consequences. Once a man or woman has accepted the need
for schooling, he or she is easy prey for other institutions. As
Illich says, ‘once young people have allowed their imaginations
to be formed by curricular instruction they are conditioned to
institutional planning of every sort.’ Is it therefore surprising
that in this schooled society for everything there are ‘experts’
and specialized institutions—coaching classes for how to
become good parents, summer schools for learning creative
writing, event managers for arranging birthday parties and
wedding ceremonies? Don’t you think that it diminishes human
creativity, causes standardization, and generates the culture of
patron-client relationship in every sphere of life? Second, it
relies on the ‘myth of measurement of values’. ‘School’, says
Iliich, ‘initiates people into a world where everything can be
measured, including their imaginations, and, indeed, man
himself.’ However, the fact is that all that is truly meaningful
is beyond measurement. You cannot measure a child’s wonder
when she looks at a butterfly or a rainbow; you cannot measure

the creative joy of a child when she invents her own toys; you
cannot measure the fulfilment a child experiences while she
reads a piece of historical narrative, or looks at a mountain peak
or a plateau. No wonder, Illich writes beautifully, ‘the learning
I prize is immeasurable.’ However, schools measure:
Mathematics-54; History-76; Hindi—38; Science—55. And its
consequences are disastrous. For all of us who have been
schooled, ‘what cannot be measured becomes secondary,
threatening.’ This internalization of ranking makes the child
accept the superior status and unquestioned authority of those
who have more schooling than he has. As a result, we tend to
accept all kinds of ranking. Is it then surprising—my young
friends—that even university professors like us who otherwise
interrogate a hierarchical society get so easily carried away by
the latest trend of ranking universities? To borrow Illich’s
words: ‘There is a scale for the development of nations, another
for the intelligence of babies, and even progress towards peace
can be calculated according to body count. In a schooled world
the road to happiness is paved with a consumer’s index.’ Third,
it is centred on the ‘myth of packaging values.’ Everything has
to be packaged attractively, sold and distributed. In fact, the
curriculum production, for Illich, is nothing but this packaging.
‘The distributor-teacher delivers the finished product to the
consumer-pupil.’ All these, as you understand, lead to a form
of alienation. I feel tempted to quote Illich’s prophetic message;
‘School makes alienation preparatory to life, thus depriving
education of reality and work of creativity. School prepares for
the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need
to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their
incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find
relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises
which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional
definition.’
It is for you to decide whether you can accept Illich’s
critique. As far as I am concerned, there is one lesson that I
value immensely which I have learned from Illich: ‘Most

learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of
unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.’ In other
words, education cannot be limited to formal institutions, to
the ritualization of certification. Schools/colleges/universities
cannot monopolize education; there is lifelong education, and
most of the time it takes place outside formal institutions, and
it is beyond measurement. It is in this context that I wish to
end this lecture with the story of lifelong learning taking place
not in a formal institution, but in the process of an engagement
with a prostitute. Look at the brilliant novel Notes from
Underground written by Dostoyevsky. In this path-breaking
novel, a nameless narrator speaks of his life—his anguish,
bitterness, despair. ‘ I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. An
unattractive man. I think that my liver hurts. But actually, I
don’t know a damn thing about my illness. I am not even sure
what it is that hurts.’ The very first paragraph makes you feel
the existential anguish of the narrator. As the novel evolves,
we get to know many incidents of encounters that have added
to his anguish, his sense of meaninglessness in the way life
moves. He seems to have missed all that is real, loving, and
trustworthy. Almost at the end of the novel the narrator makes
a confession: ‘I have felt ashamed throughout the writing of
this narrative: hence this is no longer literature, but corrective
punishment. Because telling, for example, long tales about how
I have shirked away my life through moral degeneration in my
corner, through isolation from society, through loss of contact
with anything alive, through vanity and malice in my
underground is really uninteresting. A novel requires a hero,
and here there is a deliberate collection of all the traits of an
antihero. ’And I wish to narrate one encounter which actually
made him realize the need for and meaning of love, or the
consequences of its absence. No moral lesson in a school. No
speech by the headmaster. But just an encounter with Liza—a
prostitute. See the way the narrator reveals it. ‘She could not
be called a beauty, although she was tall, strong, and well-built.
She was dressed very simply. Something nasty stirred within

me; I approached her directly…’ Time passed. ‘My mind was
in a daze. Something seemed to float over me, brushing against
me, exciting and troubling me.’ And then it happened.
‘Suddenly I saw beside me two open eyes, examining me with
steady curiosity. Their gaze was coldly indifferent, sullen, a
total stranger’s; it oppressed me.’ And just this look made him
see the truth of existence. ‘I also recalled that in the course of
two hours I had not said a single word to this being, and had
not deemed it necessary; in fact, I had even enjoyed this .But
now, all at once, I realized with utmost clarity the whole
absurdity, as loathsome as a spider, of fornication, which rudely
and shamelessly, without love, begins directly with that which
consummates true love.’ So friends, a novelist like
Dostoyevsky—known for existential anguish and simultaneous
quest for spiritual redemption—makes us see the trajectory of
life. At times, or most of the time, true learning takes place
outside the boundaries of schools, colleges and universities.
You may not agree with Illich’s deschooling proposal. But how
can you deny that school is not everything? It is just a fragment
of our learning/educational experience.
3
Seeing Through the Sociological Lens
You may wonder whether I am a sociologist at all. I narrate a

Panchatantra story in the class; I recite T.S. Eliot’s poem, engage
myself with Dostoyevsky. Don’t worry. I will definitely refer
to what the university system, because of its classification and
division of knowledge, regards as sociology. But before that,
there are two points of caution that I want to make. First, the
domain of education—the way society rears its children, the
way formal institutions like schools, colleges and universities
function, or the way curriculum is designed, or knowledges
are classified and disseminated—is not the monopoly of
professional sociologists. From parents to children, from
psychologists to historians, from economists to political
philosophers—everyone has an interest in education, and
certain ways of looking at it. And quite often, these diverse
approaches complement each other. Hence, as I would suggest,
it is not a good idea to have some sort of sociological
chauvinism. Like all sorts of chauvinism, sociological
chauvinism too restricts the flow of ideas; it is based on
insecurity. But then, we know that one major purpose of
liberating education is to overcome insecurity, and open the
windows of the mind. Let us cherish that. Second, even though
as students of sociology you ought to be rooted in the
fundamentals of the discipline, don’t forget that the boundaries
of disciplines are not like boundaries of nation-states. They
often merge and overlap. Call it whatever you like—cross
disciplinary, interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary.
Take, for instance, a thinker like Karl Marx. Who was he—
a sociologist, a political scientist, an economist, a historian, a

philosopher? Despite my very limited understanding of Marx,
and his oceanic vision, one thing I can say with a degree of
confidence. It is futile for any particular discipline to possess
him. In his EPM while speaking of alienation as loss of man’s
creative fulfilment, he was an extraordinarily gifted existential
psychologist; in The German Ideology while engaging with
Feurbeach and Hegel he was a philosopher par excellence; in
The Communist Manifesto while evolving his theory of class and
class conflict he was a political scientist; and who doesn’t know
that in the Capital while he was elaborating his ideas of use
value, exchange value, surplus labour and commodity
fetishism, he was building the foundations of another kind of
political economy in contrast to what Adam Smith had put
forward? All these currents of ideas made Marx a brilliant
thinker. Therefore, friends, retain your sociological sensibilities,
but don’t close your eyes.
It is in this context that I wish to stimulate your
interdisciplinary approach by posing a challenge before you. I
would like to take two points regarding early childhood
education that Rousseau referred to in his classic Emile (or On
Education) which was published in 1762, almost simultaneously
with the Social Contract. We know that here is an epic text in
which Rousseau spoke of his vision of education, especially
with reference to his imaginary pupil Emile—‘from the moment
of his birth up to the one when , become a grown man, he will
no longer have need of any guide other than himself.’ First,
ponder over what he said; ‘Children raised in clean houses
where no spiders are tolerated are afraid of spiders, and this
fear often stays with them when grown. I have never seen a
peasant, man, woman, or child afraid of spiders. …I want him
habituated to seeing new objects, ugly, disgusting, peculiar
animals, but little by little, from afar, until he is accustomed to
them. If during his childhood he has without fright seen toads,
snakes, crayfish, he will when grown, without disgust see any
animal whatsoever. There are no longer frightful objects for
Seeing Through the Sociological Lens 31
whoever sees such things every day.’ Second, think of yet

another point he made. ‘Dare I expose the greatest, the most
important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to
gain time but to lose it. …Thus the first education ought to be
purely negative. If you could do nothing and let nothing be
done, if you could bring your pupil healthy and robust to the
age of twelve without his knowing how to distinguish his right
hand from his left, at your first lesson the eyes of his
understanding would open up to reason. So he would become
in your hands the wisest of men, and in beginning by doing
nothing, you would have worked an educational marvel.’
Friends, how do you make sense of these two powerful points
Rousseau made? Yes, of course, you need a sociological
sensibility.
See how our urban/middle class children grow up in our
super hygienic 1500 sq. ft. apartments. No spider. No snake.
You have to take your child to a zoo. If at all they happen to
see a spider or a snake in their everyday life, it would cause
tremendous repulsion or fear. Or see the way we are always in
a hurry; we have developed a very utilitarian notion of time;
time, we say, is money; and every fragment of it, we think, has
to be used. No wonder, as parents/teachers all the time we are
‘teaching’ our children—the alphabets, the numbers, the
rhymes, the manners, the general knowledge—names of
mountains, rivers, countries, state capitals, and so on and so
forth. We do not want the child to play with time; instead, after
school they must go to music class, swimming class, piano class.
We are far from what Rousseau said: ‘Let childhood ripen in
children. And what if some lesson becomes necessary to them?
Keep yourself from giving it today if you can without danger
put it off till tomorrow?’ Possibly our sociology tells us that
with modernity we have become increasingly denaturalized;
and, despite Rousseau’s reminder: ‘Everything is good as it
leaves the hands of the author of things; everything
degenerates in the hands of man…. He turns everything
upside down; he disfigures everything; he loves deformity,
monsters. He wants nothing as nature made it, not even man;

for him man must be trained like a schooled horse, ’ we cannot
do much; we would generate fear in our children, make them
restless and overburdened, and make it almost impossible for
them to have a creative engagement with time; instead, time
would oppress them. Likewise, you can look at the entire issue
through the perspective of a psychologist. You can understand
how this denaturalization has caused severe fear in the child’s
mind: the fear of all that is seen to be ‘wild’, be it a spider or
a snake; and believe it, fear leads to violence. Moreover, you
can look at the issue through the eyes of a historian. Don’t
forget to realize that Rousseau was evolving a critique of what
he regarded as the bourgeois. Rousseau’s enemy was not the
ancient regime; he was certain that revolution would shortly
sweep them away; he was rather concerned about the kind
of man who was going to inhabit the new world. The
bourgeois distinguishes his own good from the common good;
he exploits others while depending on them. No wonder,
Rousseau’s apprehension of the emergent bourgeois took him
closer to Robinson Crusoe. Nature and natural needs are all that
is of concern to him. Nature is the ultimate tutor. That is why,
to take a simple illustration, Rousseau’s Emile lost in the woods
and hungry finds his way home to lunch by his knowledge
of astronomy. For him, astronomy is not a discipline forced
on him by his teachers. Nature will always be present to him
as a part of his very senses. In other words, historically
speaking, Rousseau was a reminder as well as a protest against
the emergent bourgeois civilization leading to denaturalization
of life, culture and education.
I am saying all this only to make a point: Be sociological;
but don’t forget to get glimpses from other disciplines. Having
said this, I feel I can now come to what you are waiting for:
looking at education through the sociological lens. In this
lecture, I will approach it by raising three central sociological
questions. And then you can find other questions, and take your
understanding of sociology of education to a much higher level.
Here is the first question: If society is not, as Emile Durkheim

repeatedly said, just an aggregate of individuals, but a ‘whole’
having its own character, binding norms and ideals, and which
cannot be reduced into its parts, then what role does education
play or ought to play to transform the individual from a discrete
egotistic being to a social/collective being? Let us try to cope
with this question through Durkheim’s eyes; and it will
definitely sharpen our sociological sensibilities. Before we go
directly into it, let us recall what you have already learned
about the master thinker and his sociological vision. Like all
other classical thinkers in the late 19th and early 20th century,
Durkheim was trying to draw the landscape of modern/
industrial society. He was trying to understand the process of
transformation—from the ‘mechanical solidarity’ of a simple,
non-modern community to the ‘organic solidarity’ of a highly
differentiated complex modern society. As a careful student of
his Division of Labour, you know that as far as mechanical
solidarity is concerned, ‘the collective conscience envelops our
whole existence…our individuality is nil.’ In contrast, organic
solidarity is possible ‘only if each one has a sphere of action
which is peculiar to him; that is a personality.’ This means, as
Durkheim said, ‘the collective conscience leaves open a part of
the individual conscience in order that special functions may
be established there, functions which it cannot regulate.’ To put
it simply, in modern society you have a distinctive identity of
your own which manifests itself in your specialized occupation,
aptitude, skills. But then, as Durkheim said, it does not mean
that in modern society we are just individuals preoccupied with
our own interests. After all, even organic solidarity has its
morality; it is not an utilitarian contract. ‘Where interest is the
only ruling force’, Durkheim cautioned us, ‘each individual
finds himself in a state of war with every other since nothing
comes to mollify the egos.’
Despite division of labour and our individuality, we should
not forget that ‘men cannot live together without
acknowledging, and consequently, making mutual sacrifices,
without tying themselves to one another with strong, durable

bonds.’ Be an individual with a personality; but don’t lose the
connectedness with the collective, its shared history, its shared
memories, its values—that seemed to be the message Durkheim
was conveying. Because he was also witnessing a trend: the
growing individualism, the loss of connectedness with the
collective and the resultant anomic disorder. Just, for a minute,
recall some of the powerful observations he made in his other
classic Suicide. Be it ‘egoistic’ or ‘anomic’ suicide, he saw the
breakdown of moral order, the loss of connectedness. When
‘man regards himself as the object of his own cult’, it becomes
difficult to ‘endure life’s suffering patiently’. It should not be
forgotten, as he said, ‘a cohesive and animated society generates
mutual moral support.’ Possibly, Durkheim’s quest was not just
to know the elementary form of religion like totemism; he also
tried to make a point that society is moral; it is sacred; it
transcends the individual; and even a modern/secular society
filled with the ethos of ‘individual rights’ should not afford to
forget that if it loses the connectedness with the sacred, that is
the moral power of the collective, it is bound to crumble.
As you understand this Durkheimian concern, it would be
easier for you to place his propositions for education. In this
lecture I will share with you only three points. First, education
has a deep social function. Each society, considered at a given
stage of development, has a system of education, and it has its
irresistible impact. In fact, as he said, ‘it is idle to think that we
can rear our children as we wish.’ It is true that in our times
there cannot be absolute homogeneous education.
Specialization, individual-specific aptitudes and talents are
important, and education must take care of these special
interests. But they are not sufficient unto themselves. Because,
as Durkheim would say, irrespective of specialized interests,
we all ought to learn as members of a given society something
that is common, shared and binding. And hence the function
of education, for Durkheim, is to arouse in the child ‘(1) a certain
number of physical and mental states that the society to which he
belongs considers should not be lacking in any of its members; (2)

certain physical and mental states that the particular social group
(caste, class, family, profession) considers, equally, ought to be found
among all those who make it up.’ Education transforms us—from
an egoistic asocial being to one ‘capable of leading a moral and
social life.’ And this task has to be taken seriously. Because we
cannot transform ourselves spontaneously. To quote Durkheim:
‘There is nothing in our congenital nature that predisposed us
necessarily to become servants of divinities, symbolic emblems
of society, to render them worship, to deprive ourselves in
order to do them honour.’ It is society that teaches us to control
our passions, our instinct, to subordinate our personal ends to
higher ends. And it is education that serves this societal
function. I wish to borrow the example of learning a language
from Durkheim. Language, for him, is a social thing; it contains
a whole system of ideas that sum up centuries of experiences.
Without language we cannot have general ideas. So when a
child learns a word, and says ‘she is my teacher’, she begins to
convey a socially embedded meaning of the word ‘teacher’; in
a way it also helps her to internalize the societal/cultural
experience. That is why, Durkheim said it quite aptly, ‘language
helps us to raise ourselves beyond pure sensation.’ Again, see
the importance Durkheim attached to the societal function of
education. Education ought to assure, among the citizens, ‘a
sufficient community of ideas and sentiments without which
any society is impossible.’ And hence it should by no means
depend on the ‘arbitrariness of private individuals.’ The state
as an embodiment of collective interests should not remain
aloof from what goes on in schools.
Second, education is inherently moral because unless
children learn morality the sacredness of collective conscience
cannot be retained. In a major text, called Moral Education,
Durkheim stated this point quite clearly. Let us try to
understand what he meant by it. It is obvious that for a thinker
like Durkheim, morality would mean rising above one’s narrow
selfish interests, and live with others with a deep sense of
connectedness. It is, therefore, important that the child learns

‘strong self-control’ in order to contain his ‘natural egoism’ and
subordinate himself to ‘higher ends’. And schools have to play
an important role in generating this sense of morality among
children. Hence, discipline is important. ‘The fundamental
element of morality’, said Durkheim, is ‘the spirit of discipline.’
I feel tempted to quote him: ‘There is a whole system of rules
in the school that predetermines the child’s conduct. He must
come to the class regularly; he must arrive at a specified time
and with an appropriate bearing and attitude. He must not
disrupt routine in the class. He must have learned his lessons,
done his homework, and have done so reasonably well, etc.’
Discipline, we were reminded, makes it possible for nations to
be well-governed. ‘A well-disciplined class has an air of health
and good humour.’ However, we would do injustice to
Durkheim if we do not mention his caution. Discipline is good,
but it should not exceed its limits; it should confine itself ‘within
certain limits’. For example, as he said, it is not necessary that
children’s attitudes, their bearing, the way they walk or recite
their lessons, the way they keep their notebooks be
predetermined. If discipline exceeds its limits, it would become
counterproductive. It would annoy and irritate the child.
Moreover, ‘if he submits passively and without resistance, he
becomes accustomed to doing nothing except on somebody’s
order—which destroys all initiative in him.’ Discipline implies
punishment. School is a mini society, and if its moral authority
is violated, it loses its sacred character. And, as he said, ‘a sacred
thing profaned remains no longer sacred if nothing new
develops to restore its original nature.’ In fact, misbehaviour
in the class shatters the child’s faith in the authority of the
school law; and hence the law must assert itself and make the
child believe that its refutation cannot be tolerated.
‘Punishment is nothing but this meaningful demonstration.’
It has to be made clear. For Durkheim, the aim of punishment
is not to cause terror and restore superficial order in the
classroom. It is not to cause physical pain or suffering to the
child; its primary purpose is to strengthen the sense of duty—

‘both for the guilty party and for those witnessing the offence—
those whom the offence tends to demoralize.’ He was
categorically against corporal punishment; it destroys human
dignity. I will quote Durkheim again: ‘One of the chief aims of
moral education is to inspire in the child a feeling for the dignity
of man. Corporal punishment is a continual offence to this
sentiment. In beating, in brutality of all kinds, there is
something we find repugnant, something that revolts our
conscience—in a word, something immoral.’
Third, for a truly meaningful social education the teacher
must realize the source of his authority. It is through the teacher
that the rule is revealed to the child. Within the class the teacher
is alone with the children who are in no position to resist him.
He should, therefore, realize the immense responsibility he is
endowed with. Yes, the teacher ‘should be decisive, have some
will power’ because ‘the child cannot have confidence in
anyone whom he sees hesitating, shifting, going back on his
decisions.’ But there is a fundamental question that needs to
be answered. What is the source of the teacher’s authority? It
is not because he is powerful in the class, because he can punish
the child. ‘It is not from the fear he inspires that the teacher
should gain his authority; it is from himself’, said Durkheim.
And this is possible not because of the superior quality of his
intelligence; what is really important is that he believes ‘in his
task and the greatness of his task’. And what is this task?
Durkheim drew an analogy. A god priest speaks in the name
of God. Likewise, a teacher is ‘the interpreter of the great moral
ideals of his time and country.’ He is just an instrument of this
moral authority, which surpasses him, and it is through his
intermediation that the child communicates with it. If a teacher
really understands the source of his authority, it is unlikely that
vanity, arrogance, or pedantry would enter his being. Rather
his respect is transmitted through word and gesture from his
mind to that of the child, where it is imprinted.
These three perspectives from Durkheim that I have placed
before you make it clear that even in an age characterized by

differentiation and individualism, he felt the need for the
meaningful thread of connectedness—the moral authority of
collective conscience—for creating a healthy society which, he
thought, would reconcile liberty and authority because, as he
said, ‘to be free is not to do what one pleases; it is to be master
of oneself, it is to know how to act with reason and to do one’s
duty.’ In other words, Durkheim’s educational agenda aimed
at creating moral citizens. However, it is possible to raise a
counter question relating to power, surveillance and the entire
process of normalization in the practice of creating ‘moral
citizens’. And hence at this juncture, I wish to begin with this
question, and open yet another sociological window to look at
education.
The question I ask is: Beneath the project of creating moral
citizens is there a delicate/nuanced exercise of power that
observes, disciplines, hierarchizes, normalizes, controls and
produces obedience? Let us try to respond to this sociological
question, and open the window through Michel Foucault.
Durkheim was a great classical thinker. And in our times,
Foucault was an amazingly insightful thinker. Before we take
some insights from him to look at education, I wish to make
two points—very briefly, but meaningfully—about him. First,
here is a thinker who is immensely sensitive. He makes you
rethink, for instance, your ‘normalcy’—the way your and my
reason excludes, marginalizes, isolates another expression,
another articulation, another language—the language of
madness. Reason is no longer in communion with madness; it
is only through the professional language of modern psychiatry
that reason establishes its control over madness, subdues it,
controls it, normalizes it. Knowledge is not separated from
power; power produces knowledge; knowledge produces
power. Second, here is a thinker who makes you see the other
stories beneath modern civility. Yes, the medieval practice of
penalty—the torture of the physical body, and projecting this
torture as a spectacle—has almost disappeared. Today we give
tranquillizers to a man who will be hanged next morning, ask

a councillor to talk to him, and even serve him the food he likes.
Yet, beneath this civility lies a ‘calculated, organized, technically
thought out’ exercise of power—the power that, through
constant surveillance and discipline, works on our body, mind
and consciousness, or to use his own words, with ‘a whole set
of assessing, diagnostic, prognostic normative judgments ’it
seeks to ‘act in depth on the heart, the mind, the will.’
Bentham’s panopticon as an architecture with an inspecting
tower at the centre, as Foucault said, began to become a model,
not just for the prison, but for other institutions like factory,
school and hospital ‘to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold
on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to
make it possible to know them, to alter them.’ Today you do
not need panopticon. Thanks to tremendous technological
advance, CCTV camera has arrived. It does the same thing. It
observes… A new form of surveillance.
This sensitivity to Foucault, I believe, will help us to look
at school and its disciplinary practices through an angle that is
different from that of Durkheim. I wish to take three
remarkably penetrating insights from Foucault—particularly,
from his book Discipline and Punish, a book that documents and
analyses the new forms of disciplinary devices and modes of
power-knowledge that emerged with the arrival of the new era
after the revolution in France— to make sense of school and
its rituals. First, discipline requires hierarchical observation, and
hierarchical observation requires a detailed work on space, its
arrangement, its location, its distribution. Because, as he said,
it is important ‘to know how to locate individuals, to set up
useful communications, to be able at each moment to supervise
the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it.’ And
Foucault gave a brilliant illustration of a school building Ecole
Militarie—a school that aimed at creating ‘vigorous bodies’,
‘obedient soldiers’, and the ‘imperative of morality’ by
preventing homosexuality. See its spatial arrangement. The
rooms were distributed along a corridor like a series of small
cells; at regular intervals, an officer’s quarters were situated,

so that every ten pupils had an officer on each side. Moreover,
in the dining rooms was a slightly raised platform for the tables
of the inspectors of studies so that they could see all the
students during meals. Not solely that. Even latrines were
installed with half-doors so that the supervisor on duty could
see the head and legs of the students. Indeed, this spatial design
acted like a ‘microscope of conduct’, and students were subject
to ‘an apparatus of observation, recording and training.’
Second, discipline requires the time-table because ‘it establishes
rhythms, regulates the cycles of repetition, and controls one’s
activity.’ And once again Foucault gave an illuminating
example of the use of the time-table in the early 19th century in
the French ‘mutual improvement schools’:
8.45 entrance of the monitor; 8.52 the monitor’s summons; 8.56
entrance of the children and prayer; 9.00 the children go to their
benches; 9.04 first slate; 9.08 end of dictation, 9.12 second
dictation…
In fact, time became ‘disciplinary time’. No wonder, the school
, like all other disciplinary institutions, became subject to ’whole
micro-penalty of time’—latelessness, absences, interruption of
tasks; of activity—inattention, negligence, lack of zeal; of
behaviour—impoliteness, disobedience; of speech—idle chatter,
insolence; of the body—incorrect gestures, lack of cleanliness;
of sexuality—impurity, indecency. And finally, discipline
requires normalizing judgment through regular examinations.
It needs to be understood. The examination as ‘the ceremony
of power’, said Foucault, establishes over individuals a visibility
through which one differentiates them and judges them.’ It is
needed to compare, hierarchise, grade and rank the pupils, and
eventually to restore the required ‘normality.’ It will be clear if
we refer to Foucault’s illustration of The Brothers of the Christian
School. It wanted their students to be examined every day of
the week: on the first for spelling, on the second for arithmetic,
on the third for handwriting. Moreover, there was to be an
examination every month in order to slect those who deserved
to be submitted for examination by the inspector. See its deeper

meaning. It places individuals in a field of surveillance, and
engages them in a whole mass of documents that capture and
fix them. Indeed, as Foucault said, we are in the society of the
teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the social worker-judge; and
it seems that it is on them that the universal reign of the
normative is based. And he expressed it with deep insight:
‘Each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it
his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his
achievements.’
Now ask yourself: What did you see from the first window?
You saw school not just as a site of knowledge, but also as a
set of disciplinary practices through which it seeks to create
moral citizens without which, as Durkheim said, a society like
ours with such complex differentiation, individuation and
division of labour could not function. With some sort of civic
religiosity, Durkheim was trying to humanize and possibly
discipline Enlightenment modernity—reconciling authority and
liberty. But as you begin to look at education through the
second window, you see a shadow of doubt. Education with
its discipline and punishment, thought Durkheim, brings out
the best in each of us. However, as Foucault was saying,
beneath this meticulous discipline lies not the ideal of freedom,
but a ‘military dream of society’ that seeks to produce
’automatic docility’, or ‘meticulously subordinated cogs of a
machine.’ So what do you do? I cannot answer for you. I am
simply a catalyst. I am not here to dictate which is right or
which is wrong. Instead, I have placed you in the turbulent
ocean. It is for you to swim now. Meanwhile, look at the world
around you—schools surrounded by iron walls, security guards
observing, monitoring everyone entering the school premises,
the CCTV camera in the Principal’s room, children with
uniforms, the morning assembly, bodily movements of students
as the teacher enters the class, weekly tests, progress reports,
parent-teacher meetings, ceremonial speeches by the Principal
on special occasions, annual day celebrations, awards and
prizes, classification of students and display of the names of

toppers on the board outside, and explore through the eyes of
Illich, Durkheim and Foucault what it means to be at school in
our times.
Now I wish to open yet another window to see education
through the sociological lens. And herein lies the third question:
If, as Benedict Anderson said, the nation is an imagined
community, what role does education play in intensifying this
imagination? Let us invoke Anderson, and try to go deeper.
For Anderson, we know, the nation is an imagined community
because ‘the members of the even smallest nation will never
know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear
of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their
communion.’ It is significant that it is imagined as a community
because ’regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that
may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep,
horizontal comradeship.’ The nation is also imagined as limited
because beyond its boundaries lies other nations. And it is
imagined as sovereign. And as Benedict said, these imaginings
must be pretty strong that as the history of the past two
centuries shows, so many millions of people are willing to die
for such imaginings. How is it possible? Benedict said in great
detail about print-capitalism—the way, for instance, speakers
of the huge variety of Frenches, Englishes, Spanishes who might
find it difficult to understand one another in conversation,
became capable of comprehending one another via print and
paper. And this created the ‘embryo’ of the nationally imagined
community. Then, Benedict spoke of museum, and mass
circulated pictures (thanks to print capitalism) for consolidating
the roots of nationalism. He gave an illustration regarding what
Indonesia’s Ministry of Education did in the 1950s. It
commissioned a series of paintings of episodes in the national
history—Buddha images, decorative stone panels, Javanese
sculpture; and the paintings were mass-produced and
distributed throughout the primary school system; young
Indonesians were to have on the walls of their classrooms visual
representations of their country’s past. Now you understand

the role education plays in intensifying the imaginings of the
nation. And then when we look at our own country (its
diversity is splendid; its inequality is immense; the distance one
has to cover—from Srinagar to Kanyakumari, from Port Blair
to Goa, from the hills of Arunachal Pradesh to the desert of
Rajasthan is pretty long; the languages people speak—Konkani
in Goa, Chaattishgari in Raipur, Maithili in Darbhanga do not
have anything common), how do we imagine it as a national
community? It is in this context that you can look at the
significance of, say, mass-circulated NCERT textbooks
throughout the country, and massive popularization of, say,
pictures, images, paintings that, it is thought, represent our
shared memories, struggles, and achievements. Imagine
friends, you are a school student in Guwahati, and she is a
school student in Tirupati; and it is unlikely that two of you
would ever meet face to face. Yet, the school history textbook
makes both of you feel that you belong to a national community
called Indian nation because both of you have grown up, to
take a simple example, with such mass-circulated paintings and
pictures like the Dancing Girl of Mohenjodaro, the Buddha with
his calm eyes in a meditative gesture, Bhagat Singh with his
cap and moustache, and Gandhi with his disciples undertaking
a journey from Sabarmati to Dandi to initiate the Salt
Satyagraha movement, and felt proud of the shared cultural
heritage. The barriers of distance and diversities are overcome,
and to use Anderson’s language, the nation as an imagined
community finds its roots in education, which acquires a new
meaning in the age of print-capitalism, mass circulated
textbooks, paintings, pictures, and museumization of history.
This makes you wonder whether education can also be seen
through the lens of cultural politics of nation making.
Why am I speaking of only these three perspectives? Why
not other schools of thought? Some of you, I am sure, might
be asking this question. No, friends, my task is not to
summarize everything—like a parrot. As a teacher, I am only
playing the role of a catalyst. I am inviting you to the domain

of ideas. You can explore many other possibilities. However,
before I end this lecture, I want to make an observation on the
feminist question in education. With the kind of critical
awareness you are gifted with, you already know about the
story of marginalization of women in education—the way a
patriarchal society, because of its gender biases and hierarchies,
causes enormous obstacles for women to continue education
in an undisturbed way leading to the drop out phenomenon;
or, for that matter, the way women’s voices/struggles/
achievements hardly find adequate space in the ‘legitimate’
curriculum (have you ever been asked to look at Mahatma
Gandhi through Kasturba’s eyes; or Gautam Buddha’s
enlightenment through his wife’s experiences?), and the process
through which schools reproduce gender stereotypes (’daring’
boys/’disciplined’ girls; boys to be motivated for careers in
science, technology, business, army and administration; and
girls for the relatively ‘softer/caring’ domains like art, teaching,
nursing, counselling), and attach gendered meanings to
knowledge systems—‘hard’ sciences for men, ‘soft’ humanities
for women. You can find many research works based on
empirical field observations that reaffirm this story. But I want
you to ask a more complex question: Is there a distinctive
feminist pedagogy—a new way of looking at knowledge and
doing research? A subtle relationship between modernity and
patriarchy (don’t forget Francis Bacon’s urge to conquer nature
as well as women for the dictum—knowledge is power; or Rene
Descartes’ mind-body dualism—abstracted pure reason vs
unreliable sensations of the body) has created a methodology
that erects a wall between the knower and the known; it has
also generated a notion of dispassionate ‘objectivity’ that
expects a set of qualities from the learner or the knower, and
wants him/her to negate reflexivity, intuitive faculties and
psychic/bodily experiences. In a way, the ‘objectivity’ of hard
knowledge is separated from experiential narratives, or from
what some feminists regard as the ‘ethic of care’. Is it also the
reason why natural sciences like Physics and Mathematics, for

quite some time, were not very open to ‘emotionally oriented’
women? Can feminism rethink science, this cult of violent
objectivity, and assert the significance of love, dialogue,
reciprocity, reflexivity and biographical experiences as equally
important modes of knowing for creating a more humane/
compassionate world? Don’t be in a hurry. Think of it.
4
Contextualizing the
Educational Debates
We have looked at education through the sociological lens. But

it is important to remember that an understanding of the Indian
educational reality is not possible without a sense of history.
Every sociologist would concede that a sense of history is
important for a deeper understanding of a social context. For
example, when we study critical social theory, how important
it is to comprehend the historical location—Europe in the late
1920s, 30s and 40s: war, devastation, holocaust, fascism. In fact,
the New Left critique emerged out of that historical challenge.
Likewise, if we wish to make sense of contemporary Indian
education through a sociological lens, it is important to
undertake a journey with history: who we were, what
happened to our civilization, how we lived, dreamed, struggled
and attached meanings to education.
Before I take you on this journey with history there are two
quick points that I need to make. First, history need not be seen
as mere ‘facts’—something that happened in the remote past,
something museumized, something recorded in archives.
Instead, we need to see and feel history as a living experience.
We carry our history with us. History whispers in our ears,
history touches us, hugs us. Our present is not entirely
separated from our past; our future has its foundations in
history. While we see history as living, the fusion of diverse
zones of time—past, present and future—begins to take place.
For example, as I sit here, teaching a course, communicating
with you I carry history with me. Smell me, and you would
Contextualizing the Educational Debates 47
find the fragrance of history! Don’t consider me a romantic fool.

I will give you a couple of illustrations to make you understand
what I mean. For example, if in the process of teaching, I argue
logically and establish my points, I carry Gautama with me.
Gautama, you know, was a great scholar in ancient India; he
wrote Naya—a major system of Indian philosophy. He enabled
me to cultivate the faculties of knowledge and modes of
argumentation. For instance, to put it simply, through
perception (or a direct contact with my sense organs) I know
that my students are here; I see them, I hear their voices.
Likewise, through inference I say that there is fire in the hill,
although I have seen only smoke, not fire in the hill. Yet, I am
confident that there is fire in the hill because out of my
previously perceived experience I know that wherever there is
fire there is smoke. Not solely that. I know that Devdatta is
outside his home merely through implication because I know
that Devdatta is alive and he is not inside his home. I also know
through analogy. I have seen a cow. And now I enter a deep
forest, and happen to see a wild animal that otherwise looks
like a cow, I arrive at a conclusion—this time through
analogy— that here is a wild cow. In other words, it is through
a sustained tradition of knowledge and logical reasoning that
I am here.
Or today right now if I feel the need for a university as a
confluence of multiple knowledge traditions, I carry the
memory of great scholars like Shilabhadra and Dharampala
who, as Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsan’s treatise suggests, taught
at Nalanda—a major university in the 6th century AD that used
to invite students and scholars from China, Tibet, Korea, and
cultivate a spectrum of knowledge traditions: secular and
sacred, philosophical and practical, sciences and arts. Likewise,
when I am delivering this lecture in English, I carry yet another
history: the way English came to India through the East India
Company and its anglicist educational policies, or the way with
the establishment of modern universities in colonial India
English became the language of the educated class and gained
‘high status’. Or for that matter, if occasionally for my lecture

I invite you to open air amidst blue sky, radiant sun, trees
and butterflies, how can I forget that I continue to hear the
Rig Vedic hymns that celebrate the beauty of nature, and the
Upanishadic tapovan, and the heritage of Rabindranath
Tagore—his Santiniketan experiments? So friends, history is
here. History is waking with me. History has a fragrance.
However, there is yet another point that deserves attention.
History can also be a burden. And if we carry history as a
burden, then like all other burdens it stops our growth,
paralyzes us, and makes us incapable of innovating, accepting
new challenges, new realities. One ought to be careful about
it. Let me give an example to make it clear before you. Yes, I
know from the Jatakas about Taxila—its well-known schools of
medicine, law and military sciences, and how they attracted
students from different parts of India: Benares, Mithila, Ujjain.
I also know that Vikramshila and Mithila—particularly, in the
13 th, 14 th, and 15 th centuries—became the major centres of
learning in the field of naya or logic. Likewise, I know that in
medieval India the madrasas in Jaunpur and Agra functioned
as the centres for higher learning in which the courses of study
included rhetoric, logic, theology, metaphysics, jurisprudence
and science. But this past glory should not be a burden; it
should not be allowed to stop my openness, my ongoing
journey. Yes, there was a developed medical centre in Taxila;
but we also need to know how modern medicine functions. Yes,
in Vikramshila and Mithila the discourses of naya were
developed; but it should not prevent me from learning Bacon,
Descartes, Hume and Popper. True, there was a great centre of
Islamic learning; but it should not prevent me from learning
how Newton came forward with causality and determinism, and
Einstein with relativity and uncertainty. A sensitivity to the past,
but not the burden of past; rootedness, but not closure—this is
what I wish to remind you of.
Having said this, I can now come to the central thrust of
my lecture. I will concentrate primarily on the major turning
points in the history of education in the context of colonial

encounter and post-independence India. Why did colonialism
happen? Here I am not dealing with this riddle. However, I
want you to understand colonialism as an encounter of cultures
and civilizations. It generates a cultural politics emerging out
of the asymmetrical power relations between the colonizers and
the colonized. A major consequence of this politics is the
process of othering through the gaze of the colonizers. The
author of the discourse is the ‘colonial master’; it is his power
and privilege to hierarchize those whom he has colonized. He
could say: they are not like us; they are inferior. We have
science, reason, enlightenment and industrialism; and they are
simply primitive, barbaric, superstitious or esoteric. In social
anthropology—the way it emerged as part of colonial
invasion—the process of ‘othering’ was total—‘civilized’ West
vs ‘primitive’ others in Africa, in South Sea islands, in Asia. It
is not surprising that even a noted anthropologist like
Bronislaw Malinowski, despite his immense contributions,
could not escape this ‘superiority complex’. A simple example
from his diary (1914-1918) would reveal this subtle superiority
complex. As he wrote, ‘The island (New Guinea) is beautiful.
Rocky cliffs. Palm trees. And an eternally blue sky. Yet, only a
few days of it and I was escaping from it. I longed to be in the
streets of London. I can enjoy the advertisements in the London
newspaper. It is becoming difficult to accept my voluntary
captivity.’ It is in this context that Edward Said’s path-breaking
discourse of orientalism would make sense. I am sure you
already know how Said argued it beautifully: the way the West
constructed the notion of the ‘orient’—its backwardness, its
striking isolation from the mainstream of European progress
in science, arts and commerce. In fact, orientalism sustains itself
by making ‘authoritative’ statements about the orient—‘its
eccentricity, its backwardness, its silent indifference, its
feminine penetrability.’ No wonder, orientalism exists as a
Western style for dominating, restructuring and having
authority over the orient. It was seen as ‘a locale requiring
Western attention, reconstruction and even redemption.’

From this sort of hierarchical ‘othering’ emerges two trends:
(a) museumizing the ‘other’ through the ethnographic text, or
through an act of ‘preserving’ a culture which is different from
Western modernity; and (b) the interfering tendency: the
colonizers assume the role of missionaries or agents of
‘progress’, and trying to ‘civilize’ the colonized through modern
education. As we look at our own experience of colonial
encounter we see both these trends. To begin with, let us reflect
on what historians regard as ‘orientalist’ education policy in
colonial India. Here we see the first trend—the ‘promotion’ of
Indic culture and civilization. You know that at its early stage
the East India Company was not eager to spread modern/
European education. Instead, it showed its willingness to
preserve the indigenous system of education. You can think of
a set of striking illustrations. In 1781 Warren Hastings
established the Calcutta Madrasa, and expressed his fascination
for the Indo-Persian culture. The courses included natural
philosophy, Koranic theology, law, geometry, arithmetic, logic
and grammar—all on Islamic lines. The medium of instruction
was Arabic. In 1784 Sir William Jones established the Asiatic
Society of Bengal in Calcutta. As Jones put it, the purpose was
to know Asia—‘the nurse of science, the inventors of delightful
and useful arts, the science of glorious action, fertile in the
production of human genius, abounding in natural wonders,
and infinitely diversified in the forms of religion and
government, in the laws, manners, customs and complexions
of man.’ Again, in 1791 Jonathan Duncan established a Sanskrit
College in Benares It was like ‘unlocking India for Europe’—
an attempt to preserve and cultivate ‘the laws and literatures
of the Hindus.’ And in 1820 Elphinstone did the same thing
when he established the Hindu College in Poona.
But then, the other response was bound to come—negating
the entire civilizational heritage, establishing the supremacy of
colonial power, its knowledge traditions, and assuming the role
of a ‘modernizer’ rescuing a ‘decadent’ civilization. I would say,
it was the moment of arrival of Charles Grant who was

associated with the affairs of the East India Company in
Calcutta and London for forty years. In 1792 he wrote his
famous treatise: Observations on the state of society among the
Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly in respect to morals,
and on the means of imparting it. See the violence in his language.
Grant charged the Hindus with ‘dishonesty, corruption, fraud,
mutual hatred and distrust’. ‘The Hindus err’, he said, ‘because
they are ignorant.’ The East India Company, he said, was under
no obligation to protect the creed of the Hindus which was
‘subversive of the first principles of reason, morality and
religion.’ For Grant—a colonial citizen with absolute
‘certainty’—the answer was pretty clear: Bring Christianity,
modern science and European literature. He pleaded for the
establishment of English schools under teachers of good moral
character. You should not forget that it was primarily because
of Grant’s appeal that a bill was introduced in the British
Parliament to send missionaries and school teachers to India
for the ultimate conversion of Hindus. Even though the bill was
not passed it was becoming clear that things would change,
and through its ‘civilizing mission’ the colonial power would
seek to establish its hegemony. For instance, recall the year 1817.
James Mill—a noted utilitarian thinker closely associated with
the East India Company published the much discussed History
of India—a work in which his condemnation of Indian
civilization, its culture, religion and knowledge traditions was
almost total. What governed him was the utilitarian doctrine
of ‘progress’. It was this doctrine that led him to critique Hindu
law and government—a society based on ‘caste, traditions and
religious dogma’. For him, ‘Hindus are merely on a level with
the antique civilizations of the past.’ No wonder, for him,
‘English government in India is a blessing of unspeakable
magnitude to the population of Hindustan.’ In fact, the
influence of his illustrious son—John Stuart Mill (yet another
utilitarian thinker)—further encouraged the idea of spreading
modern/European education in India. Meanwhile, we saw the
maturation of this utilitarian thinking in the team of Governor

General William Bentinck and the law member of his council—
Thomas Babington Macaulay. In this context I wish to recall
the speech Macaulay made in the British Parliament in 1833. It
was a speech that asserted the moral superiority of European
masters and their ‘sacred duty’ to enlighten a civilization
‘debased by three thousand years of despotism and priest craft.’
No wonder, as the ideological conflict between the ‘orientalists’
and the ‘anglicists’ grew, Bentinck knew that he could trust
Macaulay. He was asked to give his views. The result, we know,
was his famous minute of February 2, 1835. In a way, like
Charles Grant he was an advocate of some sort of cultural
imperialism. No wonder, he was against the continuance of the
institutions of oriental learning. The printing of oriental books,
he recommended, should be stopped; all oriental colleges,
except those at Delhi and Benaras, should be abolished, and
all stipends should be discontinued. English, he thought, ought
to be the medium of instruction because, according to him, ‘the
dialects commonly spoken among the natives of India contain
neither literary nor scientific information, and are terribly poor
and rude.’ He knew neither Sanskrit nor Arabic. Yet, because
of his privileged location, he could arrogantly say that ‘a single
shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native
literature of India and Arabia.’ Your entire history—its tradition
of philosophic debates, its epics and mythologies, its literary
traditions and its secular pursuits and practical skills—was
negated. His intention was clear. He thought that English
education would fulfil a hegemonic function. Think of what
he said:
We must at present do our best to form a class who may be
interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class
of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in
opinions, in morals and intellect. To that class we may leave it to
refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich these dialects
with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature
and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying
knowledge to the great mass of the population.
Eventually Bentinck gave his consent to Macaulay’s proposals,

and passed the final order on March 7, 1835.
His Lordship is of the opinion that the great object of the British
Government ought to be the promotion of European literature
and science amongst the natives of India and all the funds
appropriated for the purposes of education would be best
employed on English education.
Yes, this was a turning point. And it further gained momentum
when after the Wood’s Dispatch (1854) three modern
universities were established in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras
with the urge to inculcate the ‘improved arts, sciences and
literature of Europe’. The process with its ups and downs
continued, and an aspiring educated class oriented to modern/
European ideas began to grow. One could debate on its social
implications—the growth of new ideas and nationalist
consciousness, or the seeds of cultural slavery being sown.
However, one thing was clear. The lure of English education
was becoming irresistible; and even those otherwise known for
their cultural embeddedness began to welcome this ‘gift’ that
colonial masters gave us. To use Ashis Nandy’s language, the
West became the ‘intimate enemy’. Even when we resist its
colonial aggression, and become ‘nationalists’, we celebrate its
values. Is it the reason why a ‘renaissance’ man like Rammohun
Roy—even twelve years before Macaulay’s minute— could
write a letter to the Governor General Lord Amhest, and
express his gratitude for Providence for inspiring ‘the most
generous and enlightened of the Nations of the West with the
glorious ambitions of planting in Asia the Arts and Sciences of
modern Europe’? No wonder, Rammohun opposed the idea
of establishing a Sanskrit College in Calcutta because ‘it would
load the minds of youth in grammatical niceties and
metaphysical distinctions of little or no practical use to the
possessors or to society.’ Instead, almost like Grant and
Macaulay, he felt that ‘European gentlemen of talents and
education’ should be given the responsibility to ‘instruct the
natives of India in Mathematics, Natural Philosophy,
Chemistry, Anatomy and other useful sciences which the

Nations of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that
has raised them above the inhabitants of the other parts of the
world.’
Likewise, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan did not lag behind. His
faith in modern English/scientific education was total. Think
of the famous speech he delivered in Calcutta in 1863. He was
trying to convince his Muslim brothers that despite their faith
in Islam, they should not abandon new education. Because, as
he said, ‘we Muslims, though we have some background
knowledge of old sciences and arts, are absolutely ignorant of
modern arts and sciences; and in this age only these modern
sciences and useful arts are the main sources of progress and
prosperity.’ Remain a devoted Muslim; but expand your
horizon, and embrace modern education—this seemed to be
the central message of his powerful speech. Let me recall what
he said:
In the race of social and cultural progress the British people are
far ahead and we are lagging behind. It is urgently needed that
we come out with full enthusiasm and courage to compete with
them and overtake them quickly in this field. I have firm faith
that our Muslim youth will be free from scepticism and anti-
religious ideas and will be firm and strong in their faith and
religion if they are taught modern sciences and arts and the English
language along with Arabic and Islamic studies.
However, there were more complex and nuanced ways through
which this educational transformation was seen. In this lecture,
I would refer to two such distinctive traditions: (a) Jotirao
Phule’s engagement with the colonial state, and his radical
quest for debrahminization—a form of education for the
emancipation of the marginalized castes; and (b) Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi’s spirit of decolonization, and search for
nai talim—an educational practice aiming at integral learning
with deep sensitivity to labour. To begin with, let us recall
Jotirao Phule. In a way, he reminded us of the pathology of
the caste-ridden/hierarchical society—its sanctification through
Brahminical texts, and the need for a new socio-cultural and

educational movement for eradicating the roots of this
hierarchical/violent social order. He was a thinker and a
practitioner. His impact was tremendous. It was he who, as I
feel, prepared the ground for the arrival of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
with his relentless critique of the Brahminical Hindu social
order and its caste system. Even though colonialism was
oppressive and violent, Phule could not forget what his
immediate ancestors experienced—discontent with the rule of
the Peshwas. This terribly autocratic rule negated justice and
equality. The Brahmins were the favoured caste, and merit was
not the criterion when it came to giving them high posts. No
wonder, Phule saw a progressive possibility in the British rule.
At least, the malpractices of the Peshwa regime, he thought,
would be abolished, and it would not allow discrimination on
the basis of caste. Moreover, we should not forget that as a
student of the Scottish Missionary School he was exposed to
new ideas on science and religion. The missionaries criticized
Hinduism for its idol worship, for its pantheon of Gods, its
denial of the spiritual equality to all human beings, and the
tyranny of superstitions and rituals in daily life. He also read
Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason which shaped his consciousness.
He dedicated one of his books to him.
This biographical trajectory makes you understand why at
that juncture, for Jotirao, debrahminization was more important
than decolonization. Yes, he did not support the 1857 mutiny;
he welcomed the victory of the British. Let me recall what he
had said:
If the British Government had lost in the mutiny, history would
have repeated itself. The Peshwa regime of the Brahmins would
have been resurrected. The Hindu culture of the scriptures—
Smiritis and Puranas—would have regained strength, and the
hope of emancipating the Sudra and Ati-Sudra masses would have
been lost forever.
He hoped that the ‘benevolent British Government’ should take
care of the education of the Sudras and Ati-Sudras, and liberate
them from the physical and psychological slavery of the

Brahmins. With this hope in the good will of the colonial state,
in his representation to the Hunter Commission in 1882 Phule
argued that the government should not be under the illusion
that people from the upper castes should spread education
among the lower castes. He appealed to the colonial state to
appoint teachers from the lower castes because, as he felt,
Brahmin teachers would never mingle with lower caste
children.
But then, Phule was also an active doer; he took his own
initiative, and enabled his wife to get educated. This led to the
formation of a school in 1848—a school that was open to girls
from untouchable castes such as Mahars, Mangs and Chamars.
Imagine the cultural landscape of Pune in 1848. It was the
bastion of ultra conservative Hindu ideology. The initiative that
Phule took was seen as an offence against the shastras, religion
and society. Even his father could not approve of his son’s
action. However, with immense zeal, determination and
courage Jotirao and Savitri Phule moved forward, and this led
to the formation of two more schools—in 1851 and in 1859. The
curriculum included grammar, arithmetic, history, map
reading, etc. What was the impact of this kind of endeavour? I
feel tempted to refer to an essay that a fourteen-year-old girl
from one of these schools wrote:
The Brahmins say that other castes should not read the Vedas;
this leaves us without a scripture. Thus, are we without religion?
Oh God, please tell us, what is our religion? God, by your grace,
you sent us the kindly British Government. This has brought relief
and welfare. Before the British came, the Mahars and Mangs were
beheaded when they committed an offence against the people of
higher castes. Earlier we were not allowed to move around freely
in the bazars of Sultekadi; now we can.
In a way, Phule was fighting a cultural battle—against what
he regarded as ‘slavery’, and the Brahminical hegemony. The
cruelties which the European settlers practised on the American
Indians on their first settlement in the new world, said Phule,
had certainly their parallel in India on the advent of the Aryans

and their subjugation of the aborigines. In fact, as Phule argued
powerfully, under such leaders as Brahma and Purshram, the
Brahmins waged very protracted wars against the original
inhabitants, and succeeded in establishing their supremacy and
subjugating the aborigines to their entire control. For instance,
we are told, in the whole range of history it is scarcely possible
to meet such a character as Purshram, so selfish, infamous, cruel
and inhuman. With this counter-hegemonic struggle he gave a
new meaning to his agenda of debrahminization or sarvajanik
satya dharma; it was essentially a search for a new society
radically different from the traditional Brahminical hierarchical
order, a society which would celebrate modern scientific
knowledge as opposed to religious beliefs and practices.
As I have already mentioned, it was this force that gave
momentum to the growth of critical consciousness—a
pedagogic art of looking at social history through the
experiential account of the subalterns. And B.R. Ambedkar, to
take the most striking illustration, sharpened it further through
his critique of the dharmashastras, and sword of debunking the
hierarchical Hindu social order which, for him, would be seen
as an antithesis of modern values like liberty, equality and
fraternity.
But then, in this history of education and cultural
awakening there was another fascinating story—the story of
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: the way he critiqued the
fundamentals of colonial modernity, evolved the principles of
alternative learning leading to decolonization of consciousness,
and strove for a non-hierarchical/compassionate society. I
would refer to only a set of key points which are significant
for understanding Gandhi’s contribution to education. It is
better to begin with one of his early childhood experiences. And
Gandhi himself described it in his Autobiography. It was about
an incident at a school in Rajkot. Mr. Giles—the Educational
Inspector—had come on a visit of inspection. He had given five
words to write as a spelling exercise; and one of the words was
‘Kettle’. And Mohandas, we are told, had misspelt it. Even

though the teacher tried to prompt him with the point of his
boot, he would not be prompted. The teacher wanted him to
copy from his neighbour’s slate. See his determination, his
courage and moral integrity. He was not clever; he was honest.
As he wrote in his autobiographical note,
I had thought that the teacher was there to supervise us against
copying. The result was that all the boys, except myself, were
found to have spelt the word correctly. However, I could not learn
the art of copying.
Yes, as I would say, Gandhi throughout his life could not learn
the art of copying. And that was the reason why he dared to
be different, a seeker of truth with life-long ‘experiments’ rather
than a ‘successful achiever’. No wonder, his prescriptions were
different; he did not agree with the dominant notion of
education as a ‘knowledge of letters’. I recall Chapter 18 of his
revealing booklet Hind Swaraj—written in the form of a
conversation between the Reader and the Editor. A question
was raised by the Reader: ‘In the whole discussion, you have
not demonstrated the necessity for education’. And see the way
Gandhi as the Editor responded to it:
A peasant earns his bread honestly. He has ordinary knowledge
of the world. He knows fairly well how he should behave towards
his parents, his wife, his children and his fellow villagers. He
understands and observes the rules of morality. But he cannot
write his own name. What do you propose to give him by giving
him a knowledge of letters? Will you add an inch to his happiness?
Do you want to make him discontented with his cottage or his
hut?
True, Gandhi himself was a child of modern education; and
he too went to England—the site of colonial power—for higher
education; and through his confessions we know that, for some
time, English manners fascinated him. However, he could
entertain self-doubt, raise questions and see beyond what many
of his contemporaries were doing—seeing the colonial citizen
as an educational ideal. Try to understand the deeper meaning
of what he was saying. I believe it is easy to misinterpret Hind

Swaraj as a text that sanctifies the ‘golden past’ filled with the
prescriptions of austere/non-modern living. If you think like
this you would miss the point. The fact is that Gandhi wanted
us to see the discontents of this sort of modern education—the
way it overemphasizes the intellect, dissociates man from the
other faculties, and alienates him from the rhythm of natural
living. Gandhi interrogated its essential violence and
immorality. When you see war, holocaust, violence,
corruption—and behind everything there were and are
‘educated’ men and women from modern universities, is it
really possible for you to laugh at Gandhi? See what he was
saying:
Now let us take higher education. I have learned Geography,
Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry. What of that? In what way have
I benefited myself or those around me? It is not required for the
main thing. It does not make a man of us. It does not enable us to
do our duty.
Well, we ought to learn Geography or Astronomy. But if our
knowledge does not elevate our moral conscience, transform
us, for Gandhi, it would not have much meaning. In a way,
Gandhi was not going back to the past; instead, he was striving
for yet another world beyond the dominant notion of
modernity. He was striving for a life-transforming/moral
education—not merely the celebration of the intellect. Don’t
you think that the colonizers invaded us through their cunning
intellect and the hegemony of modern knowledge? And hence
if we wish to decolonize our consciousness we need another
practice of education. Before I speak of this Gandhian
alternative and his concrete experimentations, I wish to remind
you of yet another important question that the Reader raised
in Hind Swaraj: ‘Do I then understand that you do not consider
English education necessary for obtaining Home Rule?’
As the Editor, Gandhi’s responses were remarkably
nuanced—both ‘yes ‘and ‘no’. At one level, as he said
categorically, ‘the foundation that Macaulay laid of education
has enslaved us.’ For Gandhi, it did separate English-knowing

Indians from the masses. As he said with anguish, ‘it is a sad
commentary that we have to speak of Home Rule in a foreign
language’. However, he knew that English could not be
altogether avoided.
We are so beset by the disease of civilization, that we cannot
altogether do without English education. Those who have already
received it may make good use of it whenever necessary. The
English books which are valuable, we should translate into various
Indian languages.
However, it was his Tolstoy Farm experiment in South Africa
in the early 20th century that made us familiar with Gandhi as
a pedagogue. It was like a family in which, as Gandhi said, he
occupied the role of the father, and took the responsibility for
the training of the young: a group of Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and
Christian boys, and Hindu girls. I like to believe that there were
four pedagogic principles that emerged out of this practice.
First, he insisted on the ‘culture of heart’ or the building of
character. In other words, education would remain shallow
without ethical and moral foundations. Second, he insisted on
the ‘building up of the body’. Yes, the body—its vitality and
energy—could be channelized for a meaningful/productive
engagement. It would give a new meaning to work, and
learning, as he felt, was inseparable from productive labour.
From cooking to scavenging to gardening—everything was
done by the inmates. Yes, the result was obvious. ‘They built
up the physiques. There was scarcely any illness on the Farm.’
Third, he broke the hierarchy—mental/intellectual labour vs.
manual labour. Instead, a distinctive character of the Gandhian
pedagogic principle was the celebration of ‘manual vocation’.
Gandhi himself learnt shoe-making; and the children too
learned these skills—shoe-making, carpentry, cooking. And
finally, Gandhi attached great importance to the role of the
teacher—his character, moral principles and life-practices. For
instance, the teacher must do what he would ask his students
to perform. No wonder, Gandhi did not give excessive
importance to the centrality of textbooks. ‘I did not find it at

all necessary’, as he said, ‘to load the boys with quantities of
books. I have always felt that the true textbook for the pupil is
his teacher.’ When he spoke of the ‘training of the spirit’, he
relied less on religious books. Instead, the teacher’s own life
ought to be the major source of inspiration. Feel the importance
Gandhi attached to the unity of theory and practice:
I saw therefore that I must be an object-lesson to the boys and
girls living with me. They thus became my teachers, and I learnt I
must be good and live straight, if only for their sakes. I may say
that the increasing discipline and restraint I imposed on myself at
Tolstoy Farm was mostly due to those wards of mine.
It was this search for unity that led Gandhi to interrogate the
system of colonial education as ‘intellectual dissipation’. ‘Why
should you think that the mind is everything and the hands
and feet are nothing?’ Gandhi asked. In fact, this sort of
education makes one incapable of enduring physical labour.
‘The slightest physical exertion gives him a headache; a mild
exposure to the sun is to cause him giddiness.’ Gandhi wanted
the ‘indivisible whole’—integrating the body, mind and soul.
It was the essential spirit behind his plea for nai talim or ‘basic
education’. Once you understand this spirit it becomes easier
to grasp the significance of craft-centred learning. No, it doesn’t
mean the denial of the theoretical or intellectual element;
instead, it means integration—realizing theory through
practice, and enriching practice through theoretical insight.
Hence, as Gandhi visualized, learning the handicraft would
invariably mean a course in mechanics—on how to construct
the takli. And it would also demand a knowledge of history—
say, ‘a brief course in Indian history, starting from the East India
Company, or even earlier, from the Muslim period, giving them
a detailed account of the exploitation that was the stock-in-trade
of the East India Company, and how by a systematic process
our handicraft was strangled and almost killed.’ Not solely that.
It would also mean ‘a few lectures on cotton, its habitat, its
varieties, the countries and provinces of India where it is at
present grown and so on.’ I see it as a profound pedagogic

principle—learning through doing and thereby interrogating
the elitist (or ‘Brahminical) education that privileges the
intellectual element, and devalues physical labour or manual
vocation , and sees it as ‘polluted’. To borrow Gandhi’s words,
it was a search for ‘a just social order in which there is no
unnatural division between the haves and have nots.’ We know
that it was at the Wardah Conference in 1937 that these
principles were debated and discussed; and the resolutions
approved of Gandhi’s proposals like free/compulsory
education for seven years, mother-tongue as the medium of
instruction, education centred around some form of manual/
productive work and a self-supporting education in the sense
that it would be able to cover the remuneration of teachers.
Both these two trends—debrahminization and
decolonization—merge, even though many of you, because of
the existing identity politics, might think otherwise. In both
these projects there was a concern for the subaltern; there was
an urge to break the hierarchies—both traditional as well as
what colonial education created. Yes, Phule attackecd the
Brahminical social order; but then, Gandhi, despite his
embeddedness in religious traditions, was by no means a
revivalist. In fact, his religiosity was more like what these days
we regard as radical theology: an attempt to emancipate our
consciousness from the logic of colonial power—its reckless
modernity, its greed and satanic character—and create a
civilization based on, as his Hind Swaraj, and above all the life
he led would indicate, decentralization, sustainable
development, harmonic man-nature relationship, soul force,
austerity and religiosity as love, sarvodaya and ahimsa.
This, you might say again, is history. You are living in a
different era. What do you do with this history? Can you engage
with it to look at your own times? That is why, at this juncture
of the lecture, I believe, we need to come back to our times. I
will be brief, and speak of two broad worldviews that have
shaped educational discourses in post-Independence India.
First, I want you to reflect on the Nehruvian project of nation-

making. Post-1947: a newly independent nation—traumatized
by partition, unsure of stable foundations and worried about
its sovereignty because of the intense Cold War politics—began
to make its destiny under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru:
a sensitive modernist creatively engaged with the fabrics of an
old civilization, yet eager to build up an ethical state for
modernizing a traditional society like ours with massive
industrialization, techno-scientific development, welfare
economy, scientific temper and broadly pan-Indian secular
nationalism. I appeal to you to see the essence of a series of
education commission recommendations—the Radhakrishnan
Commission, the Mudaliar Commission, and the Kothari
Commission. You will find the educational ideal implicit in the
Nehruvian project of nation-making. With the establishment
of new universities, institutes of technology, science research
centres, and academies of art and culture an educational ideal
was set up. If you allow me to express it in simple language, it
would mean that an ‘educated’ person in new India ought to
be someone who thinks scientifically, who is broadly secular,
who retains cultural sensibility with a pan-Indian identity, and
who, even though not an orthodox communist, has not forgotten
the values of equity, social justice and the need for ‘common
schooling’. Well, it is possible to say that this new project, despite
its emphasis on ‘progress’ and ‘development’, initiated some
sort of conversation with the other two projects: debrahminization
(through the policy of protective discrimination in educational
institutions, and also by becoming sensitive—slowly but
steadily—to the cultural capital of the marginalized castes and
communities in the formation of curriculum), and decolonization
(but I believe in a ritualistic way—reducing Gandhi into a mere
official symbol: occasional remembrance, some token measures,
but generally devaluing him because, as it is thought, a modern
nation-state needs techno science, not swadeshi; industrialism,
not austerity; centralized/bureaucratic planning, not
decentralization and ‘oceanic circles’).
Even though there were many—scientists, economists,

researchers, artists, historians and educationists—who emerged
out of this euphoria of nation-making with a sense of idealism,
not everything was pleasant, smooth and uncontested. With
the demise of the Nehruvian era it was also becoming clear that
social hierarchies did not wither away, and the gap between
the educated gentry and the masses could not be bridged; and
despite the presence of excellent centres in the domain of higher
education and elite schools, the larger educational scenario was
full of discontents. Yes, in post-Nehruvian era Indian society
passed through many politico-economic upheavals with severe
impact on education—the declining faith in government
schools, the rise of regionalism and violence in universities; the
spectre of unemployment; brain drain and the retreat of the
privileged from collective responsibility; the devaluation of the
vocation of teaching, and overall decline in the standard of
education, despite the presence of some pampered research
centres, science labs and centres of excellence.
We have not come out of the crisis. But then, in the recent
times we are witnessing the assertion of yet another project—
the alliance of neo-liberal global capitalism and religious
nationalism. You need to understand its implications in the
realm of education. It begins to see education as a marketable
commodity; it reduces knowledge into a technical skill needed
for the expanding market; it creates new hierarchies—market-
friendly technical knowledges vs ‘not very useful’ liberal
education. And again, as religious nationalism becomes the
dominant ideology, the notion of being ‘educated’ means that
one is militant, assertive, aggressively nationalist using religion
as an ideology rather than a search for inner truth and wisdom.
See its consequences. It abhors critical questions, breeds social
conservatism, and sees modernity primarily as ‘economic
growth’ and technocratic/militaristic nationalism, and reduces
a learner into a mere ‘resource’ to be tapped for the market or
the nation.
Friends, see your location, feel your history, and make sense
of what is happening around you. From Gandhi’s ‘integral

education’ to the celebration of market-friendly technical skill;
from Phule’s ‘rational’ mind to the present obsession with the
recitation of Vandemataram at schools, or whether in history
texts we need to put more emphasis on Shivaji rather than
Akbar or Aurangzeb, or whether to promote Vedic sciences and
mathematics; from the ideal vision of ‘common schools’ to a
highly stratified school system—super-costly ‘international’
schools in the metros, and government schools without basic
infrastructure; from Nehru’s secular humanism to religious
nationalism; from public universities to the blooming business
of private universities; from social justice as the conscience of
the nation to reckless meritocracy and competitiveness as the
requirements of the market.
So what do you do? What kind of questions do you ask?
Can you redefine educational ideals and pedagogic
possibilities? Can you think of some meaningful ways to come
out of the crisis? Possibly this historical trajectory will give you
some insights.
5
Science, Secularization and Education
Are you ready? We are entering an immensely significant

domain of enquiry: Why is it that in modern/secular times
education becomes predominantly scientific? And are there
discontents of civilization, despite the mantra of science and
secularization? And then, can we rediscover the deeper values
of religiosity/spirituality, and redefine education to take us to
a finer state of consciousness? I wish to divide this lecture into
two parts; and with socio-political as well as philosophical
sensibilities, I will try to place this debate before you as honestly
as possible. In the first part of the lecture, I will place the
arguments that the proponents of science and secular education
put forward; and in the second part, I will speak about the
discontents of purely scientific/secular education, and argue
why it is also important to redefine religiosity and incorporate
it in the agenda of education. And of course in this discourse
the Indian landscape will appear repeatedly. So let us begin
the journey.
All of us realize that in modern times science has acquired
the position of ‘high status’ knowledge. It is not just about
natural and life sciences; all branches of knowledge tend to
project their methodologies as some sort of ‘science’. You are
already familiar with the doctrine of positivism—the way
science with its ‘objectivity’, separation between the knower
and the known, reason and emotion, empirical reality and
metaphysical speculation, and search for some sort of causal
explanation became the positive reference point for all sorts of
knowledges, be it sociology, psychology, economics, history.
Science, Secularization and Education 67
The very word ‘science’ became sacrosanct. So we have science

in everything—‘scientific’ socialism, ‘scientific’ management,
‘scientific’ child-rearing practices. In a way, science became
hegemonic; it was a distinctive feature of the project of
modernity—the way Bacon and Descartes stimulated
‘inductive’ method and ‘deductive’ reasoning, Newtonian
physics and the Darwinian theory of evolution demystified the
world, and the growing industrialism took both theoretical and
applied sciences to a great height. It was also a great companion
for the emergent cult of nationalism—the entire project of
nation making. Its census and classification of people, its
administrative unity, its militarization, its need for expansive
market and economic development—everything required
science. Possibly Paul Feyerabend was not entirely wrong in
his anguish: liberals, Marxists, socialists may have political
differences; but none of them can dare to question science; they
may differ with each other on the issue of the control of
science—whether by the state or by private agencies; but the
supremacy or desirability of science is something that remains
unquestioned. Not solely that. Feyerabend would also say that
today you don’t have actually any choice; when you take your
child to school she may choose whether to opt for music or
photography; but it is impossible for her not to choose
mathematics or physics.
What could be the other reasons for science to have such a
high status position? Yes, there is some heroic vision of science.
To make this point clear, I wish to invoke two philosophers of
science—Robert Merton and Karl Popper. For Merton, there are
four institutional imperatives of science—universalism (science
transcends the barriers of time and space), communism (science
is democratic and transparent, and hence it is a body of public
knowledge), disinterestedness (science is being pursued for its
own sake, not for any personal interest of the scientist), and
organized scepticism (science questions everything; it does not
preserve the cleavage between the sacred and the profane).
Merton’s formulations indicate that there cannot be any ‘Hindu’
science or ‘Muslim’ science or ‘Christian’ science; even if,

historically speaking, Protestants were the leading figures in
the development of modern science, science as such is not
Protestant. Likewise, as science can interrogate even what is
seen as a ‘sacred’ belief (say, a science teacher in a primary
school would tell the child that it is not the Vedic God Indra
who with his bajra and lightning brings about rain, but the
process of evaporation, the formation of clouds, and their
collision that cause rain), it leads to the cultivation of reason
and a democratic society. Again, if we think of Karl Popper,
we see his plea for the ‘open society’ that is made possible by
the culture of science which, he feels, is based on the principle
of trial and error, or ‘conjectures and refutations’; it is the
principle of falsification—not obsession with conformity, but
the constant search for new evidence that can falsify the given
conjecture—that fights against dogmas or absolutist
knowledge, and creates an environment of reasoned debate and
dialogue based on concrete proof and evidence. And hence, as
it is said, science in its true spirit is for openness and for
secularization of society. True, as history has shown us, it is
possible to have materially prosperous and technologically
developed totalitarian societies; but then, the likes of Merton
and Popper would argue that these authoritarian regimes have
not actually followed the true spirit of scientific enquiry.
Instead, they have used technological miracles for their own
political purpose—say, the way, during the holocaust, there
were many German scientists and technologists who used their
knowledge for the project of mass killing. But in its true spirit,
as it would be argued, science promotes enlightenment—the
ability to come out of age-old dogmas and prejudices.
Try to understand the irresistible march of science
education. You know that in colonial India Rammohun Roy
had pleaded for science education as opposed to scripture-
based knowledge. And it was bound to come. For example, if
you allow me to take some random examples from our history,
in 1875 Madras University decided to examine its matriculation
candidates in geography and elementary physics in place of

British history. Calcutta University divided its BA course in two
parts—course A (literary) and course B (science). Course B had
English, mathematics, inorganic chemistry and geography as
compulsory papers, and one optional paper from physics,
zoology, botany and geology. In fact, in 1879 in Calcutta, out
of 373 candidates, 191 took up course B and the pass rate was
better than in course A. In 1856, the Calcutta Medical College
had ten chairs in anatomy, physiology, zoology, chemistry,
botany, material-medica, medical jurisprudence, midwifery,
surgery, medicine and ophthalmic surgery. Around 900 bodies
were used annually for purposes of study. And it would
continue. With the birth of an independent nation, science
became a major discourse in education. In 1949, the
Radhakrisnan Commission laid great emphasis on science and
technology as two important tools of modernity, which would
help setting up rural universities to meet the needs of rural
reconstruction in industry and agriculture. Likewise, in 1966
the Kothari Commission attached great importance to the
quality of science education. As it suggested, science should
be taught in such a way that it enables the learner to understand
its basic principles, to develop problem-solving analytical skills
and the ability to apply them to the problems of material
environment and social living; it should promote the spirit of
enquiry and experimentation.
Now let us try to understand the meaning of the process
of secularization and its implications in terms of science
education. As I open a Standard English dictionary, I find the
meaning of ‘secular’; it is not spiritual, it is not concerned with
religion, not bound by monastic rules. And ‘secularism’ means
the belief that the state, morals and education should be
independent of religion. This invariably implies that
secularization is a process towards the achievement of this
ideal. We can see a positive correlation between the growth of
science and the process of secularization. As I have already
indicated, the critical spirit implicit in science questions many
dogmatic religious beliefs; and as the concrete visible gains of

science in terms of technological discoveries and inventions
became increasingly dazzling, the authority of religion, or
religious interpretations of the world began to receive a severe
blow. I wish to give a simple illustration from our times. The
birth of a test tube baby was almost like a storm that made
people all over the world rethink the religious meanings
associated with parenthood, love and sexuality. In a way,
science began to replace theology or religion as the dominant
discourse of learning. Moreover, the process of secularization
needs science because science is about the phenomenal world,
its logico-mathematical explanation, its uses and exploration.
That is why, it helps man to shift his focus of attention from
metaphysical/spiritual issues (like the ultimate meaning of
existence) to concrete/tangible issues of the world (say, how
we discover vaccines or medicines to cure human bodies from
diseases; or how with meteorological sciences we predict the
weather, and help people by rescuing them from cyclones and
floods, instead of seeing the human tragedy as predestined).
And there is no sect or religion involved in the cultivation of
these knowledges. To put it otherwise, Hindus and Christians
might differ on whether human birth is a fall or a sin; or
whether it is an opportunity to ascend towards infinite bliss;
or for that matter, Hindus and Muslims might differ on whether
God is necessarily always formless, or whether God can also
assume Himself in many forms, in many avatars. But science
unites all because its generalizations, its predictions, its
applications do not seem to have sectarian/religious biases. For
building a bridge or performing a heart surgery, the same
principle is applied everywhere; neither the Bible nor the Koran
nor the Bhagavad Gita helps us in these techno-scientific tasks.
Hence, secularization would mean a quest for education that
is free from all sorts of sectarian/religious influence.
I know that it is possible to argue that secularism need not
necessarily mean atheism. As in India, we often say that our
secularism is not anti-religion; rather it only means that the state
is equidistant from all religions, or it does not favour or

discriminate against any particular religion. It might also mean
that one can be a Hindu, a Christian, a Sikh, a Muslim, a Jain
in one’s intimate/personal domain; but one does not bring
these beliefs into the public domain of work and knowledge.
For instance, as a Hindu one might keep a bottle of Ganga water
as holy water in the prayer room; but in the Chemistry class a
Muslim teacher has every right to write on the blackboard that
water, including Ganga water is just H2O, and a Hindu student
ought to accept it. So it can be said that a secular classroom is
one in which Hindus, Muslims and Christians assemble, and
all, despite their private religiosity, study, say, Iqbal’s poem
(of all the countries ours is the best), but not a Koranic verse;
Tagore’s Gitanjali, but not a Vedic rite; physics and the big
bang theory, but not the Biblical theory of creation;
constitutional principles, but not Manu’s laws or Islamic
personal laws. Not surprisingly then, time and again we hear
the outbursts—panel discussions and newspaper editorials
debating on whether Islamic madrasas or Hindu Saraswati
Mandirs should be allowed to exist, whether Christian
missionary schools promote in a subtle way Christian values,
or whether yoga or Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Vande
Mataram—a song that might have an anti-Muslim
connotation— should be made compulsory in schools, or
whether a temple should exist in the BHU campus, or for that
matter, whether Aligarh Muslim University should be closed
after 12 noon every Friday for enabling students and teachers
to go to the campus mosques to offer namaz. This means that
irrespective of the Indian or Western brand of secularism,
there is some sort of doubt or scepticism towards religion-
based scriptures and knowledges in our times. Let us try to
comprehend the deeper reasons.
The first reason, I assume, is that historically
institutionalized religions with their powerful priest craft and
bundles of ritualistic practices have often acted as a mental
block, and caused immense fear in the minds of people. It has
led to a state of pathetic dependence—if I do not follow the

rituals prescribed by the priest craft, it would harm me. And
this dependence often goes against clear/rational thinking. I
wish to give you a simple illustration. Each time I walk through
the ghats of Haridwar, I see how obsessive rituals distort
thinking, and transform everything into its opposite. From
death rituals to the so-called ‘holy’ bath—thousands and
thousands of Hindus throw all sorts of waste material into the
river; and the result is that instead of actually loving the river
which they otherwise think is their mother, they slap and insult
it. But, despite environmental awareness and all sorts of
warning about polluted water, it goes on because of the fear
that the priest craft has generated—there is no salvation if I
don’t do this puja, or have the bath! See the consequences of
this fear. Switch on the television set, and see the innumerable
channels that advertise all sorts of babas and astrologers as
some sort of miracle-makers or magicians. ‘Baba, my son is not
getting a job; my daughter is not getting married; my husband
is suffering from acute depression, save us.’ And the baba raises
his hand, and instructs: Go to this temple for three months
every Tuesday and Saturday, offer puja; and of course, the
television channel does not forget to display baba’s bank
account number. The fact is that there are solid socio-economic
and cultural reasons for the all-pervading fear in our life. The
scarcity of resources because of accumulation and possession
of wealth by a tiny section of society, the growing anonymity
and the consumptionist culture that puts excessive pressure for
constant achievement and material prosperity, the helplessness
before a heavily complex medical system at the time of death
and disease—these are reasons for our fear; but there is no
miracle-maker or magician to solve it; it requires a struggle in
the secular domain—politico-cultural and economic
transformation. It is, therefore, not surprising that the two
powerful minds of modern times—Sigmund Freud and Karl
Marx—came forward with a critical reading of institutionalized
religion. For Freud, it is mankind’s ‘collective neurosis’. As the
child remains helpless before the father, we, despite biological

adulthood, often remain fixated at the infantile stage of
dependence, and project God as our big Father who will
rescue us; that’s why, as Freud would say, it is regression, it
is the neurosis. The way the individual patient comes out of
the burden of unconscious through the light of reason we too
have to come out of this collective neurosis through, as Freud
said in his The Future of an Illusion, rational thinking. Likewise,
for Marx and many of his followers, religion acts like an
ideology—an ideology that conceals real problems and
contradictions, and promises an illusory salvation. For instance,
if capitalism is inherently competitive because of its mode of
production and the practice of ‘private property’, the Christian
idea of ‘brotherly love’ acts as an illusion because it does not
address the structural issue of conflict, contradiction and
exploitation in society. Or, as Ambedkarites would say, the
brutality implicit in the caste system is often justified in the
name of religious sanction—say, the birth of Brahmins,
Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Sudras from different organs of
Brahma’s body. No wonder, the proponents of secular/
scientific education have always expressed their doubt over
religious education.
The second reason, I assume, is the divisive nature of
organized religions. And particularly in the historical context
of our subcontinent, we have witnessed the pain, trauma and
violence implicit in the divisive nature of religious politics. Far
from uniting, it divides and excludes, and causes violence. It
is in this context that we refer to communalism in India—the
divisive politics based on religious identity. In fact,
communalists, irrespective of their religious brand, think alike,
and show a similar kind of dislike or hatred for others. In order
to make my point clear, I wish to refer to two speeches made
by V.D. Savarkar and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Look at
Savarkar’s Presidential Address at the Hindu Mahasabha in
1937. I quote him: ‘There are two antagonistic nations living
side by side in India. Let us face unpleasant facts as they are.
India cannot be assumed to be a unitary homogeneous nation,

but on the contrary there are two nations.’ And for Savarkar,
Muslims are distinctive ‘others’. ‘The whole period from the
11th century till the decades of the 19th century’, said Savarkar,
there was ‘a single monumental war between indigenous
Hindus and Muslim invaders and tyrants.’ True, Hindus might
have many internal differences; but the difference from others
is more marked. ‘The Vedic Rishis are their common pride.
Their grammarians are Panini and Patanjali; their poets:
Kalidas; their heroes are Shri Rama and Shri Krishna; their
prophets are Buddha and Sankara. They have friends and
enemies in common.’ With this Savarkar would stigmatize the
‘other’ Muslims. ‘A Muslim is alleged to cherish an extra-
territorial allegiance. Their faces are ever turned towards Mecca
and Madina. They want Urdu to be raised to the position of
the national language. They will not tolerate Vande Mataram
song. They cannot be satisfied unless a national song is
composed by Iqbal or Jinnah himself in Urdu, hailing
Hindustan as Pakistan. No wonder, his answer was
‘militarized/masculinist Hindutva.’ And now see the striking
similarity between this speech and the speech delivered by
Jinnah in 1940 in Lahore at the Muslim League meeting in terms
of division, separation and religious nationalism. ‘The problem
in India’, said Jinnah, ‘is not an inter-communal character but
manifestly of an international one.’ And hence, as he asserted,
‘the only force open to all of us is to allow the major nations
separate homelands by dividing India into autonomous
national states.’ Like Savarkar, he too emphasized the
‘irreconcilable’ differences. For him, they belong to different
religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures. They
neither intermarry nor interdine together and indeed, they
belong to different civilizations, which are based mainly on
conflicting ideas and conceptions. Moreover, as Jinnah
continued, ‘they derive their inspiration from different sources
of history. They have different epics, different heroes, different
episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and
likewise their victories and defeats overlap.’ Hence, like

Savarkar, he too would say that there could not be a unitary
homogeneous nation. ‘It is a dream’, he said, ‘Hindus and
Muslims can ever evolve a national community.’ Jinnah ended
his powerful speech by saying: ‘Come forward—ladies and
gentlemen—as servants of Islam organize the people
economically, socially, educationally and politically, and I am
sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by
everybody.’ We know, and we continue to experience the
devastating consequences of this divisive politics in the name
of religion. No wonder, secularists are always apprehensive
about religious education. It is in this context that I wish to refer
to Nehru—particularly his reflections on ‘science, philosophy
and religion’ in The Discovery of India. ‘Organized religion,
aligning itself to theology and often more concerned with its
vested interests encourages a temper which is the very opposite
to that of science. It produces narrowness and intolerance,
credulity and superstition, emotionalism and irrationalism. It
tends to close and limit the mind of man, and to produce a
temper of a dependent, unfree person’, said Nehru. Science may
not have the answer to everything; but, according to him, it is
still the best approach. India, he felt, must lessen her religiosity,
and move towards science. What is necessary is the scientific
approach which, to quote Nehru, means ‘the adventurous and
yet critical temper, the search for truth and new knowledge,
the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the
capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new
evidence, the reliance on observed fact and not on preconceived
theory, the hard discipline of the mind.’ As we have already
stated in Lecture 4, in the Nehurivian universe science,
nationalism and modernity sought to evolve a bond for the
making of a new India.
But then, despite these strong arguments in favour of
secular/scientific education, human life is never flat and
unilinear. There are discontents. Is there something in
religiosity that is more than the vested interests of the priest
craft, dogma and rituals, sectarianism and mutual hostility? Is

there something in religiosity that is truly universal, oceanic
and enchanting without which secularization and science might
miss the richness of the inner world? These are some of the
questions that I will try to answer in the second part of the
lecture.
For you, I believe, it is now clear why the proponents of
science/secular education plead for their case. These arguments
are strong, and quite convincing. However, as young learners,
it is also important for you to move another step forward, and
explore whether there is something more beyond science/
secular education. For instance, it is possible to say that science
is not as heroic as its adherents want us to believe. As critical
theorists have pointed out, science itself has become an
ideology of domination and control with its implicit
instrumental rationality. Or for that matter, in our times
postmodernists have tried to dethrone science from its elevated
position of the master truth or grand narrative, and pleaded
for multiple ways of seeing/knowing/ experiencing the world.
Furthermore, it is possible to say that secularization has not
necessarily created a better world in terms of peace, harmony
and trust; in modern times, secular nation-states have engaged
in all sorts of war and devastation. In fact, a singer like John
Lennon reveals the hollowness of the pride of techno-
scientifically developed mighty secular empires. However, in
this part of the lecture I wish to speak of something else.
To begin with, I would like to raise a point that Max Weber
raised in his speech in Munich University in 1918; it was about
science as a vocation. Science, Weber would say, is not free from
presuppositions. For instance, science presupposes that the
rules of logic and method are valid; moreover, it presupposes
that ‘what is yielded by scientific work is important in the sense
that it is worth being known’. However, this presupposition
cannot be proved by scientific means. As Weber said, ‘it can
only be with reference to its ultimate meaning which we must
reject or accept according to our ultimate position towards life.’
But can science throw light on this ultimate meaning of life? It

is quite unlikely. I borrow two illustrations from Weber. It is
true that natural science gives us an answer to the question
of what we must do if we wish to master life technically. But,
as Weber reminded us, ‘it leaves aside the question whether
we should and do wish to master life technically and whether
it ultimately makes sense to do so.’ Likewise, modern
medicine—‘a practical technology which is highly developed
scientifically’—presupposes that ‘it has the task of maintaining
life as such and of diminishing suffering as such to the greatest
possible degree.’ Yet, to refer to Weber again, ‘whether life is
worth living and when—this question is not asked by
medicine.’ For instance, a doctor preserves the life of the
mortally ill man, even if the patient implores us to relieve him
of life. True, as Weber said repeatedly, science contributes to
the technology of controlling life by calculating external objects
as man’s activities; science contributes to the development of
methods of thinking, the tools and training for thought; and
science gives us clarity. But then, it cannot comment on the
ultimate meaning of existence. It is in this context that Weber
referred to Tolstoy. Tolstoy said: ‘Science is meaningless
because it gives no answer to our question, the only question
important for us: ’What shall we do and how shall we live?’
The fact that Weber, despite his plea for the significance of
science as a vocation, took Tolstoy’s question seriously revealed
his ambiguity. Science, said Weber, ‘is not the gift of grace of
seers and prophets dispensing sacred values and revelations,
nor does it partake the contemplation of sages and philosophers
about the meaning of the universe.’ In fact, with science, ‘the
inward interest of a truly religious man can never be served.’
See Weber’s existential anguish: ‘The fate of our times is
characterized by rationalization and intellectualization, and
above all, by the disenchantment of the world.’ No wonder, in
this godless/prophetless world ‘the ultimate and most sublime
values have retreated from public life.’ Weber was not pleading
for religious/spiritual education because he believed that ‘in
the lecture halls of the university no other virtue holds but

plain intellectual integrity.’ Yet, he could not stop referring to
Tolstoy’s question. I want you to take this question pretty
seriously. What does it mean to live if you have everything—
scientific reason, mathematical precision, technological
comforts, but no deeper meaning, no higher purpose: the kind
of quest that led a man like Nachiketa to confront the king of
the dead, and ask the questions relating to life, death, and the
meaning of existence, or a man like Buddha to see beyond the
transient phenomena, and strive for something that has no
beginning, no end? Without the light, without the intuitive flash
of illumination, without inner contentment life loses its
meaning. And this ‘meaninglessness’ can be expressed in many
ways: the indulgence with absurdity as the characters of Albert
Camus’ novels depict, the intoxication with ‘the will to power’
as Nietzsche’s Superman demonstrates in a world in which
‘God is dead’, the ethos of reckless violence, mindless
consumption, the dependence on psychiatric drugs,
tranquillizers and all sorts of intoxicants. That is why, ask the
question: Is science/secular education enough? Or is there also
a need for spiritual light—the light that overcomes darkness
and gives a meaning to existence through its aesthetics, its
connectedness with the cosmos, its realization of something that
is beyond the temporal and utilitarian? Perhaps this light adds
soul to the purely rational scientific secular discourse.
There is another point that requires attention. If secular
education leads to some sort of scientific determinism, it might
cause a major damage to our intuitive faculty, our ability to go
deeper into the domain of symbolism and decipher its deeper
meanings. In that case, life tends to become a dry/rational/
technical prose; it loses its poetry, its prayer, its mysticism. In
order to make my point clear, I will give a simple illustration.
Many of you, I believe, are aware of the Vedic God Agni—the
God of fire. With your purely rational/scientific thinking you
can arrive at an instant conclusion: In the Vedic age they
worshipped Agni because they did not study Physics; it was a
reflection of their ignorance, their poor knowledge of science

. An understanding of this kind does not go deeper into
another important aspect of life—how agni as a symbol reveals
man’s quest for something higher. Just feel this Rigvedic hymn:
Upward, O Agni, raise thy flames, pure and resplendent,
blazing high.
Thy lustrous, fair effulgence.
At a deeper level, it indicates our prayer; the fire burns our
greed and negativity, purifies us, and its upward flames take
our offerings from the earth to the sky, from the temporal to
the transcendental. The world is not just what science describes;
there is another reality, another meaning that the poet’s eyes
or the mystic’s vision comprehends; and it is no less real or
significant than the scientific truth. Is it that simply because
you have studied Physics, and learned that the sun is a huge
ball consisting of hydrogen and helium gas, you would refuse
to accept another truth that William Blake perceived when he
saw God there—the God that gives his light, or what the
Rigvedic sage expressed in his prayer: ‘Bless us with shine, bless
us with perfect day light, bless us with cold, with fervent heat
and lustre. Bestow on us, O Surya, varied riches, to bestow us
in our home and when we travel?’ The point that I am trying
to plead for is that there are limits to scientific reductionism
and determinism; and in the absence of poetic aesthetics,
intuitive flash, revealed truth and the prayer that makes us
humble and see the interconnectedness with nature and the
cosmos, life loses its rains, its tenderness, and tends to become
violent and disenchanted. Spirituality is not about ritualism; it
is about deep realization. And how can you negate its worth?
However, you can raise a question: Can this sort of
religiosity or spirituality be taught? Of course, it cannot be
taught the way one teaches Physics, Mathematics, History or
Grammar. You can prove the validity of the Newtonian law of
gravitation; you can prove a geometrical theorem; you can
show archival documents to a student of history. But you
cannot prove that life has a meaning, love heals, and there is a
longing for something that is beyond the material domain.

There is no syllabus, no codified text for spirituality. And it is
absurd to have a special discipline called spiritual studies, and
then force students to opt for the course, write exams, and
compete with one another for getting higher grades. Nor can
it be taught through sermonizing; in fact, it would destroy its
very beauty and fragrance. The spiritual sensitivity I am talking
about ought to move with us in everything we do—in the
teacher’s grace and action, in learning History or Physics, Music
or Geography, in games and festivities, in the very rhythm of
life. It is an exceedingly difficult task. It has to be felt and
realized rather than dissected and operationalized. It is easier
to be a specialist with a cultivated intellect; but it is not so easy
to live life—deeply, gracefully, meaningfully. Yet, it is worth
striving for. It is in this context that I wish to share with you
three pedagogic possibilities. I want you to think of it.
First, we need to educate ourselves and become more
sensitive to the experience of openness. Take a simple
illustration. If religions tell us that God is beyond limits; and
divine truths are transcendental, then why should we limit and
fragment God, and become exclusive and possessive? If there
is no Hindu sky or Christian sky because of its limitlessness,
why should there be a Hindu God or a Christian God? Truth—
and that too divine truth—has no ism. For instance, as I look
at the Quran I see the glimpse of a profound truth: “All that is
in the heavens and on the earth extols the glory of God. To
Him belongs the Kingdom and to Him all praise is due. He
has power over all things… He created the heavens and the
earth for a purpose. He formed you and gave you the best of
forms. To Him you shall all return…. God is the Knower of
the unseen and the seen. He is the Almighty. Wise One.” I am
not a Muslim. But why should anyone prevent me from
appreciating its depth: we are the children of the infinite; our
egos blind us; the fact is that God is the infinite, and we are
different forms of the infinite; God is illumination because it is
the realization of this connectedness. Should the Muslims alone
possess this truth because it is written in the Quran? Or,

should the Hindus abandon me if I read the Quran? Or, for
that matter, why should a Muslim feel shy of appreciating a
similar passage from the Upanishads: “Verily, at the command
of that Imperishable, O Gargi, the sun and the moon stand
on their respective positions. At the command of the
Imperishable, O Gargi, what are called moments, hours, days
and nights, half-months, months, seasons, years stand in their
respective positions…” In fact, truth has no boundary. The
way militant nationalists and their army divide the beautiful
earth into fragments and cause perpetual tension, organized
religions too with their priest craft do the same. Spirituality,
because of its very nature, is beyond boundaries, beyond the
dictates of the priests and mullahs. It is inclusive. It is not a
uniform to wear; it is an oceanic feeling to cherish. It is not
sectarian; it is universal. If you love the Himalayas, can’t you
love the Alps? It is this clarity, this openness that, I believe,
has to be brought repeatedly in our classrooms, in our families,
in our culture of learning. And it alone can save religiosity
from ritual-centric, boundary making, divisive religion. If
secularists want a society with peaceful coexistence, this sort
of religiosity intensifies it because it goes beyond mere legal/
constitutional reason, touches one’s heart, and makes one see
and feel that we are essentially one, despite apparent
differences in external forms.
The second pedagogic possibility that I am talking about
is that it is important to be aware of the emancipatory
possibilities in the realization of spiritual oneness. True, because
of the vested interests of priests and also because of the merely
ritual-centric one-sided reading of religious texts, we have
begun to believe that religion is about patriarchal Brahminism,
subjugation of women, forceful conversion and social
conservatism. It is important to remind ourselves and tell our
children that there are spiritualists who have fought this
interpretation of religion, and sought to generate the waves of
love and non-hierarchical/non-possessive relationships. Try to
understand it. If spirituality is the lightness of being, it is bound

to liberate us from all that is oppressive—the burden of ego
and narcissism, the ideology of separation and division, the
urge to accumulate and exploit. To take a concrete example,
think of Narayana Guru who was born around 1854 in Kerala.
His family belonged to a traditional low-caste which used to
practise both agriculture and Ayurveda. He was a seer who
visualized the Ultimate Reality in Himself. No wonder, he felt
that the apparent world, humans included, is only part of that
one Reality manifesting itself creatively. The one who visualizes
this Reality will naturally see the same in all. It is impossible
for him to divide and hierarchize. He does not need the lesson
of a political theory class in liberty, equality and fraternity; he
sees it, feels it, experiences it. It is not in a discourse of legal
rights; it is in the fragrance of his being. No wonder, he was
one of those remarkable spiritual leaders who critiqued the
caste system so deeply through his life and preaching. Let me
recall one of his verses written in 1914:
Of one kind, one faith, one God is man;
Of one womb, of one form
Difference herein is none. …
Of the human species
Is a Brahmin born
As is a Pariah too.
Where is caste difference, then,
Amongst the human species?
Likewise, to take yet another striking example, you can recall
Ravidas who was probably born around 1414 and died in about
1540. Yes, some of Ravidas’s disciples came from royal families,
but he never accepted any gift from them to improve his
financial condition. He continued to carry on his ancestral
profession of mending shoes, remaining ever cheerful and
contented with whatever little he could honestly earn through
his profession. It is said that Mira Bai was often ridiculed and
taunted for having a poor cobbler as her guru. See his critique
of the externality of organized religion, its burden and the fear
it creates in human minds. If God is within, why should one

search for Him outside? I feel tempted to quote from a few of
his verses, particularly at a time when some zealots say that
religion is only about constructing a temple or a mosque in a
particular site, or some legalists—Marxists and rightists alike—
argue that the Supreme Court alone can decide to whom the
site belongs.
The one in search of whom
You go to Ka’aba and Kailash,
That beloved Lord dwells
In your heart, says Ravidas
Or
Why are you searching for him outside?
Search for him inside.
See the splendour of your Beloved, O Ravidas,
By concentrating your attention within.
For Ravidas, like Kabir or Gandhi, the answer is simple. But
we have made it difficult. We do not realize that a temple is a
mosque, and a mosque is a temple; and both exist within; they
are beyond limited physical boundaries. To quote him again:
Just as fragrance dwells within a flower,
So does God pervade all beings.
Your whole life has been spent seeking him outside;
You are involved in a mirage.
For he dwells in the lotus of your heart.
How important it is to invoke these remarkably illuminating
experiences in our classrooms when we study the history of
revolution, in our families, in political circles, in civil society.
Why should we think that priests and mullahs alone would
talk about religiosity; and you and I in modern universities
would only talk about Marx, Ambedkar and Derrida? Think
of it.
The third pedagogic possibility is about the art of
integration. The spiritual illumination can throw light on
supposedly secular subjects. This integration can give a
refreshingly new meaning to teaching/learning. Let me give

two examples, and if you appreciate it, you can find other
examples. My first example is from history. Suppose you are
teaching the history of war. There is no end to war;
circumstances alter–feudalism, monarchy, capitalism,
nationalism, socialism, globalization; yet what remains constant
is war. Through diverse forms of historiography, be it colonial,
nationalist, Marxist, subaltern, you can explain war. Go ahead
with that. However, ask yourself : what is common in all wars?
It is the inflated ego, be it the ego of a king, an empire, a nation
that manifests itself in war. Because it is the ego—be it the ego
of the individual or the collective ego of the nation—that strives
for possession, for accumulation; the ego makes one perpetually
insecure, greedy and hence violent. You can think of the ego
of the British Empire, the ego of American imperialism, the ego
of Islamic states, the ego of corporate economy; and it promotes
violence. To know the history of war is to be aware of the
devastating consequences of the inflated ego. Hence, learning
history might be an occasion for overcoming the burden of ego,
and strive for what spiritualists talk about—peace with inner
harmony and egolessness. This sensitivity gives you a new
perspective to look at history. My second example is from
Mathematics. Suppose you are teaching elementary
mathematics to children. Yes, mathematics, we all know, is
about numbers and measurement. How beautiful it is to see a
child learning to count—ten balls, five books, two birds, four
bananas. It is great to see her adding, subtracting, multiplying,
dividing. But have you thought what it means to the child if
you ask her to count the sky? She would stretch her hand—
this much, that much, she would say. But gradually she would
realize that it cannot be counted and measured, and that is why
it is so beautiful in which her kite flies. The kite can be measured
(its price, its length and breadth); but it needs the immeasurable
sky to fly. Likewise, the dharma of life is to build the bridge
between the measurable and the immeasurable. So while you
teach measurement (measurement of money, property, bank
balance), you should not forget to sensitize her towards the

immeasurable. Because all profound experiences of life are
immeasurable. Your laughter is immeasurable. Your love is
immeasurable. Your pain is immeasurable. And God is
immeasurable—it is an experience of what cannot be measured.
A rich man asked Jesus: ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’
Jesus reminded him: ‘Follow the commandments. Do not
commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, and do not give
false testimony, honour your father and mother.’ ‘All these I
have kept since I was a boy’, the rich man said. When Jesus
heard this, he said to him: ‘You still lack one thing. Sell
everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ You have become
empty, there is nothing to count, and in that emptiness lies the
treasure of heaven which is immeasurable. Learning the
mathematics of measurement, and unlearning it—that is the
pedagogic art I am talking about. And it can begin right from
early childhood.
I believe I have done my job. It is for you to contemplate.
6
Euphoria of Success, Stigma of Failure
Formal education, we all realize, is not just about acquisition

of knowledge and skills. It is also about filtering people. It is
about certification and credentials. It is about success and
failure, selection and elimination. While it elevates some, it
excludes others. The stigma of ‘failure’ is inseparable from the
valorization of ‘success’. To make my point clear, let me begin
with a simple example—an experience that as a teacher I cannot
escape. I know a student who is eager, honest, alert and a
curious learner. However, in a series of entrance tests for the
doctoral programme she could not get through. With pain and
anxiety, she asked me: ‘Sir, am I really so bad?’ ‘Don’t think
like this’, I told her. ‘Examinations or entrance tests’, I added,
‘are least interested in knowing you, discovering you, showing
you a direction; instead, examinations are conducted primarily
to eliminate people on the basis of a criterion that need not
necessarily be the best one.’ I was not diplomatic. Nor did I
give her false consolation. I was trying to make a serious point
of critical enquiry.
As the resources are scarce and the aspirants are many,
society evolves a mechanism to eliminate people, and it is often
legitimized in the name of ‘fair examination’ aiming at selecting
the ‘right people for the right positions’. Hence, the entrance
test conveys a message to my student: ‘You are not the right
person for pursuing a PhD programme.’ I know that she is truly
research-oriented. But possibly in the entrance test she could
not answer to the questions like (and believe it, these are
arbitrary; and by no means aim at knowing one’s research
Euphoria of Success, Stigma of Failure 87
potential): In which year Did Malinowski conduct his field

work among Trobriand Islanders? Or which among the
following books was published earlier—The Rules of Sociological
Method; The Elementary Forms of Religious Life; Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism; and Suicide? And she failed. But then,
we have internalized the belief that we are nothing unless
educational institutions certify us; and hence my student is
forced to carry some sort of stigmatized identity—a sense of
failure.
See the way this process of selection/elimination or the
dialectic of success and failure goes on. At the age of 17, you
have just begun your life. But then, who knows you might be
asked to stop? You cannot become a doctor or an engineer; you
cannot get yourself enrolled in a graduation programme
because you have not scored the ‘required’ percentage of marks.
I am not saying that the selected ones do not deserve it; or those
who have failed are necessarily capable of doing it. I am saying
something else, which I want you to reflect on. Our formal
education system with its ritualization of examinations acts like
gatekeepers that allow only some to enter, and ask others to
go back. No wonder, you would always find an auto rickshaw
driver, a security guard, an electrician, a plumber who would
say: ‘What to do? I am Class X fail.’ Or, for that matter, you
would find a young chap hardly 24 years old earning a huge
package saying: ’Why not? My CAT score is pretty impressive;
I have done my MBA.’ Through these examples, reflect on the
way a schooled society or a credential-based society shapes our
minds. It is argued that without this process of filtering society
cannot function; the economy cannot retain its efficiency. It
must give appropriate rewards to those who deserve it, and
place the right people in the right position. The achievers
celebrate it. Nothing succeeds like success, it is said. And those
who fail internalize it, and tend to accept that they cannot make
it because schools have considered them unfit; and schools are
just and neutral. In this lecture I intend to interrogate this
dominant commonsense.
Before I do that it is important to understand how this

dominant commonsense has been legitimated through a
sophisticated theoretical discourse. It is in this context that I
invite you to read American sociologist Talcott Parsons—
particularly his much talked about essay ‘School Class as a
Social System’. As students of sociology you are familiar with
Parsons—undoubtedly a towering figure in the discipline , a
system builder with a grand theoretical landscape. Yes, he
evolved a very elaborated theory of action through an
engagement with utilitarianism, positivism and idealism. Here
was a notion of an actor with immense zeal and agency
pursuing a goal, yet governed by the ‘givenness’ of the reality
as well as the shared norms of the collective. Parsons saw
‘voluntarism’ in this action because the institutionalized norms
tend to become an ‘inner disposition’. In fact, Parsons sought
to unite ‘action’ with the ‘system’. In a ‘social system’, as he
argued, we see multiple actors with their ‘personality systems’
negotiating with each other through a shared ‘cultural system’,
and this leads to the consolidation of a fairly equilibrated social
order. As one deciphers the meanings of the Parsonian codes,
one realizes that through a nuanced process of socialization and
social control individuals are integrated with the system.
Agency and order, freedom and equilibrium—Parsons was
trying to integrate, and formulate a theoretical blueprint of the
American dream of a consensus based on equality of
opportunity and fair competition—a ‘system’ strikingly
different from the Marxian project of the state-centric socialist
order; and particularly during the Cold War era, America
needed a system builder like him.
At this juncture, it would become easier for you to
understand the arguments that Parsons made in the essay I am
talking about. The goal of education, as he said, is the
‘development in individuals of the commandments and
capacities which are essential prerequisites of their future role-
performance.’ More importantly, it is at school that the child
learns the basic values of a competitive, achievement-oriented
society. What are these ‘ basic values’? To borrow Parsons’

own words: ‘ It is fair to give different rewards for different
levels of achievement so long as there has been fair access to
opportunity, and it is only fair that these rewards lead to higher
order opportunities for the successful.’ In other words, the child
must learn that not everyone can be an achiever; and the
‘meritorious ’ones ought to be rewarded sufficiently to keep
their motivation level alive. There were three assumptions that
Parsons made: (a) the fundamental American value of equality
of opportunity; (b) initial equalization—in the elementary
neighbourhood school in America there is a fair degree of
similarity among children in terms of their family/economic
backgrounds; and (c) children are given a common set of tasks,
and the teacher is engaged in a relatively systematic process of
the evaluation of the pupils’ performance.
With an ideal setting of this kind, as Parsons indicated, it
would not be difficult for children to realize that the school
situation is like a race as everyone has an equal opportunity,
and hence it is desirable to differentiate and hierarchize people
on the basis of their achievements. Even the losers, despite the
initial difficulty, would begin to accept this logic. And this
makes it possible for schools to fulfil their major function:
selecting people for manpower allocation. Its implications are
clear. As Parsons explained, those who do well at the secondary
level would join colleges for higher learning, and the others
would join the labour force. Moreover, amongst them those
with relatively high ‘cognitive’ abilities would do better in
technical occupations—‘operatives, mechanics, clerical
workers.’ And those with relatively high ‘moral’ achievement
would be inclined towards more socially/humanely oriented
roles like ‘salesmen and agents of various sorts.’
The Parsonian system, as his critics would argue, takes us
to an imaginary world in which there is equality of opportunity
and an absolutely fair race. The harsh reality is that we live in
an unequal world; we carry the baggage of social/cultural/
economic hierarchies; and it affects significantly our educational
achievements. No wonder, as the critical argument goes, the

Parsonian system seems to be promoting a technocratic-
meritocratic ideology—a belief that economic success depends
on the possession of appropriate skills and education. It is an
ideological façade because in reality economic success is linked
to the individual’s class rather than talent. I want you to look
at the dynamics of our own society, and understand why the
Parsonian legitimation is problematic. In order to stimulate
your thinking, I wish to pose before you three examples.
My first example is from the stories of everyday life that
we see all around us—the stories of extreme forms of socio-
economic inequality and their reflections in the way schools
are structured, stratified and classified. There is no ‘fair race’,
no ‘initial equalization’; instead, we have select ‘elite’ schools
predominantly for the privileged sections of society (not
everyone can get admission in these schools because of their
exorbitant tuition fee; moreover, the selection process is based
on a kind of exclusivity that gives excessive importance to the
socio-economic background of the parents, and the child’s
ability to learn some etiquette—say, polite words in English),
and there are government schools with poor infrastructure and
low motivation primarily for the poor and the lower middle
class. Even when the children from these schools read the same
texts (say, NCERT texts), and write the same examination (say,
CBSE board examination), it does by no means indicate
neutrality or fair competition. Take a simple illustration.
Imagine Rahul—whose father is a doctor, and mother a
university professor—from the Barakhamba Road Modern
School—a leading elite school in the city. He scores 98 per cent
in the board examination, and opts for economics honours in
St. Stephens College, and aims at going to America for
pursuing higher studies. And imagine Minati—whose father
is a farmer, and mother a tailor—from a municipality school in
old Delhi. She gets merely 48 per cent in the board examination,
doesn’t get admission in any of the DU colleges, and eventually
takes up the job of a sales girl in the Big Bazar. Rahul and
Minati have not begun their journey from the same position;
their ‘academic merit’ can by no means be divorced from their
social locations. Rahul is privileged. Because of his early
socialization he has learned a set of skills and aptitudes from
his family—say, the exposure to the world of books and other
learning material, the command over English—which have
helped him to be in tune with the culture of schooling, its texts
and curriculum. But the skills that Minati has learned from her
family—say, the art of stitching, some knowledge of seeds and
farming, or how to milk the cow—are not valued at school as
far as its official knowledge and process of evaluation are
concerned. What is relatively smooth for Rahul (for him, it
looks like a sponsored upward mobility) is alienating for
Minati. In other words, in this kind of stratified schooling and
stratified social locations the script has already been written—
Rahul’s ‘success’ and Minati’s ‘failure’. Is it that social
hierarchies are converted into academic hierarchies?
My second example is derived from the autobiographical
account of a Dalit writer which reminds us once again of the
violence implicit in caste hierarchies and how educational
institutions often reproduce these hierarchies. Here I am
referring to Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiography Joothan: A
Dalit’s Life—particularly what he had passed through at his
village school when he was a child. Valmiki belonged to the
Chuhra caste; and the Chuhras were not seen as humane. It was
1958. Despite Gandhi’s conscience and Ambedkar’s plea for the
annihilation of caste and the constitutional provision for the
removal of untouchability, ‘the mentality of ordinary people’,
as he said, ‘had not changed much.’ Even though he managed
to get admission in the government school, he could realize
how his school, far from being welcoming and inviting, was
extremely violent to a child like him. He recalled how his school
headmaster used to abuse him, remind him of his ‘polluted’
caste, ask him to do all sorts of work (like sweeping the whole
school clean), and not allow him to sit with others—particularly
the Tyagis and other upper caste boys. This humiliation and
stigmatization he had to bear in silence. The headmaster was

never happy. Try to feel what Valmiki experienced:
The third day I went to the class and sat down quietly. After a
few minutes the headmaster’s loud thundering was heard: ‘Abey
Chureke, motherfucker, where are you hiding…your mother…’
I began to shake uncontrollably. A Tyagi boy shouted, ’Master
Saheb, there he is, sitting in the corner.’
The headmaster pounced on my neck. The pressure of his fingers
increased. As a wolf grabs a lamb by the neck, he dragged me out
of the class and threw me on the ground. He screamed: ‘Go, sweep
the whole playground…Otherwise I will shove chillies up your
arse and throw you out of the school.’
What is important to realize is that Valmiki’s pain is shared by
many—particularly, those belonging to the marginalized castes
in a caste-ridden/hierarchical society. Yes, as you would
eventually explore, many sociologists of education in India
have shown in their empirical works this dynamics of caste
hierarchy, violence and schooling. And herein lies my third
example. Valmiki experienced it in 1958; but even now, as my
colleague S. Srinivasa Rao’s work suggests, history is repeating
itself . As his work focuses on one of the leading IITs, we realize
how caste refuses to die even in a place that is expected to
promote what Nehru would have regarded as ‘scientific
temper’. By taking narratives of select ‘stigmatized’ students
(from SC/St background), Srinivas has tried to show how they
were subjected to ‘stigma, labelling and discrimination’ in the
process of their engagement with their teachers and forward
caste students. We come to know how these ‘reserved’ students
would often be reminded of their location, their ‘inferiority’,
or how they would be compelled to remain silent in the class,
and the best professors would try to avoid or ignore them. To
quote the narrative of one such student:
We have a workshop demonstrator who may be around 50-55
years of age who keeps uttering bad things about the SC students.
He creates a nuisance every now and then. He does not allow us
inside the workshop even if we are late by five minutes. He keeps
shouting at us. We feel disgusted with such behaviour.
This stigmatization is visible even in the ‘non-pedagogic

settings of hostel and other areas of institutional life.’ Here is
yet another revelation:
In the mess hall, in the shopping areas, in the playground, at the
table tennis board, in the hostel common rooms, there are
references to our caste background. In my case, I was indirectly
referred to in some conversation by some of my batch mates in
the hostel mess. I gave it back to them and got furious and angry.
I felt they were making fun of me because of my caste. I was
embarrassed.
All these three examples, I am sure, are provoking you to ask
a central question: Are educational institutions really neutral?
Or is there violence—not merely physical but also cultural and
symbolic—that tends to stigmatize, marginalize and demotivate
those who come from the fringes of society? For a more
theoretical answer to this pertinent question I need to introduce
the notion of ‘capital’ here. Its dictionary meaning is the stock
of money used for carrying on any business. True, this
economic or financial capital is immensely important, and its
visibility is fairly obvious. It is this capital that one needs to
run a business, start a new industry, buy technology, influence
media houses and, of course, politics. However, if you think
deeply you will realize that there are other forms of capital too;
and economic capital, despite its importance, cannot completely
determine the possession of these forms of capital. For instance,
an academic—even if not very rich—possesses a great deal of
cultural capital—say, her knowledge of sciences or arts, her
ability to think critically, write argumentatively and shape
young minds. Likewise, a leading NGO activist does possess
social capital—her social networking, her association with
people involved in civil liberties movements, her connection
with donor agencies. It is of course true that without the
possession of some amount of economic capital it is exceedingly
difficult for one to have access to what society values as cultural
or social capital. For instance, if your parents don’t have
sufficient money to buy you books, take you to science clubs,
art galleries and debating societies, how can you possess the
kind of cultural capital that is valued in educational
institutions?
It is at this juncture that I wish to refer to Pierre Bourdieu—
a French sociologist of great repute known for the ideas like
‘capital’, ‘habitus’, ‘field’, ‘reproduction’ communicated in a
heavily mystified language. The reason is that Bourdieu
debunked the neutrality of educational institutions, and
enabled us to see how social hierarchies are converted into
academic hierarchies. Bourdieu too spoke of three forms of
capital—economic, social and cultural. And his rigorous work
in the context of French society suggests how schools or
universities privilege certain forms of cultural capital , and
those who are not endowed with it tend to fail. For instance,
in the universities in France, as he said, bourgeois parlance (the
ability to verbalize feelings and judgments; and it is remarkably
different from common parlance which is devoid of fine words)
is expected from the learners because the literate tradition
assumes that all experiences can be turned into a literary
experience where style and forms of expression are important.
Not surprisingly, in the domain of higher education in France,
the upper classes and Parisians dominate, and the children of
the working class lag behind. What is this cultural capital?
Every section of society has a certain kind of cultural capital.
For instance, rural children in India whose parents are farmers
tend to inherit certain forms of cultural capital—say, folk songs
relating to the monsoon, crops and harvesting; or the
knowledge of food grains and diverse forms of plants and trees.
However, schools do not give much importance to these skills.
Instead, children born in urban/middle class families inherit
the knowledge of English, get exposed to books, atlases, art,
painting and technologies; and, as we all know, these skills or
forms of cultural capital are valued in schools, and help them
to do well in academics. To use Bourdieu’s own words, the
educational system has its own ‘cultural arbitraries’ which are
variants of the cultural arbitraries of the dominant classes. In a
way, it reproduces social hierarchies. But it appears that it is

based on the hierarchy of gifts, merits and skills. As Bourdieu
would argue, by converting social hierarchies into academic
hierarchies the educational system fulfils a function of
‘legitimation’ which is needed for the perpetuation of social
order. The fact is that ‘this is concealed beneath the cloak of a
perfect method of democratic selection.’
For Bourdieu, the privileged cultural capital can be seen in
three states—embodied, objectified and institutionalized. In its
embodied state it is a work on oneself; it requires investment
of time and energy; it is a long preparation. And only then is it
possible to inherit Mozart and Picasso as ‘long-lasting
dispositions of the mind and body’. It cannot be transmitted
instantaneously by gift, purchase or exchange. Its initial
accumulation starts at the outset only for the offspring of
families endowed with strong cultural uplift. In its objectified
state—writings, paintings, monuments, instruments—it is
transmissible in its materiality. But, as Bourdieu said, what is
transmissible is only legal ownership, and not what constitutes
the precondition for specific appreciation. For instance, you can
give me a Leonardo da Vinci painting from your collection; but
you cannot give me the taste of painting (which is embodied
capital). And in its institutionalized state it manifests itself in
degrees or certificates of academic qualifications. In a way, it
neutralizes embodied capital. I may not be so ‘fine’ and
‘sophisticated’ in my taste; yet, through my hard work I may
acquire the academic degree, and take a step forward towards
upward social mobility.
In this context, there are two points that need to be made.
First, the most privileged sections of the dominant classes from
the point of view of economic capital are not necessarily the
most well-off in terms of cultural capital. For instance, teachers
and artists rather than heads of industry or commerce can be
seen to have more ‘cultural capital’. Second, this implies that
academic justice provides a kind of resort or revenge for those
who have no other resources than their ‘intelligence’ or ‘merit’.
However, it should not be forgotten that the holders of

economic capital can manage without adequate cultural capital.
What does it mean for a society like ours? I believe that
with your sociological sensibilities you would agree with me
that there are two trends simultaneously operating in our
society. First, society is becoming more and more anxiety-prone
because of the intensification of hierarchies. Whereas traditional
caste- based hierarchies remain, the neo-liberal market economy
is creating a new form of hierarchy. While it brings prosperity
to the new middle class trained in what is known as ‘knowledge
economy’, it also causes joblessness, marginalization and
insecurity, particularly for the poor and the struggling masses
situated in the informal sector and rural economy. And second,
because of this there is acute restlessness and competition for
a share in scarce resources. This means that ours is also an
aspiring society. For those devoid of economic or social capital,
the access to education or cultural capital seems to be the only
option available for social mobility. No wonder, the education
scenario is changing in a significant way. ‘English medium’
schools are flourishing everywhere—even in remote villages
and small towns. The remarkable growth of engineering
colleges across the country, the proliferation of coaching
centres, the changing demographic composition of our
universities with many first generation learners, the growing
preoccupation with examination performance—everything
seems to indicate that there is a rat race for achieving success,
for an access to the required cultural capital—at least, in its
institutionalized form, through education. While this
democratization of aspirations leads to immense dynamism in
society, it also causes severe discontents—hyper-competition,
chronic anxiety and insecurity and perpetual fear—fear of
lagging behind, fear of failure. While some achieve ‘success’
and give the impression that through education social mobility
is possible, and hierarchies can be broken (as I prepare this
lecture I see the newspaper headlines like: ‘Samosa seller’s son
gets 64th rank in the IIT JEE Advanced exams’; or ‘’Salesman’s
son among Super 30 success stories in Bihar’), there are many

who fail. Our success obsessed society refuses to come to terms
with the phenomenon called failure. But I wish to conclude this
lecture with some reflections on failure.
The first question is: What does this ‘failure’ mean? As we
have discussed so far, it means that one cannot survive the rat
race; one has not achieved the necessary competence and merit
for excelling in what educational institutions regard as
‘knowledge’; and hence one has not found a ‘prestigious’ job
or occupation. Our analysis suggests how this failure is
engineered and socially constituted. The fact is that everyone
is unique; and everyone has some potential, aptitude and
inclination ‘A person’s identity’, John Holt wrote with
extraordinary sensitivity, ‘is made up of those things—qualities,
tastes, beliefs—that are uniquely his, that he found and chose
and took for himself, that cannot be lost or taken from him,
that do not depend on his position or success or other people’s
opinion of him’. However, as I have indicated, schools are not
simply interested in tapping the unique potential each child is
endowed with. To borrow Holt’s words, we don’t give them
enough time and space to do ‘this kind of seeking, tasting,
selecting and rejecting’. Instead, through a standardized scale—
sanctified by the ‘cultural arbitrariness’ of the privileged
classes—schools eliminate people, and cause failure. Likewise,
‘success’ does not necessarily indicate positive or noble
qualities; it only indicates how ‘fit ’one is in the rationale of
the system with its rat race and market-orientation.
My second question is: What are the consequences of this
failure? Yes, we all realize that it negates one’s self-worth,
shatters one’s confidence, makes one a passive believer in the
dominant ideology (I am a failure because I am not intelligent,
meritorious and studious), and stigmatizes one’s identity. But
then, it is perpetually redefining failure. Even those who are
‘successful’ are insecure, and feel the threat of failure. For
instance, as the rat race intensifies, even if you get 90 per cent
in the board examination (some of your friends get 99 per
cent), you see yourself as ‘unlucky’ because you may not find
admission in the most ‘prestigious’ college. See the
consequences of this redefinition of failure. John Holt
expressed it aptly:
In this competition into which we have driven children, almost
everyone loses. It is not enough any more for most parents or
most schools that a child should go to college and do well there.
It is not even enough for most children themselves. More and
more, the only acceptable goal is to get into a prestige college; to
do anything else is to fail. Thus I hear boys and girls say, ‘I wanted
to go to so- and-so, but I’m not good enough.’ It is outrageous
that they should think this way, that they should judge themselves
stupid and worthless because of the opinion of some remote
college admissions officer.
Finally, this obsession with success and fear of failure destroys
the mission, purpose and joy in learning, life and work. It
alienates those who fail; but even the ‘successful achievers’ are
not happy; instead, they are clever, hyper-competitive survivors
who have internalized what Holt expressed without any
pretence: ‘What counts in school and college is not knowing
and understanding, but making someone think you know and
understand; that knowledge is valuable, not because it helps
us deal better with the problems of private and public life, but
because it has become a commodity that can be sold for fancy
prices on the market.’
Is there a way out? There seems to be no easy and instant
answer to this question. However, it is important for us to
realize that all that prevails need not necessarily be desirable.
Imagine another world, another possibility. There is no failure.
Everyone is unique. What we need is a culture of learning that
encourages one to know oneself, unfold one’s potential ,and
live with one’s natural flow. And there is no meaning in success
if it is based on someone else’s failure. Instead, in a liberating
environment there is joy in doing what one loves to do with
all intensity, rigour and perfection. Furthermore, everyone’s
cultural capital has its significance—an artisan’s skill, a tribal
person’s knowledge of forests and seas, a boatman’s folk songs;
and liberating education, instead of hierarchizing, remains open

to multiple and diverse sources of knowledge. And imagine a
culture of education in which there is no tyranny of
examinations—the examinations that manufacture failure.
Instead, there are great and imaginative pedagogic challenges
that inspire the learner to know her potential, and excel in what
she does without the fear of condemnation, comparison and
stigmatization. I know that this imagination seems utopian. But
you have to find your utopias in order to fight the pathology
of the normal.
7
Ideology, Curriculum and
Educational Dilemmas
Yes, as I have already discussed, educational institutions

process people. But then, knowledge too is processed and
filtered. Not everything is taught; not every perspective of the
world is considered worth learning; not every ‘skill’ or every
branch of knowledge is given equal importance. This means
that we must ask why certain perspectives or skills are
considered as ‘legitimate’ knowledge at a certain juncture of
history. Before we go deeper into this issue, I appeal to you to
stretch your imagination because I am going to give you two
illustrations from history so that you can reflect on the changing
dynamics of what is regarded as ‘worth knowing’.
Stretch your imagination (and believe it, imagination is an
important faculty of learning), and think of a conversation
between famous sage-philosopher Yajnavalkya and King
Janaka which took place, say, 3,500 years ago. In this
Upanishadic dialogue we notice a profound reflection on the
Self—the ever illuminating light that lies within us. And, as the
poetic conversation indicates, this light is beyond the sun, the
moon, the fire and the speech, Even when the sun has set, the
moon has disappeared, the fire has gone out, and the speech
has stopped, the light remains because the Self is the ultimate
light; and it is the Self (not the temporal entities, but the Eternal
and the Absolute which has no beginning, or end) that ought
to be known. In a way, you see a great emphasis placed on the
spiritual search for vidya or true knowledge.
And now I ask you to come back to your own times. Your
Ideology, Curriculum and Educational Dilemmas 101
own university conference hall—a professor of political

sociology speaking on social justice, referring to John Rawls,
Amartya Sen, Gandhi and Ambedkar; and young scholars are
raising a series of issues on caste, hierarchy, reservation and
justice. See how things have changed. The palace of the king
where the conversation took place between Yajnavalkya and
Janaka has been replaced by a modern university; the sage has
been replaced by a professor of political sociology; the king has
been replaced by young research scholars; and the meaning of
education has changed—from spiritual knowledge of the Self
to the secular knowledge of politics. In a ‘secular/democratic/
republic’ there seems to be no escape from the issues relating
to politics, representation and justice; and hence political
sociology appears to be more relevant than Vedanta. This
means that what is considered worth learning is not static; it
varies and changes with the passage of time and history. Each
age, according to its historic needs and priorities, defines or
filters or processes knowledge. But how does it take place? Who
decides? Does it remain uncontested? Or is the domain of
knowledge a site of constant contestation and struggle? In this
lecture I wish to bring out these issues.
To begin with, let me make a generalized, yet a simple
statement in order to make sense of what I am referring to. You
would agree with me that we live at a time when the twin forces
of modernity and capitalism are overwhelmingly powerful.
And don’t you think that what we are asked to learn at schools
and universities are deeply related to these governing principles
of politics, economics and social life? Modernity, we know,
needs the cultivation of ‘secular’ knowledges—scientific
reasoning, engineering and technical/professional skills for
what a hugely complex bureaucratic system needs—law, public
administration, medicine and media; whereas capitalism,
because of its perpetual need for measurement, calculation,
trade and growth, demands the cultivation of mathematics,
statistics, economics, commerce and management. No wonder,
while in our times we see the proliferation of these knowledge
traditions, we simultaneously notice the systematic devaluation

and marginalization of the other branches of knowledge which
are considered relatively unimportant—theology, philosophy,
liberal arts and humanities. Anyone familiar with modern
schools and universities would concede that these institutions
tend to reproduce the hierarchy of knowledge traditions. Am I
right?
With your sensitivity, I am sure, you think that knowledge
is then inseparable from ideology—particularly, the ruling
ideology has a role to play in deciding what is to be taught
and how it is to be taught. This needs a thorough enquiry. The
word ‘ideology’, as you know, refers to a perspective, a
worldview, a way of looking at life, politics, culture and
economics. In this sense there are many ideologies propagated
by diverse social groups. Can one’s ideology grasp the social
reality in its totality? Or is it merely illusory, a false
consciousness? Or is it a fragment of truth, a partial
understanding of the social reality? At this juncture, I want you
to recall Karl Mannheim’s classic Ideology and Utopia.
Mannheim, we know, formulated the postulates of the sociology
of knowledge. He established the relationship between cognition
and experience. The way one knows about the world and
engages with it is deeply related to one’s socio-historical/
existential determinants. And, for Mannheim, as historically
located social groups we keep defining and redefining the
world in the process of our everyday struggle, and relationship
with other groups. Hence each historically embedded social
group has a perspective or total ideology (and it is different from
the ‘particularistic’ notion of ideology which is based on the
individual’s psychology of interests) to make sense of the
world. And in a society like ours where because of the
acknowledgement of the diversity of social groups and their
struggles and interests we are becoming increasingly aware of
the multiplicity of perspectives or ideologies leading to what
Mannheim regarded as the ‘elemental perplexity of our times.’
For instance, amidst the presence of, say, Ambedkarism,
Gandhism, Marxism, feminism, environmentalism, scientism,

which version is true—something that can be seen as ‘solid/
objective’ knowledge? How often we tend to say that our
version is truer than others! For instance, it is not difficult to
find the Marxists who would rather say that while they, because
of the ‘science’ of historical materialism, have the monopoly
over truth, their opponents are merely ‘ideological’—living
with ‘false consciousness’. Mannheim approached this issue
differently. Even Marxism, he argued, is an ideology—one
ideology among many other ideologies. Like other ideologies
it too speaks of the reality—but from a specific vantage point
or a social location. Instead of ‘true’ or ‘false’, ‘objective’ or
‘relative’, Mannheim spoke of relational knowledge. In other
words, every group sees the world on the basis of its socio-
historical location; and this knowledge, instead of being
condemned as false or relative, has to be seen as a fragment of
the reality which is related to the existential determinants of
the group. For instance, as he said, while the ideologies of the
dominant classes have an interest in the preservation of the
status quo; the utopias of the ascending classes seek to alter it.
In a world characterized by these diverse and conflicting
perspectives, Mannheim felt the need for socially unattached
intelligentsia who could come out of their own conditioning and
seek to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the
reality.
Yes, it is debatable whether it is at all possible for educators
to fulfil Mannheim’s expectations. However, from Mannheim
there is one important lesson that you and I can learn. We
should not absolutize what is projected as ‘legitimate’
knowledge at schools and universities as the gospel truth. Yes,
it is a perspective, maybe a relevant one. Nevertheless, there
are other perspectives too which, because of the politics of
knowledge, may not have gained the status of worth learning
material. It is a lesson of openness and critical enquiry. And
hence, at this juncture I want you to remember a few lessons
that Marx taught us. The ruling class ideology often emerges
as the dominant commonsense of the age; those who control

the material domain tend to succeed in projecting their visions
of the world as the non-problematic final truth. Take, for
instance, how we have almost normalized the notion of a self-
possessive individual driven by the ethos of competitiveness.
However, a deeper enquiry would suggest that it is primarily
capitalism—its celebration of private property, its philosophy
of money, its logic of profit—that needs an ideology of this
kind. Think of a situation. In a modern university a professor
of economics is defying the fundamentals of neo-classical
economics (rational economic man engaged in a calculative act
of bargaining; or well-being is measured in terms of what is
merely statistical), and pleading for the Buddhist economics,
asking students to reflect on Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful,
Ivan Illich’s convivial tools or Gandhi’s swadeshi. How difficult
it would be for him to survive! The leading journals are unlikely
to publish his papers; he would be ridiculed by his ‘successful’
colleagues as an idealist philosopher not suitable in the ‘science’
of economics. This is the way the ruling ideology shapes the
contents of knowledge.
Possibly it was Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci who
further enriched our understanding of this process. To put it
simply and clearly, as capitalism becomes more advanced with
its widespread network of schools, media houses, religious
institutions or other organs of civil society, the state redefines
itself not merely as a coercive apparatus, but also as an educator
engaging in the consolidation of hegemony—a process through
which the rulers manage to get active consent from those over
whom they rule. And it is obvious that education plays a key
role in the construction of this hegemony. For instance, it is
through education that we internalize the belief that the spirit
of competitiveness is a virtue, reckless consumption is a sign
of vitality, techno science is our new religion, and development
is unlimited growth. Well, hegemony does not mean that the
other views are altogether denied; but even if these views are
represented (say, a chapter on tribal revolt in a history book
that is predominantly about the history of the nationalist

bourgeoisie; or the establishment of a college of Ayurveda in a
setting where the larger share of the allotted fund is spent on
the cultivation of bio-medicine), it is a matter of tokenism.
Unlike Mannheim, Gramsci spoke of the close relationship
between economic classes and intellectuals; each class brings
with it its own intellectuals; and through their ideas and
discourses they legitimate the interests of the classes they
belong to. Revolution, Gramsci thought, means not just a frontal
attack on the outer parameters of the state; it means also a
sustained counter-hegemonic struggle in the domain of ideas;
and for this the organic intellectuals of the subaltern classes have
to play a key role. I wish to give a simple illustration to make
this point clear. Imagine how often school mathematics is
projected as ‘value neutral’. However, a deeper look at it would
suggest that it normalizes the values relating to trade,
commerce and profit. Recall the chapter on Fractions and
Percentage you learned at school. ‘A shopkeeper bought a
television set for Rs. 8,000, and sold it for Rs. 10,000/. What
was his percentage of profit?’ You have solved this sort of
mathematical problem. But have you ever solved a problem
like this: ‘A bottle of Pepsi costs Rs. 30; and the same amount
of lemon water costs Rs. 5. By what percent does Pepsi cost
more than lemon water?’ It is unlikely. The reason is that
mathematics as part of school knowledge normalizes the
dominant values of the mercantile world and profit; whereas
in the second problem you see a spirit of interrogation; the very
fact that Pepsi is costlier than a healthy drink like lemon water
may lead a learner to probe, and ask why it is so. This is the
beginning of a critical spirit (I am not saying that children can
immediately grasp the politics of global capitalism and
multinational corporations; or the mathematics teacher has to
be a political economist)—the possibility of redefining
mathematics for sowing the seeds of a counter-hegemony; and
hence there is a tendency to marginalize it. However, what I
am trying to argue is that the domain of education is also a
domain of possibilities, and critical pedagogues, like Gramsci’s

‘organic intellectuals’, need to work on the contents of
knowledge and modes of teaching, and fight the battle.
It is in this context that a reference to Michael Apple—an
American sociologist of education with a high degree of critical
sensibilities—would be appropriate. In order to invite you to
his book Ideology and Curriculum, I would draw a couple of
insights from the text and present them before you. To begin
with, Apple sees the limitations of two distinct ways—
‘academic achievement’ model and ‘socialization’ approach—
through which educators tend to look at school knowledge. For
instance, in the academic achievement model curricular
knowledge itself is not made problematic; instead, it is seen as
given and neutral so that ‘comparisons can be made among
social groups, schools, children, etc.’ This implies that the
proponents of this model concentrate primarily on the factors
that have a ‘major impact on an individual’s or group’s success
or failure in school, such as the adolescent subculture, the
unequal distribution of resources, or the social background of
the students.’ While its primary objective is the maximization
of academic productivity, it does not examine the contents of
knowledge itself. As Apple says, it fails to take seriously ‘the
possible connection between economics and the structure of
school knowledge’.
Well, the socialization approach does not necessarily leave
the school knowledge unexamined because it seeks to explore
the social norms and values that are taught in school. While it
concentrates on ‘moral knowledge’, it sees the ‘shared’ set of
normative values and dispositions as taken for granted. In other
words, it examines ‘the parallels that exist between the given
values of larger collectivity and educational institutions.’ Not
surprisingly, as Apple points out, it ignores ‘the political and
economic context in which such social values function and by
which certain sets of social values become the dominant values.’
In contrast to these two models, Apple argues that schools
do not merely process people but they process knowledge as
well; he seeks to explore why schools give special legitimacy

to certain kinds of knowledge. In fact, ‘legitimate’ school
knowledge has to be seen as a ‘value governed selection from
a much larger universe of possible knowledge’, and the
meaning of this selection—selected by ‘specific social groups
and classes in specific institutions, at specific historical
moments’—cannot be comprehended unless we understand the
dominant socio-economic ideologies. It is in this context that
Apple makes a revealing point—the way in our times technical
knowledge becomes ‘high status’ knowledge. An obvious
reason is that ‘a corporate economy requires the production of
high levels of technical knowledge to keep the economic
apparatus running effectively and to become more
sophisticated in the maximization of opportunities for economic
expansion’. This means hierarchization: the knowledges which
are not seen as ‘macro-economically beneficial’ do not acquire
the kind of importance that is associated with the high status
technical knowledge. As Apple observes, ‘substantial funding
was given to mathematics and science curriculum development
while less was given to the arts and humanities.’ Furthermore,
unlike the arts and humanities, this sort of high status
knowledge—say, mathematics, physics and technical
sciences—is considered to have ‘economic utility’; it has
supposedly an ‘identifiable content and stable structure’. And
it is easier to stratify people according to ‘academic criteria’
when technical knowledge is used.
I appeal to you see your own reality and understand what
Apple is arguing for. Have you noticed how our schools
hierarchize knowledge traditions—science is for ‘bright’
students, and humanities is for the leftovers? And have you
thought why an average parent thinks that while physics,
mathematics, chemistry and biology need special coaching,
anybody can do sociology, history and literature? The
proliferation of coaching centres, the chronic obsession with
engineering, the sanctification of the IITs, and the culture of
competitive examinations heavily oriented to ‘objective’
answers to a series of discrete questions relating to reasoning,

mental aptitude and mathematical skills—the educational
landscape indicates the power of high status knowledge, its
instrumental use in stratifying and eliminating people, and its
close linkage with the economy, the needs of the expanding
trade and market. Under these circumstances, ethical issues
(how I relate my education to the project of a humane/
egalitarian/ecologically sustainable society, or whether my job
as a techno-manager in the corporate sector really gives me the
space and time to elevate my artistic/ethical/cultural
sensibilities) become secondary. It seems that the entire project
aims at technical efficiency, not ethical sensitivity. To borrow
Apple’s own words:
Scientific and technical talk in advanced industrial societies has
more legitimacy (high status) than ethical talk. Ethical talk cannot
be easily operationalized within an input-output perspective. And
finally, ‘scientific’ criteria of evaluation give ‘knowledge’, while
ethical criteria lead to purely ‘subjective’ considerations.
Not surprisingly, this sort of education breeds conformity; it
doesn’t interrogate the dominant knowledge tradition or value
system. Whatever seeks to see beyond the status quo is seen as
problematic, utopian or idealistic. While consensus is valued,
conflict, as Apple points out, is seen as ‘inherently and
fundamentally bad’. Not surprisingly, schools tend to teach a
‘consensual theory of science’. Science is projected as value-
neutral—‘subject to empirical verification with no outside
influences, either personal or political’. As a result, we tend to
forget that science too has its politics—the way corporate or
military interests often shape the priorities of research. When
science becomes hegemonic, it also marginalizes the other
traditions of knowledge. Not solely that. Even in social sciences
one sees a consensual view promoting the maintenance of
society. It should not be forgotten that conflict is not merely
an aberration or a law and order problem. There is a deeper
meaning of conflict; it is through conflict that the oppressed
sections of society define their distinctive identity and strive
for liberation. The avoidance of conflict in the dissemination

of school knowledge implies that the system seeks to orient
individuals towards an unequal society. Let me quote Michael
Apple:
When a society ‘requires’ at both an economic and cultural level,
the maximization (not distribution) of the production of technical
knowledge, then the science that is taught will be divorced from
the concrete human practices that sustain it. When a society
‘requires’ at an economic level, the ‘production’ of agents who
have internalized norms which stress engaging in often personally
meaningless work, acceptance of our basic political and economic
institutions as stable and always beneficent …then we would
expect that the formal and informal curricula, the cultural capital,
in schools will become aspects of hegemony.
In fact, this lecture will remain incomplete unless we reflect on
the ideologies of nation and nationalism and their effects on the
contents of knowledge and curriculum—particularly, in the
realm of history and social sciences. Let us refer to our own
historic context, and examine the discourses of nationalism. To
begin with, let me refer to what can be broadly regarded as
liberal/secular (and possibly left of centre) nationalism. Here
the primary project is to emphasize India’s long civilizational
trajectory, its diversity, its plural traditions—yet, its ability to
establish a thread of connectedness and civilizational unity
through perpetual confluence of folk and high culture, and mix
of traditions (recall Tagore’s superb poetry in the Gitanjali
visualizing India as a great ocean of confluence) through
pilgrimage, trade, educational centres and diverse historic
events—particularly, the anti-colonial struggle with its pan-
Indian character and iconic figures who transcended limiting
identities. Furthermore, because of the post-partition trauma the
proponents of this project—the noted historians like Bipan
Chandra, Romila Thapar, Arjun Dev and Irfan Habib—argue
that this vision of India ought to be taught and presented before
children and young learners. Generally, because of the influence
of the Nehruvian regime, its idealism and the ‘nation-making’
project, many of us have grown up with this sort of history. For
instance, if you look at the early phase of the NCERT

textbooks of history, you would notice, to take a set of
illustrations, the following:
● A very positive depiction of the icons like Ashoka,
Akbar and Gandhi; and the underlying tone is their
broad humanism, their urge to unite diverse segments
of people, their acceptability as pan-Indian leaders and
their broadly non-sectarian appeal.
● A celebration of the stories of confluence (rather than
conflict) of Hinduism and Islam—particularly, through
the depiction of the changes that took place in the
cultural landscape of India—say, the influence of Bhakti
and Sufi traditions: Kabir, Nanak and Nizamuddin
Aulia, and the blend of these traditions in architecture,
language etc.—say, the translation of the epics like the
Ramayana and Mahabharata in Persian, the creation of
Urdu as a language of possibility blurring the
boundaries, the splendid architecture of Jama Masjid
in Fatehpur Sikri—while its lofty gate symbolizes the
classical simplicity of medieval Persia, its domes reveal
the influence of the Jain style.
● And the ‘secular’ character of the freedom struggle—
the way the Indian National Congress, unlike the
Muslim League, acted as a rainbow platform, and how
Gandhi, Maulana Azad and Nehru (rather than
Savarkar and Jinnah) strove for secular unity, and how,
despite the trauma of partition, India, unlike Pakistan,
chose to become a secular nation.
Yes, as I have already said, many of us grew up with this notion
of history. With history textbooks, the recitation of Allama
Iqbal’s adoration of India as the finest civilization in the world
at school assemblies, the headmaster’s speech on the occasion
of Gandhi’s birth anniversary, the awareness of the symbolism
of the three colours in the national flag, and the continual
reminder that Diwali, Id, Christmas, Buddha Purnima and
Guru Nanak Jayanti are our shared festivals—we were
socialized to celebrate India as a secular nation, despite our

Hindu, Muslim, Christian traditions.
However, with the passage of time (the demise of Nehru,
the growing discontents because of the gap between the grand
vision of the new nation and the actual living conditions of
people—peasants, adivasis, Dalits, working class, and the
resultant movements: peasant, feminist, environmental, Dalit
uprising), we saw the assertion of what is popularly known as
subaltern historiography. Ranjit Guha—its chief proponent
reminds us of the ‘poverty of bourgeois nationalist
historiography’ for it gives no space to the ‘autonomous domain
of the politics of the people’. As he says, ‘it fails to acknowledge,
far less interpret, the contribution made by people on their
own—independently of the elite to the making and
development of this nationalism. ’He further adds that we must
realize ‘the failure of the Indian bourgeoisie to speak for the
nation.’
To put it simply, it is argued that the history of people—
peasants, adivasis, women, Dalits, their struggles, resistances
and cultures—remains invisible or under represented in the
grand history of the nation that the liberal-nationalists
emphasize. And this history, it is argued, ought to be taught
and disseminated in our classrooms as India’s democratization
process goes on. Not surprisingly, the knowledge of history
becomes a domain of contestation. It reflects itself in a set of
questions like:
*Do people like Birsa Munda, Phule, Peryar and Ambedkar get
the same space in our history texts as the likes of Rammohun
Roy, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru occupy?
*Do innumerable struggles by the peasants, Dalits and adivasis
get the same space as the three grand movements led by the Indian
National Congress—Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience and
Quit India—occupy?
A debate of this kind, I believe, has made history writing
immensely interesting, and created new possibilities of
experimentations with the contents as well as pedagogic tools.
Take, for instance, a series of textbooks that Ekavalya has

produced. What is bound to strike you is their sensitivity to
people’s histories—the urge to look at the project of nation-
making through the eyes of the subaltern. And today, despite
the subtle epistemological differences in the approaches of
liberal/secular nationalists and subaltern historians, there is
also a broad understanding. Bipan Chandra and Ranjit Guha,
or Partha Chatterjee and Sumit Sarkar can still converse, and
broadly agree with the vision of inclusive/pluralistic/
egalitarian India. However, in our times we are witnessing the
assertion of Hindu nationalist historiography which, it seems, is
against this broad consensus. Instead, it stresses the glory of
the ancient ‘Hindu’ civilization, its achievements, its sanctified
geographical territory (to use, Golwalkar’s words, here is a
nation with a definite geographical unity, delimited by the
sublime Himalayas on the North, and the limitless ocean on
the other three sides), its ability to unite (as Savarkar expressed
it: We Hindus, in spite of a thousand and one differences within our
fold, are bound by such religious, cultural, historical, racial, linguistic
and other affinities in common to stand out as a definitely
homogeneous people as soon as we are placed in contrast with other
non-Hindu people.), its battle against ‘alien invaders’, and its
warning that the ‘foreign races’ must learn to accept the
supremacy of the Hindu religion if they wish to stay in India.
To quote Golwalkar:
The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu
culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence
Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the
Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and must lose
their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay
in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming
nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential
treatment not even a citizen’s rights.
The implications of this project are obvious. It glorifies the
‘golden’ Gupta period, the treasure stored in Sanskrit, the heroic
struggles made by the Hindu icons like Rana Pratap and Shivaji;
and likewise, it expresses its hostility towards the Muslim rulers
like Aurangzeb, or Gandhi’s ‘failure’ to stop partition, and his

‘softness’ to Muslims. It is against Marxian atheism, left/
Nehruvian secularism, Gandhi’s religious pluralism and recent
subaltern/postmodern celebration of fragments and
differences. As India’s politics changes in recent times, the
assertion of this sort of historiography is reflected in many
attempts to rewrite history texts, alter curriculum and introduce
new practices—say, the introduction of yoga at schools.
Moreover, an environment has been created: any dissenting
voice tends to be castigated as ‘anti-national’. The domain of
education is becoming increasingly ideological and political.
As this discussion on history teaching in the context of the
discourses of nationalism suggests, what is regarded as ‘worth
learning’ at a certain juncture of history is not free from the
dominant ideology.
Before I conclude this lecture, I wish to pose a question
before you: Does it then mean that there is no sanctity in what
we learn, there is no indisputable truth, and everything is
‘relative’ or ideological? No, I am not pleading for absolute
relativism; nor am I saying that there cannot be any consensus.
For instance, the principles of mathematics or technical sciences
remain valid irrespective of the location of the learners. But at
the same time, what is important is to examine how these
knowledges are disseminated or used by a certain class at a
specific period of history (recall the example of mathematics I
have given), or how the other traditions of knowledge are
devalued. Likewise, even if I am a Marxist, I cannot say that
the other modes of writing history are necessarily invalid. I
myself have realized this tyranny of certainty in my teaching
career. Once I was teaching a course on ‘Modern Indian Social
Thought’; and I chose to teach a spectrum of thinkers ranging
from Swami Vivekananda to B.R. Ambedkar, from M.N. Roy
to Rabindranath Tagore. However, a group of JNU radicals
began to whisper: ‘See Professor Pathak’s right wing turn; he
has begun to teach a ‘Hindu’ ideologue like Swami
Vivekananda.’ This, I believe, is dangerous. When your turn
comes, you become equally exclusivist. Yes, I insist that what

we need to be careful about is why at a certain period some
branches of historiography or some traditions of knowledge
gain more legitimacy than others; and we have to always
remain sensitive to what is often subdued or repressed. An
expanded horizon brings us closer to truth. In other words, I
am pleading for openness and critical (and at the same time
dialogic) eyes, not cynical eyes that indulge in nihilistic
relativism. And this spirit alone can give us the strength to see
beyond the dominant discourses of power and hegemony, and
move towards a more open/inclusive/pluralistic knowledge
traditions for the making of a compassionate society.
8
Skill Learning and Liberal Education:
Overcoming the False Duality
I can imagine that some of you are thinking that ‘Sir’ is too
philosophical; he speaks of education and enlightenment;
education and religiosity; education and nationalism; and
ideology and curriculum; but seldom does he talk about what
really matters in our everyday life : the skills we need to acquire
for participating in the sphere of work and earning our
livelihood; and the relationship between education and these
skills. Yes, in this lecture I wish to throw light on these
questions; but then, I would do my job not as a career
counsellor, but as a sociologist of education with critical
sensibilities. There would be no escape from philosophy; but
philosophy would acquire a new meaning because with
philosophy we will continually look at the skills, which, at a
certain juncture of history, tend to become more relevant than
others, and the effect of mere skill learning on the dynamics of
education.
To begin with, let me recall the dictionary meaning of ‘skill’;
it means ‘expert knowledge’ for a craft or accomplishment; to
be ‘skilled’ means to be ‘expert’ in some specific sphere of work.
And we know that it is in the domain of work that we see the
manifestations of diverse skills; work is a medium through
which a relationship between the doer and the world is
established; and the accomplishment of work needs the mastery
of ‘skills’. Think for a while , and see what is happening around
us—a cook is cooking; a gardener is nurturing a plant; with
scissors and a comb in hand a barber is cutting someone’s long
hair; a dentist is removing a young girl’s infected tooth; a

historian is looking at the old file from the archives, and taking
down important notes; a mathematics teacher is solving a
trigonometric equation; a computer engineer is designing a
software; an editor in a newspaper is editing a 2000-word
article, reducing its size for the space in the edit page that can
accommodate only 1200 words; a painter is giving the final
touch to the landscape she has been drawing for six months; a
nurse in the AIIMS is finding the veins in the patient’s thin hand
for placing the saline bottle. Now all of them, you would agree,
have some expert knowledge or ‘skills’ with which they
accomplish their work, contribute to society, and earn their
livelihood. The question is whether education should train and
help us to master these ‘skills’. The answer is, of course, yes.
True, there are certain skills that may not require a formal/
institutional education or training. For instance, a farmer’s son
knows a great deal of farming while observing his father
working in the field, and helping him, even if he has not gone
to any agricultural university; or you and I may have learned—
without ever attending special cooking classes—about different
spices and the art of cooking by observing our mothers and
grandmothers in the kitchen. But there are some ‘skills’ that
need specialized training or education to develop. For instance,
one has to be trained in a medical college to learn the skill of
heart surgery; or one has to be trained in a film institute to learn
the skill of editing or sound recording. Again, there are certain
skills that give tangible results—the skills of a doctor, an
engineer, a fashion designer etc.; but there are skills which may
not have very tangible manifestations—say, the skill of a poet,
a philosopher. While the former skills require institutional
training, it is doubtful whether for intangible skills one needs
it. Can a university create a poet, even though it can create a
literary critic? Can a university produce a philosopher, even
though it can produce a professor of philosophy? These are
complex questions you need to reflect on. However, one thing
is certain: for the cultivation of many skills, formal education
has to play a key role.
Skill Learning and Liberal Education 117
Yes, learning these skills is important. But before I go

further, I wish to take some time and remind you of three
mistakes we tend to make while we lay emphasis on the need
for ‘skill learning’. My submission is that we have to correct
these mistakes to make ‘skill education’ truly meaningful and
socially enriching. The first mistake is that we often end up
creating a false duality: ‘skill-oriented’/practical/vocational
education vs ‘liberal/theoretical ’education. That this is a false
duality can be understood by two simple examples. First,
imagine that you are doing a course in, say, film making;
undoubtedly, it is a technical course; you need to learn many
technical skills: the details of camera handling, optics, visuals,
photography; the science of recording, sound and editing. But
can you become a good filmmaker without being rooted in the
discourses of social history, politics and literature? Imagine the
master filmmakers like Chaplin and Ray. Their sensitivity to
social issues, their familiarity with great literature, I believe,
helped them tremendously to make the kind of films they did.
In other words, to know about filmmaking is to know the
nuanced art of blending of ‘skill learning’—photography,
camera, editing; and literary/philosophical learning. In the
absence of this blending what would happen is that, a
filmmaker would be reduced into a mere technician; he/she
would not emerge as an artist. Second, imagine that you are
doing a course in mechanical engineering. Once again, it is
regarded as an ‘applied course. Certainly it is. But is it possible
to evolve as a good/thinking mechanical engineer without
developing a simultaneous interest in physics and mathematics
which are the foundations of engineering science? The irony is
that in many of our engineering colleges the foundational or
theoretical science tends to be devalued, and engineering gets
reduced into a quick/four-year programme of skill learning
that enables you to get placement, and do the job mechanically
or as directed by the profit-making corporate lobby, but not
necessarily creatively. Seldom do you see innovative research
emanating from these engineering colleges. The point I am
trying to make is that theory overcomes its abstracted

character by manifesting itself in concrete tangible practices;
and practical knowledge derives its base from theoretical
insights. But then, what is the reason for the continuity of this
duality? Historically, there was a time when theoretical/
classical/liberal education was seen to be the privilege of the
elite or aristocracy; and practical/technical/vocational
education was seen with contempt. You should not forget that
for both Plato and Aristotle knowledge existed for its own
sake free from practical reference, and found its source and
origin in a purely immaterial mind; it had to do with spiritual
or ideal interests. Whereas all that was practical/experiential
was seen with contempt—at best represented in the various
handicrafts. It is like thinking that there is something morally
dangerous about experience, as such words as sensual, carnal,
material, worldly interests suggest; while pure reason and
spirit connote something morally praiseworthy. Does it look
somewhat similar to the Brahminical division—Brahmins as
seekers of spiritual truth vs Sudras as manual labourers
dissociated from spiritual scriptures? However, in modern
times, as John Dewey analysed beautifully, there is a complete
swing of the pendulum; now we see the opposite—the
emphasis on vocational education as opposed to purely
theoretical/liberal education. Let me narrate some of the
reasons that Dewey put forward for this historic
transformation: (a) In democratic communities there is an
increased esteem of whatever has to do with manual labour,
and the rendering of tangible services to society. Labour is
extolled; and men and women are now expected to do
something in return for their support by society. (b) Now
those vocations, which are specifically industrial, have gained
tremendously in importance. They engage the best energies
of an increasingly large number of people. The manufacturer,
the banker and the captain of industry are new heroes. (c)
The pursuit of knowledge has become more experimental, less
dependent on literary tradition, and less associated with
dialectical methods of reasoning, and with symbols. (d) The

advances which have been made in the psychology of learning
in general, and of childhood in particular, fall into line with
the increased importance of industry in life. It gives importance
to instincts of exploration, experimentation and ‘trying on’. The
reasons that Dewey put forward help us to understand why
instead of attaching ‘superior’ status to liberal/theoretical
education, we should begin to give importance to practical/
vocational education. However, as Dewey did not forget to
remind us, there is a danger in the contemporary practice of
overemphasis on vocational education; it may be reduced into
mere trade education as a means of securing technical efficiency
in specialized future pursuits. It does not transcend the duality;
instead, it retains the duality by giving priority to what was
neglected earlier—practical education, and thereby
undermining the value of theoretical/liberal education. With
absolute clarity and insight, Dewey said: “This movement
would continue the traditional liberal or cultural education for
the few economically able to enjoy it, and would give to the
masses a narrow technical trade education for specialized
callings, carried on under the control of others. This scheme
denotes simply a perpetuation of older division, with its
counterpart intellectual and moral dualisms.” So the task is not
to deprive the vocational education of the beauty of philosophic
and intellectual depth of theoretical/liberal education; the task
is to unite: to see one’s vocation as a tangible practice of
theoretical learning; and to enrich theory through applied
practices. It is almost like imagining a situation that Marx
imagined in his ‘whole man’—reading philosophy, harvesting
the land, playing the piano; or Gandhi imagined when he
visualized integral education reconciling intellectual cognition
and vocational learning. I feel tempted to quote Dewey once
again: “An education which acknowledges the full intellectual
and social meaning of a vocation would include instruction in
the historic background of present conditions; training in
science, to give intelligence and initiative in dealing with
material and agencies of production, and study of economics,

civics, and politics, to bring the future worker into touch with
the problem of the day and the various methods for its
improvement.’
The second mistake is that in a world dominated by the
ruthless logic of the market, education tends to acquire a
narrow meaning. It puts emphasis on the production and
cultivation of only those skills that have an instrumental
significance for the market. Once again, I wish to make this
point clear by giving a simple illustration from the prevalent
educational scenario. Take two ‘skills’—(a) The skill of
designing a fashionable dress for the garment industry that
caters to the requirements of the urban elite and fashion
industry; and (b) The skill of understanding, say, the painting
of Ravi Verma or Jamini Roy, and exploring art history. Now,
as you see, the market needs the former kind of skill; whereas
for it, the second skill does not have much appeal because it
carries no utilitarian value. Now the rapidly emergent
educational institutions or polytechniques or vocational
institutions give central importance to a course like fashion
designing, not art history. So you will notice the overflow of
courses in the name of vocations that can sell in the market—
hotel management, fashion designing, tourism management,
software engineering, industrial and human resource
development; whereas the courses that seek to generate yet
another kind of skill—say, the skill of a historian, a linguist, a
teacher (courses like history, literature, linguistics, philosophy,
education) get increasingly marginalized.
Quite often—and this is the point I am trying to
emphasize—there is an incompatibility between the needs of
the market and the true needs of the community. I do not know
how many of you have visited the remote Himalayan hamlets.
If your eyes are truly open, one thing will strike you. 8,000
ft. altitude—a remote village surrounded by snow-clad
mountains, but without a school, a primary health centre; but
then, in the road side shop you will find Coke, Pepsi, Lehar
chips for the ongoing march of tourists. Definitely, some ‘skills’

have been properly used to bring these ‘multinational’ products
to this remote zone; and these skills have been mastered in
business schools that train managers, hidden persuaders and
sophisticated sales agents. And they get jobs, the increment for
completing the target. However, the villagers are desperately
searching for a doctor, a teacher, and an engineer who has the
imagination to use indigenous technology to bring drinking
water from its source in the fountain to the top of the altitude
so that village women need not spend hours to store and carry
drinking water. The institutions that serve primarily the
business interests of the corporate world are not interested in
creating doctors with a knowledge of bio medicine as well as
herbal medicine (even now the Himalayas are full of herbs),
dedicated teachers who can use simple/local material to teach
science, mathematics, history, language, and creative engineers
with social sensibilities. In fact, Coke and Pepsi run faster than
drinking water; techno-managers are more valuable for the
market than rural physicians. The ‘skills’ that the market
considers valuable triumph; the skills that people need for their
well-being are forgotten. This, I believe, is a problem if, in the
name of vocational education or skill learning, we end up
prioritizing the market over life. This is nothing but the
colonization of the life world. In this context, I want you to
recall Henry A. Giroux—a leading critical pedagogue of our
times. What strikes me are his sharp reflections on the growing
corporatization of higher education. He refers to ‘corporate
time’—the way it ‘maps faculty relationships through self-
promoting market agendas and narrow definitions of self-
interest.’ This is like being ‘caught on the treadmill of getting
more grants, teaching larger classes and producing more
avenues for the university.’ The critical/liberating function of
education suffers. In fact, because of this market-orientation
academics are now ‘pressurized to teach more service-oriented
and market-based courses and devote less time to their roles
as well-informed, public intellectuals or as cosmopolitan
intellectuals who perform a valuable public service.’ This

transformation is tragic. Try to feel it. Education becomes mere
training for getting a corporate job; everything else is forgotten.
I want you to reflect on the anguish of Giroux:
Under the rule of corporate time, the classroom is no longer a
public space concerned with issues of justice, critical learning, or
the knowledge and skills necessary for civic engagement. As
training replaces education, the classroom, along with pedagogy
itself, is transformed because of the corporate restructuring of the
university.
The third mistake is that we tend to think that the application
of skills does not require socio-political or cultural imagination.
This sort of ‘professionalism’ makes us irresponsible. We sell
skills in the market place without bothering about their larger
social implications. Suppose a reputed medical college trains
me, and I get equipped with the skill of a gynaecologist. And I
start a clinic in the hinterland of Haryana, and begin to earn
money by using my skill of conducting the sex detection test,
and thereby promoting the practice of destroying female
foeticide—a prevalent brutal patriarchal practice that prefers
the male child rather than the female child! True, I have learned
some specialized skills; but I have never learned to ask myself:
For whose benefit am I applying these skills? What are the
larger social implications of the practice of my skills? In fact,
this is a non-reflexive use of skills, and this is dangerous. So
you would agree with me if I say that our society is full of
‘skilled’ MBAs promoting the sale of wine and cigarettes;
‘skilled’ architects promoting the business of lavish real estate
companies and so on and so forth. The point I am trying to
make is that if you have only ‘skilled’ personnel without
enriched social/cultural sensibilities the result would be
disastrous. It is in this context that I wish to invoke Habermas—
the insights he gave in his book Knowledge and Human Interests.
He interrogated the self-perception of positivist sciences; as far
as this perception is concerned, science is free from interests; it
is pure—above politics. However, Habermas identified three
‘knowledge constitutive interests’—instrumental, hermeneutic

and emancipatory. And a huge domain of techno-scientific/
managerial knowledge is based on instrumental interests——
say, the urge to establish human control over nature, promote
material well-being and economic development. Hermeneutic
disciplines like history and literature help us to understand the
domain of cultural codes, symbols and human narratives. And
there are knowledge traditions—like Marxism or
psychoanalysis—that are based on emancipatory interests that
help us to free ourselves from the frozen ideology of
domination. Habermas, unlike his other New Left colleagues,
was not entirely pessimistic about modernity; yet, he saw the
crisis of modernity or late capitalism. For him, market-driven
instrumental interests have become supreme, and as a result,
hermeneutic and emancipatory traditions are in decline. So you
have technologists, managers and economists who refuse to
engage in a communicative action (say, encouraging people to
reflect on what they need –Coke or drinking water; huge dams
and nuclear reactors or solar energy and electricity from small/
eco-sensitive dams; reality shows on television channels for
their children or good history/mathematics/music teachers at
village schools; smart phones or low cost/pesticide free rice,
wheat and vegetables). For Habermas, one way to come out of
the crisis is to restore the dialogic spirit of communicative
action. And for that these three interests have to be reconciled.
In other words, you cannot afford to produce only skilled
technicians; you need to create politically/ culturally mature
doctors, managers, economists, engineers and other ‘skilled’
personnel. If I put it simply, in an engineering college you need
a professor who can take students to the world of Dostoyevsky
and Tagore; or in a management school you need a teacher who
can engage students in the issues that Gandhi and Ambedkar
raised; and in a medical college you need a philosopher who—
just after the anatomy class—can initiate a discussion on
Nachiketa’s engagement with death, and the book of Tibetan
Buddhism on life and death.
Friends, I hope that I have succeeded in convincing you

that it is integration that we need, not ‘skills’ in isolation. Hence,
I believe that it would be appropriate if I take you to the
‘feasible utopia’ of the ‘ecological university’ that Ronald
Barnett constructed in his wonderful book Being a University.
What does the idea of ‘ecological’ indicate? As Barnett would
say, ‘there are states of well-being in the interconnectedness of
the environment’. No wonder, it promotes the ethics of care.
The ecological university, unlike a market-oriented/
instrumental learning shop, has a ‘conscience’ about its place
in the world; it has a care towards the environment—care
towards the world. Barnett seems to be convinced of the fact
that the time of the ecological university has arrived. We find
ourselves in a world characterized by social disorder, global
warming, climate change, degradation of the natural world and
gender/ethnic/social class differences. We need the ecological
university to heal the wound, and reconstruct the world. That
is why, Barnett privileges ‘wisdom enquiry’ over mere
‘knowledge enquiry’. Unlike the celebration of merely narrow
market-friendly technical skills, it embraces all forms of
knowledge. To use Barnett’s own words, ‘the poet, the ballet
dancer, the midwife, the Eskimo and the mystic: are all
recognized as having valid forms of knowledge.’ As a result,
the ecological university is both inclusive and demanding. I too
cherish this idea. At a time when education is commodified,
knowledge is mere training and skill learning, students are only
future employees of the corporate sector, and teachers are just
service providers, I feel like overcoming my despair, and
Barnett helps me when he dares to strive for the ecological
university, when he says:
It hears the world, it is receptive towards understanding of the
world, and it reaches out to the world. Yes, it is a feasible utopia.
It is always just in reach and always just beyond reach. It will
continue to be inspired both by itself and by its possibilities.
9
A Society That Has Lost its
Teachers is Dead
It is difficult to continue a discussion on education without

referring to teachers—their social as well as institutional
location, the responsibilities they are endowed with and the
difficulties they confront. As education is a constant process
of transmission of social heritage, skills, knowledge traditions
and values from one generation to another, teachers, as Emile
Durkheim reminded us, play a key role in the process of this
transaction. But who are they? Are they just paid employees
in bureaucratically managed institutions—the way bankers
work in a bank, engineers work in a factory? Or, is it a vocation
of an altogether different kind? Is the larger society aware of
the meaning of this vocation? Does it care for its teachers? How
are teachers recruited? How do they define themselves? These
are important questions—sociological as well as pedagogical—
that we need to reflect upon.
Before we move further in search of the answers to these
questions, I need to make a point which, I believe, we should
not forget. Teachers are not just people like us who do the job
of professional teachers in recognized formal educational
institutions—schools, colleges, universities, and teach academic
subjects like Physics, Mathematics and History. In fact, the great
teachers of humankind have taught outside these formal
institutions; they are not the ones with DLits and PhDs; they
are prophets, mystics, poets, revolutionaries. Just close your
eyes, and imagine Jesus climbing the mount and delivering his
sermons, spreading the message of love, forgiveness and the
Kingdom of God. Or reflect on Krishna on the battlefield of

Kurukshetra communicating with the puzzled/perplexed
Arjuna, and pleading for a notion of work that is free from the
burden of ‘ego’, from the egotistic calculation of gain or loss—
the work that is an offering, the work that liberates the doer
from tamasic inertia, rajasic aggression and even, sattvic subtle
pride of being good and saintly, and makes the impossible
possible: calmness amidst intense activities, yogic stability even
on a battlefield. Or think of Rumi whispering in your ears when
our attachment to limiting identities causes so much strife and
tension in the world: What can I do my friends, if I do not know? I
am neither Christian nor Jew, nor Muslim nor Hindu. What can I
do? What can I do? My place is the placeless. My trace is the traceless.
Having said this, I will limit the focus of this lecture. I will
concentrate primarily on teachers in formal educational
institutions, even though one, irrespective of the location of
one’s work-school or university, should not stop deriving the
inspiration from the extraordinarily gifted teachers like Jesus,
Krishna and Rumi. Only then is it possible to build the bridge
between the professional and the transcendental, occupation
and vocation, knowledge and wisdom. To begin with, I wish
to evolve a set of qualities that, I feel, ought to characterize the
vocation of teaching. True, teachers have diverse institutional
locations—some teach at schools, and some teach in
universities. And these locations pose different challenges.
There are two primary factors involved at schools. You deal
with flowers that have just begun to bloom. You need great
care to allow this blooming to happen. In other words, the
development of the child—her cognitive, psychic stages of
growth, her physical/vital/emotional energy, her sense of
freedom and responsibility, or, to put it otherwise, her
‘character building’ ought to be taken care of. Second, a teacher
ought to cultivate interest in knowledge traditions at an
elementary level that requires a great deal of pedagogic
sensibilities. However, when you teach in universities, you have
a different set of challenges. For instance, unlike schoolteachers
A Society That Has Lost its Teachers is Dead 127
you are dealing with supposedly ‘mature’ adults who have

come after a long process of schooling. Hence, as it is said,
‘character building’ or ‘moral development’ is no longer your
task. Second, as you are teaching academic subjects at a fairly
higher level, even pedagogic sensibilities, as it is thought, are
not so important; a university faculty begins to see herself more
as a researcher rather than a pedagogue. But the point that I
am trying to plead for is that despite these differences, there is
a set of common characteristics that unite them and give a
distinctive meaning to the vocation of teaching.
(a) Teaching is an ethical act because it is an act of
sharing, not possessing. As you teach you give yourself—your
energy, your inspiration, your concepts/information/theories/
facts; it is in this communicative act that you find the meaning
of your vocation. I give two illustrations to make this point
clear. Suppose you are teaching a child the concept of a map.
You do not begin by asking him to draw the map of India. What
is important is to understand the concept of a map. You begin
with the classroom itself—its size, its length, its breadth, its
spatial arrangement—the location of windows, doors, the
benches and tables, and the teacher’s platform and the
blackboard. Then you evolve the notion of scale and
proportion—say in the map 10 ft. has to be represented as 1
inch, and four directions have to be identified; and only then
on a small piece of paper the child draws the map of a
classroom whose area may be 300 sq. ft. showing the location
of windows, doors, the teacher’s platform, benches, etc. And
only then does she understand why in the map of India the
distance between Srinagar and Kanyakumari looks only 30 cm
while even if you take a direct flight it takes not less than four
hours to cover the distance. In other words, in this very act of
teaching you are sharing the clarity of your concepts with
patience, warmth, hope. You are giving yourself. Likewise,
think of a professor who may have done a great deal of
research, say, in modern Indian history. But when he comes to
the classroom and faces undergraduate first year students, he
realizes that his task is to share what he has gained in his

research, and share it in a way that it arouses their interest in
history; his joy lies not in possessing what he has achieved, but
in disseminating, in sharing, in giving. And every teacher
knows that the more you give the more you receive, the more
your concepts are developed and sharpened. In fact, in an ideal
classroom the ethical act of communion does take place. I
would like you to read two books—Gijubhai Badheka’s
Divasapna, and Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World. These books, I
must say, have inspired me a great deal. I have learned what a
gifted teacher could do. With stories, cultural metaphors, living
practices and engaging activities a teacher can sharpen the art
of communication, and activate the student’s faculties of
learning.
(b) Teaching is an art of relationships—a bond that
touches the souls of both the teacher and the taught. Try to
understand this. Even though a teacher is doing a job, and
earning his salary, it is a job of a qualitatively different kind.
You come to a bank to withdraw money; you approach the
banker, give your withdrawal form, and he gives you the
money. Most of the time your relationship with the banker ends
there; it is a purely official engagement between the client and
the banker. You come to a school. Your literature teacher is
teaching you poetry. It is not like giving you cash—the way
the banker does. Here the teacher is communicating, talking
about life, nature, deep human experiences; and it affects you;
and when you respond to her vibrations, it affects the teacher.
And it goes on. It leads to a bond; English class is just an
occasion through which the student comes closer to the teacher;
they begin to care and trust each other. Likewise, even if you
are in a university, and dealing with your research students; it
does not end with chapters, references and technical/scholarly
remarks on your thesis. The fact of working together creates a
bond; both pass through moments of rise and fall, hope and
despair; and quite often, the teacher becomes a counsellor; and
the student becomes his trusted friend he can call at any
moment of difficulty. And this relationship gives a distinctive

meaning to the vocation. It is not a merely technical job—9 am
to 5 pm; it affects human souls; its influence is all-pervading.
You do not just teach Physics and Geology; you engage with
life. Physics and Geology enable you to do that.
(c) Teaching is about love and authority, freedom and
discipline. It is fairly obvious that fear destroys the culture of
learning; it is an environment filled with love and freedom that
allows the learner to grow, experiment and unfold his/her
potential. Does that mean that learning needs no guidance? It
does need guidance, a helping hand, a catalyst. And a teacher
plays that role. It is in this sense that a teacher ought to carry
some authority; but this authority is not brute power—the
power to punish; but the power that emanates from her care,
concern, knowledge and wisdom. This authority enables the
learner to realize that love is the ultimate authority; and
freedom is the finest form of discipline. I wish to give an
example to make this point clear. True, we have grown up in
an environment that makes us think that love and authority,
freedom and discipline are contradictory. We need to unlearn
this. A student of mine was writing his MPhil dissertation. Yes,
I asked him to explore, and choose the theme he is interested
in. With freedom and trust we undertook the journey. But then,
there was a moment when he was not working on his
dissertation; he was doing something else; he was not growing;
and then, one day I told him: show me a chapter; otherwise, I
will not forward your fellowship form; I know you are not
feeling good; but meet me after a month, your opinion might
change. Yes, he came after a month, and this time with a fairly
well written chapter. He told me: ’Sir, you are right. I now
realize my responsibility; I should appreciate the worth of
freedom. You did the right thing. It was needed for me to
realize this truth.’ For me, it was also a tough job—not to
forward my student’s fellowship form. But there was only one
thing that guided me: my student would not misunderstand
me; he would realize my love and care. Authority without love
is brutal; love without authority might degenerate into

callousness. This highly delicate/subtle practice characterizes
the spirit of teaching.
(d) Teaching is constant learning. A teacher remains a
student because studentship means eternal curiosity, eagerness
to learn, evolve. If a teacher thinks that he has finally arrived,
his is the last word, and there is nothing new to learn, he ceases
to become a good teacher because he would stop growing. Take
any stage of teaching. Suppose my students are a group of 10-
year-old students, and I am teaching a mathematical concept
like fractions. Yes, I know the mathematics of fractions. But am
I sure that I need not learn anything about its method of
dissemination? If I am alert, if I am growing every moment,
then every occasion is the moment of learning—how I make
the experience of fractions clear before my students. So it is
summer—the month of May, the day temperature is 43 degrees
Celsius, and there is no water in the student’s water bottle. She
is thirsty, I ask her friend to pour some water into her bottle,
and after that sharing he finds that half his bottle is empty. I
ask him: how much water have you shared with your friend?
He says, half my bottle, Sir. Then, a discussion begins on
fractions and sharing, and the experience of sharing—sharing
an apple among five friends, sharing a birthday cake among
ten friends; we begin to realize the meaning of 1/2, 1/5, and
1/10. I learn a new method of teaching mathematics through
the principle of sharing, and distributive justice. Numbers
acquired a soul. It is in this sense I believe that a teacher remains
a child, always willing to evolve and grow. Be it inertia or
passivity, arrogance or a sense of absolutist knowledge, it
destroys the dynamics of the teaching-learning process. Always
believe that a teacher is a student; a student is a teacher.
I know many of you would say that these are ideal
formulations; in real life teachers are not fundamentally
different from other professionals. Possibly, you are right. We
have to explore why it is so. But before that, I am obliged to
refer to Martin Buber and Paulo Freire—the ideals they created,
and the way they enriched our understanding of the

significance of the vocation of teaching. Let me begin with
Martin Buber. I want to use a set of insights derived from two
of his lectures delivered in 1926 and 1939—one in Heidelberg
and the other in Tel-Aviv. First, think of Buber’s notion of
communion or dialogue. It has to be distinguished from
compulsion, which, as he said, is a ‘negative reality’; it means
‘humiliation and rebelliousness’. But communion is the
‘positive reality’; it means ‘being opened up and drawn in.’ In
fact, freedom does not mean that one is free of destiny or nature
or men. Freedom means communion with them. In fact, as
Buber said, ‘all conversation derives its genuineness only from
the consciousness of the element of inclusion, an
acknowledgement of the actual being of the partner in the
conversation.’ That is why, the relation in education is one of
‘pure dialogue.’ Second, think of Buber’s plea that ‘education
worthy of the name is essentially education of character.’ True,
there are innumerable factors—nature and the social context,
the house and the street, language and custom, the world of
history and the world of daily news in the form of rumour, of
broadcast and newspaper, music and technical science, play
and dream—that affect the child. Yes, the educator is only one
element among innumerable others; yet, ‘he is distinct from
them all by his consciousness that he represents in the eyes of
a growing person a certain selection of what is, the selection of
what is ‘right’, of what should be. And this means not just
humility, but tremendous responsibility on the part of the
educator—responsibility for the selection of reality which he
represents to the pupil.’ However, it is not easy. It is easy to
teach algebra, says Buber. However, with the education of
character everything becomes problematic. I quote him: ‘I try
to explain to my pupils that envy is despicable, and at once I
feel the secret resistance of those who are poorer than their
comrades. I try to explain that it is wicked to bully the weak,
and at once, I see a suppressed smile on the lips of the strong.
I try to explain that lying destroys life, and something frightful
happens: the worst habitual liar of the class produces a brilliant

essay on the destructive power of lying. I have made the final
mistake of giving instruction in ethics, and what I said is
accepted as the current coin of knowledge; nothing of it is
transformed into character-building substance.’ No instruction
can work without dialogue, without touching the soul of the
pupil. In other words, the educator needs to gain the pupil’s
confidence. How aptly Buber expressed it: ‘For the adolescent
who is frightened and disappointed by an unreliable world,
confidence means the liberating insight that there is human
truth, the truth of human existence. When the pupil’s
confidence has been won, his resistance being educated gives
way to a singular happening: he accepts the educator as a
person. He feels he may trust this man, that this man is not
making a business out of him, but is taking part in his life,
accepting him before desiring to influence him.’ However,
dialogue or this mutual confidence does not mean the absence
of conflict. ‘A conflict with a pupil’, said Buber, ‘is the supreme
test for the educator.’ Conflicts, if they are decided in a healthy
atmosphere, have an educational value. If the educator is the
victor, as Buber said, ‘he has to help the vanquished to endure
defeat; and if he cannot conquer the self-willed soul that faces
him, then he has to find the word of love which alone can help
to overcome so difficult a situation.’ In fact, from Martin Buber
I derive the idea of an educator or a teacher as a dialogic being
engaging with the soul of the pupil.
And now let me invoke Paulo Freire—a remarkably
insightful Brazilian thinker who gave a new meaning to
education for liberating humankind from oppression; an
educator, for him, is not just a teacher engaged in burdening
the mind of the learner with all sorts of information; instead,
his task is to create a dialogic environment that enables the
learner to overcome silence, regain his own voice, and acquire
confidence to redefine the world. What Freire wrote in his
classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed was not separated from his own
life-experience. As the economic crisis in 1929 in the United
States began to affect Brazil, the precarious stability of Freire’s

middle class family gave way and he found himself sharing
the plight of what Frantz Fanon would have regarded as the
‘wretched of the earth.’ This had a profound influence on his
life as he came to know the gnawing pangs of hunger and fell
behind in school because of the listlessness it produced. His
early sharing of the life of the poor also led him to the discovery
of what he describes as the ‘culture of silence’ of the
dispossessed. He realized that their ignorance and lethargy was
the direct product of the whole situation of economic, social
and political domination of which they were victims. His
educational philosophy derived its inspiration from his
conviction that every human being, no matter how ’ignorant’
or submerged in the ‘culture of silence’ he or she may be, is
capable of looking critically at the world in a dialogical
encounter with others. Not surprisingly, Freire critiqued the
‘banking concept of education’ which imposes the ‘culture of
silence’ on the oppressed. See the analogy. As Freire said, in
this practice ‘education becomes an act of depositing, in which
the students are the depositories and the teacher is the
depositor’ Here knowledge is seen as ‘a gift bestowed by those
who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom
they consider to know nothing.’ No wonder, it projects an
absolute ignorance onto others—’a characteristic of the ideology
of oppression’. It is ‘necrophilia’; it is nourished by love of
death, not life. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads
women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their
creative power. As opposed to this, Freire celebrated ‘liberating’
or ‘problem posing ’education. I love to quote Freire: ‘The
teacher is no longer merely the one who teaches, but one who
is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn
being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a
process in which all grow.’ The distinction between these two
forms of education is clear. Let me borrow from Freire. ‘Banking
education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-
posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking
education inhibits creativity and domesticates the intentionality

of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world,
thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation
of becoming truly human. Problem-posing education bases
itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action
upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as
beings who are authentic when engaged in inquiry and creative
transformation.’ That is why, like Buber, Freire too would say
that dialogue is the spirit of liberating education. A teacher is
a dialogic being.
Here I wish to share with you some of the implicit features
of dialogue Freire talked about. First, dialogue demands love
because it alone can overcome domination—‘sadism in the
dominator and masochism in the dominated.’ Love is an act of
courage; love is commitment to others. ‘If I do not love the
world—if I do not love life—if I do not love people—I cannot
enter into dialogue. ’In fact, the naming of the world which is
an act of creation and re-creation is not possible if it is not
infused with love. Second, dialogue demands humility. How
can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others, and
never perceive my own? How can I dialogue if I am closed to—
and even offended by—the contribution of others? Third,
dialogue demands intense faith in humankind—faith in their
power to make and remake, to create and re-create, faith in their
vocation to be more fully human. Only when dialogue is based
on love, humility and faith mutual trust between the dialoguers
is the logical consequence of a ‘horizontal relationship.’ Finally,
as Freire said, ‘only dialogue which requires critical thinking
is capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue
there is no communication, and without communication there
can be no true education.’ In fact, Freire gave the teacher a new
role, which is not limited only to the boundaries of the
classroom; the teacher or the educator is engaged in a
communion with people; it is anti-elitist; it is indeed the
pedagogy of the oppressed that can liberate even the oppressors
from the principle of oppression.
As a matter of fact, from both Freire and Buber, I am

deriving the philosophic core of the four characters of a
teacher—a teacher engages in an ethical act of sharing, a teacher
engages in a dialogic relationship with students, a teacher
derives her authority from love and conviction, and a teacher
is humble constantly engaged with students in an act of self-
exploration for naming or for creating/re-creating the world.
But then, as you would point out: where are these teachers?
True, it is difficult to find teachers with these characteristics.
Let us explore some of the sociological reasons for the absence
of Buber’s dialogic educator, or Freire’s teacher as an
emancipator.
The first reason, I believe, is the increasing bureaucratiza-
tion of what I would regard as education machineries. The logic
of bureaucratization replaces creativity and uniqueness with a
mechanical/standard formula. For instance, certificates and
degrees become more important than the spirit of teaching.
Imagine a man like Tagore applying for a teaching job in a
school in India. It is impossible for him to get it because, as the
school management would tell him, he does not have the B.Ed
degree. Moreover, in a country like ours even these degrees
do not have much meaning; more often than not they are
acquired through malpractices or rote learning with a purely
instrumental orientation—not for becoming sensitive to the
practices of education, but for getting a job with a regular
monthly salary. The result is that a teacher is reduced into yet
another paid employee—without inspiration, without fire,
without mission. Furthermore, a teacher is treated as a cog in
a machine; seldom does she play a meaningful role in choosing
the contents of knowledge to be disseminated among children;
nor does she have much say in the books to be prescribed, or
the pattern of evaluation appropriate for arousing children’s
creativity. Almost everything is decided—a centralized
bureaucratic board has already decided everything And these
days schools hire management-oriented NGOs to instruct
teachers regarding what to teach and how to teach. A teacher
is doing her limited/defined job—acting as a mediator between

‘higher authorities’ and children. This leads to three devastating
consequences. First, as the teacher loses creativity she tends to
become more like a police officer or a dictator in an over-
crowded classroom; managing the class and restoring artificial
order and discipline tend to become her central concern.
Second, maintaining registers, recording students’ performance,
completing the syllabus—it is difficult for an average teacher
to see beyond this cycle of monotonous routines. Great ideas,
pedagogic innovations and dialogic spirit are forgotten; a
teacher becomes more like a clerk—moving from one class to
another, ordering the files, and occasionally discussing with
colleagues subjects such as ornaments, soap operas, census and
election duties, fixed deposits and life insurances. Third, as the
system puts excessive pressure on children for ‘success’ in a
hyper-competitive world, the culture of private tutors, coaching
centres and tutorial homes becomes all-pervading. This leads
to yet another transformation. A teacher becomes a ‘private
tutor’ dictating ‘notes’ or some magical formula for success.
And those who are fairly smart begin to see themselves as
money-earning machines. Take Buber and Freire to Fitjee,
Aakash and Brilliant tutorials. They would collapse.
The second reason has to be seen in a vicious cycle. As the
system transforms a teacher into a paid employee, and in a
highly stratified system of ranking of professions her location
is not seen to be very high, she loses her self-esteem (her self-
esteem has been damaged because she has already been
reduced into a cog). Moreover, the more she loses it the more
the larger society views her with some contempt. ‘It is a
woman’s job. Anybody can do it. Good minds do not choose
teaching; they have more interesting and lucrative things to do;
they become managers, engineers, civil servants. Teaching has
neither money nor power.’ How often you and I have grown
up with this societal perception of the occupation of teaching.
Possibly, many teachers internalize this stigmatized identity.
It is obvious that in a corrupt society like ours, there are many
who are in this profession not because of their talent or calling,

but because of nepotism, networking and even bribery; and
when you do not respect your own work, when you do not
see the worth of your vocation, you cannot expect others to
respect you. Is it the reason why many Indian colleges and
universities (often started because of political calculation, but
without any vision, without a team of honest/dedicated
academics) are filled with demotivated teachers, disinterested
students and politically appointed vice-chancellors? There is
no meaningful teaching, no creative research, and no academic
vibrancy. This legitimization crisis often leads the wealthy class
to demand for the entry of foreign universities in the country.
It is sad that because of this corruption as a nation we have
not yet gained self-respect. For how long do we have to depend
on everything ‘foreign’? Yes, Indian teachers are caught into
this vicious cycle; many of them are devoid of self-respect and
vocational pride. This, I guess, is mainly the reason why
increasingly we find ourselves amidst teachers who are not in
tune with the spirit of the vocation, its grace and dignity that
the likes of Buber and Freire talked about.
The third reason is related to the state of teachers in higher
education. Two things have happened. The ideal profile of a
university faculty is changing rapidly. As publications, projects
and conferences have begun to acquire more importance in
deciding the career prospect of a faculty, teaching as a deeply
pedagogic/engaging/meaningful communion with students is
losing its significance. Instead of creating a symmetrical
relationship between teaching and meaningful research, these
days a university faculty feels tempted or pressurized to see
himself more as a ‘researcher’ (and research means
publications). As a result, the pride in teaching, its joy, its purely
non-utilitarian moments, and its non-measurable experience
seem to be disappearing from our consciousness. A university
faculty is becoming a specialist, a subject expert, a seminary, a
project person, a fund-rising authority, but not necessarily a
teacher. This is a great loss. There is another thing that needs
consideration. As universities—especially private universities—

are becoming aggressively market-driven, students are
becoming more like consumers (consumers of ‘skills’ that fetch
lucrative jobs), and teachers are reimagining themselves as
‘skill-providers’; in such a relationship there is no communion,
no shadow of Buber and Freire; it is technical/instrumental/
formal; it is without love, without gratitude, without memory.
These difficulties are real and solid. Yet, we all feel that
despite these obstacles, teachers ought to live amongst us—
teachers who are communicators, carry a lamp, and encourage
us to overcome the darkness of our minds. A society that has
lost its teachers is a decadent society, even if it is economically
efficient and technologically skilled. Before I end this lecture, I
wish to remind you of two challenges confronting us. First,
because of the immense growth of information technology we
find ourselves in a world characterized by what I would regard
as information pollution. Quite often, we feel tempted to equate
information with knowledge, and knowledge with wisdom.
This is a tragedy; tools tend to replace the essence. Is it possible
for the Internet to replace a teacher—the physicality of his body,
the fragrance of his soul, the vibrations of his dialogue, the
radiation of his explanatory skills? Is it possible for the
television anchor or a celebrity star to replace a teacher, and
tell us what we ought to do, or how we attach deeper meanings
to science and aesthetics, religion and politics, mathematics and
poetry? In a society that, to use David Riesman’s language, is
becoming ‘other-directed’ (when media spectacles, latest
fashion, latest information, latest gadgets tend to shape the
minds of vulnerable minds) teachers find themselves helpless;
but that is precisely the reason why they have to rediscover
themselves with clarity, with wisdom, with intelligence, with
conviction. It is a challenging task. The other challenge is about
the perplexing paradoxes that confront our contemporary
existence. Let me give you some striking illustrations to make
sense of these paradoxes. We live amidst malls as well as
suicide bombers, globalization as well as religious
fundamentalism, virtual intimacy as well as absence of living/

face-to-face communication. Here is a world that is more prone
to schizophrenia, psychic depression, and split personalities.
How do we make sense of this world, overcome its
contradictions, and move towards a more healthy society? For
these reflections, society needs teachers, and teachers with
wisdom. Once again, the task is pretty challenging.
That is why, I end this lecture with an appeal. You are
young, filled with life-energy. Accept these challenges, and
choose the vocation of teaching.
10
In Search of Feasible Utopias
In all these lectures, you must have noticed a quest for a more
life-affirming meaningful education. And despite the
sociological analysis of what we regard as ‘objective facts’, I
have appealed to you repeatedly to strive for what does not
exist, but what ought to exist. Unless we retain this restlessness
and search, we will fall into the trap of a ‘fact-centric positivist
sociology’ that retains the status quo, and negates all deeper
aspirations for a better society. That is why, I wish to end this
series with a lecture on Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Sri
Aurobindo (1872-1950) and Jidu Krishnamurti (1895-1986).
These three thinkers (or do I call them visionaries?) were neither
professional educationists, nor university sociologists; and their
speeches or writings were not ‘academic’ (by ‘academic’ I mean
a trained style of reference-oriented writing characterized by
technical vocabulary, empiricism and theoretical abstraction;
and deprived of aesthetic/experiential/spiritual flavour); yet,
with their penetrating eyes they could see the malady of the
existing educational practices, and suggest a refreshing
departure with new experiments and pedagogic possibilities.
They did inspire many teachers and educationists who were
never contented with the prevailing order. Before I go deeper,
I request you to fight two temptations. First, understand,
contemplate, think and allow yourself to be perplexed before
you call them ‘impractical idealists’. And second, before you
negate them as ‘elitist’ (in the university circuit you and I often
use this word to stop those we do not want to listen to; you
may think that the poor need bread, clothes and some basic
In Search of Feasible Utopias 141
education; they have no time for all these ‘alternative’

education projects which are essentially the privilege of the
rich), you need to be calm and dialogic; you need to see
whether the principles you derive from them can be used very
creatively in simple/ordinary sites of learning.
Tagore was a gifted poet, an artist by nature and a thinker-
activist with a deep spiritual longing. Feel the poet’s religiosity.
It was like the Upanishadic prayer for the universal, an intense
realization of connectedness, a bridge that relates the finite to
the infinite. No wonder, man’s religiosity, for him , lies in his
ability to cross all boundaries, and strive for the ‘surplus’: an
experience of ecstasy, a rhythm of connectedness with nature,
a quest that cannot be measured in terms of utilitarian
calculation. As I see, Tagore’s prayer—a distinctive feature of
many of his songs and poems—emanates from this gratitude
that in our earthly existence we have found ourselves amidst
this beautiful universe; and we are all connected with it. This
abundant religiosity made him extraordinarily sensitive. With
the touch of a creative artist, he portrayed the characters in his
literary masterpieces. Take, for instance, the fate of a young
boy called Phatik in one of his remarkably penetrating short
stories. Phatik is filled with life-energy; he is completely merged
with play; despite his childhood naughtiness, he, it seems, is
in tune with nature: its rivers, its trees, its monsoon showers.
But then, when his maternal uncle takes him to Calcutta, and
assures his anxiety-ridden parents that he would be admitted
into a school, and it would civilize him, the story takes a
different turn. The city, its closed space, its dissociation from
nature, and the school with its burden of textbooks and cage-
like classrooms begin to cause severe pain and sadness in his
being. It is like trying to capture the infinite sky in a closed
room. He feels restless; he feels like returning to his ‘home’:
the land of trees, rivers, boats; he escapes; the cops take him
back; he collapses with high fever and delirium; his mother
rushes to Calcutta. And the story ends with a tragic note: at
the moment of ultimate departure, in an unconscious stage
Phatik tries to convey something to his mother: ‘Today is my

vacation’. In fact, Tagore reminds one of the eternal flow of
life—its boundlessness. Not surprisingly then, with his
celebration of the ‘universal’ man he could not agree with the
doctrine of militant nationalism. Its restrictive character, its
machinery, its narcissistic ego, Tagore did realize at the time
of war, could destroy the edifice of human civilization. One of
his finest gifts to us, I want you to realize, was the alternative
vision of Indian civilization that he offered. It was a vision that
could take us beyond the narrowness of nationalism, and enable
us to feel India, as a poem in Gitanjali indicates, as a great ocean,
a confluence of multiple traditions, ethnicities and religions.
In a way, India is a process of becoming rather than something
defined, closed and fixed.
It is not surprising that a man like him was bound to reflect
on and work in the domain of education. Just reflect on a simple
question Tagore raised: ‘Should the child be blamed for not
having learnt the problems of algebra before coming into the
world?’ You realize his pain and anguish. We know how
forceful learning, constant drilling and perpetual comparison
(see this child. How good he is in mathematics! He remembers
the tables. And you run away from mathematics; you are
useless) tend to stigmatize ‘failure’ and destroy the child’s
confidence and a sense of self- worth. Education becomes
oppression. It is, therefore, obvious that he could not give his
consent to what goes on in the name of education—books
dissociated from life, prison like classrooms erecting a wall
between the child and the vast natural landscape, fragmented
academic disciplines divorced from the art of living, and the
burden of information with rote memorization transforming
the child into a parrot repeating borrowed words and ideas.
In this context, I wish to refer to an evocative reflection of
Tagore—‘A Poet’s School’. There are three striking aspects
about this reflection, which I wish to share with you. First, the
poet invoked the great ancient poet Kalidasa—particularly his
celebration of tapovana—the forest dwelling where the seekers
of truth lived in an atmosphere of purity and the simple life.

It was the same longing that enabled Tagore to rediscover
and reinvent the spirit of tapovana in a modern society. ‘In
order to be real’, said the poet, ‘it must find its reincarnation
under modern conditions of life, and be the same in truth, not
merely identical in fact.’ With deep sensitivity, he could see
the discontents of mechanical forces inherent in highly complex
modern societies. With artificiality and limitless desire, modern
man seems to have enveloped himself with things and
commodities on all sides. He has lost his ‘nest’, which is simple
and related to the sky. Instead, as the poet said with anguish,
‘modern man is busy building his cage, fast developing his
parasitism on the monster, Thing, whom he allows to envelop
him on all sides.’ As Tagore recalled his childhood, his deep
longing for the ‘Himalayas and the shade of great deodars’, or
his quest for a ‘large feeling of the sky, of the light’, and his
urge to ‘mingle with the brown earth in its glistening grass’, it
became obvious why he did not like his own school experience.
For him, it was deeply alienating. As he said, ‘In the usual
course I was sent to school, but possibly my suffering was
unusual, greater than that of most other children, the non-
civilized in me was sensitive; it had the great thirst for colour,
for music, for movement of life. Our city-built education took
no heed of that living fact.’ Not solely that. Tagore was equally
fascinated with Robinson Crusoe’s island, the possibility of the
‘perfect union between man and nature.’ The blend of such
biography and historical sensibility led him to start his own
school, and reinvent the ideal of tapovana—a school amidst the
abundance of nature, a school without urban artificiality,
modern aggression and regimentation. At this juncture, I feel
tempted to quote him:
I tried my best to develop in the children of my school the freshness
of their feeling for nature, a sensitiveness of soul in their
relationship with human surroundings, with the help of literature,
festive ceremonials and also the religious teaching which enjoins
us to come to the nearer presence of the soul, thus to gain it more
than can be measured—like gaining an instrument, not merely

by having it, but by producing music upon it.
In other words, art or aesthetics emanates from this organic
relationship between the child and nature; it creates immense
sensitivity. Dance or painting, music or poetry grows out of
this connectedness. I recall a famous line of Keats: A thing of
beauty is a joy forever. Imagine the absurdity of teaching Keats
in a closed classroom dissociated from the blue sky, the
expanded horizon, and the whisper of trees. Ironically, most
of the time poetry is taught in a non-poetic manner; the beauty
of nature is described in an unnatural environment. But when,
the child finds himself amidst nature, he sees extraordinary
beauty in a flower, in the shade of a tree, in a tiny bird flying
in the sky. That is art—the aesthetics of living. Only then is it
possible for the child to understand what Keats wrote in his
poem. A poem is not just a rhythmic arrangement of words; a
poem is not merely about its style, technicality and grammar;
a poem is a deep experience. This experience, I would like to
believe, was tremendously important for Tagore. Moreover, it
is this experience that leads to simplicity because one finds joy
in the simple things of life, in the vast universe one sees and
feels. No, never did Tagore privilege the ‘callousness of
asceticism’ over the ‘callousness of luxury’. Instead, as he felt,
when education as an art of living generates the sensitivity to
respond to the ‘deeper call of reality’, the mind is likely to be
weaned away from the ‘lure of the fictitious value of things’.
And herein lies the second point that I wish to make. In
the poet’s school, there was no duality of academics and work,
or work and play. In conventional schools, you must have felt
through your own experience, academics is essentially a
teacher-directed activity—a ‘serious’ study of mathematics,
grammar, history; and work is merely ‘extra-curricular’, and
play is just a break, something not so significant, a momentary
relief for coming back to the domain of serious studies. This
duality of academics and work, or work and play makes
education alienating. Tagore, I would argue, sought to
transcend this duality by promoting in his young students an

‘active vigour of work and the joyous exercise of inventive and
constructive energies’. Education is not separated from, but
deeply related to ‘activities in their kitchen, their vegetable
garden, their weaving, their work of small repairs.’ In other
words, nothing is mundane; every moment is a moment of
learning and celebration. No wonder, it filled the poet’s mind
with joy when he saw his students taking the ‘utmost delight
in cooking, weaving, gardening, improving their surroundings,
rendering services to other boys, very often secretly, lest they
should feel embarrassed.’
And third, despite enormous obstacles and difficulties
(Tagore identified these obstacles as ‘the tradition of the
community which calls itself educated, the parents’
expectations, the upbringing of the teachers themselves), like
a determined karmayogi he sought to accomplish the impossible:
‘ an atmosphere for developing the sensitiveness of the soul,
for affording the mind its true freedom of sympathy.’ And
friends, never forget that this is more important than learning
the ‘geography of foreign lands.’ I quote him again:
I can see from their manner, they have dimly begun to think that
education is a permanent part of the adventure of life, that it is
not like a painful hospital for curing them of the congenial malady
of their ignorance, but is a function of health, the natural
expression of their vitality.
What does it mean to revisit Tagore in our times characterized
by the all-pervasive denaturalization, mechanization and
narrow/specialized/fragmented knowledge systems? You
ought to ask this question. But before you do so, let me
introduce Sri Aurobindo whose reflections on education, I
believe, are equally worth examining. In a way, it is a journey
from a poet’s vision to that of a saint-activist. Sri Aurobindo’s
life-trajectory was full of turning points. Yes, when colonialism
was creating the colonial master as an ideal to emulate, Sri
Aurobindo’s father sent him to England, and wanted him to
be trained in English education and English manners. As a
brilliant student, he did quite well. But then, when he came

back to India things began to take a different turn. His
involvement in the nationalist movement, or what historians
would have regarded as ‘extremist’ politics revealed the
paradox of life. However, his arrest and his prison days took
him to yet another mode of realization. As his famous Uttarpara
speech (the speech he delivered after he was released from jail)
informs us, he realized the inner call of his life. From Swami
Vivekananda to the Bhagavad Gita: he was deriving his
inspiration, and seeing the presence of Vasudeva everywhere.
In a way, he was moving from the active domain of politics to
the spiritual domain. We all know that for the next stage of his
life Pondicherry became his destination. This renunciation
notwithstanding, his writings—characterized by profound
philosophical/spiritual insights and aesthetic/cultural
sensibilities—took the debate on Hinduism, Indian culture and
civilization to a great height. Nothing seemed to have escaped
his attention. The fundamentals of Indian culture—its sacred
texts, its epics and puranas, its art forms; the evolution of the
world, the age of reason, the making of a nation, war, self-
determination; and the evolution of human consciousness: Sri
Aurobindo threw light on almost everything significant. It was,
therefore, obvious, that his engagement with the theory and
practice of education was equally sharp and insightful. Before
I come to the specificities of his ideas on education, I wish to
make a few observations which will help you to understand
his educational philosophy. See the way he looked at the
evolution of human society. Yes, as students of sociology/
cultural anthropology, you know diverse descriptions of this
evolution—from a ‘simple’/’primitive’ society to a ‘complex’/
’modern’ society; from a kinship-centric community to a state-
centric modern society; from the ‘theological’ age to the
‘scientific’ age; from a ‘class-divided’ society to a ‘communist’
society; or from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ to ‘postmodern’
society. Yes, all these explanations have their significance.
However, Sri Aurobindo gave yet another dimension to it,
which, I believe, you should reflect on. True, it was a great

forward movement from the ‘infrarational’ stage to the age of
‘reason’. Science grew, technology evolved, social organizations
became more refined and human intellect became sharper. But
then, reason, as Sri Aurobindo felt, cannot be the final and
ultimate stage of evolution. Reason could not solve the crisis
we are all caught into. Reason gave us liberal democracy and
modern capitalism. However, it produced its own
contradictions and violence—hyper-competitiveness and
survival of the fittest—‘not of the spiritually, rationally or
physically fittest, but of the most fortunate and vitally
successful.’ Reason produced its own remedy—something like
a collectivist mystique, a totalitarian socialism crushing the
uniqueness of the individual leading to a ‘complete unanimity
of mind, speech, feeling, life.’ We seemed to be caught into this
vicious circle. Capitalism, socialism, the fall of socialism, and
the rise of neo-liberal global capitalism: we find ourselves in a
world that can seldom reconcile the individual and the social,
autonomy and harmony, freedom and unity, the phenomenal
and the transcendental. The solution, said Aurobindo, lies in
the awakening of the spiritual light; it alone can make us realize
that it is love (rather than a machine invented by the reason)
that unites and transcends these dualities. Now, let me quote
Sri Aurobindo:
The solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in its
spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can
alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater than
the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine the vital nature
of man and impose harmony on its self-seeking antagonisms and
discords. A deeper brotherhood, a yet unfound law of love is the
only foundation possible for a perfect social evolution, no other
can replace it. The love which is founded upon a deeper truth of
our being is the expression of an inner realization of oneness.
Not postmodern differences and relativism, but the spiritual
oneness of humankind ought to be the next stage of evolution
we are waiting for. This requires the evolution and elevation
of the human spirit. And this evolution takes place in a material
universe because ‘the first conditioning status of things is

Matter’. Mind and Life, as Aurobindo said, are evolved in
matter. However, we should not forget that they are limited
and modified in their action because of ‘their subjection to the
law of material Nature’ even while they modify what they
undergo and use. For the entire transformation, what is needed
is the emergence of the law of the Spirit. To quote Aurobindo:
‘Its power of Supermind or gnosis must have entered into
Matter and it must evolve in Matter. It must change the mental
into the supramental being, make the inconscient in us
conscious, spiritualize our material substance, erect its law of
gnostic consciousness in our whole evolutionary being and
nature.’ To make it easier to understand, we can say that we
have a physical/embodied existence; it has its needs, drives,
desires; and the reality of this body cannot be negated.
However, as we evolve, we acquire intelligence, mental faculty
and consciousness that tend to guide and modulate the bodily
instincts and demands. In our times, we have seen the acute
development of the mental faculty; this leads to the birth of
scientists, intellectuals, artists. This alone is not sufficient.
Because ‘the mental man has not been nature’s last effort or
highest reach’; we need to move towards ‘divine life’—a stage
of the finest psychic/spiritual development. This ‘divine life’
does not deny or repress the physical, vital and mental needs;
instead, through a process of ‘ascent and integration’ even ‘the
lower gradation of being comes to a point at which the higher
can manifest in it’; and as a result, everything becomes an
instrument of the divine. In a way, this elevated existence is
qualitatively different from the Freudian anxiety-ridden/
potentially neurotic/repressed man. Because at this stage of
evolution what we find is the birth of the ‘spiritual sage, seer,
prophet, God-lover, Yogin, gnostic, Sufi, mystic.’
If we keep this canvas in mind, it would be easier for us to
make sense of a series of concrete pedagogic formulations that
Sri Aurobindo made. ‘The first principle of teaching’, said
Aurobindo, ‘is that nothing can be taught’. You may wonder
how it is possible. Isn’t it a fact that we are amidst teachers

and instructors everywhere, and they are continually teaching
us—English grammar, elementary mathematics, geography,
geology, music, painting, swimming, horse riding, and even I
am teaching Durkheim and Foucault? Absolutely true. Teachers
are needed. But then, teachers need not impose themselves on
young learners; teachers need not begin with an assumption
that they possess the treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and
it is their task to fill the child’s ‘empty’ mind with all sorts of
information, theories and bookish mantras. Instead, a teacher
is a catalyst; his/her primary task is to arouse curiosity and
interest, and create an environment conducive to the
development of all the faculties of learning which are innate in
the child. Take a simple but meaningful example. Suppose I
am a teacher and trying to invite a child to the world of Physics.
I invite her to observe and experience the natural phenomena
—from sunrise to sunset, and encourage her to raise questions
and express her wonder. Possibly, she would like to know
about colour—the amazing colour of the sky during sunrise
and sunset; possibly, she would be curious to explore why
during this interval the sun changes its location—from east to
west (is the sun moving, or is it something else?); possibly, she
would like to know why the length of her shadow varies from
time to time. In other words, I am trying to develop her faculties
of learning—the ability to observe, the urge to raise questions.
And then she can know and understand Physics better. She
would be an active learner rather than a passive receiver. ‘The
second principle’, Sri Aurobindo added, ‘is that the mind has
to be consulted in its own growth.’ This, I believe, is equally
important. How often as adults and parents, we impose our
will on our children. We tend to decide their careers, the
occupations they would pursue, and everything based on what
is trendy, prestigious and market-friendly. It is, therefore, not
surprising that one who could have become a poet becomes
an engineer and remains unfulfilled; or, for that matter, one
who could have become a scientist becomes a chartered
accountant, and, despite economic success, remains

discontented. This is a great loss. The uniqueness of the learner
is denied; one is never allowed to understand oneself and
realize what one is inclined to. Everyone is seen and judged
through a uniform scale; it is like a bulldozer that seems
determined to crush individual uniqueness. Under these
circumstances, it is important to recall what Sri Aurobindo said:
‘Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a
chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere
which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it,
develop it and use it.’ And finally, the third principle is to ’work
from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall
be.’ Try to understand it. This principle attracts me as a teacher.
No matter what I engage with—mathematics or history—it is
important to begin from the local surrounding, the immediate
context the child can relate to: ‘the soil from which he draws
sustenance, the air which he breathes, the sights, sounds, habits
to which he is accustomed.’
Take, for instance, an abstract mathematical concept like
negative integer. A rhythmic movement in the staircase—
upward as well as downward—is likely to make the child
understand the concepts of positive and negative integers. This
is a movement from the concrete to the abstract. Likewise, if
the child is encouraged to find information from her parents
and grandparents regarding her family, her ancestral roots; if
she is asked to see the family album, and find the old postcards
written by her grandmother to her father, and persuaded to
construct a brief history of her family, she would learn the first
important lesson of historiography. And it is not possible if
history books ask the child to remember something remote and
distant, something she could not relate to—say, the names of
Aurangzeb’s brothers, or the exact date of the Gandhi-Irwin
Pact. The fact is that once the concepts are clear, one learns
smoothly; but if one cannot see, feel and experience the world
the theoretical abstraction remains a loaded word, a burden.
Essentially, these three principles indicate the necessity of
cultivating and arousing the faculties of learning—say, the

ability to observe, compare and judge various classes of objects.
Because, as Sri Aurobindo said, ‘there is no scientific subject
the perfect and natural mastery of which cannot be prepared
in early childhood by this training of these faculties.’ However,
it should not be forgotten that the cultivation of the intellect
alone is not sufficient What is equally important is ‘sovereign
discernment, intuitive perception of truth, plenary inspiration
of speech, direct vision of knowledge to an extent often
amounting to revelation, making a man the prophet of truth.’
Quite often, the conventional instructor remains indifferent to
it; but then, ‘faculties so important to humanity cannot be left
out of our consideration.’ One might think that with his plea
for spiritual evolution, Sri Aurobindo was pleading for some
sort of ‘moral education’. No, his perceptions were different;
morality, for him, was not sermonizing, a dry lesson in what
one should do and what one should not do. Instead, moral
education is about living, seeing, understanding, experiencing.
What is required is to suggest and invite, not to impose or
command. ‘The best method of suggestion’, he reminded us,
‘is by personal example.’ Furthermore, as the Mother—Sri
Aurobindo’s disciple—elaborated, a life-sustaining/ integral
education must work on the physical, vital, mental and psychic
states of being.
At this juncture, I wish to refer to Jidu Krishnamurti—a
wanderer, a radical philosopher who moved around the world,
defied the chains of all organizations and their prescribed
ideologies, delivered lectures, engaged in conversations with
people, reminded us of the meaning of true freedom— an
unconditioned mind without ‘knowledge’ (‘knowledge’ is
thought, thought is memory, memory is in time; and hence true
learning demands absolute alertness, living in the very moment,
and unlearning the old baggage), and inspired educationists
all over the world to strive for a new culture of learning that
sees beyond the ritualization of passing exams, reading books,
mastering physics or geography, and becoming ‘successful’.
Before I invite you to Krishnamurti’s educational discourses,

it is important to have a brief introduction of the man—a major
turning point in his life and his moment of enlightenment. You
possibly know that when Krishnamurti was merely a 14-year-
old boy, he was chosen by the leaders of the Theosophical
Society with a hope that he would emerge as the future world
spiritual leader to salvage the world. This led to the formation
of the Order of the Star in the East—a worldwide organization
with young Krishnamurti as its head. In fact, Mrs. Annie Besant
nurtured him; and meanwhile, the Order of the Star in the East
had grown into a vast organization with enormous wealth,
properties, and thousands of followers all over the world
preparing them to be the disciples of the coming Messiah.
However, not everything in life follows structured planning.
Krishnamurti was passing through intense inner conflict,
psychic turmoil and spiritual realization. And despite his
gratitude to Annie Besant whom he regarded as his mother,
he was inwardly revolting against the religious structures
around him and his own role in it. The moment of departure
came on August 3, 1929. In the presence of Annie Besant and
3000 Star members, Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the
Star and returned to the donors all the wealth and the
properties that had been given for his mission. He delivered a
historic speech on the occasion. I will begin with this speech
because it would help us to understand the meaning of
Krishnamurti’s core teaching.
‘Truth’, said Krishnamurti, ‘is a pathless land, and you
cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion,
by any sect.’ If someone depends on a messiah or an
organization one escapes from oneself, from one’s own quest.
It is like depending on crutches. Let me quote him:
Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can
make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of
yourselves for a cause make you free; nor can forming yourselves
into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into works, make
you free…That key is your own self, and in the development and
the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is

the Kingdom of Eternity.
A careful look at the path-breaking speech indicates his longing
for freedom, and it is possible when one is free from all sorts
of fear. See the immensely radical statement he made: ‘I desire
those who seek to understand me to be free, not to follow me,
not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a
sect.’ When we are conditioned, when we love to wear a badge,
follow a guru, we end up limiting and fragmenting what is
essentially the ‘absolute, unconditioned Truth’. No wonder, he
could give up everything—organizational power, thousands of
followers, wealth and property, and dare to speak:
I want therefore to set man free, rejoicing as the bird in the clear
sky, unburdened, independent, ecstatic in that freedom. And I,
for whom you have been preparing for eighteen years, now say
that you must be free of all these things, free from your
complications, your entanglements. For this, you need not have
an organization based on spiritual belief…because Truth is in
everyone; it is not far; it is not near; it is eternally there.
No wonder, Krishnamurti repeatedly reminded us of the
damage that fear causes to our consciousness. And imagine
how our contemporary education system generates fear, and
,in fact, is based on fear—fear of failure, fear of lagging behind,
fear of not retaining ‘success’. This is self-defeating; this does
not allow the child to grow with her own rhythm, acquire a
free mind. ‘I think’, said Krishnamurti, ‘one of the causes of
fear is comparison’. The entire process of examinations, graded
hierarchy and valorization of some uniform norm of ‘success’
pollutes the educational milieu, causes hyper-competitiveness,
and generates fear. See the deep insight with which
Krishnamurti spoke about it in one of his lectures:
To make you as strenuous, as studious as the other boy or girl, he
(the teacher) gives you grades, he gives you marks and so you
keep on struggling, competing; you are envious of the other boy.
So comparison breeds envy, jealousy; and jealousy is the beginning
of fear….When you compare yourself with somebody else, that
somebody else is more important than you. Is it not so? You as

an individual with your capacities, with your tendencies, with
your difficulties, with your problems, with your being, are not
important, but somebody else is important, and so you, as a being,
are pushed aside and you are left struggling to become like
somebody else. In that struggle is born envy, fear…
Education is not just academic—accumulation of information
and knowledge of different disciplines. Because, as
Krishnamurti would remind us, ‘the whole movement of life
is learning.’ Is it possible to overcome the trap of words and
theories, and cultivate goodness and awakened intelligence?
This means alertness, heightened sensitivity to nature and life,
the ability to observe and merge with the observed, the freedom
to experience the amazing sunrise and sunset, feel the shade
of a tree, and hear its whispers. It is true leisure. It means a
quiet mind. For Krishnamurti, ‘it is only in this sense of leisure
that the mind can learn not only science, history, mathematics
but also about oneself.’ And this leads to a new notion of art—
not as a technique, but essentially as inward beauty. In response
to a question (‘What is the place of art in education?) asked by
a teacher, Krishnamurti replied:
As our society is constructed, we are more concerned with the
outward expression, with the looks, with the sari, than with that
which is inward. It does not matter what you are within, but you
must present a respectable appearance—put on rouge, lipstick. It
does not matter what you are inside. So we are more concerned
with technique than living, with mere expression than with love.
Therefore, we use outward things as a means to cover up our
inner ugliness, our inward confusion. We listen to music to escape
from our own sorrow. In other words, we become spectators, and
not the players. To be creative you must know yourself, and to
know yourself is extremely difficult; but to learn a technique is
comparatively easy.
It was, therefore, obvious that he emphasized on the
significance of educating the educator. A teacher is not merely
a subject expert, or an authority imposing ‘discipline’ through
fear and surveillance. The flowering of goodness, inner beauty,
an unconditioned mind without fear, sensitivity to life—the

teacher as an educator ought to enable the child to cultivate
these faculties. Education is not merely about earning a
livelihood, or learning of various academic subjects. Education
is the ‘cultivation of total responsibility in the student’. The
question that he posed before the teachers keeps haunting me.
I cannot escape it. Let me remind myself of this profound query:
Now, can you, in the teaching of mathematics, physics, and so
on—which he must know for that is the way of earning a
livelihood—convey to the student that he is responsible for the
whole mankind? So that, although he may be working for his own
career, his own way of life, it will not make him narrow, and he
will see the danger of specialization with all its limits and strange
brutality. You have to help him in all this. The flowering of
goodness does not lie in knowing mathematics and biology or in
passing examinations and having a successful career. It exists
outside there. When there is this flowering, career and other
necessary activities are touched by its beauty.
Before I conclude the lecture there are three points that I need
to make. First, reflect on a question that some of you may be
thinking about: Are they relevant? What is ‘relevant’, my
friends? If by being ‘relevant’ you mean something that is
prevalent or actually practised, then they are definitely not
relevant. Because in a hyper-competitive world like ours the
actual practice of education is not in tune with what they
pleaded for—say, affinity with nature, psychic/spiritual
elevation, an ethic of care with a quest for freedom. But if by
being ‘relevant’ you mean something that ought to exist for
revolution, for healing us, for creating a better world, then they
are immensely relevant—the way the need for light becomes
relevant in a dark room, or the way peace becomes relevant in
a ruthlessly violent world. In a world that transforms us into
mere ‘economic resources’ or ‘skilled manpower’ or greedy
consumers, Tagore, Aurobindo and Krishnamurti were
whispering in our ears: ‘You are a possibility. You are
essentially a seeker, an artist, a spiritual being. You are unique.
Life is not merely for passing examinations, earning a livelihood
and becoming a ‘successful’ employee. Life without a sense

of beauty and connectedness with the cosmos is dull and
violent. Education is the cultivation of this sensitivity.’
Second, there is a practical/sociological question: What
about those schools, which grew out of the educational ideals
of these three philosophers? Did they succeed? Did they remain
confined to the select elite? Yes, there are schools of this kind—
from Santinekatan to Rishi Valley School to Mirambika School
in Delhi. It is possible to examine the ethnographic account of
some of these schools, and enquire into their dynamics—the
way they cope with the pressure of the mainstream (following
the centralized Board, at least at the higher classes in terms of
curriculum, examinations and evaluation), the process of
perpetual negotiation with the parents (their own middle class
anxiety regarding the ‘future’ of their children—their careers,
or their capacity to ‘adjust’ to the system after school), and the
task of educating the educators (whether teachers see
themselves as pedagogues with a deep conviction, or whether
they are primarily employees doing a paid job). You can look
at some of these studies. And possibly you will discover that
these ‘alternative’ schools, far from being absolutely perfect,
exist with unresolved contradictions (elitist parents seeing these
places primarily as sites of ‘cultural capital’), paradoxes,
failures, and yet some remarkable achievements, promises and
possibilities.
Third, I want you to realize that for practising the kind of
pedagogy they talked about what is needed is the zeal, the
willingness to do things differently and make experiments—
not so much wealth and technology. That is why, even under
extremely humble situations, it is possible to be creative,
provided we are daring and hopeful. In this lecture, I have tried
to give the examples of some concrete practices, which are in
tune with this spirit. When I look at myself as a teacher, one
question I ask myself is whether I can try, and despite
‘structural constraints’ (huge class, examination system,
grading, time schedule), do something that is life-affirming, and
in tune with the spirit I am talking about. The fact that I often
interact with you in an open space, give you the assignments
that demand the cultivation of all the major faculties of
learning—not just abstracted reason, but emotions, experiences,
aesthetic sensibilities, and creative practices that involve your
hands and simple technologies—indicates that we have not lost
hope ,and possibly we are agreeing with Karl Mannheim’s
prophetic vision in Ideology and Utopia that if utopias disappear
we become stagnant. Yes, while we try to do something
differently, meaningfully and beautifully we might make many
mistakes; we might fail repeatedly. But never forget that to fail
is not everyone’s privilege; the conformists follow the
established pattern and remain ‘secure’; and only those who
dream, try and initiate take a ‘risk’. And what does it mean to
be young if you fear to take ‘risks’?
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Ten Lectures on Education

Pedagogic and Sociological Sensibilities

Touch a book. Feel it. It whispers in your ears. It begins to speak

religion, market, nation and diverse ideologies of education. It

and alternative publications—have enriched my ideas. Nothing

It is always good to begin with a simple question. What is

So you have learned that education is also about competition,

advisor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who decides a

be truly enlightened in this sense. Yes, the modern age did

at the finite, limited and temporal without realizing that what

different and superior to a mechanic. As a specialist in

from our own situation. The other day a leading newspaper

knowledge. And his pedagogy involved the art of story-telling.

of bed. He looked around. No princess, no palace, no children.

I have a friend. His name is Uttkarsh. He is hardly four years

Contrasts. Yes, Mead saw the process of growth of American

unaccustomed eyes.’ For instance, in religion they may be

principles of citizenship, the adherence to universal legal/

scene only with the growth of the industrial state. Illich

when she looks at a butterfly or a rainbow; you cannot measure

value immensely which I have learned from Illich: ‘Most

She was dressed very simply. Something nasty stirred within

You may wonder whether I am a sociologist at all. I narrate a

a sociologist, a political scientist, an economist, a historian, a

whoever sees such things every day.’ Second, think of yet

monsters. He wants nothing as nature made it, not even man;

Here is the first question: If society is not, as Emile Durkheim

without tying themselves to one another with strong, durable

belongs considers should not be lacking in any of its members; (2)

connectedness. It is, therefore, important that the child learns

child; its primary purpose is to strengthen the sense of duty—

before you make it clear that even in an age characterized by

tranquillizers to a man who will be hanged next morning, ask

cells; at regular intervals, an officer’s quarters were situated,

to be submitted for examination by the inspector. See its deeper

prizes, classification of students and display of the names of

representations of their country’s past. Now you understand

playing the role of a catalyst. I am inviting you to the domain

reason why natural sciences like Physics and Mathematics, for

We have looked at education through the sociological lens. But

find the fragrance of history! Don’t consider me a romantic fool.

‘high status’. Or for that matter, if occasionally for my lecture

points in the history of education in the context of colonial

Western attention, reconstruction and even redemption.’

it was the moment of arrival of Charles Grant who was

maturation of this utilitarian thinking in the team of Governor

Eventually Bentinck gave his consent to Macaulay’s proposals,

Chemistry, Anatomy and other useful sciences which the

Brahminical texts, and the need for a new socio-cultural and

them from the physical and psychological slavery of the

had certainly their parallel in India on the advent of the Aryans

‘Kettle’. And Mohandas, we are told, had misspelt it. Even

of what he was saying. I believe it is easy to misinterpret Hind

has enslaved us.’ For Gandhi, it did separate English-knowing

importance to the centrality of textbooks. ‘I did not find it at

present grown and so on.’ I see it as a profound pedagogic

First, I want you to reflect on the Nehruvian project of nation-

Even though there were many—scientists, economists,

of what is happening around you. From Gandhi’s ‘integral