Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India: Sunandan Roy Chowdhury

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The book discusses several political and social factors that have influenced higher education policy and development in India such as the role of English language, Western influences on university models, globalization and issues around access and equity.

The main topics discussed in the book include the politics around the English language in India, the influence of Western university models and nationalisms in India, the impact of global processes and developmental visions, conflicts in universities, challenges around access to elite institutions and poverty in higher education development.

The author discusses challenges around access to education for marginalized groups, lack of resources leading to poor quality of education, conflicts between students and administration, and disconnect between education and societal or economic needs.

POLITICS, POLICY

AND HIGHER
EDUCATION
IN INDIA

Sunandan Roy Chowdhury


Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India
Sunandan Roy Chowdhury

Politics, Policy
and Higher Education
in India
Sunandan Roy Chowdhury
Sampark Global Journal
Kolkata, India

ISBN 978-981-10-5055-8 ISBN 978-981-10-5056-5  (eBook)


DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944548

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
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Cover illustration: © Stephen Bonk/Fotolia.co.uk

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature


The registered company is Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
For my father Sudeb Roy Chowdhury (1936–2007)
who taught me to reflect on politics
and urged me to value the power of policy
Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Brahmin Language, Hindu Growth—Politics


and Power of English Language in India 7

3 Western University, Indian Nationalisms 35

4 Cold War to Brand Wars: Global Processes,


Developmental Visions, and Indian Higher Education 51

5 Class Struggles in Class Rooms: Conflict, Politics,


and the Indian University 85

6 Elite Institutions, Dismal Development: Poverty


of Indian Higher Education 101

7 Conclusion: Toward a Democratic Higher Education 131

Bibliography 143

Index 149

vii
An Unmitigated Evil

The system of education is an unmitigated evil. I put my best energy to


destroy that system. I don’t say that we have got as yet any advantage
from that system. The advantages we have so far got are in spite of the
system, not because of the system. Supposing the English were not here,
India would have marched with other parts of the world, and even if
it continued under Moghul rule, people would learn English as a lan-
guage and a literature. The present system enslaves us, without allowing
a discriminating use of English literature. My friend had cited the case
of Tilak, Ram Mohan and myself. Leave aside my case, I am a miserable
pigmy.
Tilak and Ram Mohan would have been far greater men, if they had
not the contagion of English learning. I am opposed to make a fetish
of English education. I don’t hate English education. I don’t want to
destroy the English language, but read English as an Indian nationalist
would do. Ram Mohan and Tilak (leave aside my case) were so many
pigmies who had no hold upon the people compared with Chanakya,
Shankar, Kabir and Nanak. Ram Mohan and Tilak were pigmies before
these giants. What Shankar alone was able to do, the whole army of
English-knowing men can’t do. I can multiply instances. Was Guru
Govind a product of English education? Is there a single English-
knowing Indian who is a match for Nanak, the founder of a sect second
to none in point of valour and sacrifice?

ix
x  An Unmitigated Evil

If that race has ever to be revived, it is to be revived not by English


education. I know what treasures I have lost in not knowing Hindustani
and Sanskrit. I ask you to consider and value the glamour of education
at its true worth. English education has emasculated us, constrained our
intellect, and the manner of imparting this education has rendered us
effeminate. We want to bask in the sunshine of freedom, but the enslav-
ing system emasculates our nation.

M.K. Gandhi
Young India
April 1921
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  Introduction provides a curtain raiser for the book. It points


out that the book is about higher/tertiary education in India, the func-
tions that the Indian university has played in the specific fashioning of
governance, control, and development in India, and that Indian higher
education policy is the principal focus area of the book. How politics and
policy are enmeshed in the making of higher education in India that is
what the book unravels. This chapter gives a sketch of what lies ahead
in the book’s main five chapters. The author outlines the thrust of each
of the chapters from Chaps. 2 to 6, namely, “Brahmin Language, Hindu
Growth: Politics and Power of English Language in India,” “Western
University, Indian Nationalisms,” “Cold War to Brand Wars: Global
Processes, Developmental Visions, and Indian Higher Education,”
“Class Struggles in Class Rooms: Conflict, Politics, and the Indian
University,” and “Elite Institutions, Dismal Development: The Poverty
of Indian Higher Education.” Here, the author also points to some of
the main questions the book addresses, such as does higher education
strengthen democracy or does it weaken the democratic and socialist
­ideals enshrined in Indian Constitution of 1950?

Keywords  British colonial rule · Higher/tertiary education in india


Dominant policy prescriptions · India’s ideas of development
Injustice in Indian universities · Binary of colonial/national

© The Author(s) 2017 1


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5_1
2  S. Roy Chowdhury

In the last three centuries, India has received, adopted, and adapted
important axes to govern, control, and oppress itself. The English lan-
guage, the specifics of nationalism, Western science including Western
medicine, industrial technology, parliamentary democracy, and a juridical
system based on England’s justice system are key components of mod-
ern India. And the Indian variant of Western university is at the core of
this constellation of governance, control, and oppression. But language,
nationalism, and technology cannot govern, rule, or oppress by them-
selves. These inanimate tools are used and abused by human beings to
govern, rule, and oppress other human beings. While India’s colonial
rule inaugurated most of these ideas, ideals, and institutions, the spe-
cific fashioning of these technologies of governance and development
has happened in the heads and hands of Indians themselves. And India
was not a blank slate before the inauguration of this Western/colonial set
of structures. The pre-existing patterns negotiated with the new thrusts,
and this has resulted in a new India where the old lives and thrives with
the Western/colonial influence and the more recent post-independence
developments.
This book is about higher/tertiary education in India, the functions
that the Indian university has played in the specific fashioning of gov-
ernance, control, and development in India. I am specifically interested
here in Indian higher education policy. Who are the policymakers, what
are the policy prescriptions, and what do those policy prescriptions tell
us about the dominant patterns of Indian thought and the ideas, ide-
als, and structures that govern India? Who gains from policy, and who
loses out, does education/higher education policy lead to social trans-
formative processes, or does it ensure reproduction of social stratifica-
tion? Do higher education policy and the higher education world work
toward greater benefits in health, education, arts, culture, and develop-
ment of the nation at large or does it work as a self-serving institution
for a few that benefits from higher education? Does higher education
strengthen democracy or does it weaken the democratic and socialist ide-
als enshrined in Indian Constitution of 1950?
The roots of this book lie in a one year research project I did in 2002–
2003 as a fellow of the International Policy Fellowship (IPF) program
of the Open Society Institute (OSI) [part of the Soros Foundations
Network] in Budapest. My project was to map the post-university lives
of student activists and its impact on society. I studied four universities
in four different countries: Ljubljana University in Slovenia, Warsaw
1 INTRODUCTION  3

University in Poland, Dhaka University in Bangladesh, and Jawaharlal


Nehru University (JNU) in India. I interviewed approximately 15 indi-
viduals from each university and told a story of university and social
change in each case; it was an exercise in oral history. My project was
part of a much larger global study on universities and social transforma-
tion, led by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information
(CHERI) of the Open University, UK. Through conferences over a
period of a year and half in Europe, Africa, and India, I was exposed to a
great variety of resources in higher education research as well as intrica-
cies of policy research. This led me to design a study on Indian higher
education policy. At a snail’s pace, I wrote a Ph.D. at the Education
Department of Delhi University and submitted a thesis in 2011. Of the
five chapters of this book, the first and the third specifically draw upon
my Ph.D. work.
In “Brahmin Language, Hindu Growth,” I look at politics and power
of English language in India. I map the contested growth, complex-
ity, and impact of English education in India from India’s contact with
European Christian missionaries, during the period of colonial rule and
in post-1947 independent India. I critique the dominant policy prescrip-
tions and environment that have ensured the growth of English as a new
caste marker, a tool of domination and of material enrichment in the
hands of a numerically tiny but powerful elite.
“Western University, Indian Nationalisms” is about contrasting
nationalisms, their emergence in colonial India, and how nationalisms
and universities were tied together in intimate relationships. The idea of
India is a contested one. Conceptions of an ideal India inform India’s
politics and society today, and it did so since and during British colonial
rule. As India’s educational system and higher education institutions
developed in the colonial period, especially after the 1850s, the idea of
Indian nation took shape in minds of educated Indians. For 200 years
since the early 1810s, higher education institutions have been centers
of discourse on nationalism. Various groups of Indians with ideologi-
cal motivations centered on secularism, Hindu identity, Islamic iden-
tity, and women’s emancipation have fashioned their versions of Indian
nationalism on educational campuses. In some instances, the founding of
educational institutions itself has been the result of the specific national
vision that the founders had. In short, higher education and contrast-
ing and conflicting versions of nationalism have been enmeshed in
India for 200 years. Indian university has been a site of visions of Indian
4  S. Roy Chowdhury

nationalism. I argue that the idea of India that has projected itself most
powerfully has done so in great measure in the universities, even before
creating the similar impact on the wider public world. I also argue the
dominant and dominating idea of Indian nationhood has skillfully
elbowed out competing visions of Indian nationalism. However, the dif-
ferent streams of visions continue to jostle for influence in contemporary
India today and in its higher education space.
In “Cold War to Brand Wars,” I discuss global processes, develop-
mental visions, and Indian higher education. Modern and contemporary
India’s development and ideas of development are inextricably linked
to the policies set in motion during British colonial rule. Indian elites’
conception of development was heavily influenced by their exposure to
development in Britain and Western Europe. The pattern of the Indian
mind to fashion development along Western lines took a new step for-
ward with independence. Post-1947 India was faced with a bipolar
world of superpower rivalry between the USA and the USSR. The Cold
War impacted India’s development, its higher education, and the policy
environment. The decades since 1990 have seen the impact of globali-
zation and a new era of world politics. I discuss the impact of global pro-
cesses on Indian development and higher education policy and narrate
the shifts in India’s developmental visions. The selective use of science
by Indian policy planners, a specific view of the West within dominant
Indian opinion and a particular understanding of development, has
impacted India’s policy in higher education. I argue a narrow and elite-
serving view of development has had limiting impact on the growth and
flowering of Indian higher education and society.
In “Class Struggles in Classrooms,” I discuss the conflict, poli-
tics, and the Indian university. In recent years, Indians have woken up
in the morning to news of suicides committed by university students
from lower-caste/class background; many have happened in elite insti-
tutions. What has prompted students from economically depressed and
socially marginalized sections of Indian society to commit suicide? Does
the malaise stem from and point toward a deep injustice within Indian
society? India’s universities, especially the ones that are funded by the
government, have been founded with the objectives enshrined in Indian
Constitution, those of justice, liberty, and equality. The higher education
system professes to further the cause of education, enlightenment, free-
dom, and justice. In reality, the Indian university is a space where injus-
tice continues, on a number of axes of discrimination, such as language,
1 INTRODUCTION  5

caste, class, gender, urban/rural, and physiological disability. I discuss


the social and cultural experience of students from margins of society in
the sites of higher education. This chapter also looks into the nature of
control and of politics in the higher education space. I argue that instead
of having a transformative role, in most part, the Indian university plays
a key role in reproduction of the inequities of the Indian social system.
And, finally, I point out that this becomes possible because of a poverty
of politics in India.
The following chapter, “Elite Institutions, Dismal Development,”
shows how an undemocratic thrust on elite higher education institu-
tions has led to a dismal state of higher education and development.
In the last 25 years, India has experienced reasonably high rate of
economic growth, and the purchasing power and size of the middle
class have grown. At the same time, the primary health indicators and
the basic education indicators of the country have remained poor, in
many instances much worse than a poorer economy, that of neighbor-
ing Bangladesh. While India is always talked about in the Indian and
global press as an important emerging economy, the ground realities
of living condition of majority of Indians remain abysmally poor. India
plans smart cities while its child mortality rates are higher than that
of most its neighbors. India’s software industry boasts of providing a
wide range of services to global clients while roads in its major cities
remain potholed and clogged with traffic; it sends machines into space
and its biggest financial hub of Mumbai gets paralyzed with rains every
monsoon.
The state of dismal development can be found in the higher education
sector as well. Policymakers continually talk about “the crisis” in Indian
education; I say, the crisis gets louder by the day. The answer to the flaws
lies in what I call a mentality of caste and continuation of a system put in
place during the colonial era. I show how an architecture and geography
of injustice plagues the nation. Both in the way how university world has
been fashioned and especially in the case of disciplines and conceptual-
ization of knowledge, Indian higher education has remained nearly fro-
zen at 1947. I argue, in order to create a robust higher education world,
India has to unshackle itself from the mentality of caste and archaic con-
ceptualizations of disciplines. Though I see the flaws of colonial struc-
tures, I argue we need to move out of the binary of colonial/national.
Educational freedom which leads to a new ordering of disciplines and
of higher education holds the key to a just, equitable, dynamic, and
6  S. Roy Chowdhury

sustainable growth in India. A complete conceptual overhaul of Indian


higher education alone can lead to a developed India.
The book has been a long time in the making. My interest in poli-
tics started at our family dinner table in discussion with my father who
filled a little boy with anecdotes from Indian politics. From that early
start, I have learnt politics, history, economics, policy, philosophy, educa-
tion, environment, values, and contested meanings from a great many
friends and teachers in different locations in India and abroad. Among
the many who have shaped my understanding and stimulated my mind
are Basab Bhattacharya, Ajit Chattopadhyay, Swami Girijananda, and
Swami Asaktananda in Narendrapur; Subhas Chakraborty, Rajat Kanta
Ray, Shirin Masood, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, and Hari Vasudevan in
Presidency College; Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Majid Siddiqui,
Indivar Kamtekar, Shirin Ratnagar, and Aditya Mukherjee in JNU;
Amitabha Choudhury, Gaston Roberge, Ranabir Samaddar, Santanu
Chakraborty, Biplab Chakraborty, Saswata Ghosh, and Suvojit Bagchi
in Calcutta; Muhammad Yunus, Abdullah Abu Sayeed, Abul Momen,
and Mahmud Hasan in Dhaka; DD Nampoothiri and Vinod Krishnan in
Kerala; Amy Kazmin, James Lamont, Daniel Lak, Tarun Bose, and Rajib
Ray in Delhi; Mohan Kanda in Hyderabad, Yehuda Elkana and Pamela
Kilpadi in Budapest; Zmago Smitek, Iztok Osojnik, and Evald Flisar in
Slovenia; John Brennan, Yann Lebeau, and Anita Nassar in London;
Kian Tajbakhsh in New York; Timothy Ryback in Paris; Ashis Nandy
through his books and in lively discussions, Saleem Badat in South
Africa; Anna Lindberg and Staffan Lindberg in Sweden; Anne Vihakara
in Finland; and Jacob Dreyer and Rex Harrower in free-wheeling dis-
cussions in different locations. I did my Ph.D. with Rumesh Chander of
the Education Department of Delhi University, without his kindness and
generosity I would have been a doctoral drop-out. My father did not live
to see this book, nor did my wife Sujatha. My son Chandril, apart from
dearly loving his little sister Ananya, has become passionately involved in
the practice of education. I hope they and their generation will engage
with some of the ideas and ideals that this book throws up.
CHAPTER 2

Brahmin Language, Hindu


Growth—Politics and Power of English
Language in India

Abstract  The use of English in India’s everyday lives varies widely.


The head of a large business corporation may use a language other than
English only when she speaks to her cook or the driver of her car. At
the other extreme, a school teacher of science at a Hindi-medium school
in a town in the state of Madhya Pradesh may use English only when
she has to deal with a physics syllabus that is written in English or if
she wants to read education policy documents emanating from govern-
ment sources or think-tanks in New Delhi. There are a 100 different
gradations of the use and power of English in Indian lives within these
two ends of the pendulum. Has India always lived with English, have
Indians lived with another such language of power other than English,
how long have Indians lived with English, and what has English done
to Indians, to their minds, to their education, to their culture, to their
economic and social development, to their pursuit of knowledge of sci-
ences and humanities, and to India as a civilization? In this chapter, I
try to see the contested growth, complexity, and impact of English edu-
cation in India from India’s contact with European Christian mission-
aries, during the period of colonial rule and in post-1947 independent
India. I ask, has English done India good, has it been bad for Indians,
can India live without English, and if India cannot live without English,
how exactly should India live with English? This chapter is divided into
three main parts. The first part “India’s British/European Encounter
and Indian Higher Education” looks at the development of English and
development of the ideas of “development” in India between 1700,

© The Author(s) 2017 7


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5_2
8  S. Roy Chowdhury

when the initial Europe–India encounters began, and 1947, the year of
India’s independence from British rule. The second “Independence and
After—Language, Education, and Development” sees how higher edu-
cation policymaking in independent India has created and nurtured the
power of English as a Brahminical language and what it has meant for
the nature of India’s economic and educational development. The third
part, “Concluding or Continuing the Debate,” explores possible alterna-
tives in India’s language policy and what that can mean for alternatives
in India’s politico-economic and edu-cultural spheres of development. A
postscript offers policy-relevant actionable suggestions in the area of lan-
guage and development.

Keywords  English education · European knowledge


Brahminical power of English · Underdevelopment of Indian society
Language and development · Empowerment of Indian languages

Indians live with English, Indians who live in India’s big, medium, and
small cities and in villages, Indians who have been educated in schools
where medium of instruction is either one of the Indian languages or
in English-medium schools, Indians who are employed as doctors, tech-
nocrats, lawyers, bankers, school and university teachers, clerks, bureau-
crats, journalists, businesswomen, and politicians. The use of English in
India’s everyday lives varies widely. The head of a large business corpo-
ration may use a language other than English only when she speaks to
her cook or the driver of her car. At the other extreme, a school teacher
of science at a Hindi-medium school in a town in the state of Madhya
Pradesh may use English only when she has to deal with a physics syl-
labus that is written in English or if she wants to read education policy
documents emanating from government sources or think-tanks in New
Delhi. On one end of the pendulum is the science teacher in whose life
English is nearly absent apart from the source of power that it wields,
and on the other end is the CEO in whose life Indian languages other
than English are nearly absent, except when they are to be used with ser-
vice providers who do not have any facility of the English language what-
soever.
Has India always lived with English, have Indians lived with another
such language of power other than English, how long have Indians lived
with English, and what has English done to Indians, to their minds, to
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  9

their education, to their culture, to their economic and social develop-


ment, to their pursuit of knowledge of sciences and humanities, and
to India as a civilization? I map the contested growth, complexity, and
impact of English education in colonial and post-colonial India.

India’s British/European Encounter and Indian Higher


Education, 1700–1947
The first saplings of English education in India were planted by Christian
missionaries from Denmark. Missionaries from Denmark, Scotland,
England, and America started work in eastern and southern India in the
early decades of eighteenth century. Their work was centered, among
other places, in Madras, Vishakhapatnam, Calcutta, Dhaka, and Bombay.
As early as 1716, Danish missionaries started an institution for the train-
ing of teachers and, in the next year, two charity schools in Madras. They
taught English and principles of Christianity.1 The missionaries also per-
suaded local rulers to open English schools in Tanjore, Ramnad, and
Sivaganga.

Early Empire Builders Admired Oriental Knowledge


and Languages

The year 1757 marks the beginning of the rule of East India Company,
first in Bengal and then gradually it spread to other parts of India. In the
first decades of the Company’s reign, the men at the top were convinced
that the “knowledge of the natives of India” in Persian, Arabic, and
Sanskrit were important repositories of knowledge, and hence, Indians
should be educated in their own languages including their vernaculars.2
Moreover, they thought and accordingly directed policy that the English
men working for the East India Company should learn Persian and one
Indian vernacular language.
In this period, Warren Hastings, the Governor General, had suggested
the establishment of a professorship of Persian at Oxford. Hastings estab-
lished the Calcutta madrasa, where Muslim students were taught, so that
they could later qualify to hold lucrative offices. The course of study fol-
lowed the traditional pattern embracing theology, logic, rhetoric, gram-
mar, law, natural philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic.
Around the same time, John Owen, Chaplain to the Bengal Presidency,
10  S. Roy Chowdhury

requested the Government to establish schools for the teaching of


English “to the natives of these provinces.”
In 1791, the practice was started of giving writers a monthly allow-
ance for employing a Munshi to teach Persian or an Indian vernacular
and promotion depended on knowledge of such a language. In 1794, a
rule came into force that starting 1796, no company’s servant would be
eligible for the office of a Collector unless he showed proficiency in an
Indian language.
Wellesley, Governor General for a period starting 1798, wanted
to found a college at Fort William,2 the military–administrative–eco-
nomic center of the East India Company, comparable to Oxford and
Cambridge. This was to be a college for the young British civil serv-
ant, who had signed up to serve in the administration of British India.
Besides Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit, six Indian vernaculars were to be
taught—Hindustani, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, and Kannada.
Muslim and Hindu Laws should be studied as well as English Law, juris-
prudence, and the laws enacted by the Governor-General-in-Council.
Political economy, world geography, and mathematics were to be
offered. The modern languages of Europe as well as Latin, Greek, and
the English classics would be provided for. There would be provision for
courses in ancient and modern European history and also in the history
and antiquities of Hindustan and the Deccan. The grand plan for Fort
William College that Wellesley had did not get approval from London.
A set of political and economic factors went against Wellesley’s vision in
higher education. The Fort William College did continue in a pygmy
version of Wellesley’s vision till 1854.
In debates in British Parliament, the idea of imparting “useful knowl-
edge” to the inhabitants of British India was put forth. But this idea lost
out at that time to those who thought the Hindus “had as good a sys-
tem of faith and morals as most people.” The dominant British opinion
was of the view that it will be unwise to think of any other education
than what people in India already had a tradition of. There was also the
thought that Britain had lost America because of its “folly” of allowing
the establishment of schools and colleges, and the same “folly” should
not be repeated in India.
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  11

English, European Sciences, and Useful Knowledge


In early 1800s, Charles Grant, a director of the East India Company,
advocated the setting up of English schools which, he argued

will open to them a world of new ideas … The Hindus would in time,
become teachers of English themselves; and the employment of our lan-
guage in public business, for which every political reason remains in full
force, would, in the course of another generation, make it very general
throughout the country. (UEC 1950: 8)

Two successive Governor Generals, Lord Minto and Lord Moira, talked
about the need for dissemination of literature and Western sciences
among Indians. The well-to-do and educated Indians were also keen to
spread European knowledge. In 1817, the Hindu College was created in
Calcutta, primarily by the efforts of Bengalis/Indians. School book soci-
eties and similar such organizations were being formed by educated and
well-to-do Indians in, among other places, Calcutta and Bombay, and
the demand for books in English was growing. In 1823, Mountstuart
Elphinstone, the governor of Bombay Presidency, urged in a minute, the
establishment of schools for teaching English and the European sciences.
From an analysis of the trends and debates in the East India
Company, the British Parliament, and the Christian missionaries, three
separate strands emerge in educational thinking,3 namely:

1. India and Indians have knowledge of and in Sanskrit, Persian, and


Arabic. That knowledge is of high quality and in no way less than
what other cultures/civilizations possess. So, it is fair to continue
education and patronize educational systems in such a way that
educational development is in these languages and in the knowl-
edge universe of these languages.
2. Introducing the teaching and learning of English is important for
the dissemination of Bible and other Christian texts. English will
also help create in the “natives” of India better citizen-subjects.
3. English is also the bearer of the European “modern” sciences, and
an introduction of English will help the dissemination of “useful”
knowledge to Indians.
12  S. Roy Chowdhury

Sons and Daughters of Macaulay


William Babington Macaulay is a much-maligned man. One of his sen-
tences from his minute of 1835 delivered in the British Parliament has
been cited in endless histories and social analytical texts of modern and
contemporary India.4 He had asserted:

who could deny that a single shelf of a good European Library was worth
the whole native literature of India and Arabia.

While the above statement has earned him wrath and scorn of edu-
cated Indians, another of his statement has defined the nature of India’s
modernity and, in a complex inter-relationship, its education. He had
said, the aim of English education was to form

a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in


opinions, in morals and in intellect.

It is important to note that even though Macaulay is famous for these


words, he conceived an empowerment of Indians wherein Indians may
take over the reign of India and British rule could end. The empire of his
vision was one of

pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism: that empire is the imperishable


empire of arts and morals, our literature and laws. (UEC 1950: 10)

Taking a cue from Macaulay, Lord Bentinck, then the Governor General,
ruled:

the great object of the British Government in India was henceforth to


be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives
of India; and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education
would be best employed on English education alone. (UEC 1950: 11)

This decision of Bentinck was in no less measure influenced by economic


exigencies. In 1833, the Charter Act was passed, and at that time, the
East India Company was facing a financial crisis. The Governor General
wanted to reduce expenditure. One of the major heads of expenditure
was the big salaries of English officers. It made eminent sense to add
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  13

more Indians to the administration at lesser pay. With Macaulay’s min-


ute and Lord Bentinck’s decision, English and the charm of Anglophone
civilization came to stay. India had started to be ruled by the British East
India Company after 1757. From 1835, it started to be ruled by the sons
and much later by daughters of Macaulay.
Prior to British rule in India, there were long stretches of time when
Indian civilization lived with one or the other elite language of power.
For centuries, Sanskrit was the language of power/knowledge. Texts
were composed in Sanskrit, which remained the preserve of Brahmins,
the highest caste of Indians. Brahmins wore a sacred thread to demar-
cate special status and that they knew Sanskrit. Knowledge of Sanskrit
ensured Brahmins’ domination of majority of the population while
a small ruling class comprising Kshatriyas (the warrior caste) and the
Brahmins remained the principal axis of power. During the rule of the
Turko-Afghan Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, Persian became the
elite language of power. With Macaulay’s advocacy and Bentinck’s deci-
sion, English became the new Brahminical thread of status and power
in a new India. It created a new power elite, and English became the
central tool of acquiring, retaining, and asserting power for this new
Anglophone Brahminical elite.

Conflict and Growth from 1835 to 1947


The 1835 ruling in favor of English led to the popularity of English edu-
cation all across India. New colleges and schools were set up, quite often
under the direct involvement/patronage of wealthy Indians. In 1844,
Lord Hardinge declared that English-educated Indians will get prior-
ity in all government appointments. That policy continued in matters of
governance and rule of power till 1947, the year of India’s independ-
ence. This policy is visible in the higher echelons of Indian government
till today and is an unwritten code in big Indian business corporations
and in many small and medium companies too.
But the reach of English education and the appeal of Western civi-
lization did not become universal among Indians. In 1857, a rebellion
popularly known as the Sepoy Mutiny broke out. Indian soldiers of the
British Indian Army rose up in revolt and a number of Indian rulers
joined them and they attempted an overthrow of British rule. The rebel-
lion failed. However, what 1857 shows is that all sections of the Indian
population were not great votaries of the English/Western science
14  S. Roy Chowdhury

project of Macaulay, Bentinck, or of Indians like Rammohun Roy who


advocated wholesale adoption of English education and civilization.
Areas such as Bengal or Bombay, where British rule created a new class
of Indians who could profit from the reign, favored the establishment
and expansion of English and Western science. At the same time, there
were large parts where people did not accept the supremacy of British/
Western economic, military, and cultural power.
Medical, legal, and technological education grew in the nineteenth
century—the spread was slow and geographically uneven across India.
However, it was a gradual but sure way of extending the hold of English
language and European knowledge, and hence British power to all
aspects of society and government in India. Between 1818 and 1860,
institutions for dissemination of medical learning started in Calcutta,
Madras, and Bombay, and engineering education started in Bengal,
Bombay, Madras, and United Provinces. In the field of legal education,
the teaching of law in this period gave importance to Muslim and Hindu
Laws and was practiced in institutions such as the Calcutta madrasa and
Banaras Sanskrit College. While the practice and belief in Western tech-
nology and medicine have been near total in what is today’s middle-class
India, law still remains a much-contested terrain. This throws up along
with language a challenge to wholesale Westernization.
The policy slant of Macaulay–Bentinck was entirely for English.
Subsequent policy documents have a more nuanced approach. The edu-
cational dispatch of Sir Charles Wood to the Court of Directors of the
Company in 1854, for example, argued that study of Indian languages
should be encouraged and English should be taught where there was a
demand for it. It goes farther to say that both English and Indian lan-
guages should be regarded as the medium for diffusion of European
knowledge. The Wood’s Dispatch is particularly in favor of using Indian
languages for the expansion of mass education.
In spite of such strands of thought, the hegemonic hold of English as
well as the awe of European science and civilization grew among affluent
and educated Indians, and so did the number of educational institutions
imparting English education, especially in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.5 In the process, it created a new class of educated
middle-class Indians. However, this class was principally formed by the
upper castes of traditional Indian society. So, while taking advantage of
the new Brahminical thread, namely, English, the old Brahminical forces
retained their hegemony over Indian society. In the field of language
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  15

alongside English, languages like Hindi or Urdu developed. Smaller lan-


guages like Magahi, Maithili, and Bhojpuri, to name some languages of
north India, were marginalized.6 In terms of caste/class hegemony as
well as in domination of a few languages over many, the growth of edu-
cation and pattern of social change in the second half of nineteenth cen-
tury and the first half of twentieth-century India retained the domination
of small groups over the vast majority of the population.7 English did not
liberate India but it only supplanted an earlier elite/power marker of lan-
guage/knowledge/power. It helped reinforce the domination of upper-
caste/class Indians on Indian politics, economy, education, and society.
While the colonial government and the Indian power elite were
strongly in favor of English and Western science, what did Indian scien-
tists have to say about the adoption of English in Indian life and educa-
tion? Early Indian scientists trained in Western science, as Deepak Kumar
(Kumar 1998) tells us, had strong ideas about language, education, and
national development.8 S.C. Chuckerbutty (1824–1874), professor of
clinical medicine at Calcutta Medical College between 1854 and 1870,
said in 1855:

Education, in its intellectual sense, means the drawing out, disciplining,


strengthening, and refining, the power of the understanding; and no lan-
guage is more calculated for this work in the present state of our country
than English … It has made us all independent thinkers and some of us
independent actors.

In contrast, P.C. Ray, a chemist who founded Bengal Chemicals, one of


the early industrial enterprises in eastern India, addressed the convoca-
tion in Jamia Milia Islamia in 1923:

Let us not give merely a purely theoretic and literary education that has
unfitted us for the affairs of the world, and made us service hunters, thus
inviting to our schools the apellation of gholam-khanas (storehouse of
servants). (Kumar 1998)

Ray, unlike Chuckerbutty, believed science should be taught through


Bengali and other Indian languages. The opinion of Indians was clearly
divided in their attitude toward the use of English language.
The outline of educational policy environment that I have sketched
so far shows two trends in terms of attitude toward the English language
16  S. Roy Chowdhury

and Western knowledge. One is the wholesale adoption of English lan-


guage and Western knowledge. Important exponents of this line of
thought are Macaulay and Bentinck among the British and Rammohun
Roy, Syed Ahmed Khan, and scientists like S.C. Chuckerbutty among the
Indians. The second policy strand is that Western knowledge and edu-
cation are important but they should be diffused in India through the
medium of Indian languages, and in this vision, two twin elements are
embedded. One is that one’s own language is a source of one’s legit-
imate pride, and the other is that an individual comprehends complex
ideas better in one’s own language rather than in a foreign tongue. The
third strand of educational policy and developmental vision linked to it
is that of men like Gandhi. This strand of thinking is heavily disposed
against Western scientific and industrial modernity and wants India to
find its unique path of development where the self-sufficient Indian vil-
lage communities can be the center of development.
Of these three strands, the wholesale epistemic and educational adop-
tion of English and Western knowledge system dominated the minds of
dominant Indian groups. The use of Indian languages did spread in the
primary and secondary levels of education but university-level education
remained exclusive preserve of English and the English-educated, who,
true to Macaulay’s wish, bought his vision and tried hard to become “a
class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opin-
ions, in morals and in intellect.” What Macaulay did not explicitly articu-
late and may not have envisaged is that this “class of persons” became
the new English touting Brahmins of a new India. The English fixa-
tion of the upper castes/classes was reinforced by the fact that English
opened economic doors. From the school book societies of early 1800s
in Calcutta and in Bombay to the growth of English-centric colleges and
universities in late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the educational
and cultural power of English was always buttressed by its economic and
political power.
This new India, however, remained nearly the same as the old India of
Brahminical/upper-caste domination where a tiny minority of 10–15% of
the population rules over the vast majority of nearly 85% of the laboring
population. The social and political function of oppression and exploi-
tation that was once effectively performed by Sanskrit and knowledge
texts in Sanskrit and in a lesser way by Persian in a certain period was
now taken over by English and Western knowledge as it came to Indians
through the medium of English. The visible and not so visible hold of
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  17

the Brahminical thread of English on the Indian body politic did not
seem to loosen even when the scepter, as Macaulay predicted, had passed
from British to Indian hands.

Independence and After—Language, Education,


and Development, 1947-2017

In a response to Rabindranath Tagore that appears at the beginning of


this book, Gandhi had expressed his firm belief regarding the damage
caused by English language to Indian civilization. Tagore himself though
critical about the roles of English in Indian society had argued that in
spite of problematic influences, English language and Western civiliza-
tion had done India substantial good. The responses to use of English
and roles that English language/civilization played in Indian society have
oscillated between two ends of a pendulum, both among the English
colonial policymakers/administrators and Indian thought leaders. As
Indians fashioned their response to British colonial rule, they tried to
either imbibe English or oppose the use of English. Those like Gandhi,
who were opposed to the use of English in the civic-cultural life of India,
wanted to bring Indian languages to the center of India’s educational
experience. But even Tagore with whom Gandhi differed was in favor of
education through the medium of mother tongue as opposed to educa-
tion through the medium of English.
What then was the intrinsic difference between the two thought
leaders? It was the way they viewed the role of the colonizing English
civilization on India and Indian minds. Both saw the ills of the influ-
ence of English language and civilization: Tagore was willing to see the
positive aspects along with the negative ones, and Gandhi could not
see almost anything positive in the influence. With such contrasting
worldviews/opinions among India’s thought leaders, what role did
Indian educational thinkers assign to English in the post-independence
period? What roles did they conceive for Indian languages apart from
English, and how has the relationship between English and Indian
languages developed since 1947, particularly in the realm of higher
­education?
18  S. Roy Chowdhury

Policy Thinking in Higher Education After 1947


I have surveyed six major higher education policy documents that were
initiated by India’s federal government after 1947. The documents bear
the imprint of policy thinking in New Delhi and other major urban
power centers of independent India; they result from thought cultures of
India’s English-educated elite who steer India’s multi-layered and com-
plex educational, business, and politico-governmental processes. The
policy documents that I have analyzed are the reports/recommendations
of:

1. University Education Commission (UEC), 1948–1949, chaired by


S. Radhakrishnan.
2. Education Commission (EC), 1964–1966, chaired by D.S.
Kothari.
3. National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986/1992, initiated by
prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and finalized by prime minister P.V.
Narasimha Rao.
4. Policy Framework for Reforms in Education (PFRE), 2000,
Mukesh Ambani and Kumar Mangalam Birla as conveners.
5. National Knowledge Commission (NKC), 2006–2009, chaired by
Sam Pitroda.
6. Committee to Advise on the Renovation and Rejuvenation of
Higher Education (CARHE), 2008–2009, chaired by Yashpal.

As with Gandhi and Tagore, the thinking in the policy documents also
belongs to various points of the pendulum. No document though is
anywhere close to Gandhi’s views on English education. Even the UEC
coming soon after India’s independence struggle led by Gandhi opted
for a moderate position vis-à-vis the use of English. It says

the study of the language and the literature of our mother tongue should
occupy the first place in general education. Language incarnates the genius
of people which has fashioned it. Every word, every phrase conveys some
idea of men and women as they ploughed their fields, tended their homes,
built their towns or sailed their ships. We get into the spirit of our people
by acquiring control over their language.
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  19

UEC looks at Sanskrit, English, and Hindi and, finally, opts for Hindi as
the federal language and at the same time emphasizes that Hindi should
not claim superiority over regional languages. It urges that educated citi-
zens of India be bilingual and as far as possible, multi-lingual. However,
it asserts

English will have to continue as the medium of federal business till the
provinces are ready for the change and the provincial educational institu-
tions have spread the federal language adequately.

It stresses that English is a gateway to the world of knowledge and goes


on to add

Unable to have access to this knowledge, our standards of scholarship


would fast deteriorate and our participation in the world movements of
thought will become negligible … in the universities no student should
be allowed to take a degree who does not acquire the ability to read
with facility and understanding works of English authors. We must take
into account our Yugadharma. (trans. Yuga = period, dharma = religion,
implies the law of the time)

Clearly, a politics of assertion of English was played out in the earliest


higher education policy document of independent India. While UEC
accepts the importance of mother tongue, by asserting that without
knowledge of English, the standards of scholarship would fast deterio-
rate and India’s participation in the world movements of thought will
become negligible; it privileges English. Unwittingly, it also privileges
the English-knowing groups of India. Ironically, though India has con-
tinued to privilege English in its higher education structures, one can-
not say that standards of scholarship have not deteriorated or that India
has been able to participate in full measure in the world movements of
thought. By asserting “no student should be allowed to take a degree who
does not acquire the ability to read with facility and understanding works of
English authors,” the Commission by one stroke of irresponsible thought
crippled the educational futures of millions of Indian young women and
men. What this kind of thought structure has resulted is that millions
of students go through university education in India, they parrot some
words, phrases, and sentences of English, and at the end of their educa-
tion, they get a degree—which may or may not ensure them a foothold
20  S. Roy Chowdhury

in the job market—and as an end result, they neither have any facility
over English nor a mastery of their own mother tongue or an Indian lan-
guage or for that matter any area of human knowledge.
A decade and a half after UEC, EC (1964–1966) takes stock of the
entire Indian education system under the chairmanship of D.S. Kothari
and puts forward a comprehensive report and recommendations. While
the humanistic bent of Radhakrishnan takes a backseat in EC, the privi-
leging of English and other “international” languages continues, and
any clear thrust toward empowerment of Indian languages is absent. It
says that a “world language” in addition to English should be taught
at university level, and the thrust is for Russian, so much so that the
Commission says, without the knowledge of Russian, Ph.D. should not
be awarded. Though policymakers looked up to the Soviet model, they
unfortunately did not study it closely enough to see that in the Soviet
Union, Russian and all the major languages of the USSR were devel-
oped greatly and they were the medium of higher education. If Indian
policymakers were to understand the developmental success of the then
Soviet Union in a more acute manner, then they would have formulated
policies to deepen knowledge worlds in the Indian languages rather than
think of Russian or English as “world languages.”
The silver lining in the EC’s report, so far as Indian languages and
development are concerned, is that it advocates the translation of works
of science and technology from Western languages into major lan-
guages of India. The problem, however, is once Russian or English or
other “world languages” are privileged by saying that Ph.D. cannot be
granted without the knowledge of a particular language, then Indian
languages are disempowered to the extent that policy turns them into
lame institutions.
In NPE (1986/1992),9 even though there are some signs of democ-
ratization in the form of open universities, the issue of language is over-
looked. Policymakers advocate distance and open learning through open
universities but they fail to see that unless information and knowledge
are made available in Indian languages and in mother tongues of people,
access to education will be fraught with serious difficulties, and learning
outcomes will be mediocre.
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  21

Language, Education, and Development in Twenty-First


Century
PFRE (2000) touches on certain significant themes. The authors draw
on the experience of South-East Asian countries and try to establish a
correlation between greater input in education and the relatively new-
found economic prosperity of those nations. The report looks at the con-
cept of human capital and says, “…human capital levels act as a driver
of technological innovation. Second, human capital stocks determine the
speed of absorption of technology.” When discussing education develop-
ment in other select countries, the authors choose Sweden, South Korea,
Singapore, Thailand, and China, and from experiences of these countries,
they draw lessons and urge

Creative and independent thinking must be emphasized across the educa-


tion system in order to promote a learning society.

What is the relation between technology and language? How does edu-
cation in one’s mother tongue or natural language affect development/
absorption of new technology? This critically important theme escapes
the attention of the authors.
PFRE rightly points out the influence of input in education on the
economic prosperity of South-East Asian nations but overlooks the role
of culturally sensitive education policy. In most countries of South-East
and East Asia, the greatest proportion of education is imparted in the
mother tongue. The bearing of language policy on economic/develop-
mental outcomes can be seen in India too. Among young Indians work-
ing in the software industry, a large number have not had the privilege
of an English-medium education during their school years. They would
have usually had difficulty in finding a middle or top management job at
an FMCG company but have not faced that cultural hurdle in getting a
job in a software firm.
Talking about the introduction of humanistic disciplines in premier
technology and management institutes, CARHE (2008–2009) says

We can then look forward to the day when IITs and IIMs would be pro-
ducing scholars in literature, linguistics and politics along with engineer-
ing and management wizards who would have substantial motivation for
engagement with the local community, and the opportunity to use and
22  S. Roy Chowdhury

enhance learning by solving real-life problems in their immediate environ-


ment.

The authors do not ask, in which language shall technocrats and socio-
crats interact with the local community. Won’t they require to commu-
nicate in Tamil, Telugu or Maithili, or Manipuri to understand the lives
and cultures—technological and humanistic of the communities? Won’t
there be a chasm between the Anglophone higher education they have
received and revered and the worlds where the natural language is any-
thing but English.
The language issue plays a key role when we look at the stigmatiza-
tion of vocational education. CARHE says that majority of students who
go to vocational institutions are pass outs of uninspiring schools. What
exactly are uninspiring schools? These are government schools in deso-
late villages, in urban slums, or in lower-middle-class neighborhoods in
the cities and towns of India—an extremely large proportion of these
schools teach, not in English but in a language which I call the natu-
ral language of the region.10 A great irony of India is that possibly not
even 1% of India’s top government servants send their children to gov-
ernment-run schools. Stigmatization is rooted in the use of the medium
of instruction and the society’s perception about Indian languages and
English. The primacy given to English leads to a disproportionate power
of English and the English-knowing classes of India. The attitude stems
from the mentality of Brahminism rooted in Indian minds. Hence be it
the introduction of humanistic disciplines and nurturing of socially rel-
evant education in IITs and IIMs or be it the de-stigmatization of voca-
tional education, the answer to a variety of problems plaguing Indian
higher education lies in the language question.
On the issue of language, NKC (2006–2009) says

An understanding and command over the English language is a most


important determinant of access to higher education, employment pos-
sibilities and social opportunities. School-leavers who are not adequately
trained in English as a language are always at a handicap in the world of
higher education. More often than not, teaching is in English. Even if it
is not, in most subjects, books and journals are available only in English.
And those who do not know English well enough find it exceedingly dif-
ficult to compete for a place in our premier educational institutions. This
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  23

disadvantage is accentuated further in the world of work, not only in pro-


fessional occupations but also in white-collar occupations overall.

Pointing to this reality NKC says

There is an irony in the situation. English has been part of our education
system for more than a century. Yet English is beyond the reach of most
of our young people, which makes for highly unequal access. Indeed, even
now, no more than one per cent (italics mine) of our people use it as a sec-
ond language, let alone a first language.

The strategy of introducing English at the very early stages of education


and also giving a thrust to translation may prove to be a sound policy for
furthering growth, quality, and research in the higher education sector.
The report says

Translation activities should be seen in tandem with the plan to increase


access to English language training across the population, and the promo-
tion of English in school education at the primary level. Both are aspects
of the goal of increasing access to knowledge.

Laying emphasis on translation, it says

Language should not act as a barrier in science teaching. To bring such


students to level playing ground, apart from English language lessons,
there is a need to arrange speedy and widespread dissemination of basic
science education materials in local languages. These courses should be
designed to facilitate understanding of fundamental concepts in the local
languages and also provide a bridge towards subsequent studies in the
English language. Resources should be provided to translate the best sci-
ence books in local languages. Internet dissemination of these translated
books should be carried out.

Clearly, NKC consistently advocated a progressive democratic policy in


relation to language. That this becomes all the more important in science
teaching goes without saying. It discusses the important theme of the
special needs of tribal children, where it says

Early childhood education is very important as the brain develops the fast-
est up till six years of age. In this context, special teaching aids need to
24  S. Roy Chowdhury

be developed for tribal children as they are not exposed to modern tech-
nology like rest of the children. Motivation for learning has to be created
by providing exposure to scientific developments. Tribal schools should
be equipped with teachers who are trained in pedagogical methods suited
to special needs of tribal kids. They should be well versed in local tribal
dialect. Science subjects should be taught in local language till mid-school
level. However, the teacher should explain fundamental concepts in tribal
dialect to ensure sound conceptual understanding. Tribal dialect can be
used for evaluation purposes too at lower levels. Nutritional requirements
of tribal children should be taken care of.

The opportunity for tribal kids to learn sciences in their own tongues
till middle school level will have a positive impact on their educational
achievements.
NKC has unequivocally put thrust on education through mother
tongue and at all levels—starting with the primary school and going up
to higher education, as also of providing education to tribal populations
in their own languages. And it has laid stress on the urgent need of trans-
lations of scientific and technological literature including textbooks to be
made available in Indian languages.
Probably, the most important theme that NKC touched upon is the
issue of absorption and fluent use of English in Indian society. It says and
I reiterate:

Indeed, even now, no more than one per cent (italics mine) of our people
use it as a second language, let alone a first language.

In my view, this is a key to the understanding of the underdevelopment


of Indian society. When we are talking of vocational education, national
skills mission, and development of skills, more students in science and
maths, focus on research-oriented learning, bridging the needs of soci-
ety with higher education, making education more socially relevant,
and making learning–teaching experience a joy for the teacher and the
learner—in all of this and in the entire gamut of issues that concern
education and development, the key to underdevelopment and the key
to the future possibility of meaningful equitable and excellence-centric
development lie in the domain of language. As long as Indians are starry-
eyed about English, a small number (1–5%) of Indians will use the tool
of English to aggrandize themselves and continue an unethical rule of
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  25

cultural–economic power over the vast majority of Indians. Only with


widespread adoption of Indian languages in education systems, empow-
erment of Indian languages through availability of world-class transla-
tions of world knowledge and the marriage of developed grasp of one’s
own language and foreign languages such as English (and not English
alone) with scientific rigor can lead to a developed educational system,
a dynamic yet sustainable economy, and a peaceful yet vibrant society in
India.

Concluding or Continuing the Debate


Language and education are enmeshed intimately. The geo-cultural
mosaic of India is a treasure house of languages. India’s people spoke in
a variety of languages and educated their young through the millennia.
During centralized regimes, the trend was toward the use of a language
of power. Persian was the court language and hence the language of the
elite in the Mughal era. In the British colonial period, English became
the language of government and of the new elite. The colonial period is
witness to battle of ideas over language policy. While initial British policy
favored continuity of the study of traditional Indian languages such as
Persian and Sanskrit and the knowledge worlds of those languages, later,
from 1835 onward, with the policy of Macaulay and Bentinck, English
became the favored language. Later, the importance of education in ver-
nacular languages, along with English, was stressed, both by colonial
policy documents such as the educational dispatch of Sir Charles Wood
in 1855 as well as by Indian nationalist leaders and educationists in the
late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In the post-1947 policy documents, the thinking on language policy
has multiple strands, and there is a lack of a clear policy statement on
language. The documents stress generally that in primary and secondary
education, the child’s mother tongue or the language of the particular
region should be the medium of instruction. There is a near unanimity
that English should be taught but it is usually never stressed that English
should be the medium of instruction. However, for the post-secondary,
i.e., higher education levels, it is an unsaid unanimity that English should
be the preferred medium of instruction. EC (1964–1966) stresses the
need of learning additional world languages like Russian at the Masters
and Ph.D. level, but that is more an exception reflecting the impact of
Cold War politics rather than a general trend.
26  S. Roy Chowdhury

In the context outlined above, two principal questions arise. Policy


thinkers have known that private English-medium schools exist in
the big and medium cities of India, for the children of middle classes
and the rich. Why do not India’s policy thinkers discuss this hiatus
between private schools and government ones? Second, how can one
expect a smooth switch for millions of young minds from a Bengali-
/Malayalam-/Hindi-medium education to an English-medium one
at the post-secondary/higher education level? Most policy documents
have not explored in detail the reality of English being unable to pen-
etrate into 90% of the Indian population. For the large mass of indi-
viduals who have a “basic” knowledge of English, English is not their
language. Reports like the NKC give a pointer to the extremely limited
use of English in India. The role of Indian languages other than English
in higher education is not made clear, and the relationship between
development of India’s languages and the nation’s research capacity,
innovation and economic development, is not discussed. Certain pol-
icy documents talk about a thrust toward translation and while that is
welcome, a roadmap outlining translation’s role in creating a research
environment in languages other than English is not charted. The pos-
sibility of Indian languages becoming homes of scientific and social
scientific universes is not even considered. In an absence of a specific
roadmap of development of Indian languages and higher education in
Indian languages to levels comparable in English, German, or Japanese,
India’s education policymakers are content to keep its languages, at least
the state of social scientific and scientific research and education in these
languages, at pigmy levels. Indians who know English and can express
their innovative ideas in English have been less than 10% of the educated
population in the last 200 years. It will require a miracle whereby the
“trickle-down” effect of English learning and knowledge will change this
situation in the next 200 years. With Indian languages at pigmy levels,
no wonder that India’s scientific and social scientific research will remain
at pigmy levels too.
In an essay11 on the state of languages in the intellectual communi-
ties of India, Ramachandra Guha (2009) has discussed the decline of
bilingual intellectuals, people who were or are equally at intellectual
home in English and their mother tongue or one of India’s numerous
languages. This world of bilingualism and multiculturalism was a result
of the Europe–India interface; it never became a large proportion of the
population, but it had substantial adherents. As Guha rightly points out,
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  27

with their differences over the role of English notwithstanding, Tagore


and Gandhi were the greatest names among India’s bilingual intellectu-
als. Yet, this intellectual–cultural species born and nurtured in the crea-
tive tension of the colonizer and the colonized is dying a slow death.
Independent India’s education, administration, business, and culture
policies in respect to language have not encouraged bilingualism or
intellectual/academic linguistic pluralism. The largely unitary state has
spawned its centralized and centralizing English-believing elite, thereby
creating an ever widening gulf of academic and cultural power between
the English-metropolitan and the Indian-language moffusil.
The policy choice before India today as it was at the time of inde-
pendence is whether the power stream of Indians continue pampering
English and those who know English and make do with the country’s
vast non-English world only to the extent that democracy and majori-
tarian politics forces upon this power stream, or does India take spe-
cific measures to build broad-based deep intellectual homes in its main
languages. If India decides to follow the route followed so far since the
minute of Macaulay, India will continue to have a small elite that knows
English and large sections of population in a permanent state of inferior-
ity complex vis-à-vis English. It will also mean India remains a perma-
nent importer of new technologies. On the contrary, if it makes a break
with the policy past and decides to build scientific and intellectual homes
in each of India’s 20 main languages, then there could be a flowering of
research and innovation in these languages taking India’s total research
output to a substantially high level. The thrust of building intellectual
homes in the languages will also lead to a greater success in fields such as
social planning, thereby benefitting the working of panchayats, munici-
palities, and the social sector as a whole.
In recent years, one hears industry leaders moan the lack of an ade-
quate number of skilled workers such as plumbers and electricians.
The lack of availability of scientific and technological literature and the
overarching educational pattern of English dependence contribute
to the poor state of skills education in the country. On the one hand,
there is the Brahminical power of English, and on the other hand, the
Brahminical mindset of looking down upon labor. These two cou-
pled together to create a neglected and stigmatized environment for
an important sector of technical education that does not carry the elite
“IIT” (Indian Institute of Technology) tag. As a result, be it in core
strength of skilled manpower for engineering and manufacturing sectors,
28  S. Roy Chowdhury

or be it in the quality of service delivery by the medical establishment,


India languishes at the near bottom of world tables. The Brahminic use
of language power goes hand in hand with the Brahminical anti-labor
mindset, resulting in a severe handicap toward creating an industrial
economy and a progressive society with reasonable welfare for all. The
domination of the Brahmin language called English and the accompany-
ing stigmatization of labor and laboring people contribute to the polit-
ico-economic and edu-cultural architecture of Hindu growth.
A radical break in language policy at the higher education level can
usher in changes that will lead to a different India. This change where
Indian languages become the intellectual home of scientists and social
scientists will take decades if not a century. When it happens, the forces
of language democracy will most likely unleash a scientific revolution in
each language leading to a renaissance and scientific flowering in Indian
civilization. Falling short of such a revolution, India as a nation/civiliza-
tion will have to remain content with its roles as clerks, cyber-account-
ants, and call center operators. For that, of course, English can serve
India well.

Postscript: Brahmin Language, Dalit Politics


My thoughts on English, its power, and domination in independent
India have evoked mixed responses. After a lecture, listeners in the audi-
ence would ask/say:

• Were it not for English, could India remain a united republic?


• If you wanted to remove English, then Hindi would take over and
that would be disastrous.
• The only way to remove social/cultural differences in India is to
give Dalits and oppressed groups the advantage of English.

Let me look at the power of English once again and try and address
these themes. Robert D. King, who carefully examined and documented
how Nehru crafted an astute policy in the contested world of politics of
language in India, writes

If India had had the bad luck to have been led at its birth either by an
English-hater resolved to rid the land of the English language at all costs
or by a weakling not firm about the retention of English, then we should
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  29

have today an India isolated from much of what is good and useful in a
world where English has become the international language. Today’s India
would be an inward dwelling, neurotic backwater. More than likely we
should not be speaking of a single India at all, if English had been elimi-
nated, for Dravidian India would not have tolerated second-class linguistic
status …. (King 1997)

Gyanendra Pandey (2016) quotes Dalit activist and intellectual


Chanderbhan Prasad. Prasad believes:

There is something mysterious about English, … English produces the


symmetry between brain and the mind …. Tiny minority [of] English
nations are the greatest producers of modern knowledge.

If your child learns English as if he or she has inherited 100 acres of land.

Let me start with the Hindi/English theme. When I critique the use and
abuse of English in the realm of education, contemporary culture, or
higher education policy, I do not propose that English as a connecting
language for India be replaced by Hindi. I do not advocate that Hindi
engulfs the languages of south India or tramples the many languages of
tribal populations in India’s northeast and those in the heartland of cen-
tral India. We have witnessed how Pakistan broke up in 1971, and the
imperialism of Urdu on Bengali contributed to the birth of Bangladesh
in great measure. So, I am not suggesting Hindi/Urdu imperialism
replaces the empire of English. Let English continue as a link language
within the many peoples of India, let it also continue to be the principal
language for international communication.
But, and this is where I diverge from the dominant trend since 1947,
let English and English-knowing minority not have the power to trample
over the economic and cultural aspirations of the non-English-knowing
majority. If India regards English as vital, it must realize that the Indian
languages are even more vital. And India’s many languages are vital not
only for matters of heart, not only for the “soft” areas of emotion and
culture, but even more so for the “hard” areas of business and technol-
ogy and material and human development. There are some excellent
successes which can be seen as example of the cultural-business order
I advocate. The Telugu film industry regularly churns out films which
are invariably dubbed in Hindi and released in Hindi. The Telugu film
industry has grown enormously, and it has profited from the business of
30  S. Roy Chowdhury

dubbing its films in Hindi. This has happened outside the English gaze.
At the same time, Hindi did not destroy Telugu; on the contrary, Telugu
has profited from Hindi’s pan-India reach.
I mentioned the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. How has Bangladesh
fared compared to India or Pakistan, state-systems which live under
a monster called Anglopolis.12 Bangladesh is a society and state where
nearly 98% of its people work in and with Bengali, the natural tongue of
the land. Writing after two decades of India’s strong economic growth,
Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze (2011) tell us that in spite of high rate of
economic growth, India lags behind Bangladesh on all basic health indi-
cators and on a large number of primary and secondary education indica-
tors. Sen and Dreze do not bring in the language angle to this contrast.
I think that a major reason behind Bangladesh’s better performance is
that the policy planner and the bureaucrat in Dhaka speak and write the
same language as the village school teacher in a remote district or the
small peasant’s daughter who aspires to be a management executive in
Dhaka or Chittagong. In India itself, the state of Kerala has performed
exceedingly well in the area of human development. In the case of Kerala
too, I feel that language has played a key role in ensuring greater human
development index. Malayalam, the natural language of the state, is a
language of both the elite and the people. Once again, a caveat, I am not
saying the success of human development in Kerala or in Bangladesh is
only for the language question, but I think language plays a key role in
the development or underdevelopment of societies.
The idea prevalent among Dalit or Brahmin intellectuals that English
nations are great producers of knowledge or that they are more devel-
oped societies does not hold water. In the nineteenth century, German
was the main language in which the world of physics developed. French
and several other European languages have been and still are languages
of scientific enquiry. The economic development of Japan, Korea,
and China where English is not the national language of power is way
ahead of South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa where the power of the local
English-knowing elites tramples the vast majority.
As for the Dalit espousal of English, I see Chanderbhan Prasad’s point
that if a Dalit person learns English, she/he will feel empowered. And I
think that Dalits and all historically backward communities should and
even must learn English. Knowledge and command over English will
definitely empower the Dalit individual. But will learning of English
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  31

end class/caste domination? No, it will not. Power and those in power
act in a complex manner; there are sophisticated tools that the powerful
use. If you bridge the language divide, there will be accent divide; if you
bridge the education gap, there will be digital divide; English is one of
the pillars of the elite club, not the only one. What is central to reduce
Brahminical/upper-caste domination is to rob Brahminism of the idea
world that validates its power. Let each Dalit individual learn English
and learn English well. But let her not lose the language into which she
was born. Let her develop a mastery of that language at least as much
she masters English. The more pressing question is to purge Indian lan-
guages like Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, or Hindi of their inher-
ent authoritarian/hierarchical structures. Disbanding India’s languages
which are languages both of Dalits and of upper castes, and of upper-
caste dominations, will not be an astute decision. It is urgent for Dalits
to learn English, but it is even more urgent for Dalit politics to take the
contestation into the realm within Indian languages, and to contribute
to the greater struggle for “annihilation of caste.”

Notes
1. For information on the early beginnings of English education and
for a history of education in colonial India, see University Education
Commission (1950).
2. While in colonial India, languages spoken by ordinary Indians were
referred to as vernaculars, in contemporary Indian parlance, Indian lan-
guages spoken by the large mass of people is referred to as regional lan-
guages. In the politics of languages, Tamil, Gujarati, and Bengali are
referred to as regional languages while English is referred to as national
language.
3. For the East India Company’s educational policies, see Basu (1982a, b).
4. For an exposition of Macaulay’s minute in the British Parliament and his
ideas, see University Education Commission (1950).
5. For a history of educational development in this period, see Basu (1974).
6. For an insightful discussion on how Hindi marginalized smaller languages,
see Bhokta (1998).
7. For the domination of new class and how the old high caste groupings
metamorphosed into a new class, see Barra (1998).
8. For ideas of Bengali scientists like S.C. Chuckerbutty and P.C. Ray, see
Kumar (1998).
32  S. Roy Chowdhury

9. This particular National Policy on Education was first declared in 1986


when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister. However, it underwent changes
both during the period when V.P. Singh was prime minister and when
P.V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister. The final text of the document
that we have now is a revised text declared in 1992 when P.V. Narasimha
Rao was prime minister. Hence, I refer to this document as NPE
1986/1992.
10. For a child whose parents are both native to the Malayalam language, her
mother tongue is Malayalam. However, if she grows up from a very early
age in Amritsar, a city in Punjab, I think Punjabi becomes her natural
tongue, and it is in that language she feels most comfortable.
11. See Guha (2009).
12. I have discussed in an article the dominant and the undemocratic power
of English in India and more widely in the Indian sub-continent. See Roy
Chowdhury (2014).

Recommended Readings

Government Reports/Policy Documents


Education Commission. 1970. Education and National Development: Report of
the Education Commission (EC). New Delhi: NCERT.
Ministry of Human Resources Development. 1992. National Policy on Education
1986—Programme on Action 1992 (NPE). New Delhi: Government of India.
Ministry of Human Resources Development. 2010. Report of Committee to
Advise on the Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (CARHE).
New Delhi: Government of India.
National Knowledge Commission. 2009. National Knowledge Commission—
Report to the Nation (NKC). New Delhi.
Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry. 2000. Report on A Policy
Framework for Reforms in Education (PFRE). New Delhi: Government of
India.
University Education Commission. 1950. Report of the University Education
Commission (UEC). New Delhi: Government of India.

Books/Articles/Essays
Barra, Joseph. 1998. Colonialism and Educational Fragmentation in India. In
Bhattacharya.
2  BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER …  33

Basu, Aparna. 1974. The Growth of Education and Political Development in


India, 1898–1920. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Basu, Aparna. 1982a. Essays in the History of Indian Education. New Delhi:
Concept.
Basu, Aparna. 1982b. Education of Civil Servants during the Company Period.
In Essays in the History of Indian Education. New Delhi: Concept.
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi (ed.). 1998. The Contested Terrain: Perspectives on
Education in India. New Delhi: Orient Longman.
Bhokta, Naresh Prasad. 1998. Marginalisation of Popular Languages and Growth
of Sectarian Education in Colonial India. In Bhattacharya.
Dreze, Jean and Sen, Amartya. 2011. Putting Growth In Its Place. Outlook, 14
November 2011. https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/putting-
growth-in-its-place/278843.
Guha, Ramachandra. 2009. The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual.
Economic and Political Weekly 44 (33): 36–42.
King, Robert D. 1997. Nehru and the Language Politics of India. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Kumar, Deepak. 1998. Educational Ideas of Bengali Scientists from 1850 to
1920. In Bhattacharya.
Pandey, Gyanendra. 2016. Dreaming in English. Economic and Political Weekly
51 (16): 56–62.
Roy Chowdhury, Sunandan. 2014. Monster Anglopolis. Planet—The Welsh
Internationalist, 216.
CHAPTER 3

Western University, Indian Nationalisms

Abstract  “Western University, Indian Nationalisms” is about contrast-


ing nationalisms, their emergence in colonial India, and how national-
isms and universities were tied together in intimate relationships. The
idea of India is a contested one. Conceptions of an ideal India inform
India’s politics and society today, and it did so during British colonial
rule. As India’s educational system and higher education institutions
developed in the colonial period, especially after the 1850s, the idea of
Indian nation took shape in minds of educated Indians. For 200 years
since the early 1810s, higher education institutions have been centers
of discourse on nationalism. Various groups of Indians with ideologi-
cal motivations centered on secularism, Hindu identity, Islamic iden-
tity, and women’s emancipation have fashioned their versions of Indian
nationalism on educational campuses. In some instances, the founding of
educational institutions itself has been the result of the specific national
vision that the founders had. In short, higher education and contrasting
and conflicting versions of nationalism have been enmeshed in India for
200 years; the creation of the two nation-states of India and Pakistan in
1947 bears testimony to this. Indian university has been a site of visions
of Indian nationalism. The idea of India that has projected itself most
powerfully has done so in great measure in the universities, even before
creating a similar impact on the wider public world. This chapter argues
the dominant and dominating idea of Indian nationhood has skillfully
elbowed out competing educational visions and of nationalism as was
conceived in Vishwa Bharati and Jamia Millia Islamia. Different streams

© The Author(s) 2017 35


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5_3
36  S. Roy Chowdhury

of visions continue to jostle for influence in contemporary India today


and in its higher education space.

Keywords  Contrasting nationalisms · National education


Oppressiveness of colonial education · Religio-cultural worlds
Educational universes · Non-Eurocentric universalism

English became the new Brahminical thread in nineteenth-century India.


It also created an intricately woven cloth, a fabric called English/Western
education. The upper castes/classes of India adopted and adapted to the
world of Western/English education. Much of this adoption/adaptation
happened within the walls of the university, an institution that became
the dominant face of Indian higher education in the second half of nine-
teenth century. While the upper castes/classes from different cultural
worlds within India found in the British/Western university the model
institution for higher education, the nature of national ideal that uni-
versities in colonial India fashioned differed widely. The visions of what
higher education institutions meant and what their educational and
political/social/cultural ideals were varied from one cultural community
to another and from one founder to the other. The Western university
in the political/cultural space of colonial India spawned Hindu national-
ism, Indian nationalism dominated by Brahminical upper castes/classes,
Muslim Indian nationalism, and religio-spiritual universalism of different
kinds.
One of the earliest seats of Western learning/teaching in colonial
India was the Hindu College, which started in the second decade of
nineteenth century in Calcutta. True to its name, for several decades, it
remained a Hindu and I would add a Brahminical upper-caste/class insti-
tution. Later, the Hindu College was closed down and was replaced by
Presidency College,1 which in principle was open to students and teach-
ers of all communities of India. While the colonial government set up
a few universities in the second half of the nineteenth century, notably
the ones in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Allahabad,2 the Indian upper
castes/classes also took the lead in setting up educational institutions in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the promi-
nent institutions set up by elite Indians were the Muhammedan Anglo-
Oriental College in Aligarh (later named as Aligarh Muslim University
[AMU]), the Banaras Hindu University in Banaras, the Osmania
3  WESTERN UNIVERSITY, INDIAN NATIONALISMS  37

University in Hyderabad, the SNDT Women’s University in Pune, the


Viswa Bharati in Santiniketan close to Calcutta, and the Jamia Millia
Islamia in Aligarh and later in Delhi.
When the Hindu College was set up in Calcutta in 1817, it reflected
the desire of the local Bengali upper-caste elite to be educated in English
and in modern Western sciences. Several decades later when Sir Syed
Ahmed Khan founded the Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental College in
Aligarh, he too believed that knowledge of English and Western sci-
ence was crucial for Muslims in north India for their development and
for gaining leadership positions in society. All of nineteenth century, the
dominant classes of Indian society—apart from a section of the tradi-
tional elite during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857—felt English and modern
Western science were the keys to India’s development. The hegemony of
this specific strand of educational/cultural thought of colonial rule held
sway over upper-class/caste Indian minds.

Politics Takes Hold


As the nineteenth century rolled into the twentieth, this hegemony did
not remain unquestioned. The first half of the twentieth century is a
phase of national awakening of India and Indians. It took shape in dif-
ferent nationalisms. Universities played a key role in shaping the many
nationalisms of British India. Mushirul Hasan (1998a) paints a vivid
picture of AMU and its intimate linkages to Muslim Indian nationalism
that finally gave shape to the formation of Pakistan. The loyalty to British
rule ingrained in the educational thought of Sir Syed, the founder of
the institution, was contested in the twentieth century. Students became
politically active in the early decades. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the
political environment in AMU witnessed diverse allegiances. There were
staunch supporters of the Indian National Congress under the leader-
ship of Gandhi, there were socialists, and also those who were with the
Communist Party of India (CPI). Yet gradually, the political force that
gained ground and finally triumphed was the ideology of Pakistan, one
that believed the Muslims of the sub-continent could only prosper peace-
fully if they could found a separate nation-state for Indian Muslims. As
Muhammad Ali Jinnah believed and made others believe, Hindus and
Muslims were two distinct nations. AMU was the battleground of this
clash of nationalisms3; the whole world of Indian higher education too
38  S. Roy Chowdhury

was a site of this clash where no one nationalism could triumph over
another, and where the voices of universalism remained a faint murmur.
AMU’s role in the creation of Pakistan can be gleamed from scores if
not hundreds of accounts. Hasan quotes the Aga Khan:

often in civilised history a university has supplied the springboard for a


nation’s intellectual and spiritual renaissance … Aligarh is no exception
to this rule. But we may claim with pride that Aligarh was the product of
our own efforts and of no outside benevolence, and surely it may also be
claimed that the independent, sovereign nation of Pakistan was born in the
Muslim University of Aligarh. (Hasan 1998a: 191)

Aligarh, which I tend to use interchangeably for AMU, did not reach
the Pakistan moment from its very inception. During the first few dec-
ades, it was assiduous with the colonial administration and ideology.
Even Gandhi was at first rebuffed by the university’s students when he
gave a call for non-cooperation with the British in 1920. Later though,
in the 1920s and most of the 1930s, the Congress under Gandhi’s lead-
ership had a big following in Aligarh. The communists too organized a
major students’ strike in 1936, and the communist All India Students
Front (AISF) tried to prevent the setting up of a branch of All India
Muslim Students’ Federation (AIMSF) in Aligarh; there were students
who did not want a Muslim organization in the university where major-
ity of students and teachers were Muslims. But in later 1930s, the tide
turned in favor of Muslim nationalism, the Pakistan movement and for
its sole spokesman, namely, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. While overt mani-
festations of aggressive Hindu nationalism in north India, especially in
the then United Provinces, could have contributed to the popularity of
the Muslim League and the call for Pakistan among Muslim students,
students aligned with the Muslim League and their political mentors on
campus aggressively put down any opposition to the idea of Pakistan. In
the mid 1940s and in the run up to partition/independence in 1947,
communist students clashed with the Muslim Leaguers but the die had
already been cast; a separate nation-state for Indian Muslims was only a
few months away. From allegiance to British crown and English/Western
modernity to Gandhian ideals of anti-colonialism to communist world-
view of politics of the economically oppressed to Jinnah’s idea of two-
nation theory that divided Hindus and Muslims, Aligarh had come a
long way.
3  WESTERN UNIVERSITY, INDIAN NATIONALISMS  39

National Education
Muslim Indian nationalism was one of the different nationalisms in colo-
nial India. The cultural assertiveness of Hindu world could be felt in the
pattern of politics practiced within the Indian National Congress. Indian
nationalism of which Congress under Gandhi became the lead bearer was
in a continuous engagement with education. In the politics of national-
ism, ideas of “national education” played an important role.
In late nineteenth century, Indians with English education became
assertive in the political life of society. Indian National Congress, formed
in 1885, was a platform of educated Indians to express their views about
the governance of the British Raj. The colonial government’s decision
to partition Bengal in 1905 spurred a “nationalist” movement in Bengal
and beyond—it was popularly known as Swadeshi movement.4 At this
time, the Congress also put forward its thought in educational matters.
A resolution on “national education” was adopted at the Congress ses-
sion held in Calcutta in 1906. It felt it was time people all over the coun-
try take up the question of “national education” for boys and girls, and
“organize a system of education, literary, scientific and technical, suited
to the requirements of the country, on national lines under national
control.” The themes that came up in this resolution were as follows:
Indian/nationalist control, fostering patriotism, provision for religious
instruction, no servile imitation of the West, teaching through modern
Indian languages, lower fees, and education for boys and girls.5
In the “nationalist” phase of modern India, many more educa-
tional visions were articulated. In 1937, Gandhi propounded the idea
of Buniyadi talim or “basic education,” also referred to as the Wardha
scheme of education. With Gandhi’s philosophy as the backbone, it was
Zakir Hussain, a future Vice-Chancellor of the AMU after partition, who
drafted the policy of Buniyadi talim. This bore the hallmarks of Gandhi’s
political and philosophical vision with a stress on manual work and the
importance of linking education to the realities of rural India. Apart
from the stress of learning through the medium of Indian languages,
the thrust was toward an India that could be idealized through its self-
sufficient village republics.6 While the incorporation of manual work
in education was Gandhi’s way of countering anti-labor Brahminical
mindset of upper-caste Indians, the effort to make education linked to
rural realities was his idea of creating a society divested of the “ills” of
Western/modern industrialism.
40  S. Roy Chowdhury

Nationalism of Indian Scientists


Gandhi was vocal in his opinion against adoption of Western science and
industry in India. On the other end of the pendulum from him were
Indian scientists, men of science who were immersed in Western science
and believed in the “scientific project.” Early Indian scientists trained in
Western science, as we learn from Deepak Kumar (1998), had strong
ideas about education and national development. S.C. Chuckerbutty
(1824–1874), professor of clinical medicine at Calcutta Medical College
between 1854 and 1870, proposed a scheme of “national education.”
In 1869, Mahendralal Sarkar, also a doctor by training and profes-
sion, argued for a “national institution” for the cultivation of sciences
by “the natives of India,” entirely under Indian management and con-
trol. In 1886, P.N. Bose, a scientist at the Geological Survey of India,
wrote a pamphlet on technical and scientific education in Bengal and,
a decade later, published three volumes titled “A History of Hindu
Civilisation.” Kumar sees this as a case where “fierce nationalism trans-
formed a geologist into a historian.” Bose argued that teaching of sci-
ence should be linked to the process of industrialization. He advocated
India to follow the Japanese path of industrialization and modernization.
P.C. Ray a scientist and a pioneering entrepreneur wrote “A History of
Hindu Chemistry.” Clearly, Indian scientists were fuelled with the idea
of nationalism, and in their minds, the greatness of Hindu civilization fed
into the stream of Indian nationalism. On the one hand, they urged their
fellow Indians to embrace science, and on the other hand, they tried to
instill legitimate pride in Indians with the idea that India had a history of
science even before India’s encounter with modern West. Gandhi’s ideals
and the ideas of scientists jostled with one another in the shaping of link-
ages between education and Indian nationalism.
When Indian nationalists think of “national education,” their politi-
cal demand is focused on nationalist control of education. There is no
great divergence between nationalists and colonial rulers in the mean-
ings and purpose of education. Krishna Kumar (1991) has pointed to
the homonymy in colonialist and nationalist ideas of education. The tiny
elite that university education created in colonial India was paternalistic
toward the large mass of ordinary Indians, as was the colonial adminis-
tration. But the homonymy did not stop here. Whether in the issue of
use of Indian languages or in the content of courses, nationalists—apart
from a few exceptions—did not diverge much from the colonial thinking
3  WESTERN UNIVERSITY, INDIAN NATIONALISMS  41

in education. In an enmeshed relationship with education/higher edu-


cation, the national movement unleashed processes of social reform but
the content of education did not differ greatly from the colonial plan-
ning of education. The nationalist movement and expanding educa-
tional opportunities opened doors for socially oppressed groups such as
the lower and backward castes and women to come forward and be part
of an expanding national awakening and freedom struggle. Nationalism
as an ideology took education to a wider section of Indian society. This
widening social base of education did not, however, take away the elite
domination of Indian nationalism. A few thousand men educated from a
handful of universities maintained their hold on Indian nationalism. They
rallied around Gandhi and effectively did not let Gandhi’s appeal toward
masses get translated into an egalitarian takeover of Indian nationalism
and the freedom struggle it spawned. So, as Aligarh was the epicenter
of Muslim Indian nationalism, it was the Presidency College in Calcutta,
Elphinstone College in Bombay, and the universities of Calcutta,
Bombay, Madras, and Allahabad that bred the men who dominated
Indian nationalism in the vehicles of the Congress party or for that mat-
ter in parties such as the CPI. Higher education and politics in colonial
India were intimately bound, and the university world played a key role
in how Pakistani nationalism and Indian nationalism evolved in British
colonial India.

Contrasting Nationalisms in the Educational Space


However, between the dominant political cultures of Muslim Indian
nationalism and Indian nationalism, there were voices in education that,
on the one hand, questioned the colonialist/nationalist educational ideal
and, on the other hand, tried to explore philosophical universes beyond
the narrow politics and oppressive political domination of nationalism.
Rabindranath Tagore, India’s national poet, had conceived and cre-
ated a school and a university in Santiniketan, some 150 km away from
Calcutta. His was an attempt to create an education that moved away
from the colonial framework and embraced a new universalism. The
Jamia Millia Islamia created by students and teachers dissatisfied with
the functioning of AMU too was based on a critique of colonial edu-
cation. Tagore actively took part in the anti-British Swadeshi (swadesh
means “one’s own land”) movement in Bengal in 1905 but within some
years, he became disillusioned with nationalism and nationalist politics.
42  S. Roy Chowdhury

He became a harsh critic of nationalism, and his 1917 book Nationalism


admonished the Western world and Japan for their nationalisms, which
he felt could only breed aggression. Ashis Nandy (1994) has discussed
in detail the poet’s critique of Indian nationalism, which can lead us to
question the legitimacy of nationalism. Tagore is India’s national poet,
and yet his view on nationalism sits uncomfortably with the trumpet-
ing of nationalism in pre- and post-independent India. Within the realm
of the university, this discomfort has a history of faint murmurs. Partha
Chatterjee (2016) recalls his encounter with Tagore’s lectures on nation-
alism in a course on political thought at the University of Calcutta in
the 1960s. Clearly, as Chatterjee himself notes, the professors in the uni-
versity who exposed students to Tagore’s passionate critique of national-
ism were advancing a complex relationship between the university and
nationalism. This critique of nationalism has continued as a thought cur-
rent in the Indian university world. Before India’s independence from
colonial rule, at least two institutions epitomized this thought current;
they were Jamia Millia Islamia and Tagore’s Santiniketan school and
Viswa Bharati.
I first turn to Jamia. Aligarh, that is, AMU, was founded with the
declared aims of creating educated Muslim subjects of colonial rule,
and though Aligarh became the nerve center of the Pakistan movement,
the university’s core educational paradigm remained bound to colonial
patterns of education. The Urdu poet Akbar Illahabadi wrote about
Aligarh’s educational achievement with a heavy dose of irony:

What glorious deeds our fellows have performed!

Passed B.A., got a government job, received a pension and died. (Hasan
1998a: 157)

Along with the fixation for a job in the colonial bureaucracy, there
was also the veneration of things English; there was a sense that if one
could approximate to English/British cultural patterns, one became
a truly civilized person. Muhammad Talib (1998) gives us a picture of
the creation and development of Jamia. The institution was founded in
October 1920, and the Old Boys’ Lodge in Aligarh was its first home.
After inhabiting several modest homes in the AMU neighborhood,
Jamia moved to Delhi. In contrast to AMU’s British colonial moor-
ings and espousal of English-medium education, the founders of Jamia
3  WESTERN UNIVERSITY, INDIAN NATIONALISMS  43

strongly advocated education through mother tongue; in Jamia’s case,


it was Urdu. Jamia’s founders were determined to keep education free
of British control, and the curriculum was planned such that it could be
true to the religious and cultural traditions and upheld a morally guided
path. Early 1920s was the time of the first pan-Indian movement against
colonial rule; under Gandhi’s leadership, the non-cooperation move-
ment spread to all corners of British India and brought in great num-
bers of people into politics and anti-colonial struggle. Gandhi and his
compatriots like the Ali brothers also led the Khilafat movement where
they tried to pressure the British government to preserve the authority
of the Ottoman emperor as the Caliph (Khalifa) of Islam whose power
was greatly diminished at the end of the First World War in 1918.
Khilafat and non-cooperation were the political moments at the birth of
Jamia, and the institution was intimately linked to the political awaken-
ing of the time. Nationalism and anti-colonialism along with embrac-
ing of Islam formed the philosophical basis of education in the minds
of the founders of Jamia. As much as it was born out of a critique of
colonial education, it also distanced itself from the orthodox Muslim
education imparted in madrasas.7 The hallmark of Jamia’s education was
not its adoption of Urdu alone. More importantly, it founded an edu-
cation which brought the aspiration for a purer existence through reli-
gion and the need for a real-life practical existence under the same roof.
Jamia’s students discussed the Quran and the Hadith, and at the same
time, the curriculum focused on skills training in different trades such
as agriculture, gardening, cooking, tailoring, weaving, and book-bind-
ing. Religion, nationalism, critical enquiry, and an embrace of the world
of work and labor formed the bedrock of Jamia’s educational universe.
Much of these were to later inform Gandhi’s educational thrust as seen
in Buniyadi talim, in which Zakir Hussain, Jamia’s leading thinker for a
long time, was his closest comrade. In contrast to AMU, which emulated
the colonial educational universe, Jamia Millia Islamia broke new ground
in education. It questioned the colonial worldview and started a journey
that brought anti-colonialism, national aspirations, Islam, and a respect
for labor and culture of work into the rubric of education. While AMU
fuelled the Pakistan movement and supplied the new Pakistani state with
a section of the new elite, Jamia contributed to the fabric of a polyphonic
India after 1947. AMU whose founding was centered on veneration of
English/Western education contributed greatly to the state of Pakistan
fashioned as a nation of India’s Muslims, and Jamia founded with Islam
44  S. Roy Chowdhury

as one of its pillars informed the plurality of India after 1947. In their
two trajectories, we see a contrast in nationalisms. The eastern Oxford of
Sir Syed’s dream created a Muslim nation-state and Jamia with an adher-
ence to Islam’s role in education contributed to a multi-religious India.

Different Religio-cultural Worlds, Similar


Educational Universes
Jamia was born in an Islamic fold. Viswa Bharati was born in a Brahmo
fold. Yet, in their core values, the institutions had much in common.
Their educational philosophy was against the colonial pattern of rote
learning and manufacturing clerks to man the British Indian bureaucracy.
Founding men of both institutions wanted education to be based on the
spirit of free enquiry; they upheld universal goals and at the same time
wanted to be true to religious and cultural traditions. And, in a distinct
departure from Brahminical–colonial patterns, their idea of education
was to link it intimately with the native soil where the institutions were
located and to enmesh education with labor, laboring people and trades
of ordinary everyday life.
While Jamia believed in Islam’s creative role in the educational uni-
verse, Santiniketan and Viswa Bharati were born within the fold of the
Brahmo movement. In the Europe–India encounter of nineteenth cen-
tury, various cultural streams of Indian life underwent reform and new
forms emerged. In Bengal with Calcutta as the epicenter, the Brahmo
sect became prominent. The Brahmos believed in single godhead and
abhorred the idol worship prevalent in the traditional Hindu world.
Drawing its following from wealthy upper-caste Hindu families, the
Brahmos contributed a great deal to the educational, cultural, and politi-
cal development of Bengal and India. The Brahmo leader Rammohan
Roy’s campaign against Sati—the practice of burning a widow on the
funeral pyre of her husband, contributed to the ban on Sati.
Rabindranath Tagore grew up in the Brahmo world of Calcutta. His
poetry was deeply influenced by Brahmo ideas and ideals of divinity. As
a teenager, Tagore was not at ease with the colonial education imparted
in Calcutta schools of nineteenth century. In one of his short stories, he
ridiculed the system of education which turned students into parrots.1
In the Brahmo school he founded in Santiniketan, he wanted to impart
an education that would be free from the oppressiveness of colonial
3  WESTERN UNIVERSITY, INDIAN NATIONALISMS  45

education. The school was founded in 1901.8 Freedom was central to


Tagore’s vision for the school. He wanted to unshackle Indians from the
baggage of colonialism, but colonialism was not the only source of un-
freedom. Brahminical and patriarchal worldviews also clouded Indian
minds, and Tagore’s school encountered those blocks on the path to
educational freedom.
From the autobiography of a student in the early years of the school,
quoted in a recent study (Ghosh and Sarkar 2015), we get to know that
students belonging to different castes wore dresses of different colors;
each color would be assigned to specific castes like Brahmins, Vaidyas,
and Vaishyas.9 In the dining hall, there were separate sitting arrange-
ments for Brahmin and non-Brahmin students. In the early years of the
school, in the case of non-Brahmin teachers, Brahmin students refused
to bow down and touch their feet—a gesture of respect for elders; they
would only do namaskar with folded hands. The educational climate was
so ill-disposed toward the lower castes that a non-upper-caste teacher
called Kunjalal was removed from teaching and assigned to administra-
tive job.
With the resistance toward lower castes, one can guess that the com-
munity also would not accept Muslims with open arms. In 1910, a
Muslim gentleman had wanted to send his son to the Santiniketan school
but in spite of Tagore’s insistence, the authorities of the ashram and the
school did not give admission to the boy. In 1919, a Muslim boy from
South Africa was enrolled for a short while. The school had to wait till
December 1919 when a Bengali Muslim boy became the first full-time
student of Santiniketan; this boy was called Syed Mujtaba Ali who went
on to become a celebrated Bengali writer.
Girls too did not have an easy ride. In 1908, a girls’ hostel came up
but it had to be shut down in 1910. The principal reason was that the
free mixing of boys and girls—which always creates tensions and excite-
ment around the emotional exchanges of the two sexes—did not go
down well with the authorities. Tagore expressed his sadness at this deci-
sion but he did not try to veto the decision of the school authorities.
Girls had to wait till 1918 to become full-fledged members of the educa-
tional world of Santiniketan.
It is interesting to note the differences in social realities of Jamia and
Santiniketan. Jamia emerged from within the Muslim universe and had
very little, if at all, of caste distinction between students, at least there
was no theoretical endorsement of caste in Islam. Second, born in the
46  S. Roy Chowdhury

interstices of Islam and India’s freedom movement under the leadership


of Gandhi, non-Muslims or Hindus were much more welcome in Jamia
from the very beginning. In fact that Jamia did not toe the Pakistan line
that dominated Aligarh in late 1930s and 1940s itself is a pointer to its
rejection of narrowly defined nationalism. However, while Santiniketan
grappled with all the issues of caste, religion, and gender, Jamia did
not open its doors to women students till much later in the day. That
girls came back to the institution, Muslim students grew in number,
and that in 1920, Brahmins and other castes started eating together in
Santiniketan; all of this was in a large measure the influence of Gandhi
and of the social change that accompanied the freedom movement. On
the one hand, he visited the ashram a few times, once in 1915 and later in
1920, and more so because of the anti-British struggle he had launched
across India. The freedom movement united Indians against an alien rule;
it also broke down many walls that Indians had erected between one
another for centuries. The history of Santiniketan in a microcosm cap-
tures the impulses of an India undergoing radical social change.
The school in Santiniketan was founded in 1901, and in 1918, the
year that the First World War ended, Tagore initiated the process of cre-
ating a higher education institution. He called it Viswa Bharati (Viswa
meaning world and Bharati defining Bharat that is India). And true to
its name, the world came to Santiniketan. Tagore had won the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1913, and writers, artists, intellectuals, and states-
men from home and the world came to see his educational universe.
Some like C.F. Andrews and Leonard Elmhirst became key figures in the
growth of that universe. But Tagore did not only open up Viswa Bharati
to the knowledge universes of China, Japan, Europe, or the Arab world;
he also insisted that students must observe the death anniversary of reli-
gious leaders such as Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, Chaitanya, Nanak,
Kabir, and Rammohan. Along with respect for human thought, he also
stressed on deep respect and interaction with nature. Tagore’s educa-
tional vision in his school and later in Viswa Bharati was to create inde-
pendent man, not the subjugated colonial subject. His lifelong mission
was to unshackle the colonized mind.
But within the first two decades of the Santiniketan school, he
could sense that the dreary world of routine was creeping its way into
the school. He also observed the arrogance of the educated. His edu-
cational vision moved a step forward. In 1923, he started Siksha satra
(Siksha meaning education), a school where the separation between
3  WESTERN UNIVERSITY, INDIAN NATIONALISMS  47

work and knowledge would be done away with. This was also part of his
vision of injecting Indian village life with new vigor. When Indians were
immersed in rote learning and bookish education, he had sent his son
and another student to learn agriculture in a university in America. While
Jamia stressed on learning some trades, Siksha satra developed courses
on a large variety of trades. House building, sanitation, cooking, public
health, hospitality, making textile items, making paper, dyeing, making
bricks, repairing cycles, and making musical instruments were some of
them. When Gandhi visited Siksha satra in 1925, he was overwhelmed;
he could see his vision of Buniyadi talim in Tagore’s school. He even
wanted to take a leading figure of Siksha satra to his Wardha ashram.
Both Jamia and Santiniketan school/Siksha satra were deeply touched
by the thrusts of Gandhi and the freedom movement. Both tried to free
education from the oppressiveness of colonial educational system and at
the same time steer clear of aggressive nationalisms, be it Muslim Indian
nationalism or Indian nationalism. The two institutions tried to define
education as a system of combining the world of work and the world of
knowledge. But these impulses of educational freedom and universalism
lost out to the votaries of aggressive nationalism. The votaries of aggres-
sive nationalism won the day with one another’s Pakistan and India. The
university in Aligarh got its Pakistan; Presidency, Calcutta, Bombay, and
Madras universities got their India; and the colonial education system
largely continued in both nation-states.10 Thrusts emanating from Jamia
and Viswa Bharati toward non-Eurocentric universalism and toward
combining the world of work and knowledge or giving primacy to vil-
lage reconstruction remained a faint murmur. With Tagore’s death in
1941 and Gandhi’s murder in 1948, the possibilities of an education that
would unshackle the colonized mind died soon thereafter.

Notes
1. For a history of the Hindu College/Presidency College, see Zachariah
et al. (1998).
2. Among others, M. Rajivlochan (2008) has discussed how the London
University served as the model for setting up the first universities in
India. That model has largely dominated the pattern of Indian universi-
ties in the colonial and post-colonial eras.
3. I fashion this phrase on the lines of Samuel Huntington’s phrase “clash of
civilizations.”
48  S. Roy Chowdhury

4. Books that document and analyze India’s freedom movement are count-
less. Sumit Sarkar (1984) gives a balanced account of the freedom move-
ment from the second half of nineteenth century till independence in
1947.
5. For an account of “national education,” see University Education
Commission (1950).
6. Self-sufficient village republics was the Gandhian ideal. However, one
should be alert to the fact that historically we do not experience self-suf-
ficient village republics in India. In Gandhi’s worldview and scheme of
things, there is a trend of idolizing the Indian village. I am aware that
the Indian village is not a paradise, yet it is important to give adequate
importance to rejuvenate village life economically as well as culturally and
educationally. Rabindranath Tagore could see that the Indian village was
in a state of decay, and his work in eastern Bengal in the first decade of
twentieth century and in Santiniketan and Sriniketan in the first half of
twentieth century was to rejuvenate rural Bengal. And Gandhi himself
put social reform at the center even as he gave primacy to the Indian vil-
lage in his conception of development.
7. Abdur Rahman Sehwarvi (Bijnori), an Aligarh graduate, outlined a pro-
posal of the university, and while asserting that Urdu should be the
medium of instruction, he also clarified that it did not mean a backward
movement toward madrasa education. See Talib (1998).
8. The educational institutions that Rabindranath Tagore founded were at
least three: First was a school in Santiniketan, the second was a center for
higher learning which he named Viswa Bharati, and the third was Siksha
satra, also a school but one where the learning of trades was put as part
of the core curriculum. Siksha satra was also part of Sriniketan which was
an institution he set up for the rejuvenation of Indian rural life and mate-
rial condition. There are a number of studies on these institutions. See
Dasgupta (1998), and Ghosh and Sarkar (2015). For an understanding
of Tagore’s educational thought, see Dasgupta (2009).
9. Ghosh and Sarkar (2015) quote from the autobiography of Rebachand,
one of the first residents in the fully residential school in Santiniketan.
According to Rebachand, each day after bath, students wore dresses;
the Brahmin boy wore white silk, the Vaidya boy wore red silk, and the
Vaishya boy wore yellow silk. In the caste patterns in Bengal, Vaidya is
a caste between the Brahmin (priest) and Kshatriya (warrior), and here
again unlike the north Indian caste structure, in Bengal, the Kshatriya
caste is replaced by a caste called Kayastha.
10. From Commission on National Education (1959), formed by Ayub
Khan’s government in Pakistan, we learn that two American educationists
were members; this was both a continuation of colonial influence and of
3  WESTERN UNIVERSITY, INDIAN NATIONALISMS  49

the post-1945 Cold War era politics, Pakistan being a close US ally in the
Cold War period. Though Pakistan and India were divided on religious
lines, the epistemological universe of the ruling elites of both nations was
influenced by the Anglo-American world. There was no representation
from Muslim societies outside the sub-continent in the making of post-
independence educational policy of Pakistan, though Pakistan claimed
itself to be the homeland of Indian Muslims.

Recommended Readings
Bhattachrya, Sabyasachi. (ed). 1998. The Contested Terrain: Perspectives on
Education in India. New Delhi: Orient Longman.
Chatterjee, Partha. 2016. Freedom of Speech in the University. Economic and
Political Weekly 51 (11): 35–37.
Commission on National Education. 1959. Report of the Commission on
National Education. Islamabad: Government of Pakistan.
Dasgupta, Uma. 1998. Santiniketan: The School of a Poet. In Hasan 1998a.
Dasgupta, Uma (ed.). 2009. The Oxford India Tagore: Selected Writings on
Education and Nationalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Ghosh, Swati, and Ashok Sarkar. 2015. Kabir pathshala: pathabhavan o sikshasa-
trer itihas. Calcutta: Signet Press.
Hasan, Mushirul. (ed.). 1998a. Knowledge, Power & Politics: Educational
Institutions in India. New Delhi: Roli Books.
Hasan, Mushirul. 1998b. Negotiating with Its Past and Present: The Changing
Profile of the Aligarh Muslim University. In Hasan 1998a.
Kumar, Deepak. 1998. Educational Ideas of Bengali Scientists from 1850 to
1920. In Bhattacharya.
Kumar, Krishna. 1991. Political Agenda of Education—A Study of Colonialist
and Nationalist Ideals. New Delhi: Sage.
Nandy, Ashis. 1994. The Illegitimacy of Nationalism—Rabindranath Tagore and
the Politics of Self. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rajivlochan, M. 2008. Reforming Education for India, from England. Seminar
587: 39–42.
Sarkar, Sumit. 1984. Modern India 1885–1947. New Delhi: Macmillan.
Talib, Mohammad. 1998. Jamia Millia Islamia: Career of Azad Talim. In Hasan
1998a.
University Education Commission. 1950. Report of the University Education
Commission (UEC). New Delhi: Government of India.
Zachariah, B., S.R. Chakraborti, and R.K. Ray. 1998. Presidency College,
Calcutta: An Unfinished History. In Hasan 1998a.
CHAPTER 4

Cold War to Brand Wars: Global Processes,


Developmental Visions, and Indian Higher
Education

Abstract  “Cold War to Brand Wars” discusses global processes, devel-


opmental visions, and Indian higher education. Modern and contem-
porary India’s development and ideas of development are inextricably
linked to the policies set in motion during British colonial rule. Indian
elites’ conception of development was heavily influenced by their expo-
sure to development in Britain and in Western Europe. The pattern of
the Indian mind to fashion development along Western lines took a new
step forward with independence. Post-1947 India was faced with a bipo-
lar world of superpower rivalry between the USA and the USSR. The
Cold War impacted India’s development, its higher education, and the
policy environment. The decades since 1990 have seen the impact of
globalization and a new era of world politics. This chapter discusses the
impact of global processes on Indian development and higher education
policy and narrates the shifts in India’s developmental visions. The selec-
tive use of science by Indian policy planners, a specific view of the West
within dominant Indian opinion and a particular understanding of devel-
opment, has impacted India’s policy in higher education. The author
argues that a narrow and elite-serving view of development has had lim-
iting impact on the growth and flowering of Indian higher education and
society.

Keywords  Commanding heights of economy


Commanding heights of education · Science as liberator
Brands and branding · India/Bharat divide · Educational democracy

© The Author(s) 2017 51


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5_4
52  S. Roy Chowdhury

End of Colonialism, Beginning of Cold War


In 1947, at the time of India’s independence, the world order that colo-
nized India knew was experiencing profound changes. For India, there
were three changes. The first was independence. In its newfound inde-
pendence, India could surely plan to chart its own course in economy,
developmental agenda, education, and areas of national interest. The sec-
ond was that the Western imperial powers of eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries; most notably, Britain and France were gradually losing control
of their colonial territories and, among the Western nations, the United
States of America (USA) was increasingly taking the lead in global affairs
and was the new leader of the “free world.” The third change was the
rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had ushered
in the Soviet Union (USSR), and after a victorious role in the Second
World War (1939–1945), it became a great power in world politics. It
also symbolized communism as opposed to the capitalism of America,
Britain, France, and other Western nations. America and the Soviet
Union became the leaders of the capitalist and socialist camps, respec-
tively, which led to the beginning of Cold War that lasted from the
late 1940s until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. India had a pro-
found change at home; it had become an independent nation. And, in
the world, it did not have to engage with the might of Britain, but the
new world leaders were the capitalist USA and the socialist Soviet Union.
America was the new great power and leader among the rich Western
nations. And, on the world stage, it was no longer a singular domina-
tion of capitalist West but a socialist Soviet Russia had become an equal
politico-military power.
This change in global structure impacted political, economic, and
educational thought in post-1947 India. In the decades preceding inde-
pendence, India had experienced a robust anti-colonial struggle and
the flowering of ideas and ideals under the leadership of Gandhi and
Gandhian thought. For independent India, the charm and influence of
the Gandhian ideal were greatest. Education was one of the centerpieces
in Gandhi’s thought universe. In South Africa and later in India, he led
a life that was meant to be a model for others to get educated in his path
and follow it. As he famously said, “My life is my teaching.” Gandhi’s
political ideal lay in the non-violent overthrow of the British Raj while
his economic ideal lay in the rejuvenation of India’s village life. In sync
with his economic ideal, rural life and its rejuvenation were central to
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  53

the educational universe of Gandhi. Even as Gandhi waged his struggle


against colonialism, a large part of the Indian upper and middle classes
were under the spell of English and Western civilization. They did side
with Gandhi on the question of political independence and control of
the state mechanism, but their philosophical world, culturally and mate-
rially, was heavily influenced by Britain. Alongside English, science con-
stituted a vital part of the appeal of Western civilization for the educated
and affluent Indian. The dominant belief in the superiority of English as
a language and in the power of science to transform India’s economy was
profoundly etched in the minds of most educated Indians.1 Gandhi had
challenged this worldview but he had limited success. At independence,
while the Gandhian way was one of the paths of development before
the new nation, the elite was inherently inclined in adopting Western
modes of economic progress. However, with the rise of socialism and the
Soviet Union, the options of development paths did not remain only one
“Western way.” Alongside the capitalist path, a new choice emerged on
the horizon; that of socialism, especially in the reality of Soviet Union.

Of Gandhi, Tagore, and Rural University


The elite could now sidestep the Western Anglo-American domina-
tion and choose to benefit from the power and knowledge base of
Soviet Union. The precise influence of Soviet Russia on India’s educa-
tional thought can be discerned in policy documents such as the EC of
1964–1966. The more important question is the developmental vision
of independent India’s political, economic, and educational elite. Indian
higher education had developed in the 150-year colonial period, princi-
pally, in the shadow of British structures of higher education. Scholars
like M. Rajivlochan (2008) have demonstrated how the first Indian uni-
versities were built on the London university model. With anti-colonial
movement and upsurge in nationalist ideas and ideals, and with the
overarching influence of Gandhi and of men like Tagore, Indian politi-
cal opinion challenged British rule, and finally, colonial rule came to
an end. During the anti-colonial struggle, small groups of educated
and vocal Indians started alternative economic activities such as during
the Swadeshi movement in Bengal in 1905–1907 or the different vol-
untary organizations Gandhi founded and led. Gandhi and his follow-
ers developed a worldview that posited itself against colonial domination
and Western modernity. Tagore’s work in Santiniketan, Sriniketan, and
54  S. Roy Chowdhury

Siksha Satra was also an Indian answer to colonial domination of Indian


education.2 But the appeal of this alternative universe started fading soon
after independence. The alternative philosophical thrust of Gandhi and
Tagore did not get woven into the specific path of industrial develop-
ment that post-1947 India charted for itself. In its developmental vision,
independent India continued with the fetish of English language and
modern science. This, in turn, shaped the dominant Indian thinking on
higher education.
In the initial years after independence, UEC of 1948–1949 reflects
the developmental vision of Gandhi. The commission was formed by
Government of India; it had ten members with Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,
who later became the second president of India, as its chairman. Three
of the ten members were foreign nationals: one from the UK and two
from America. This choice reflected three strands. First, Indian anti-colo-
nial struggle led by Gandhi was against British political domination but it
had a declared policy that it was not against the Western world. Second,
among the world powers, it was America who unequivocally supported
India’s right to independence. Third, and probably the most significant
politically, this choice also represented India’s perception and accept-
ance of America as the dominant world power in politics, economy, and
education.
While the influence of world politics can be discerned, the mark
of Gandhian thought and a larger humanistic worldview can also be
observed. The chairman of the commission was Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,
a philosopher who in his erudition synthesizes Western and Eastern
philosophical traditions. The awe of science and technology had not yet
completely mesmerized the national elite. And, though there were more
Americans than British in the commission, one of the Americans was an
educator with deep-rooted experience in working with rural education
issues in America. This reflects the influence of Gandhi.
UEC puts forward a vision of education and development where rural
India had a central place. While this vision is praiseworthy, at the same
time, it disappoints us with the conservative view on women and public
life. It argued that “the best place” for women was in the homes, and
based on this patriarchal view, the commission conceived women’s par-
ticipation in education. This resulted in the neglect of women within the
framework of higher education thinking and policymaking.
The developmental vision centered on Gandhian swaraj, and the rural
world is of relevance even today. Its neglect by subsequent policymaking
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  55

has diminished the social transformative roles of Indian higher edu-


cation. UEC laid great stress on rural universities and on agricultural
education. The commission’s period coincided with the time when the
Indian Constitution was being shaped in the Constituent Assembly
of free India. The spirit of freedom movement and the Constitution
informed UEC:

The outlines of the social philosophy which should govern all our institu-
tions, educational as well as economic and political, are indicated in the
preamble of our Draft Constitution. We are engaged in a quest for democ-
racy through the realization of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. We
shall take up the different problems of educational theory and practice and
arrange them under the five heads of democracy, justice, liberty, equality
and fraternity.

World political processes such as the French Revolution of 1789 inform


the policy document; the clarion call of the revolution, “liberty, equality,
fraternity,” is upheld by the policymakers. While the social justice con-
tent of India’s freedom struggle and the spirit of Constitution inform
the UEC, one can also discern the influence of world communism. They
refer to Karl Marx’s thought, saying:

The education of the future will in the case of every child over a certain
age, combine productive labor with education and athletics not merely as
one of the methods of raising social production but as the only method
of producing fully developed human beings. On this question of learning
through doing Marx and Gandhi agree.

Here, we discern how the authors are marrying the influence of global
socialist ideals, whose influence on the Indian thought world of 1930s
and 1940s was enormous, and the thought world of Gandhi.3 For con-
ceptualizing and advocacy of integrating physical and manual labor in the
educational process, they draw inspiration from two thinkers who have
often been seen as providing succor to two distinct political streams in
modern and contemporary India.4 While discussing justice, UEC argues
a democratic society “… must raise the material standards of life and
increase national productivity by the larger use of scientific discoveries
and technical application.”
They point to Soviet Russia as to how the socialist state
56  S. Roy Chowdhury

wiped out illiteracy, raised the educational level of the masses, built and
equipped scientific institutes and laboratories and transformed the country
with new industries and new type of agriculture.

Significantly, UEC shows appreciation of “new industries” and “new


types of agriculture” in the Soviet Union. This new industry was state-
controlled industry, and this new agriculture was collective farming. The
policy thinkers hold in high esteem the principles of command economy
as was practiced in the erstwhile Soviet Union. Here, we see a two-
pronged discourse: On the one hand, there was the appeal of communist
ideology as spelt out in Marx’s thought; on the other hand, there was
the appeal of state-led and state-commanded economic growth model of
the real-life socialist system developed in the Soviet Union.
While I point out the influences of global ideational and political pro-
cesses on the thought pattern of the commission, this in no way reduces
the significance of UEC’s recommendations. Three areas which the com-
mission stresses upon in order to advance the cause of justice, namely,
agricultural education, technological education, and rural development,
remain as important as ever. Cottage industries assume an important role
within rural development:

cottage industries and small cooperatives require to be developed and


machines to lighten the labours of men living in cottages.

In the developmental vision of UEC, agricultural and technical educa-


tion and rural development are intertwined; later and contemporary
educational policy moved away substantially from their vision where the
village had a central role in policy imagination.
Religious education forms another important strand of thinking in
UEC. No other policy document in independent India has put forward
the case of religious education, not to mention the thrust that UEC
gave it. The overarching concern of Radhakrishnan and his colleagues
was the preservation and continuity of the pluralist world of India; they
wanted students to be exposed to multiple belief systems. Their stress
on religious education came in the aftermath of the partition of British
India, which was accompanied before and after, by ghastly riots between
Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs; millions were uprooted from their genera-
tions-old homes.
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  57

While some policy thinkers had previously advocated that religious


education was best left to families, UEC differed5:

If we are not prepared to leave the scientific and literary training of pupils
to the home and the community, we cannot leave religious training to
these. … The child is robbed of its full development. … If this guidance
is left to homes and communities, the chances are that communal bigotry,
intolerance and selfishness may increase.

Taking note of the secular state in India, the UEC recommended:

that all educational institutions start work with a few minutes for silent
meditation, that in the first year of the degree course lives of the great reli-
gious leaders like Gautama the Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates,
Jesus, Samkara, Ramanuja, Madhava, Mohammed, Kabir, Nanak, Gandhi,
be taught; that in the second year some selections of a universalist charac-
ter from the Scriptures of the world be studied, and that in the third year,
the central problem of philosophy of religion be considered.

Their recommendation reflects the influence of Gandhi and other think-


ers of peace such as Tagore, who emerged during the freedom strug-
gle. They also find ways to address the scar of partition where religious
passion inflamed millions of people and led to nothing but destruction
and misery. An urge for peace in education must have also informed the
authors of the report, especially after the horrors of the Second World
War, no less that the war ended with America’s atom-bombing of the
Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.6 The practice of exposing
undergraduate students in various disciplines to religious and thought
leaders from diverse cultures of the world would have not only made
them more understanding and accepting of one another’s religious
beliefs but also would have created a wider world consciousness in them.
In the last 70 years, dominant public world and policy thinking in India
has moved away from the pluralist-humanitarian thought of UEC; a new
developmental vision has gradually engulfed the nation.
58  S. Roy Chowdhury

Commanding Heights of Economy, Education,


and Science

The Gandhian developmental vision was replaced quickly in the early


years of independent India with an economic vision where science, tech-
nology, and management became the core of developmental thought.
Along with advisers like the scientists P.C. Mahalanobis, Vikram Sarabhai
and Meghnad Saha, and the industrialist J.N. Tata, Prime Minister
Nehru led India to a specific path of economic and industrial devel-
opment, where high science, mega developmental projects, and new
industrial townships became the central design of Indian developmen-
tal planning. The idea of economic growth with rural India at its center
was relegated to the backseat. Science as a panacea of most of India’s
ills became the new mantra of development.7 With big dams and mega
steel plants encapsulating Nehru’s concept of “commanding heights of
economy,” Indian agriculture too underwent profound changes.8 The
Green Revolution in Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh raised
agricultural productivity manifold, but has also left behind environmen-
tal and agricultural problems. This developmental vision which was com-
pletely top-down attitude developed from the core idea of science in
command and gave shape to the three strands of commanding heights of
economy, science and technology, and education.
While the founding of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)
and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) had already initiated
the structure of commanding heights of education, EC (1964–1966)
which worked close on the heels of Nehru’s death in 1964 embodied
the dominant developmental ideology of India of 1950s and 1960s. It
also reflected acutely the influence of Cold War and of Soviet Union on
Indian thought world. The selection of the head of the commission is
itself an important pointer to the change of ideas and ideals. While the
philosopher Radhakrishnan led UEC in 1948–1949, in 1964–1966, the
governing elite thought D.S.Kothari, a professor of physics to be best
suited for the job of chairing the commission. EC was a mammoth exer-
cise, and its four-volume report remains the most comprehensive sur-
vey of Indian education. Several recommendations were definitely well
thought and apt; however, EC was clearly part of a thought structure
where the commanding heights of education fed into the “commanding
heights of economy.” A humanist educational and socio-economic vision
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  59

was replaced by a bureaucratic and techno-scientific vision, and EC bore


that imprint.
UEC’s vision of creating rural universities disappears from the idea
world of EC. While the importance of agricultural universities remains,
EC stresses upon creation of major universities and metropolitan univer-
sities:

The most important reform we envisage is the development of five or six


what we may call major universities where conditions may be provided …
to make first-class post-graduate work and research work possible.

Clearly, a vision and policy of creating elite centers of higher education


informs the idea of major universities. When the commission advocates
“conditions may be provided … to make first-class post-graduate work and
research work possible,” what is evident is that high-class education and
research will not happen in the non-major universities. That is a clear
indication that while most universities will remain financially and edu-
cationally poor, the policy decision is to create a handful of elite cent-
ers of higher education. Soon after EC, we see the founding of JNU in
Delhi, which becomes an elite center of higher education, especially in
the social sciences. The idea of setting up metropolitan universities in
the major cities of India also finds favor with the urban-centric Indian
planning process. In the decades since 1970, we have seen an increasing
concentration of universities in the big Indian cities. In a way, the major
university and the metropolitan university ideas have coalesced. There is
no major university under the aegis of the government, apart from the
setting up of IITs or IIMs, which has been planned or has developed in a
small Indian town, not to mention rural India.
EC discusses the national preoccupation with science and technology
and underscores the need of social sciences and humanities. However,
this discussion does not lead EC or the planning processes it impacted
to give a strong fillip to the growth of humanities and social sciences at
the undergraduate or postgraduate levels. A handful of elite social science
research centers developed under the aegis of Indian Council of Social
Science Research (ICSSR). Though EC talks about the national preoccu-
pation of science and technology, its own vision is also under the hegem-
ony of science and technology. In its reference to global contexts, it says:
60  S. Roy Chowdhury

… the greatest contribution of Europe doubtlessly is the scientific


­revolution.

The same thought world informs the stress on Russian as a preferred


language. EC advocated that for anyone wanting to get a Ph.D. degree,
she/he must learn Russian; it even suggested that the government
should consider whether or not to make Russian compulsory at the mas-
ter’s level. This affinity toward learning Russian was definitely not for
love of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Russian literature. The scientific and
technological prowess of the Soviet Union, that it could create mega
industries and could send man into space or that it could create a nuclear
arsenal, is what caught the imagination of Indian educationists. So,
policy thinking was informed by the politics of Cold War and a global
political situation where India’s foreign policy tilted gradually toward
the Soviet Union and a staunch belief system that the techno-scientific
path was the only way for development. The techno-scientific vision was
accompanied by an urban and elite-centric growth path. One fed into
the other. The impact of global processes, a vision of techno-scientific
development and an elite-centric politics, informed and shaped policy-
making of EC and the India of late 1960s and 1970s. The command-
ing heights of economy that were much appreciated by Prime Minister
Nehru found its perfect match in the commanding heights of education
as they emerged from EC’s discourse and policy advocacy.
Though EC abandons the idea of rural university, agricultural univer-
sities, vocational education, and education for women get high priority.
Discussing agricultural universities, EC recommended that alongside
traditional subject areas like plant pathology or soil science, academic
courses should be developed in fields such as engineering for agricul-
ture, food technology, agricultural economics, public administration,
mass communication, sociology, anthropology, law, earth sciences, basic
sciences, and humanities. EC saw agricultural education much beyond
agriculture alone. The agricultural university that they envisioned was
a university with the widest possible interest in knowledge disciplines,
which had a special focus on agricultural education. Going further,
they proposed setting up of agricultural colleges and agricultural poly-
technics, and recommended that agricultural education be included
in the syllabus of secondary schools. Apart from one recommendation
to bring agriculture into the public space, that of broadcasting agricul-
tural programs through radio, nearly all the valuable recommendations
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  61

concerning agricultural education found few takers.9 The reality of agri-


cultural university and agricultural education did not live up to their
vision. Agriculture with an annual growth rate of 3% or less remains one
of the worst performing sectors of Indian economy. “Shining India” sel-
dom thinks that the number of malnourished and undernourished chil-
dren is about a quarter of the population, and even for the large low and
middle middle-classes, the intake of fruits and vegetables is limited to a
very small variety. The neglect of agriculture and agricultural education
continues only at the peril of the nation’s well-being.
EC stressed on vocational education as well. It says, it was unfortu-
nate that there was a feeling “that vocational education at the school
level is an inferior form of education, fit only for those who fail in general
education, and the last choice of parents and students.” The commission
urges:

A concerted effort is needed by both government and industry, through


enlightened wage policies, vocational guidance and the education of pub-
lic opinion, to promote the status and value of the skilled craftsman and
technician. … Our main recommendation is that, by 1986, some 20 per
cent of all enrolments at the lower secondary level and some 50 per cent
beyond class X should be in part-time or full-time vocational and profes-
sional courses.

Fifty years later, in 2017, neither do we see much of an enlightened


wage policy nor has there been any uplift in the status and value of
skilled craftsman. Pulls and pressures of the market economy may have
led youth in the 18+ age group toward professional courses but educa-
tional planning has done scarce little to lead students after class X toward
full-time vocational courses. The second United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) government of 2009–2014 and the National Democratic Alliance
(NDA) government of 2014–2019 have both discussed and promoted
“Skill India,” a new nomenclature for vocational education. But how far
the change has happened at the ground level is uncertain. The skills of
skilled workmen and workwomen remain unshaped by institutional edu-
cation, and educational institutions do scarce little to change the skills
gap in economy and society. Sadly enough, what is referred to as voca-
tional education in India can never get a facelift unless the nation strug-
gles against and overcomes the deep inequities of caste and class and the
mentality of caste that plagues India.
62  S. Roy Chowdhury

Science as Commandment, Scientist as Oracle


While agricultural universities and vocational education were major areas
of thrust in EC, the commission rested on the pillar of modern science.
In their words:

The basic approach and philosophy underlying the reconstruction of edu-


cation adopted by us in this Report rests on our deep conviction that the
progress, welfare and security of the nation depend critically on a rapid,
planned and sustained growth in the quality and extent of education and
research in science and technology. Science has radically transformed
man’s material environment. In the technologically advanced countries the
average span of human life has increased more than a third over the last
hundred years. Science is universal and so can be its benefits. Its material
benefits are immense and far-reaching—industrialization of agriculture and
release of nuclear energy, to mention two examples—but even more pro-
found is its contribution to culture. Science is liberating and enriching of
the mind and liberating of the human spirit. … Nothing comparable to the
scientific revolution in its impact on man’s development and outlook has
happened since the neolithic times.

We can hear a complete trust in science as the liberator of mankind.


It is important to note the two examples of the benefits of science.
Industrialization of agriculture as was envisaged and executed in north-
ern and northwestern India in the 1960s along with the building of big
dams and mega irrigation projects is one of the examples. The second
example, nuclear power, civilian, and military, military even more than
civilian, has fired the imagination of the power elite and the university-
educated middle classes almost through the entire span of independent
India. The specific pattern of science that is embraced is one which feeds
into a power-centric celebration of national pride; the politics of nuclear
power has fed into ultra-nationalist rhetoric often, especially in the late
1990s, when India under Prime Minister Vajpayee detonated the nuclear
bomb.10
The placing of science at the high pedestal is also reflected in EC’s
advocacy of setting up of national science academy modeled on the
lines of similar academies in Japan and the Soviet Union. Once again,
the Soviet influence is strong on the policymakers. This belief in sci-
ence as the liberator notwithstanding EC leaves behind a trail of ambiva-
lence. While, on the one hand, science is seen as the great deliverer of
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  63

development, on the other hand, that same hegemony is jolted when it


quotes a scientist no less than Max Born:

Though I love science I have the feeling that it is so much against history
and tradition that it cannot be absorbed by our civilization. The political
and military horrors and the complete breakdown of ethics which I have
witnessed during my life may be not a symptom of an ephemeral social
weakness but a necessary consequence of the rise of science—which in
itself is one of the highest intellectual achievements of man. If this is so,
there will be an end to man as free, responsible being. Should the race not
be extinguished by a nuclear war it will degenerate into a flock of stupid,
dumb creatures under the tyranny of dictators who will rule them with the
help of machines and electronic computers.

Words like that leave the developmental vision of Nehruvian India and of
EC with plenty of questions. The critique of a blind belief in science as
the driver of development has developed in India and globally in recent
times through the ideas of environmental activists, political psycholo-
gists, educationists, doctors, philosophers, and spiritual leaders. Much of
that spirit had informed India through the works and writings of Gandhi
and Tagore, which in turn was embodied in UEC (1948–1949). But
India of 1960s and EC decided to bask in the sun called science. Later
education policy too turned its back to the spirit of the philosophers.

Electorate and Education: No Longer an Elite Vision


In 1947, and especially with the adopting of the Constitution on January
26, 1950, India chose to be a parliamentary democracy with universal
adult suffrage as a central pillar of its body politic. Four decades later, in
the National Policy on Education (1986–1992), the voice of that body
politic was loud and clear. The elite vision of EC gave way to a substan-
tially more democratic vision of education. Soon after EC had submit-
ted its report, the Congress which had been in power for two decades
in almost all the Indian states was voted out of power in nine out of the
sixteen states of that time. Though it strengthened itself with the Indian
victory of the Indo-Pak war of 1971 and the creation of independent
Bangladesh, it again lost popularity in 1975 when then prime minis-
ter Indira Gandhi, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, imposed Emergency
and suspended all civic freedoms including the freedom of speech. A
64  S. Roy Chowdhury

countrywide movement under the charismatic leadership of social-


ist Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan united a great variety of opposition
parties, and the amalgam called Janata Party came to power in Delhi in
1977, the first non-Congress government to rule India since independ-
ence in 1947. The Janata regime lasted barely 3 years. But it signaled
significant changes in Indian political culture. Nehru or his daugh-
ter Indira was from the topmost echelons of the Indian elite; the cote-
rie of their well-heeled advisers represented the bureaucratic/business/
academic elite. In the Janata government, we see the appointment of
Charan Singh, son of a Jat farmer from the state of Uttar Pradesh, as
deputy prime minister and, briefly, even as prime minister. The power of
the brown sahib, that is, the English-educated Westernized Indian elite,
started to decline in the political sphere.
In 1980, the Congress stormed back to power in Delhi. While
Congress reinforced itself as a central power, the nation was witness to
violent struggles in different parts of the country. In the northwest, Sikh
insurgents led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale wanted a separate nation-
state for the Sikh people, and in Assam, the native Assamese people
wanted to get rid of Bengalis and other “foreigners”—Indians who were
resident in the state and flourished in business and other professions. In
Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu Desam Party led by film-star turned politi-
cian N.T. Rama Rao stormed to power in the state elections, heralding
the beginning of a strong current of state-centric and region-centric poli-
tics in India; a trend that championed greater decentralization of power.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI-M] was often in power
in three states: two in the east and one in the south; they too contin-
ually attacked Indira Gandhi and the Congress for being unfair to the
legitimate economic and other demands of the states. The 1980s can be
seen in Indian politics as the decade of upsurge of regional parties, i.e.,
political parties whose electoral base is limited to a certain state of the
country, and who represent the interests of people of a certain dominant
linguistic/identity group concentrated in that particular state. In the
70s and 80s, the elite domination of politics gets challenged and New
Delhi’s unitary rule gets chipped away by the federal pulls of different
Indian states. With Indira Gandhi’s death through a brutal murder com-
mitted by her Sikh bodyguards, her son Rajiv Gandhi comes to power
with a massive electoral victory in 1985. The new regime tries to respond
to these two pressures, namely, against elitism and the centrist rule of
New Delhi through a push to local self-governance; it gives a concerted
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  65

push to the Panchayati Raj institutions, a system designed to create self-


governance at the village level.11 Rajiv does not return to power in the
parliamentary elections of 1989; for a second time, a Janata-style gov-
ernment of an amalgam of parties and political ideologies spanning the
right, the center, and the left come to power. The United Front govern-
ment of Prime Minister V.P. Singh also lasts only 2 years, but once again,
the push against elite domination is seen in his policies, especially in his
extending reservations in education and government jobs to different
backward castes/classes of the nation.
In the world arena too, there was a quiet change. The Soviet Union
which was the great and only important light of the socialist/communist
ideal in the 1950s gradually came to be challenged by communist China
in the 1960s and 1970s. The leadership of world socialism/communism
got divided into two rival camps. In the 1950s, beaming with confi-
dence after successful freedom struggles against respective colonialisms,
the leaders of new Asia and new Africa like India’s Nehru, Indonesia’s
Suharto, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah,
along with Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, founded the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM), a bloc of nations who were non-aligned to and were
equidistant from both the USA and the USSR. With the demise of the
founding leaders, NAM slowly lost steam in 1970s, and by late 1980s,
it had lost much of its substance. On the other hand, unable to reform
itself and address certain emerging problems, the Soviet Union collapsed
in 1991. While Nehru had maintained some sort of equal distance from
America and Russia, Indira Gandhi leaned closer to the Soviet Union
and created a range of arrangements that deepened Indo-Soviet political
and economic ties in 1970s. With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991,
India had suddenly lost its most important political and economic friend
on the world stage. So, in the beginning of 1990s, both in domestic and
international fronts, it was a substantially altered reality. The educational
policymaking of this period reflects these profound changes that hap-
pened at home and in the world.
The National Policy on Education (NPE), initially enunciated in
1986, was further revised in 1991–1992; the recommendations of
Ramamurti Committee (1990) and the work of a committee headed by
Janardhana Reddy, then chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, were taken
into consideration. The modified National Policy on Education was
tabled to the parliament in 1992. It is best to designate this as NPE
(1986–1992). NPE does not talk of building major universities; instead,
66  S. Roy Chowdhury

the policy thinkers turn their attention to rural universities, and it intro-
duces the idea of open universities in Indian educational planning. It
gives a strong push toward women’s education. Among its concerns is
quality education for the physiologically challenged.
The center–state relation, i.e., the relationship between New Delhi
and the different Indian states in the political sphere, impacts policy
thinking in education. NPE is the first major policy document that cat-
egorically points to the structure that education was on concurrent list,
meaning both the central government in Delhi and the state govern-
ments had purview over education. This implied that in the field of edu-
cation, both were valid players and had important roles to play.
While the role of the states is given importance, NPE is once again
the first policy document to lay a clear stress on women’s education. In
terms of political structures, it brings the states in as important players,
and in the sphere of relationship between the two genders, it stresses the
need for educational development of the deprived half of Indian soci-
ety. Soon after 1947, UEC had decided that women’s roles were mostly
inside the house. NPE made a clear break from that patriarchal view of
society; its thrust is clearly on women’s education and women’s empow-
erment through professional engagement. The introduction of women’s
studies departments in universities is recognition of academic discipline’s
role in addressing changing social and political reality. NPE signals a rad-
ical shift of policy in favor of women’s empowerment. It also reflects the
growing assertion of women and women’s rights groups on the Indian
policymaking process and in Indian polity.
The trajectory of women’s empowerment went through a spurt dur-
ing the freedom struggle in the first half of twentieth century, when a
section of women from the affluent and educated classes came into
public life. However, this spurt failed to impact policy in the immedi-
ate post-1947 years. In the 1950s and 1960s, the women’s liberation
movement became a strong presence in the West. This reinvigorated
women’s movement in India in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in wom-
en’s empowerment; its impact can be seen in later developments such
as the creation of women’s resource centers in undergraduate colleges
and universities. Thrust on women’s education in NPE is a symbol of the
changed perceptions, so also is the discussion on education for the physi-
ologically challenged. NPE is the first policy text that clearly advocates
the case of better education for the disabled. A process of acceptance
of the physiologically challenged in educational institutions may have
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  67

started after NPE but its impact is still minimal. While major and met-
ropolitan universities were the hallmark of EC, the flagship idea of NPE
was open universities; it gave a strong push to open and distance edu-
cation. This document stands out for its policy push for creating open
universities that resulted in the growth of open universities since the
early 1990s. While Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)
set up by the central government has done phenomenal work in provid-
ing tertiary/higher education to millions of Indians young and old, state
governments too have started their open universities. To an extent, this
educational tool has revolutionized higher/tertiary education in India.
Its inclusiveness has brought millions into the fold of higher education.
What mobile telephony has done to communication, open learning sys-
tems have a similar potential in higher/tertiary education.
Open universities have had positive impacts in developing econo-
mies such as Thailand. The first open university was founded in 1970
in Thailand, a good two decades before India.12 Compared to Thailand,
India lags well behind its eastern neighbor in almost all the indicators
of education, health, and economic well-being. Open learning systems
and an appropriate language policy, I believe, have contributed a great
deal to the success story of Thailand and many of India’s South-East and
East Asian neighbors.13 Hence, the push of NPE (1986–1992) toward
open and distance education makes it a landmark policy document in
Indian education. When Rajiv Gandhi pushed forward the Panchayati
Raj institutions, V.P. Singh implemented the Mandal Commission rec-
ommendations of extending educational and job reservations to the
Other Backward Classes (OBCs); at the same juncture, NPE gave a
strong push to open learning. Indian policymakers could feel that learn-
ing must move beyond the university walls; it was an urgent business to
foster open learning systems in a democratic India.

Philosopher, Physicist, Politician, Private Industrialists


So far, I have shown how politics, both at the national and international
levels, and education policy are interwoven. The trend continues in post-
Cold War India. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan of the USA and
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the UK propagated less govern-
ment intervention in the economy and greater privatization. This phe-
nomenon came to be commonly referred to as Reaganomics. The World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also advocated that
68  S. Roy Chowdhury

greater trade between nations leads to greater prosperity. International


trade in goods and services and movement of capital and labor got a
great spurt in the decades following 1990–1991. The idea of less gov-
ernment in economic affairs of the nation and maximum role of private
capitalists in nearly all sectors of life became the new mantra. In post-
1991 India, this economic ideology, often referred to as liberalization,
privatization, and globalization, came to be accepted across the political
spectrum—left, right, and center.
This reliance on private industry and big corporations found expres-
sion in a post-1991 policy document. During NDA regime (1999–
2004), in 2000, a special subject group within the Prime Minister’s
Council on Trade and Industry worked on and published a report called
A Policy Framework for Reforms in Education (PFRE). Industrialists
Mukesh Ambani and Kumar Mangalam Birla were, respectively, con-
venor and member of this group. It bears the hallmark of a new era of
liberalization, privatization, and globalization. While a philosopher
chaired UEC (1948–1949), a physicist led EC (1964–1966), and politi-
cians had a leadership in NPE (1986–1992), in the new India with its
mantra of private capital, two leading industrialists get appointed by the
Prime Minister to create PFRE. The Indian power elite and the nation
had journeyed a long way from Gandhi’s swaraj to market raj.
The report looks at challenges in education and points out that edu-
cation was important for economic growth. The authors of PFRE 2000
are acutely aware of the depths of poverty and troubles of governmental
control and inefficient bureaucracy in India:

The challenge that we face in education in India is to bridge the large gap
between education have-nots and haves while, simultaneously, radically
upgrading education content, delivery and processes to foster a competi-
tive, yet cooperative, knowledge based society.

On the relation between education and development, PFRE points out:

Education … is vital for population control, poverty reduction, economic


growth, civic order, culture and citizenship. Education helps reduce pov-
erty by increasing the productivity of the poor, reducing fertility rates,
improving health and equipping people with the skills they need to partici-
pate fully in economy and society.
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  69

Linking the business and investment angle to education and develop-


ment, it says:

investment in education was considered more of a social obligation rather


than one that would give significant returns.

They argue that the current understanding was that an educated pop-
ulation gave rise to higher economic indicators. They draw on the
experience of South-East Asian nations and try to establish a correla-
tion between greater economic input in education and their newfound
prosperity. The report argues that human capital levels act as a driver of
technological innovation and also determines the speed of absorption of
technology.
Stressing upon the need to invest in education, PFRE finds that
India has neglected investment in education. The discussion turns to
NPE (1986–1992) which had advocated that expenditure on education
should reach 6% of GDP. PFRE laments that the level of investment was
nowhere near the 6% mark. And, on educational development in India, it
sums up:

India’s education system is highly skewed. India has excellent examples of


institutions at all levels of education to demonstrate its capability. Some
higher education institutions like IITs and IIMs have earned international
acclaim. But below this elite crust there is not much to speak of and the
road ahead is challenging.

PFRE is aware of the social and economic challenges, about the depths
of poverty and exclusion; it points out that schooling was still a costly
proposition for the agricultural laborer and refers to the PROBE sur-
vey and states that sending two children to school amounts to nearly
40 days’ wage for an agricultural laborer.14 It also points out:

We have rigid labor laws that protect the interests of 30 million employees
in the government, public sector and organized private sector. The large
numbers of workers in the unorganized sector and agriculture have no
protection.
70  S. Roy Chowdhury

Rigidity, as PFRE rightly points out, does not stop with labor laws; it
says education is a highly controlled sector and a plethora of rules and
regulations act as a drag on the education system:

Rules and regulations govern virtually everything from location, student


intake, course content, fees and fee structure, appointments, compensa-
tion for faculty and so on … Consequently institutions have become rigid.
There is little freedom for creativity and innovation. The compensation
system is unable to attract good quality faculty. Research initiatives are
constrained and linkages with private sector are poor.

For the state of universities, PFRE also blames politicization; it states


that Indian universities are hotbed of politics where teachers have
turned into politicians and student unions are seen as nurseries of politi-
cal careers. They urge political parties to come to an understanding and
decide to stay away from universities and educational institutions.
PFRE suggests ways of improvement and change; it advocates foreign
direct investment in higher education, and more importantly, it argues
for decentralization of management of education:

Redefinition of government role in higher education will call for a major


privatization of the university education system in India. A Private
University bill should be legislated to encourage establishment of new
private universities in the fields of science and technology, management,
economics, financial management and other critical areas with commercial
application.

This report stands out for its advocacy of privatization of Indian higher
education. Led by private capitalists, and coming in an era commonly
referred to as a time of liberalization, privatization, and globalization, it
initiates the idea of a private university bill. In the same breath, it deline-
ates technology and commerce as the principal areas where private uni-
versities should offer courses and welcomes foreign direct investment in
higher education. When PFRE discusses restrictive controls in govern-
ment-sponsored higher education, the solution offered, out of that log-
jam, is privatization. In a departure from PFRE, I think that as a policy
option the nation can also explore that government-funded universities
could be reformed, ushering in an environment of lesser rules and better
governance.
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  71

While pushing for privatization, PFRE stresses on equity and social


justice. We see a strong advocacy of making education inclusive for the
physiologically challenged and a deep concern about the state of labor-
ing population in the unorganized sector. Though texts such as UEC
(1948–1949) address the theme of poverty, it is PFRE that categorically
points out the huge gulf of economic opportunities between the organ-
ized white-collar professionals and the vast pool of unorganized poor
laboring population. However, the overarching thrust is for privatization.
Nehru-era policy and governing philosophy was techno-bureaucratic;
post 1991, the techno-bureaucratic gets replaced by and transformed
into techno-mercantile. I say, “replaced and transformed” because the
policy does not get replaced one fine morning, rather there is a gradual
transformation of policy. I deliberately use the concept of transformation
because what happens in post-1991 India is that the beneficiary techno-
middle class of the Nehru era, it is they whose ideas get transformed
into techno-mercantile. The dominant groups of beneficiaries remain
largely same, the classes and sets of people who were votaries of techno-
bureaucratic structures before 1991; after 1991, they became votaries of
techno-mercantile structures. We see the shift in the pages of higher edu-
cation policy. With its push for private university, the PFRE reflects this
shift and embodies the educational vision of new techno-elite in a new
India.

Much Disquiet on the Private Front


Nearly two decades into the liberalization, privatization, and globaliza-
tion story, in 2008–2009, the UPA government of the time constitutes
a committee to give recommendations. “Committee to Advise on the
Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education” (CARHE) was
chaired by Yashpal, a scientist and professor. It was constituted in early
2008 and submitted its report in 2009. Unlike PFRE, most members of
this committee were from academia and a few from bureaucracy. Like its
predecessors, CARHE too discusses the problems in higher education:

Loss of primacy of the universities in the scheme of the higher education


sector in India, erosion of their autonomy, undermining of undergraduate
education, the growing distance between knowledge areas and the isola-
tion of universities from the real world outside and crass commercialization
72  S. Roy Chowdhury

are some of the problems that characterize the growth of the Indian higher
education system.

Discussing the ills that have plagued the government-funded university,


it severely criticizes the state of private higher education. After two dec-
ades of expansion of private higher education in India, CARHE gives us
a reality check; it tells us much is wrong in the private universities that
have mushroomed since the push toward privatization in early 1990s.
As they say in the quote above, “crass commercialization” is a problem
“that characterize the growth of Indian higher education system.”
CARHE points toward the corrupt and less than transparent practices
of private institutions. At the same time, it also notes that the over-regu-
latory attitude of the governing bodies in higher education hampers the
entry of genuinely philanthropic endeavors in setting up higher educa-
tion institutions:

The solution to the unscrupulous methods of some private investors


should not mean doing away with their participation in the field of higher
education altogether. In order to reach the goals of doubling the higher
education capacity from the present level, it will be necessary to encourage
participation of the private sector.

The report puts forward its unease with private higher education
­institutions:

Purely private initiatives require a credible corrective mechanism to do


away with the ills associated with it currently. It would be necessary for
instance that the present practice of family members who sometimes don’t
have the experience or the competence relating to education occupying the
controlling position of the governing systems of the private educational
institutions be prevented. Similarly, the practice of conferring academic
designations such as Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and Pro Vice Chancellor
to members of the family has to stop.

Continuing its criticism of private institutions, the report urges private


institutions:

not to confine themselves only to commercially viable sectors of educa-


tion such as management, accountancy and medicine, etc. but should also
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  73

encompass social and natural sciences by establishing comprehensive uni-


versities.

CARHE shows displeasure toward private higher education institutions


for high fees; education needs to be affordable and clearly private univer-
sities by charging hefty fees do not cater affordable higher education.
CARHE does not share the optimism toward private higher education
that we saw in PFRE. Though CARHE accepts the importance of having
private higher education, it shows its failings on several counts. In 2000,
the mood of the power elite was all too optimistic about private higher
education; at the end of the next decade by 2008–2009, the optimism
had faded. The academics in CARHE may grudgingly accept a private
role in higher education, but the flaws of the private sector were clearly
no less than the ills in the government sector. Privatization was clearly no
panacea in the higher education sector.

India’s Policy Prescriptions for Bharat


In recent decades, the public world in India has often referred to the
existence of two worlds within the same republic: one called India and
another called Bharat. Bharat is a name that the landmass derives from
history beyond the second millennium whereas India is the British
nomenclature of the country. In contemporary times, in the India/
Bharat divide, the discourse has pointed out that there is an English-
speaking techno-modern affluent India and an English-fearing chaotic
rural-small town Bharat. Does this divide sneak its way into policymaking
in higher education? I show how the ramifications of India/Bharat shape
education policy thinking and impact Indian higher education.
While CARHE shows the problems of private universities, it also cri-
tiques the nature of governance in government-funded institutions; uni-
versities and the higher education system as a whole are over-regulated,
and educational institutions suffer from excessive rules and regulations
imposed on them by governing bodies. Advocating maximum autonomy
for the institutions, it tells us that while institutions like IITs and IIMs
enjoy a great degree of autonomy, the general central/state university is
subject to tight administrative controls, which acts as a negative weight
on the academic life of the universities.15 Thus, elite institutions enjoy
autonomy; the ones lower down the pecking order suffer from the bag-
gage of rules and regulations. Clearly, there is freedom for India and
74  S. Roy Chowdhury

shackle for Bharat. Within the same broad educational sector, we have
a different set of norms for institutions. There is no clear logic apart
from the class/elite angle as to why IITs or IIMs should enjoy far greater
autonomy than the undergraduate college in a small town. What this
regime indicates is that IITs and IIMs whose graduates are destined to
fill up the ranks of techno-mercantile elite are hence privileged to enjoy
autonomy. The system creates an elite and in that process also creates
elite institutions which have a distinctly different set of norms than the
ordinary institutions and ordinary student and teaching population that
form the bulk of the higher/tertiary education sector.
CARHE laments the existence of too many rules and regulations that
weigh down the colleges and universities, yet strangely enough, it wants
to create a governing body over and above all other existing bodies, to
govern the higher education sector. Will the addition of an overarching
body on top of all other bodies add to the quality of higher education
dispensed by India’s institutions? It was strange that policy planners who
are talking about the malaise of over controlling structures are them-
selves advocating the creation of one more new structure over and above
all the existing structures. Here is a desire for India to be in control of
Bharat.
CARHE says many more young people are there in colleges and uni-
versities today than in past decades, and that they want jobs after com-
pletion of education; unlike in earlier periods, education was not a goal
in itself. This view is clearly an elitist bias in policy thinking. The young
Indian who went to do a BA in English in Presidency, Stephens, or
Oxford in 1960s—did she/he pursue it only for the joy of learning?16
I think that is an oversimplification and a serious glossing over of class
character of higher education. Those from India who have had pursued
or pursue higher education do that with a variety of motives, of which
one strong component is economic/material gain, and cultural/educa-
tional status is also strongly linked to material gain. Similarly, for those
from Bharat, their motive is not only to get a job; there is surely the job
angle but the aspiration for higher education is also cultural. The experi-
ence of higher education is multi-dimensional for every young person.
To think that new entrants in the higher education scene, many of whom
may be first-generation learners, are in the university only to get jobs is
a case where India thinks it knows Bharat and can also frame an effective
policy for Bharat. Such inaccurate thinking points to the depth of the
divide between India and Bharat.
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  75

CARHE itself also points to India/Bharat issues. In a distinct depar-


ture from earlier policy texts, they point to the isolation of IITs and
IIMs. The policymakers advocate that the institutions

broaden their curriculum framework and assume the functions of full-


fledged universities without losing their unique character. We can then
look forward when IITs and IIMs will produce scholars in literature, lin-
guistics and politics along with engineering and management wizards who
would have substantial motivation for engagement with the local commu-
nity, and the opportunity to use and enhance learning by solving real-life
problems in their immediate environment.

This “local community” is Bharat and CARHE rightly says, unless the
elite institutions come out of their isolation of India and unless they are
able to think of taking Bharat forward along with India, the perceived
excellence of these institutions will always face a question mark.17 It
clearly voices unease with private higher education and shows where
IITs and IIMs have lagged behind. Two strands of policy, that of pri-
vate higher education and of elitist institutions of knowledge, both come
under the critical gaze of the policymakers. This report clearly shows the
problems with private institutions and elite universities such as IITs and
IIMs. These institutions have always been showcased as centers of excel-
lence, but 50 years after their founding, a policy text shows where they
have failed. Without saying in as many words, CARHE tells the IITs and
IIMs that it was time they stopped being confined in India and stepped
out into Bharat.18

Translating Policy, Bridging the Divide


CARHE urged IITs and IIMs to step out into Bharat. NKC chaired by
Sam Pitroda was initiated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during
the UPA regime (2004–2009); its policy recommendations too could
bridge the India–Bharat gap. Unlike any other policy text, before or
after it, NKC was made available in ten Indian languages, a small but
extremely important step to bridge the India/Bharat divide. English-
savvy India and English-fearing Bharat inhabit different language worlds
with a largely different set of cultural lexicon. With NKC, at least, a pro-
cess started wherein policy texts from the central government level move
beyond the English and Hindi confines to getting published in a number
76  S. Roy Chowdhury

of Indian languages. In India, a country of continental character, there


are more languages than ten. When a major policy text gets available in
ten Indian languages, a signal is sent out that English-knowing India
wants to take non-English Bharat along with it in a journey called pro-
gress or development. Second, when a document gets available in these
many languages, the intellectual worlds in those languages have a very
concrete option to engage with policymaking. If this process is institu-
tionalized such that every policy document in education or health or
rural development gets translated into a dozen languages, that will defi-
nitely initiate robust debate and will pave the way for a richer policy envi-
ronment and a more effective policymaking.
NKC lays great stress on translations. It advocates setting up of
knowledge and information portals on health, environment, rural issues,
and different important areas, and it urges that each portal must be made
available in all the major Indian languages. The policy makers clearly try
to think of Bharat and do not remain confined in India. Even Bharat
is not a uniform single shade of economic and cultural opportunities.
Tribal populations are the most trampled within Bharat. NKC is the first
policy text that clearly urges that learning materials must be made avail-
able in tribal languages; this may have also been an impact of the Maoist
movement with its support base among the tribal peoples of central
India.
The urge to create policy solutions relevant to Bharat is most mark-
edly seen when NKC discusses vocational education. Unlike previous
texts which have lamented the sorry state of vocational education, NKC
actually points to the core of the problem:

It is widely recognized that a crucial problem with vocational training in


India is a negative association with manual labor.

This is an accurate characterization of the problem. The root cause of


the dismal state of vocational education is the Brahminical attitude that
looks down upon manual labor and the consequent influence of the idea
on large sections of society. It suggests ways in which vocational educa-
tion can be salvaged, and it could become an important tool of educat-
ing large numbers of young people and providing them with employable
skills.
The first is to rebrand it as skills education. From 2006 to 2007
onward up until now, we have seen that skills and skills education has
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  77

become a popular currency in the educational and economic discourse in


India. Both central and state governments have been talking about skills
development, and skills development centers have emerged across India;
institutions established in earlier decades have also rebranded themselves
as skills academies. This new initiative has also brought in private part-
ners into the process, which may have already contributed to a modicum
of dynamism in the sector. How far this rebranding will lead to educa-
tion, empowerment, and employment of large numbers of young people;
we have to wait a few years for a more definite answer.19
Another important suggestion is that any student who has completed
school education till class VIII should be eligible to enter a vocational
education course. CARHE too had advocated that vocational education
be brought under the umbrella of universities. If we can lower the entry
requirements of vocational education and, at the same time, offer gradu-
ates the possibility of university certification and further educational
advancement in the university system, we can definitely create a new
value chain in the educational and professional development of those
young women and men who have been traditionally termed as drop-
outs. The goal of a truly inclusive educational regime must be to bring in
the drop-outs.
A third recommendation is the idea of entrepreneurship. Skills train-
ing to develop enterprise and entrepreneurial abilities can be a key in
rejuvenating the entire sector of what has been traditionally referred to
as vocational education. With new branding of the sector, and structures
where drop-outs are translated into bring-ins and enterprise taking root
in the graduates, a renewal and rejuvenation of vocational education may
become a reality in the not too distant future.
NKC’s attempt to be inclusive goes beyond the arena of vocational
education. It discusses health education and non-traditional management
education, and in both areas, it is clear that NKC is trying to translate
policy into the real-life situation of Bharat. It points out the problems in
health education:

Over the years, health related education and training has become more
urban oriented, doctor-centric and technology-driven.

It discusses the situation of paramedics and recommends the setting


up of a paramedical council which would prepare training programs
for multi-skill and specialty technicians and oversee their delivery and
78  S. Roy Chowdhury

quality. Paramedics, NKC says, such as compounders, dressers, and lab-


oratory technicians, can perform public health functions such as health
education, and such a health worker can be trained through vocational
training.
In its discussion on non-traditional management education, NKC
points out

The need for better management in education, health, local govern-


ment, cooperatives and civil society organizations and so on has been felt.
However, the experience of graduates of Institute of Rural Management
and Institute of Forestry Management shows that a lack of advancement
opportunities in the government acts as a barrier to the success of such
programs. There is a need to establish career opportunities in public man-
agement, and systematize recruitment and retention policies.

NKC shows a political will to go beyond the beaten track. It conceives


and advocates how management education can realistically contribute to
a variety of sectors of Indian life and become truly relevant to people’s
needs. I will go a step further and suggest that the regular management
education in IIMs or similar institutions should have an important area
that includes management and public life. The very nature of manage-
ment education needs to undergo reform if management as a discipline
were to have a positive impact on the lives of ordinary Indians.20 This
has started in varying degrees in different IIMs and management institu-
tions but is yet to reform the values at the core of institutionalized man-
agement education in India.

Educational Democracy in an Era of Brands


and Branding

As this book was completing its last mile, another policy exercise hap-
pened in education at the central government level. A draft educa-
tion policy document was released by Ministry of Human Resources
Development (MHRD) in mid 2016. Leaving that aside, since India’s
economic liberalization in 1991, we have three policy texts, namely,
PFRE (2000) led by industrialists Ambani and Birla, CARHE (2008–
2009) led by the academician Yashpal, and NKC (2006–2009) led by
management expert and policy thinker Sam Pitroda.
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  79

In 2000, we saw a push for private higher education; later in the dec-
ade in the period 2006–2009, we see that ills of privatization are on the
discussion table. Alongside, we see that there is a greater push toward
educational democracy. However, the trend of India to remain in con-
trol of the realities of India and Bharat remains both in CARHE and
NKC. Like CARHE’s suggestion of creation of National Commission
for Higher Education and Research (NCHER), an overarching body to
oversee the higher education sector, NKC too, its push toward educa-
tional democracy notwithstanding, advocates the setting up of National
Science and Social Science Foundation which, the authors say, will have
the mandate to oversee the entire higher education sector in India. Both
texts lament and critique the over-regulation of higher education sector,
and yet suggest the creation of an even higher up umbrella body to over-
see higher education. India with its confidence and unstated arrogance of
English and techno-modernity wants to be in control of a continent of
people whose aspirations can only be met through educational democ-
racy. And that should begin with democratic values in the policy environ-
ment.
NKC has also pointed out that universities in India have contributed
to the creation and development of political democracy. Both CARHE
and NKC have expanded the policy world toward addressing the com-
plex reality beyond the classroom. That educational policy should
encompass the world outside English, that lack of English skills should
not prevent students to achieve their higher education potential, that
vocational education should enter university, and that university should
enter the dusty roads and slums outside its walls are a policy set that has
the potential to usher in change. All this, however, happens in the larger
canopy of brands and branding. While ushering in of private universities
is clearly creating a competition between private brands of higher educa-
tion, the mentality of branding has gripped the policy environment as a
whole. On the one hand, vocational education gets rebranded as skills
education. And, on the other hand, most Indian universities and higher
education centers show desperation to get ranked in international higher
education rankings such as QS. What should Indian universities aspire
for, to be ranked in the first 100 or 200 institutions in Asia or the world,
or should it explore if management as a discipline can contribute to bet-
ter health standards of its people. Arthur Morgan, member of UEC
(1948–1949), had said that when discussing with hundreds of academics
of Indian universities, a stranger may not ever know that a single village
80  S. Roy Chowdhury

existed in India. In this era of branding and brand conscious develop-


ment, the nation’s English-educated middle class plunges head on to
international rankings. There is little realization that global rankings and
semi-global power status can never be attained when large sections of
population are poorly fed and where big issues of development remain
unsolved for decades after decades. The critical question is, with all the
push toward educational democracy articulated in policy documents, will
political democracy ensure educational democracy, or will the limited
nature of political democracy severely dwarf the educational and life pos-
sibilities of the common Indian, for whom destiny has ascribed a nation
called Bharat!

Notes
1. In “Western University, Indian Nationalisms,” I have discussed the opin-
ion of Indian scientists on science and development, and that stream of
thought in turn influenced ideals of national development.
2. For an understanding of Tagore’s educational thought, see Dasgupta
(2009).
3. In the first half of the twentieth century, especially in 1920s, 1930s, and
1940s, upper-class Indians went to study in England and a substantial
number got influenced by Marxism. At home, the CPI and other politi-
cal parties such as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association led by
Bhagat Singh gained a large following.
4. In post-1947 India, Gandhi and Marx have been the ideological inspira-
tions, respectively, for the Congress (and parties of the Congress stream)
and the communist parties. Though struggle for economic rights of the
working class and laboring poor forms a major plank in the commu-
nist discourse, individual communist leaders—many drawn from upper
castes—do not value labor in individual daily lives. Whereas Gandhians
do not put the laboring poor at the center of their idea world per se, but
they actually value labor in individual daily lives. Gandhi’s advocacy of the
use of charkha (spinning wheel) each day of one’s life is to drive home
the importance of labor in daily lives of men and women.
5. The Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) in its 12th meeting
held in Mysore in 1946 had opined that spiritual and moral instruction
should be the responsibility of the home and the community where the
people belonged. For further understanding, see UEC (1950). I feel
that the change of opinion from CABE committee of 1946 to UEC
(1948–1949) may have been a result of the ghastly Hindu–Muslim riots
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  81

and deaths in the wake of India’s partition, in the years 1946, 1947, and
1948.
6. The large-scale devastation caused by the big world powers during the
Second World War (1939–1945) made thought leaders and informed
citizens to question the ethical dimension of industrial progress. But
much before at the time of the First World War (1914–1918), Tagore
had harshly criticized nationalism and its aggressiveness in his lectures in
Japan and in the USA. See Tagore (1920). Later in 1930s, he alerted the
world to the ills of industrial civilization in his book Crisis in Civilisation.
For Tagore’s disquiet with the modern scientific industrial world, see
Uma Dasgupta (2009) edited The Oxford India Tagore, especially the sec-
tion “East and West in A Scientific Age.”
7. The dominant developmental vision of Nehru and his advisers has been
critiqued in 1980s and in the last decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, there
were few critiques. One notable voice of opposition to Nehru’s mega
projects was Kapil Bhattacharya who was the chief engineer of the West
Bengal government in the first decades after independence. In a 1961
report, he strongly opposed the building of the Farakka dam. Because of
his opposition to these great “national” projects, he was even branded a
Pakistani spy. For discussion on his opposition to big dams and the devel-
opment paradigm of “commanding heights,” see Sengupta (1999) and
Chari (2016).
8. In 1992, I first encountered the phrase “commanding heights of econ-
omy” in a course titled “Growth of Indian Capitalism” taught by Aditya
Mukherjee when I was a student of MA at the Centre for Historical
Studies(CHS) in JNU in New Delhi.
9. As a middle school boy in early 1980s, I recall that there was a daily pro-
gram titled Chashibhaider jonyo (For our farmer brothers) in Bengali on
All India Radio (AIR), Calcutta. I am almost certain that similar pro-
grams targeting agriculturists were broadcast by the AIR centers across
India, and they did it in the natural language of the region.
10. Soon after the nuclear bomb was detonated, there was talk among the
ultra-nationalists that they would take the nuclear ash to far-flung corners
of India.
11. Panchayati Raj comes from panchayat which is a traditional system of
village democracy where five elected elders deliberated and decided on
disputes and issues of governance. In contemporary India, Panchayati
Raj institutions refer to the structure of democratically elected rural self-­
government.
12. For an understanding of the relation between politics and the educational
development of Thailand, and the exact juncture of development of open
universities in the country, see Watson (1981).
82  S. Roy Chowdhury

13. Thailand has a much greater portion of its population with higher/ter-


tiary education. The country is nearly 100% literate. Countries such as
Indonesia and Malaysia are also in the similar league. This advance in
educational attainment of South-East Asian nations, I believe, has been
possible because in their respective national educational systems, teach-
ing–learning has happened in mother tongues/natural tongues. The
advances of educational attainments, economic growth, and quality of
material life have been intimately linked to one another.
14. PROBE stands for Public Report on Basic Education, and the specific
PROBE report referred here is the one published in 1998 (www.undp.
org/content/dam/india/docs/public_report_basic_education_india.
pdf).
15. The problem of poor and undemocratic governance in higher education
has become nearly endemic to the sector. For an incisive critique, see
Chowdhury (2008).
16. This view that students in an earlier time went into educational institu-
tions for a loftier goal than economic advancement will find few takers. In
his introduction to a volume, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (1998a, b) writes,
“To the beneficiaries of ‘English education’ in the colonial regime, educa-
tion was a means of economic advancement, chiefly through employment
in the service of the state and its allied agencies.” The same pattern of
outcome of educational attainment continued in post-1947 independent
India.
17. For a critique of IITs in view of their inadequate involvement with India’s
democratic project, see Mehta and Sharan (2016).
18. Of course, IITs and IIMs have occasionally shown interest toward the
wider society. Researchers in Guwahati IIT, for example, made an inno-
vation that could lighten the physical labor of driving a cycle rickshaw.
Among the IIMs, the one in Kozhikode has had a structure of encour-
aging incubation centers. Centre for Research and Education for Social
Transformation (CREST) is born out of such an incubation center.
CREST runs a 5-month course twice a year, for graduates from culturally
underprivileged backgrounds with the aim that the course will help the
student reduce the gap of cultural capital that the student most likely has
in relation to privileged students in the educational and professional envi-
ronments.
19. Anil Sadgopal (2016) has put forward a harsh critique of the “Skill
India” initiative of the Government of India. Though I share his view
in regard to some of the negative impacts that Indian’s globalizing eco-
nomic structures can have on the nation’s artisans and trades, it is bet-
ter we reserve the finality of our judgment about the current initiatives.
The problem in regard to the skills education sector has other dimensions
4  COLD WAR TO BRAND WARS: GLOBAL PROCESSES, DEVELOPMENTAL …  83

as well. Government’s inadequacy in developing the skills or vocational


education sector has resulted in large private corporations and industry
bodies taking over the function of skills training in their hands. Partha
Mukhopadhyay (2008) has offered a detailed study of this development.
20. For critiques of management education in India, see Bhattacharya (2010)
and D’mello (1999).

Recommended Readings

Government Reports/Policy Documents


Education Commission. 1970. Education and National Development: Report of
the Education Commission (EC). New Delhi: NCERT.
Ministry of Human Resources Development. 1992. National Policy on Education
1986—Programme on Action 1992 (NPE). New Delhi: Government of India.
Ministry of Human Resources Development. 2010. Report of Committee to
Advise on the Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (CARHE).
New Delhi: Government of India.
National Knowledge Commission. 2009. National Knowledge Commission—
Report to the Nation (NKC). New Delhi.
Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry. 2000. Report on A Policy
Framework for Reforms in Education (PFRE). New Delhi: Government of
India.
University Education Commission. 1950. Report of the University Education
Commission (UEC). New Delhi: Government of India.

Books/Articles/Essays
Bhattacharya, A. 2010. Mismanagement of Indian Management Education.
Economic and Political Weekly 45 (24).
Bhattacharya, S. (ed.). 1998a. The Contested Terrain: Perspectives on Education in
India. New Delhi: Orient Longman.
Bhattacharya, S. 1998b. The Contested Terrain of Education. In Bhattacharya.
Broadfoot, P., et  al. (eds.). 1981. Politics and Educational Change: An
International Survey. London: Croom Helm.
Chari, M. 2016. Over 50 Years Ago, Bengal’s Chief Engineer Predicted that the
Farakka Dam Would Flood Bihar. Scroll. https://scroll.in/a/827254.
Chowdhury, R. 2008. Autonomy and Dignity of Teachers. Seminar 587.
D’mello, B. 1999. Management Education. Economic and Political Weekly 34
(48).
84  S. Roy Chowdhury

Dasgupta, U. (ed.). 2009. The Oxford India Tagore: Selected writings on educa-
tion and nationalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Mehta, Mona G., and R. Sharan. 2016. IITs and the Project of Indian
Democracy. Economic and Political Weekly 51 (11).
Mukhopadhyay, P. 2008. Learning to Work. Seminar 587.
Rajivlochan, M. 2008. Reforming Education for India, from England. Seminar
587.
Sadgopal, A. 2016. Skill India or Deskilling India: An Agenda for Exclusion.
Economic and Political Weekly 51 (35).
Sengupta, N. 1999. A Buzzword Named ‘Development’. The Hindu. http://
www.narmada.org/archive/hindu/files/hindu.19990831.05312524.htm.
Tagore, R. 1920. Nationalism (Reprint). London: Macmillan (Original 1917
edition published by Book Club of California, San Francisco).
Tagore, R. 1941. Crisis in Civilisation. Calcutta: Viswa Bharati.
Watson, K. 1981. Higher Education and Political Change in Thailand. In
Broadfoot 1981.
CHAPTER 5

Class Struggles in Class Rooms: Conflict,


Politics, and the Indian University

Abstract  “Class Struggles in Classrooms” discusses conflict, politics,


and the Indian university. In recent years, Indians have woken up in the
morning to news of student suicides. There have been much-publicized
cases where college or university students from lower caste/lower class
background have committed suicide; many of these have happened in
elite higher education institutions of the country. What has prompted
students from economically depressed and socially marginalized sec-
tions of Indian society to commit suicide? What is the deeper malaise in
India’s higher education system? Does the malaise stem from and point
toward a deep injustice within Indian society? India’s universities and its
higher education institutions, especially the ones that are funded by the
government, have been founded with the objectives enshrined in Indian
Constitution, those of justice, liberty, and equality. The higher education
system professes to further the cause of education, of enlightenment, of
liberty and freedom, and of justice. In reality, the Indian university is a
space where injustice continues, on a number of axes of discrimination.
Language, caste, class, gender, urban/rural, and physiological disability
all of these provide the sources of discrimination. This chapter details the
social and cultural experience of students from margins of society in the
sites of higher education; it also looks into the nature of control and of
politics in the higher education space. It argues that instead of having a
transformative role, in most part, the Indian university plays a key role in
reproduction of the inequities of the Indian social system. And, finally,

© The Author(s) 2017 85


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5_5
86  S. Roy Chowdhury

the author points out that this becomes possible because of a poverty of
politics in India.

Keywords  Student suicides · Axes of discrimination


Reservation in higher education · Politics of control in higher education
Parochial university · Poverty of politics

Of Suicides and Silences
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi is India’s
premier site for medical education, offering undergraduate and postgrad-
uate courses; it is also a large hospital that caters at affordable costs, to
patients from a vast swathe of northern India. Each year, around a mil-
lion students sit for the entrance test to AIIMS and 72 get selected! Anil
had got selected as one of those 72 in 2011. He was from a lower-caste
background and hailed from a village in north India. When he arrived in
AIIMS, almost everything looked foreign to him; he had never seen such
a huge campus, so many big buildings, not to mention air-conditioned
seminar rooms. He felt lost. His alienation grew over the next weeks.
In order to discuss his problems, he sought an appointment with the
director of the institute several times. After repeated requests, he failed
to meet the administrator. One cloudy day, Anil committed suicide. The
suicide triggered news and discussion in media; it led the authorities to
sit up and think of ways to respond to student alienation.1
This was not the end of student suicides on university campuses. In
early 2016, another Dalit student, Rohith Vemula, who was pursuing his
Ph.D. in University of Hyderabad, committed suicide. That became a
national issue, student activists organized protest meets in different cam-
puses, and citizens took out rallies condemning the callousness of univer-
sity management that had most likely led to Rohit’s suicide. Vemula had
left behind a suicide note which was an indictment of casteist and capital-
ist democracy.2
All Dalit or lower-caste students or students from villages, depressed
suburbs of big cities, and from small dusty towns do not commit suicide.
Yet do they silently suffer humiliation, do they feel alienated, what roles
does the power stream of upper castes/upper and middle urban classes
play in their lives, and what exactly is the experience of a young woman
of 20 who comes from a small town to study in an elite-tag institution in
5  CLASS STRUGGLES IN CLASS ROOMS: CONFLICT, POLITICS …  87

one of India’s big neon-lit cities? I did a brief survey, more of an infor-
mal set of interviews and conversations.
Shortly after Rohith Vemula’s suicide, the Bengali daily Ananda
bazaar patrika carried an article titled ami dalit (I am Dalit) by a young
college teacher called Mohitosh Mandal.3 He tells us his life story and
the difficulties of being an academic from the lower caste in Calcutta’s
famous campuses, often seen as progressive communities. Born and
raised in a poor agricultural family some 50 km away from Calcutta,
where rainwater leaked through the roof of his house each monsoon and
wet his textbooks, he rose through determination to study English litera-
ture in a Calcutta university. With excellent academic scores, he landed
himself a job as a university lecturer. However, in his journey from village
to city, the university world bared its prejudice toward this young Dalit
man. In his student days, a professor would tell him, he should not study
English literature because it was not for him; another would tell him he
should not pursue research in literary theory as he would be a misfit for
that. In veiled and not so veiled ways, the urban professor’s prejudice
humiliated him at different steps of his academic journey. He goes on to
narrate that the social upper caste/class prejudice has not left him even
when he has now become a university teacher. Now, he faces flak from
students; to many of them on the campus, he is an outcaste. To me, it is
evident that his non-English-medium school background, his lower-class
and lower-caste background, and his rural background, a combination of
all four, have contributed to the discrimination against him.
While Mohitosh faced open discrimination, many who do not face it
still go through alienation where the causes stem from class, rural–urban
divide, and language. Mimi came to study in the big city college from
one of the Calcutta suburbs that dot the Hugli River. These semi-urban
locales were once throbbing industrial sites in the heyday of industri-
alization in southern Bengal. Now fallen into disrepair, these towns are
decrepit and the social milieu consists of lower classes, lower-middle,
and at best middle classes. Mimi had gone to a Bengali–medium school
in her neighborhood, was a bright young girl, and found her place in
the hallowed city college that she aspired for. Once she was in her first
year BA history class, everything and everyone looked alien to her. She
could not understand the English accent of the best professors; she
did not know the city music bands that her classmates were passionate
about, and she hardly knew anyone who had come from a similar class
88  S. Roy Chowdhury

background to study history. For much of the first months, in the college
corridors of glory, she was all alone.
This story of alienation is not Mimi’s alone. Discrimination and alien-
ation are experiences of a large number of students in the elite-tag insti-
tutions; the outcomes are varied. While Mohitosh and Mimi have fought
back, everyone is not a fighter. A few years ago, a young student from
Malda, a town in north Bengal, got admitted in a literature department
in a Calcutta university. A woman teacher in the class ridiculed him and
his lack of necessary cultural background so much so that he left the uni-
versity after a week. One of his classmates tells me he disappeared alto-
gether. So, while we have some small number of fighters, we have many
more of these silent disappearances, young bright minds that travel from
village or town to the neon-lit academic city, only to be spurned by the
culture of power stream to return to their centuries-old state of still
silence.4

Axes of Discrimination
Moonis Raza (1990) points out, in the 1980s, i.e., four decades after
independence, the literacy rate for upper-caste urban male in Kerala’s
Kottayam district was close to 90%, and that for low caste rural female
in Rajasthan’s Barmer district was less than 1%. While Dalits were 15%
of the overall population, their share of higher education enrolment was
half of that figure. These realities of 1980s have definitely changed for
the better; the disparities between urban and rural have surely decreased.
But the axes of inequities and of discrimination remain. Discrimination
results in inequities; inequities fuel discrimination; one leads to another;
and the inherent divisiveness in society continues and provides a fertile
ground for conflicts, overt, and covert.
What are these axes of discrimination? Language, caste, class, gender,
urban/rural, and physiological disability all of these provide the sources
of discrimination. English, as I have argued in “Brahmin Language:
Hindu Growth,” is a tool of power and a new caste marker; its jour-
ney started in colonial India, but its stranglehold has increased in the
70 years since independence. Caste contributes both in its literal sense
and also expresses itself as a mentality. A caste-fuelled mentality is at the
core of much of the discrimination along lines of language, class, urban/
rural divide, and gender. Class is the new caste in India. The two merge
to create what I would like to call\“claste” discrimination. More often
5  CLASS STRUGGLES IN CLASS ROOMS: CONFLICT, POLITICS …  89

than not, the upper castes are also the upper and upper-middle classes
both in rural, semi-urban, and urban settings, while the lower and other
backward castes are the lower and lower-middle classes. Gender remains
possibly the most deeply rooted area of discrimination in Indian soci-
ety. While caste is most pronounced in Hindu populations, principles in
Islam are against the idea of caste—it is a religion that strongly advo-
cates all men are equal before the Almighty. In South Asian Muslim
populations, though caste is prevalent to an extent, its societal impact
is possibly less than in Hindu populations. However, gender inequities
remain strong in Muslim societies. Of course, women’s movements con-
tinue to challenge patriarchy, both in Hindu and Muslim populations.
The urban–rural divide plays out in more ways than one in exacerbat-
ing discrimination. A disproportionately huge proportion of universities
and especially the elite-tagged ones are in big metropolitan cities. In a
“claste” mentality, habitats too get structured into the four-tier caste
hierarchy: metro cities, tier two cities, towns, and finally villages at the
bottom of the pyramid. Discrimination along lines of physiological dis-
ability probably remains in the worst state. The campaign against such
discrimination is weak, and society and university are far from inclusive
toward those with disabilities.

Reservation Leads to Downgrading of Excellence


in Higher Education?

Nearly, all education policy texts believe that politics on the campuses
is negative and detrimental to higher education. Yet, politics and higher
education are inextricably linked. In 1990, Prime Minister V.P. Singh,
a man of socialist vision, accepted the recommendations of Mandal
Commission that had advocated reservation for OBCs in higher educa-
tion and in government jobs in addition to the already existing reserva-
tion for Dalits/Scheduled Castes and tribal populations. All hell broke
loose in many parts of India. Students from upper castes brought out
rallies, held protest movements, and received front-page attention in
newspapers. University teachers joined them in their attempt to save
excellence in higher education; they felt that with more reservations for
backward castes, academic standards will be badly affected. Passion rose
high to defend Brahminical entitlements; in a few instances, upper-caste
students took to self-immolation.
90  S. Roy Chowdhury

The reservations came to stay. The non-Congress government of


the day instituted one of the most socially inclusive political decisions
in independent India. During the last three decades of India’s freedom
struggle from 1920s to 1940s, with Ambedkar at the helm, Dalits had
found a voice of their own. That got reflected in the making of Indian
Constitution and the post-independence reservations for Dalits, who
were termed as scheduled castes. Forty years had passed since then; a
plethora of castes between the upper castes and the Dalits had found
a political voice, especially in the anti-Emergency movement in the
1970s. V.P. Singh’s decision of reservation in universities and in govern-
ment jobs was recognition of that voice in India’s many layered political
democracy.
Did reservation compromise academic excellence; does reserva-
tion compromise academic standards? For the sake of debate, let us
assume that reservation and more reservation lead to a downward spiral
in higher education standards. If that were so, one would assume that
when reservation was only around 20%, i.e., the first 43 years of inde-
pendent India, Indian universities and the IITs and IIMs must have pro-
duced much cutting edge research or at least produced a large number
of papers in acclaimed journals or transformed the content and meaning
of higher education from what was left behind by the colonial system.
And, correspondingly one would expect that in the two and half dec-
ades since the Mandal Commission, there has been a drastic downgrad-
ing of Indian universities and IITs and IIMs. Neither is the case. Nor
did Indian higher education system produce an internationally respect-
able body of research before 1990, nor has it fared any worse in the
post-1990 period. In research output measured through papers pub-
lished in peer-reviewed international journals or in number of patented
inventions, India has consistently lagged much behind global knowledge
centers such as Western Europe, North America, and Japan.5 Under the
guise of the talk on excellence, the anti-reservationists were anti-demo-
crats and wanted to continue and still desire to continue today, the stran-
glehold of upper castes in higher education and cushioned jobs. NKC
tells us that only 7% of India’s workforce is in the organized sector, i.e.,
large public and private corporations, banks, and similar big economic
institutions. Upper castes constitute around 15% of India’s population,
and if one does a census of this cushioned sector, one would most likely
see upper castes have cornered 75% of these jobs. In the rest 93% of the
workforce, we will most likely find 75% or more are Dalits or OBCs. In
5  CLASS STRUGGLES IN CLASS ROOMS: CONFLICT, POLITICS …  91

effect, the societal caste divide reinforces itself through a “claste” divide
that invades the cushioned sector. Higher education is the gateway to
this cushioned sector. What the anti-reservation lobby signified then and
now is an effort at social gate-keeping; excellence in higher education
was a poor excuse.

Girls Become Nurses, Boys Become Bus Drivers


The number of girls in schools and that of young women in colleges,
polytechnics, and universities have grown manifold from the very low
levels in 1947. However, higher/tertiary education acts as another
theater for prevalent gender biases which result in marginalization of
women. In most of the humanities departments, girl students far out-
number boys, and the trend is some four decades old. It is more pro-
nounced in the largest urban centers. In the sciences, boys are more than
girls, and in technology and medicine, they heavily outnumber the oppo-
site sex, and in commerce and accounting, it is nearly a man’s world.
Nursing colleges attract only girls, while a course to become an electrical
mechanic churns out male professionals. It is evident that gender roles
are ascribed to girls early in their lives, and one such role idea is that
women are caregivers, hence the choice of nursing.6 Boys are culturally
trained to be macho men; hence the nearly total preponderance of men
as bus drivers, taxi drivers, auto drivers and the concomitant flouting of
all kinds of traffic safety rules. Boys far outnumber girls in law, manage-
ment, and medicine. While nearly all nurses are women, the number of
male dentists is probably 20 times more than that of female ones. The
higher education space is one of the core centers where societal biases
structured along gender lines are carefully nurtured.
The anti-woman bias within the higher education establishment gets
reflected in the composition of leadership within the university world.
In positions of academic governance such as principals of colleges and
vice-chancellors of universities, there would possibly be one woman for
every ten men. What is even more interesting is the leadership of aca-
demic societies. Disciplines such as history have attracted more women
in the last four decades. But take the leadership of the Indian History
Congress; you will invariably see a preponderance of men as presidents,
secretaries, and even sectional presidents during the annual sessions of
the Congress. Same will be true for the Indian Science Congress. The
composition of teachers’ union in different universities and colleges
92  S. Roy Chowdhury

reflect the same trend. The university leadership, even if it has a nomi-
nal awareness about this state of things, does scarce little to reform the
gender biases prevalent in choice of subjects and life-careers of young
women and men. And, when it comes to actual leadership, I suspect men
actively impede the possibility of women becoming university leaders.

Parochial University?
Writing in early 1970s, Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph (1972) initiated an
important idea in the discourse on Indian higher education. They rightly
observed that “traditional structures like villages and castes are becom-
ing more cosmopolitan.” This trend of late 1960s and early 1970s has
definitely gained further momentum, 50 years later. This transformation
of the traditional structures of society, they argued, resulted in “univer-
sity parochialization.” They felt that Indian universities were no longer
insulated from the pressures of democracy, and the newer universities
formed after independence cared less for international relevance of cur-
riculum or reference. They rightly asked, as the universities become more
socially and culturally representative, will they lose their cosmopolitan-
ism? Alternatively, can the Indian university induct new constituencies in
the creation of knowledge worlds and make knowledge relevant to local
needs?
While the Rudolphs had pointed to a key area in understanding the
contemporary Indian university, universities have neither become whole-
heartedly socially and culturally representative nor have they bridged
knowledge and local concerns. As for the former, the stranglehold
of claste in universities continues. In Calcutta University, for the first
70 years, its Department of Geography did not have even one teacher
from any of India’s hundreds of scheduled tribes, nor was there any
teacher who was Muslim!7 Positions earmarked for individuals from the
Dalit communities were routinely filled up by upper “claste” individu-
als. So, even the process of being socially and culturally representative
has been an extremely limited one. Because of politics, democratic move-
ments, and constitutional mechanisms in place, the dominant groups
within the university have paid lip service to social inclusion but have
carefully kept the largest sections of Indian society outside the academic
clubs. And the creation of knowledge worlds for local needs has not even
taken baby steps. Mental resistance, tied up with material self-interest,
to social and cultural inclusion within academia has led to the academic
5  CLASS STRUGGLES IN CLASS ROOMS: CONFLICT, POLITICS …  93

inertia toward change that could have created knowledge for local needs.
What has happened is that on the one hand, the university becomes
parochial by caring less for international movement of knowledge, and
on the other hand, it does nearly nothing to make knowledge locally rel-
evant. Where the university has headed in its parochial condition is the
poor copying of Western knowledge and parroting it in the worst pos-
sible manner for further dissemination.
If we turn to policymaking, there is an important turn to the theme
of “parochial university.” While I agree with the thrust of Rudolphs,
there is at least one area where Indian policymaking was more parochial
at independence than 70 years later. UEC (1948–1949) had opined that
the natural place of women is in the confines of home, and the policy
document was detrimental to the development of women’s education.
Later documents like the National Policy on Education (1986/1992)
strongly advocated women’s education, and for the first time, women’s
study and resources centers were created within the universities. In this
regard, policy thinking has moved away from a parochial view of the
higher education space. Surely, if Indian higher education before 1947
was more international and yet had no women participants in that pro-
cess, that internationalization was not democratic; nor could it be an
ideal of cosmopolitanism.

Politics of Control in the Higher Education Space


From its beginnings in the colonial era till now, Indian universities have
always been tied with politics. There are two distinct ways of the univer-
sity–politics encounter. One is the founding of colleges and universities
and the flow of funds from the central or state governments. The other
is the process of control of the university campuses by competing politi-
cal parties and competing politicians. There is a third element of power
within higher education institutions, and that is of a burgeoning bureau-
cracy/administration.
Since 1947, the central government has been the biggest source of
funding to the higher education sector. University Grants Commission
(UGC), a body under the central ministry of education, now called
Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), is responsible
for most of the funding that the state and central universities receive.
Predictably, UGC and through UGC the central government tries to
control the universities. In covert and at times, overt ways the political
94  S. Roy Chowdhury

party/parties in power use UGC as a tool to control the higher edu-


cation space. Though there are political issues in the ways that UGC’s
power is exerted, for the most part, UGC exerts itself in administrative
ways where it functions as a mega-bureaucracy. Under this overarching
bureaucratic control of UGC, the universities themselves create and nur-
ture their own administrative structures. While the position of a principal
in a college is often a seat of power to control the everyday happenings
in a college, in the universities positions such as of the vice-chancellor
and the registrar assume great power over academic workings of individ-
ual teachers. The role that university bureaucracy plays can be extremely
demeaning toward the dignity of the academics, and we have seen in
recent years, academics articulating their displeasure strongly.8 The
power of UGC or the respective college bureaucracies is about adminis-
trative control and show of who’s the boss. In the process, the academic
world within colleges and universities suffer from a powerful versus vic-
tim syndrome.
The teachers organize themselves into unions and while, on the
one hand, they agitate about the material conditions such as pay, etc.,
their fight against what is perceived often as an oppressive bureaucracy
is equally important. Those in university governance, instead of pro-
viding much-needed leadership to the higher education institutions,
become more interested in the show of their little powers. The teach-
ers’ movement gets caught into this cycle of protests against the univer-
sity bureaucracy. The whole cycle of exchanges between UGC, university
administration, and teachers’ unions takes the university world on a
downward spiral. This is a failure of management; with political will, all
parties concerned can devise ways of better management and effective
leadership of the college and university world.
While this play of power and resistance is from the everyday hap-
pening on the campuses, the founding of colleges and universities is
in themselves an act of politics. In the colonial period, wealthy Indians
formed educational institutions, schools, and colleges. These institutions
served as tools for extending their influence on society at large. A sec-
ond pattern was founding of educational institutions by different sects or
specific religious communities. This continues in the post-1947 period,
a third pattern gets steam in independent India. Politicians active in a
particular town or district either start educational institutions includ-
ing colleges or reach the position of control in existing institutions.9
This third kind becomes the most popular form of political control of
5  CLASS STRUGGLES IN CLASS ROOMS: CONFLICT, POLITICS …  95

higher educational institutions. Organized political parties too carry out


a systematic effort to control higher education and its institutions. In
some states such as West Bengal under the CPI-M rule between 1977
and 2011, the party in power routinely intervened in the functioning of
colleges and universities, and especially for the universities, it controlled
appointments at all levels. While the CPI-M’s virtual takeover of higher
education in West Bengal has been much discussed, almost all political
parties when they are in power in the states or at the center, they meddle
in the daily lives of institutions and influence/control appointments. And
this process of negotiation between the political party and the higher
education world is finely enmeshed in one another.
The teachers’ unions are vocal and important players in the colleges
and universities. The leaders of the unions represent one or the other
political party and often rise through union activity to the core leader-
ship of the parties. And if a particular party comes to power in a state,
the party appoints every now and again a person, who has risen through
teachers’ unions, as minister of education. The education minister then
goes ahead in putting his pals into positions of power. And the rival
political party awaits its turn. This forms an important dynamic of the
power processes where politics and higher education meet.

Student Unions in a Democratic Society


Political parties speak in one way through teachers’ unions and the con-
trol of appointments in colleges and universities, and the student unions
form the primary face of politics on the campuses. All through independ-
ent India’s policymaking exercises, educationists and policy proponents
have felt that party-driven politics is a negative influence on the academic
climate of colleges and universities, often advocating student politics be
brought to an end; they have urged political parties to come to a con-
sensus and withdraw from the higher education space. This, of course, is
a utopian suggestion. In a society where education/higher education is
probably the primary modern marker of social status of an individual and
where access is extremely unequal and is a field of overt and covert con-
testation, it is but natural that political parties will want to extend their
influence on the campuses. Moreover, with large numbers of young peo-
ple in each campus, the higher education space across the nation offers
the single biggest concentration of youth. For political parties or for any
organized group, this is where they can easily find an audience for their
96  S. Roy Chowdhury

respective political/ideological programs. And historically, it is the site of


higher education that has greatly fashioned nationalism and other con-
tending ideologies in India.
While the call for shunning institutions of politics is an unrealizable
one, it is important to examine what goes on in the field of student pol-
itics. All major parties and even minor ones have a student wing. The
National Student Union of India (NSUI) belongs to the Congress party,
the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) belongs to the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), the CPI has its AISF, and the list goes on. The cen-
tral party charts out a program of activity for the respective student
wings. And, with some variations depending on the state and the region,
the student wings carry out the program as directed by the party. The
parties get foot soldiers from the student population and some of the
foot soldiers later become leaders of the party. The primary task of the
party’s student wings is to win college or university elections. Often, the
phrase used is “capture the union.” In good measure, the parties train
the student recruits into vocabulary and mood of greater electoral poli-
tics at the state or national level. For parties, student politics is a recruit-
ing arena and a field to extend their political influence.
We see what is there for political parties in student politics, but what
is there for students? Why do students, and only a handful among them,
join serious union-level politics? In the absence of deep ideological ori-
entations in student politics, what could be the reasons for students
when they join politics? In many instances, it is the family’s influence.
But beyond this, there is a larger dynamic at play. As higher education
goes through a period of massification, it draws into its fold youth from
diverse backgrounds, a very large proportion of students coming from
not so privileged backgrounds. While for a few, cornered within the
academic classroom, politics offers a freer space; for many others, stu-
dent union politics offers a space for moving to prominence.10 Those
who see even further can gauge that political party affiliation can bring
them material progress. In a society where class hierarchies are steep,
politics offers a way of responding to sense of deprivation engendered
by class. In understanding of caste dynamic in traditional Indian society,
sociologists have used the idea of Sanskritization, i.e., a process where
a lower-caste group attempts to lift its identity to a caste group that is
immediately above in the pecking order. In contemporary India, I think,
politics plays that function for many individuals. Lower-middle-class indi-
viduals, necessarily not from lower castes, find in politics and often in
5  CLASS STRUGGLES IN CLASS ROOMS: CONFLICT, POLITICS …  97

student union politics the first point of entry to a different social status.
By virtue of participation and leadership in student politics, an individual
from a low social status finds herself or himself in a new position of high
status. This represents a neo-Sanskritizing trend in Indian polity. It lends
an important narrative to the larger theme of class and caste struggles
within the Indian higher education space.
It is rare that student politics has moved away from the folds of estab-
lished parties. The Free Thinkers in JNU in the late 1970s and 1980s
and the Independents Consolidation in Presidency College, Calcutta
from late 1980s till now are two important examples. Campuses such
as JNU have been politically vibrant; ideological battles have played out
in the minds of students through the various generations in the univer-
sity. In IIT Chennai, in recent years, the Periyar–Ambedkar study circle
has challenged the casteist order of things in higher education and more
widely; over the decades in some of Calcutta’s campuses, student groups
have come out in substantial numbers against injustices of state power.
However, considering the huge mass of Indian college and university
students, this group of ideologically alive ones is a miniscule proportion.
Of course, though small they have a larger impact than their numbers
when media takes up their causes. There too, though, class biases come
to play. A student demonstration in one of Calcutta’s elite-tag universi-
ties or in JNU gets wide media attention. The moment the protesting
students are from a smaller town such as the University of Burdwan, the
news trickles down to a four-liner. All in all, student groups working out-
side the realm of established political party directed program is scarce lit-
tle. And, even when they may espouse extremely radical positions like the
Revolutionary Students Union, they will still be the student wing of the
CPI (Maoist).

Poverty of Politics
While policy planners do not like the presence of party politics on cam-
pus, it is politics that has given the most important critical input into
the Indian higher education system; the decision of the V.P. Singh gov-
ernment of 1989–1990, of implementing reservation for various back-
ward castes, remains the landmark initiative toward social justice since
the adoption of the Indian Constitution in 1950. However, discrimina-
tion and deprivation continue along multiple axes. In post-liberalization
India, the economic policies of parties on the right, left, and center have
98  S. Roy Chowdhury

gradually moved toward an unspoken consensus. In 1990, the Mandal


Commission recommendations were accepted; in 1991, economic liber-
alization was inaugurated, and since late 1980s, private higher education
has expanded in leaps and bounds and has largely bypassed the system
of reservation. Economic liberalization, economic globalization, and pri-
vatization are the three pillars of material life that most Indian political
parties accept. Student wings of the parties remain caught in “captur-
ing the student union” mode; ideological struggles especially centered
on contrasting economic models for social development which informed
students in the 1950s and 1960s are a far cry in educational campuses
today.
There are parties like Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party
(SP), Republican Party of India (RPI), and others whose stated politics
is that of struggle against caste oppression. These parties too remain
caught up in an everyday politics where winning elections and becoming
the ruling party in a state is be-all and end-all. The ideological strug-
gle against caste or mentality of caste takes a backseat far behind and
becomes nearly invisible. While reservation and quotas for the under-
privileged are absolutely necessary for the creation and deepening of a
democratic society, it cannot be a sufficient measure. There is a need for
a larger and deeper ideological battle. Ambedkar had argued for “anni-
hilation of caste.” Without a deep and embedded political consciousness
of that ideology of annihilation, reservations alone cannot take Indian
society toward a fair political democracy, nor can it give rise to an intel-
lectually dynamic higher education universe. In 1950, while inaugurat-
ing the Indian Constitution, Ambedkar was acutely aware of the crisis of
social justice in India’s political democracy. In Ambedkar’s vision, there
was both the democratic arithmetic of reservation and the longer term
philosophy of justice—the annihilation of caste itself. Unfortunately,
politics in independent India has not assimilated Ambedkar’s thrust of
social justice. While social justice movements and parties have emerged,
the sophisticated and complex articulation of social justice has remained
a faint inaudible murmur. It is politics that articulates its decision in res-
ervation; however when reservation alone becomes politics, then poli-
tics loses its appeal for a world free of injustice. The axes of injustices
in Indian society are multiple. When Dalits agitate against injustice, they
rally their kin but other oppressed groups are not brought into the fold
of the movement. For a struggle born in Manipur or Kashmir, Dalits
or tribal populations of central India do not come out in solidarity. A
5  CLASS STRUGGLES IN CLASS ROOMS: CONFLICT, POLITICS …  99

million mutinies across India remain dispersed political struggles. A


meta-narrative that brings the struggles into a larger rubric of movement
against injustice is sorely missing. Ambedkar fought for the rights of the
depressed classes or Dalits, but he did not remain contained in that par-
ticular history of oppression. That expansive politics is absent in contem-
porary India; it results in a continuation of injustices in society and in the
higher education space, and the protests against such injustices do not
coalesce into a sophisticated political–ideological articulation within and
without the university world.

Notes
1. Anil Meena, a first-year MBBS student, committed suicide on March 3,
2012. According to reliable sources, between 2010 and 2016, there have
been 11 suicides among students and doctor-interns in AIIMS.
2. There has been a flood of articles on the suicide of Rohith Vemula. For an
eloquent defense of the ideals that Vemula stood for, see Bhattacharjee
(2016).
3. For the complete article, written in Bengali, see Mandal (2016). In
the closing section of his article, Mandal talks about Rohith Vemula’s
thoughts.
4. The experiences discussed here are sourced from interviews done in 2016,
with former students of Presidency and Jadavpur universities in Calcutta.
5. All the hype about the excellence of IITs and IIMs notwithstanding,
Indian universities remain in a peripheral and marginal position vis-à-
vis the world knowledge system dominated by North America, Western
Europe, and Japan. See, for example, Altbach (1993).
6. This phenomenon is a proof of the educative function of society, as con-
ceptualized and argued by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Passeron
1990).
7. I have learnt this in an interview I did with a professor of the geography
department in 2016.
8. Rekha Chowdhury (2008) has discussed in detail how administrators
undermine the dignity of teachers in higher education institutions. A
guest lecturer in a girls’ college in Calcutta tells me how the principal in
the college acts in arbitrary ways with complete impunity.
9. To understand how politics and politicians negotiate with educational
institutions, see the work of Harold Gould (1972) in the context of Uttar
Pradesh and the work of Iqbal Narain (1972) on Rajasthan.
10. Kanhaiya Kumar, the JNU students’ union leader who rose to nationwide
prominence in 2016, hailed from a remote village in Bihar and neither
100  S. Roy Chowdhury

did he have English at his command nor did he have the cultural capital
that many of his fellow students had in JNU. However, when he became
a vocal student leader on the JNU campus, his social stature was greatly
heightened and he gained prominence much beyond the possibilities of
his modest rural background. In an interview with me, Debalina Ghosh,
a former student activist in Presidency University (earlier Presidency
College), has pointed out that in the first 6 months of college she felt
alienated and kept to herself. But when she entered active politics, she
became much more accepted by all students. The experience of politics
giving individuals a higher social location will be shared, I think, by a
large number of student activists.

Recommended Readings
Altbach, Philip G. 1993. Gigantic Peripheries: India and China in World
Knowledge System. Economic and Political Weekly 28: 24.
Bhattacharjee, Manash. 2016. The clarity of a suicide note. The Hindu. http://
www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/The-clarity-of-a-suicide-note/arti-
cle14017737.ece.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1990. Reproduction in Education,
Society and Culture. London: Sage.
Chowdhury, Rekha. 2008. Autonomy and Dignity of Teachers. Seminar 587.
Gould, Harold. 1972. Educational Structures and Political Processes in Faizabad
District, Uttar Pradesh. In Rudolph and Rudolph.
Mandal, Mohitosh. 2016. Ami dalit. Ananda bazaar patrika, http://www.
anandabazar.com/supplementary/rabibashoriyo/rabibasariyo-cover-story-on-
dalit-1.291430#.
Ministry of Human Resources Development. 1992. National Policy on Education
1986—Programme on Action 1992 (NPE). New Delhi: Government of India.
Narain, Iqbal. 1972. Rural Local Politics and Primary School Management. In
Rudolph and Rudolph.
Raza, Moonis. 1990. Education, Development & Society. New Delhi: Vikas
Publishing House.
Rudolph, Susanne H., and Lloyd I. Rudolph. 1972. Education and Politics
in India: Studies in Organization, Society, and Policy. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
University Education Commission. 1950. Report of the University Education
Commission (UEC). New Delhi: Government of India.
CHAPTER 6

Elite Institutions, Dismal Development:


Poverty of Indian Higher Education

Abstract  “Elite Institutions, Dismal Development” shows how an


undemocratic thrust on elite higher education institutions has led to a
dismal state of higher education and development. In the last 25 years,
since India has experienced reasonable economic growth, the purchas-
ing power and size of the middle class have grown. At the same time, the
primary health indicators and the basic education indicators of the coun-
try have remained poor, in many instances much worse than a far poorer
economy, that of neighboring Bangladesh. While India is always talked
about in the Indian and global press as an important emerging econ-
omy, the ground realities of living condition of majority Indians remain
abysmally poor. India plans smart cities while its child mortality rates
are higher than that of most of its neighbors. India’s software industry
boasts of providing a wide range of services to global clients while roads
in its major cities remain potholed and clogged with traffic; it sends
machines into space and its biggest financial hub of Mumbai gets para-
lyzed with rains every monsoon. The state of dismal development can be
found in the higher education sector as well. Policymakers continually
talk about “the crisis” in Indian education; this chapter points out that
the crisis gets louder by the day. The system has flaws, can the flaws be
remedied and a better system put in place? The answer to the flaws lies in
what the author calls a mentality of caste and a continuation of a system
put in place during the colonial era. This chapter shows how an architec-
ture and geography of injustice plagues Indian higher education. Both
in the way how university world has been fashioned and especially in the

© The Author(s) 2017 101


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5_6
102  S. Roy Chowdhury

case of disciplines and conceptualization of knowledge, Indian higher


education has remained almost frozen at 1947. The author argues that in
order to create a robust higher education world, India has to unshackle
itself from the mentality of caste and archaic conceptualizations of dis-
ciplines. Though the author sees the flaws of colonial structures, he
argues that we need to move out of the binary of colonial/national.
Educational freedom which leads to a new ordering of disciplines and of
higher education holds the key to a just, equitable, dynamic, and sustain-
able growth in India. A complete conceptual overhaul of Indian higher
education alone can lead to a developed India.

Keywords  Caste and class hierarchy · Crisis in Indian higher education


Architecture of injustice · Disciplines and underdevelopment
Redefinition of disciplines · Educational freedom and national well-being

In 2010–2011, my usual day was to take the metro from Delhi’s Lajpat
Nagar station, get off at Viswavidyalaya (university), and from there walk
to the Delhi University’s Department of Education. Each day when I
stepped out of the train hundreds of young university students, would
climb the escalator up to the street level. As soon as we were out of the
station, I would see a group of young men—their faces filled with expec-
tation to get a new client. They were cycle rickshaw drivers, each one
of them was waiting to get a new passenger who he will cycle to her or
his college, one of the many that dot the Delhi University’s leafy green
campus. The young students—girls and boys—were all in their late teens
or early 20s. The young men, who ferried them in their cycle rickshaws
in sun and in rain, were also between 18 and 30. Everyday, the two reali-
ties of youth stared me on the face. A middle-class upbringing where it is
given you will go to a college once you finish secondary education. And
a lower-class upbringing—most likely also a lower-caste reality—where
the maximum you can dream of is to pedal a cycle rickshaw and ferry the
sons and daughters of the middle class to their academic glory. As these
two Indias jostled in the edu-urban reality of Delhi University, I tried to
leaf through yellowed pages of books and journals in the library at the
Department of Education.
The year 2017 marks 70 years of India’s independence from British
colonial rule. It is also 200 years since Hindu College the first Indian
institution of imparting Western education at higher levels was founded
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  103

in Calcutta. In 1858, the first universities with Western education at


their philosophical center were set up in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras.
More were formed by the British administration until 1947. And Indians
of different political, social, and religious beliefs also started institu-
tions/universities of higher education between 1900 and 1947. After
independence, the number of universities has increased. And centers
of higher education, perceived as centers of excellence, have also been
formed. The IITs in Kanpur, Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur, Bombay, and in
the recent years in some other cities are such elite institutions, as also are
the IIMs. The Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Tata Institute
of Fundamental Research in Bombay, and the Saha Institute of Nuclear
Physics in Calcutta are the elite centers in pursuit of knowledge in core
sciences. In recent years, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and
Research (IISERs) have been created. The Jawaharlal Nehru University
(JNU) founded in the late 1960s is also an elite university, and it was a
place for social sciences in the first decades of its existence, now though
it has departments of natural and physical sciences as well. There are sim-
ilar institutions in medical sciences, in law, and in a range of other aca-
demic/professional fields. All fields taken together, the number of such
elite institutions will be around 250. Compared to this, the number of
tertiary education institutions—undergraduate colleges and polytechnics
included—in the public and private sector will be close to 20,000.
After a growth of higher education institutions spanning around
150 years, and 70 years since policy planning in independent India, it
is natural to ask how have the institutions performed, what have they
achieved, have they contributed to India’s economy, society, and cul-
ture, and if so, to what extent. Where have they failed, are their failings
because India has been a developing country, a country that has not
yet industrialized fully, or are these failings the reasons why India has
remained a poor country. If there are failings of the Indian higher edu-
cation system, where do the failings stem from, what are the relations
between the nature of India’s political, social, and cultural worlds and
the state of India’s higher education?

“A Quiet Crisis”
In education policy documents, one discerns a visible disquiet. NKC
(2008–2009) says, “there is a quiet crisis in higher education in India
which runs deep.” A similar concern is voiced by CARHE (2008–2009).
104  S. Roy Chowdhury

The areas where the policy thinkers see the university failing are as fol-
lows: absence of a robust humanistic tradition, inability of integration of
work into the university world, disconnect between theory and practice,
fragmentation of the idea of knowledge, a depressing examination system,
stigmatization of vocational education, and absence of academic leader-
ship. They also point out that the library system in India is in a bad shape,
the graduates of some professional institutes such as of forestry or rural
management are not being offered adequate career options, there is a
dearth of students pursuing mathematics and basic sciences, and the num-
ber of students in universities is as low as 10% (or lower) of the population.
They discuss problems; they also advocate measures which can create
better universities. There is a thrust toward doing hands-on work within
the educational practice as also creating links between the world of work
and the university. In their words:

Indeed, the experience and culture of work represents that core space
where the humanities and the sciences meet.

Further, they point out:

Indian system of higher education has also kept itself aloof from the local
knowledge base of the worker, the artisan and the peasant and the real world.

In order to redress the issue of work disconnect and “the chasm between
theory and practice,” policy thinkers recommend that the syllabi:

be designed with a view to inducting the student into a community of par-


ticipant citizens.

They advocate “compulsory exposure and engagement with different


kinds of work … and should include both manual and other kinds of
work/occupations.” CARHE points out that the present examination
system tests certain skills of the student but does not test either her abil-
ities to deal with real-world situations or skills required for theoretical
pursuit of knowledge. The system is:

memory-based questioning, with the occasional rote-based “application”


question masquerading as real-world problem solving … entrench the stu-
dent’s lack of ability to examine and understand the real world, as a result
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  105

of which their engagement with people or issues remains scarce once they
enter the world of work, with implications for their abilities as workers and
citizens.

NKC draws up a roadmap for the rejuvenation of higher education and


knowledge systems; it shows how more students could be attracted to
learn science and mathematics; advocate the setting up of web-based
knowledge portals on water, energy, education, food, health, agricul-
ture, employment, citizens rights, and other important issues; create “50
national universities that can provide education of the highest standard,”
at least 10 in the short term of 3 years; give impetus to open and dis-
tance education; and address the problems such as medical education
being urban-centric. And, to re-energize Indian higher education, they
urge vice-chancellors of universities to give visionary leadership.
Policymakers also sound a somber note of alarm:

And, in some important spheres, we continue to reap the benefits of what


was sown in higher education 50 years ago by the founding fathers of the
Republic.

With ideals of a great university in their minds, the founding fathers

realized … in a social context characterized by a sharp division between


the rural and the urban, the elite and the masses, and between men and
women. … higher education was increasingly perceived as a means to over-
come caste and class hierarchy, patriarchy and other cultural prejudices and
also a source of new knowledge and skills, a space for creativity and inno-
vations.

How far have Indian universities shaped/reshaped the “sharp division


between the rural and the urban, the elite and the masses, between men
and women.” If the situation was such that universities have not been
able to live up to these goals and have failed, that could well signal that
Indian democracy itself is in peril. Is the “quiet crisis” in Indian higher
education reflective of a quiet crisis in Indian democracy, or has Indian
democracy failed to nurture Indian higher education toward the deepen-
ing of democracy and social justice, or has Indian university world shied
away from “dirty politics” and “dusty India” in order to continue what
Pierre Bourdieu famously termed “reproduction in education”?
106  S. Roy Chowdhury

The Crisis Gets Louder by the Day


While the commissions note that only about 7% Indians of the 18–24
age group get any form of higher education, the comparable number for
Asia is 15%, and one can almost blindly say, the number is much higher
in South Korea or Singapore, not to mention Japan. This low percentage
gets reflected in the small number of students in many Indian universi-
ties. A large number of universities have student strength in the vicinity
of 5000 whereas for most European and North American universities,
the figure is close to 30,000. On the one hand, huge numbers of the
youth are denied the opportunity of higher/tertiary education; they land
up as rickshaw drivers at the gates of Delhi University or as guards at the
gates of gated communities of the upper-middle classes and the rich.
Not only does a small number get to colleges or universities. Those
who do, what happens to them after they complete tertiary/higher
education? In 2013, the West Bengal government was recruiting pri-
mary and secondary school teachers. The total number of teachers to
be recruited was about a thousand. Four and a half million candidates
appeared for the exam.1 This is an Indian state whose per capita gross
domestic product (GDP) is somewhere in the middle of the rankings of
the 28 Indian states. And this is in an India two and a half decades after
high rates of economic growth since the liberalization of 1991. Through
my association with workshops held in AIIMS in Delhi, India’s premier
medical school, I came to learn that for admission to 72 seats in AIIMS,
Delhi the number of examinees who appear in the all India entrance test
is one million!
Examinations in India have become a social spectacle worth several
sociological studies; often, they have a huge social cost and take a toll on
students and parents, and that is a great national loss.2 Nervous parents
expecting successes of their wards line up at the gates of examination
centers, educational entrepreneurs set up tutorial shops, and landlords
rent out rooms and paying guest accommodations to expectant students
studying for various grades of competitive exams to secure jobs or uni-
versity seats that will lead to jobs.
Oppressive exam culture has its losses. The state of research culture
is also depressing. Devesh Kapur (2010) has pointed out that while
Delhi School of Economics produced 4.5 Ph.Ds annually in the 1970s
and 1990s, between 2000 and 2010, there has been only a meager
1.5 Ph.Ds each year; Kapur reminds us that this is despite the fact that
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  107

number of economics departments in Indian universities climbed from


72 in 1971 to 119 in 2001.3 The students who complete Masters in
Economics, a large percentage of them, go to universities in the West
for further studies or get sucked into high-salaried jobs with financial
institutions in India. The Ph.D. positions remain vacant. While the urban
well-heeled girls and boys finish masters and leave for the West, those
from India’s backwaters of dusty towns in the states of Chhattisgarh and
Rajasthan, even if they are academically gifted, they do not have the cul-
tural resources to aspire to study in one of India’s premier institutions.
The production of research at other elite institutions such as IITs and
IIMs suffers from these same cultural and socio-economic factors. India’s
policy thinkers or university leadership has done little to stem the decline
in research output levels at India’s top academic institutions. Setting up
50 national universities, as the NKC recommended, will not ensure the
development of research output and standards. The answers to India’s
falling standards in research and in higher education lie elsewhere. It is a
deeper malaise.
With some exceptions in a few centers of natural sciences and fields
such as nuclear technology and rocket and outer space science, research
does not show any promise. With the bleak landscape in research is
combined the lack of interest in postgraduate studies. Especially in the
engineering streams, students get jobs as soon as they finish their bach-
elor degree and are not inclined to “waste” 2 more years studying. As a
result, a large number of seats at the master’s level of engineering col-
leges go vacant year after year. For the nation, this is not only a loss of
unutilized educational capacity but it also means that in the absence of
engineering students who complete postgraduate studies, there will be a
continuing shortage of teachers for engineering disciplines.
As the master’s level languishes, the state of undergraduate studies
cannot be far behind. The policy reports rightly argue that in the Indian
university system, the undergraduate level is looked down upon, those
who are regular teachers at the postgraduate level; they do not teach
undergraduate students. Further with college teaching caught in the
9-to-1 syndrome, there has been a rapid deterioration of undergradu-
ate teaching. This points to the academic culture (or the absence of it)
wherein teachers in most undergraduate colleges come in to their institu-
tions at 9 a.m. in the morning and finish all their teaching assignments
by 1 p.m. and leave. This has resulted in a near absence of a dynamic and
interconnected educational community of teachers and students in the
108  S. Roy Chowdhury

undergraduate colleges. With a bleak college culture, students in smaller


cities and towns often look at undergraduate education as “time pass,”
meaning they were enrolled in the colleges because they have nothing
better to do.4 A low morale of the students, teachers more concerned
with salaries and far less with the state of academic life, an administra-
tive culture which controls more and governs less, and libraries where
the librarian’s salary is often higher than the cost of books and magazines
bought in a year, this is how dismal the state of college education is in
most of India. Bypassing this dismal state of publicly funded undergradu-
ate education, private universities have mushroomed in different parts of
India. The private colleges and universities—the bulk of them—address
the aspirations of youth for higher/tertiary education and jobs in mod-
ern sectors of economy but their standards of teaching and governance
are almost as bad as the bulk of the public institutions. They add to the
dismal state of higher education; they do not alter the scenario.
Let us turn to vocational education. Starting with EC (1964–1966)
and right up to the recent work of NKC and CARHE, policy thinkers
are unanimous that in people’s mind, there is a stigma attached to voca-
tional education. Polytechnics and industrial training institutes continue
to languish. Students who do poorly at the school level and youth from
poor families are the ones who enroll in vocational institutions. The pol-
icy community is rightfully concerned about the stigmatization of voca-
tional education. However, in a society where caste and the mentality of
caste play profound roles, it is not surprising that the stream of education
where manual labor is integral to the process of learning and to future
jobs continues to be stigmatized. Stigma attached to polytechnics, col-
leges in a dismal state of dysfunction, postgraduate studies stagnating
and research output falling in meaning and in numbers. The crisis of
Indian higher/tertiary education is loud and clear.

The System has Flaws, Let us Adopt Remedial Measures;


it Will Lead to a Better System?

Policy thinkers look at the systems in place in higher education, they


find problems that plague the system, and they advocate measures which
they believe will remedy the situation and will galvanize and re-energize
higher education in India. I summarize here below the recommendations
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  109

of CARHE and NKC, which embody the policy community’s response


after nearly two decades of economic liberalization in India.
They argue “…universities have to be autonomous spaces” and add
“intellectual and moral” autonomy from political forces is a pre-condi-
tion for the development of universities. With autonomy in place, they
suggest that to take the university forward and to ensure it performs its
academic, social, and cultural roles well, the vice-chancellor of the uni-
versity should provide leadership.
They note “the fragmentation of the idea of knowledge,” and hence,
as much as they advocate a robust undergraduate program for each uni-
versity, they simultaneously argue:

it would be necessary that the universities adopt a curricular approach


which treats knowledge in holistic manner and creates exciting opportuni-
ties for different kinds of interfaces between the disciplines.

As much as they stress on dialogs between disciplines, they advocate


the university to take cognizance of the real world. Institutions such as
the IITs and IIMs, as also others, should engage with local communi-
ties and enhance their learning by solving real-life problems. While
suggesting such programs for IITs and IIMs, they also would like the
universities to do self-evaluation, and when they do so, they should have
parameters which are not only academic. One of these needs to be cen-
tered upon the transformative role higher education can and should play.
Universities need to ask themselves what roles have they played in respect
of the inequities around gender, caste, and class.
Alongside these ideas, they also assert that much greater funds
need to be allocated to the higher education sector by the union and
state governments. The paucity of funds, they feel, is a great factor in
the underdevelopment of the universities. They also suggest new struc-
tures of governance. Some colleges should be made autonomous or they
could also be granted university status. A cluster of few colleges can be
delinked from an existing university to which they are affiliated, and this
cluster can be shaped into a new university. In this way, the number of
universities will go up, and it will also result in better governance of the
higher education sector as a whole.
NKC moves a step forward and discusses issues of training. Pointing
out that only 7% of India’s working force was in the organized sector,
they suggest:
110  S. Roy Chowdhury

enhancing training options available for the unorganized and infor-


mal ­sector will be critical for enhancing the productivity of … working
­population.

Linked to this, vocational education finds attention of the planners.


Bringing vocational education to the fold of the university will reduce
the stigmatization of the sector. An important remedial measure in this
sector can be a rebranding of vocational education as skills development.
And when graduates of polytechnics or other centers of skill develop-
ment become successful entrepreneurs, they could help in taking the
stigma out of vocational education.
While there has been the growth of IITs and many engineering insti-
tutions, the state of education in basic sciences remains underdeveloped.
To rejuvenate science education, the thinkers want more students in sci-
ences and mathematics, both at school and college levels. And in con-
tinuation, they stress the need for “more quality Ph.Ds.” To enhance the
quality of life of fellow citizens with the help of knowledge and tech-
nology, there is the idea of setting up of national web-based portals in
sectors such as water, energy, environment, education, food, health, agri-
culture, employment, and citizens’ rights. In taking the world of knowl-
edge forward and making India a vibrant knowledge society, India’s
many languages can play an important role. NKC points out to this need
and potential, and argues that learning materials such as books in sci-
ences and other disciplines should be made available in different Indian
languages.
With recommendations and suggestions covering vocational/skills,
undergraduate and postgraduate education as well as directions of
research; governance of university and the higher education sector as a
whole, the social role of university, the targets that the nation and the
university world should have, and a call to rejuvenate the sector, if the
recommendations are implemented, it is well possible that the Indian
university world will come out of its stupor and will be an engine for
innovation, economic growth, and social justice. To assess the plausible
impact of the contemporary set of policy guidelines, we should evaluate
the impact of policy advocated in the early decades of independent India.
It is important to see what were the recommendations of that era and
how much did things change for better or for worse, in the many dec-
ades since.
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  111

An Architecture of Injustice
Writing on Chinese education, Robert Sloss (1981) tells us, “There is
in fact no education that is, or indeed can be or ought to be, divorced
from the ideology and the political ideas of the society of which in many
ways it is the supreme expression; education is perhaps the most intensely
political of all the aspects of a society for it encapsulates the fundamen-
tal beliefs and the basic social goals of that society.” Nothing can be
truer; it is the ideology and political ideas of India’s privileged classes
that have shaped Indian higher education. Though an ideology of social
justice informed India’s freedom struggle and the making of India’s
post-independence Constitution, in subtle and at times in not so subtle
ways, India’s power stream has subverted that ideology and has skillfully
crafted India’s education/higher education to suit its political and eco-
nomic needs.
Policy thinkers want that universities should evaluate themselves
on how far have they contributed to better the situation in relation to
indices of social injustice such as caste or class. What they gloss over is
how the university and higher/tertiary education system itself embodies
injustice. It is a pyramid where the top 200 odd “elite” institutions like
IITs, IIMs, and others receive a disproportionate share of public money
as compared to undergraduate colleges or centers of vocational educa-
tion. In August 2016, the HRD ministry decided on Project Vishwajeet,
which aims to put IITs in the top 100 of global rankings, and in
November 2016, IITs have requested a sum of Rs. 22,000 crore (3.2
billion US dollars) over a 5-year period from the ministry. How does this
figure compare with budgetary allocations to education and higher edu-
cation? In 2016, the budgetary allocation for the education sector as a
whole was Rs. 72,394 crore, of which Rs. 43,554 crore was allocated for
school education and Rs. 28,840 crore for higher education. So, what
the government spends for the whole higher education sector in 1 year,
the IITs want almost that amount of money for themselves in 5 years.5
The entire higher education system itself is like the four-level caste struc-
ture of Brahminical Hinduism. The IITs and the likes including a few
select universities are the Brahmins at the top, the bulk of universities
are the second tier, the mass of undergraduate colleges (leaving the elite
ones aside) are the third tier—OBCs, to use a term from the lexicon of
contemporary Indian politics, and the vocational education institutes are
the Dalits or untouchables. Along with inequities of public spending,
112  S. Roy Chowdhury

the mechanism of self-reproduction of the urban (bureaucratic–cultural–


political–economic) and urbane elite through the choice of one or two
undergraduate colleges in each big city creates the basis of this unjust
system. The higher education system, far from being transformative,
actively ensures the continuation of the inequities in society. The system
goes beyond “reproduction in education,” I would say, it is education
for reproduction.
The vision of higher education in the policy environment since the
Nehruvian period of 1950s up until now has almost always had an elitist
inclination. Let us see one aspect of policy thinking present in three tracts
which are serious and rich in thought. EC argues for the creation of
major universities; soon after, we witness the inauguration of JNU. NKC
suggests the formation of 50 national universities, which can impart edu-
cation of the highest level. These directives have led and will lead to more
elite-centrism within the university system. In CARHE, there is a push
toward making certain colleges autonomous and giving them university
status. Invariably, the colleges singled out are the ones which have an
elite tag in the public mind. A few colleges in the large urban centers
have moved in that direction since CARHE’s report—not necessarily as
a direct impact of the report. The advocacy of autonomy for a handful of
colleges, while the bulk of institutions in higher/tertiary education sec-
tor remain under government control, is one more step toward elitism
in higher education. The irony of Indian educational thought emanat-
ing from the policy texts and from within the university world as well is
that there is the talk of university’s role in social transformation while in
effect, the Indian university continues to function as a reproductive unit
of the unjust social, economic, political, and educational order in India.
There is architecture of injustice both within the higher/tertiary educa-
tion system, and without, one complements and facilitates the other.

Mentality of Caste
The hold of caste itself, i.e., the tag to each individual human being at
birth whether he/she is from a higher or lower caste, has weakened in
India in the last 100 years. It continues to exert great influences in poli-
tics, and there are incidents where upper-caste individuals torture human
beings from the lower castes, yet I would say the overall influence of
caste on Indian society has decreased.6 But that does not mean that the
ideology of caste has withered away. Far from it, caste has transformed
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  113

itself into new forms and shapes in contemporary India. The mental-
ity of caste continues, and it has developed and made forays into almost
every sphere of life in India. To me, there are two distinct components of
the mentality of caste. One is the anti-labor, especially anti-manual labor
mindsets of upper-caste/class Indians. Often, this also expresses an anti-
gender bias. Communist leaders of different hierarchies would always be
up in arms against social injustices in public meetings. After the meeting
when you accompany one of them to his home, the man will enter his
two-bedroom flat, welcome you and ask you to sit down, and will almost
immediately “order” his wife to make a cup of tea for you.
The second strand is that of hierarchy. No matter what you do, in the
unspoken rules of Indian dominant public world, each stream of human
activity has been neatly categorized in the model of the four-tier caste
system. In recent years, India has witnessed a mushrooming of literary
festivals. Invariably, the power language of English dominates these fes-
tivals. And the literary world too is neatly divided into not less than four
categories. At the top of the pecking order are the Indian English writ-
ers who live in the West, followed by Indian English writers who live in
India, then the writers (mostly upper caste/class) writing in the major
Indian languages like Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Tamil, etc., and
at the lowest rung, Dalit writers and writers in the marginalized Indian
languages. A 2006 survey of English and Hindi language media revealed
the extent of upper-caste domination in journalism. “If men and women
are taken together, the share of upper-caste Hindus in the upper ech-
elons of the media is 85%. These castes account for 16% of the national
population.” The survey found there was not a single Dalit or tribal per-
son among top 300 journalists.7 A hierarchy that embodies and ensures
an unjust system permeates university, political party system, media, and
the literary–cultural universe.
While hierarchies and cultures of hierarchy have a debilitating impact
on vast sections of society, the anti-manual labor mindset has a crippling
effect on the economic development of the nation. In the last 25 years
since the economic liberalization of 1991, India has witnessed tremen-
dous growth in software exports, and the booming software sector has
fuelled growth in private technical education, real estate, hospitality, and
in other sectors. But in this same period of 25 years, what has happened
with the physical infrastructure of India. The only noticeable change
is a few swanky airports and a few thousand kilometers of reasonably
well-constructed national highways. There is not a kilometer of road in
114  S. Roy Chowdhury

any Indian big city without a pothole; there is not half a kilometer of
sidewalk which has the same surface level, and in every 2 km, you will
see heaps of garbage piles at 12 noon each day. Add to this, the coun-
try suffers from floods nearly every other year; a nuclear-powered nation
does not have the technology of putting up adequate flood shelters for
its hapless citizens. The dismal situation does not stop with rural folk
in god-forsaken corners of the land. Almost every rainy season, normal
life in Mumbai comes to a halt whenever there are torrential rains. The
other big urban centers are no better. The list of such areas where India
remains an outdated un-modern society is endless. Yet, why do Indians
not wake up and find solutions to these problems. The answer lies in the
anti-manual labor mindset.
Working in the software industry or the various sub-streams of busi-
ness process outsourcing (BPO) involves the use of intellectual skills;
India and upper-caste/class Indians have embraced them and have made
a reasonable success out of them. But when it comes to cleaning gar-
bage and fixing potholed roads and rough sidewalks, then manual labor
is required. The leading groups of the society have gone through an edu-
cation which has ensured that they look away from these “dirty” mat-
ters. The educative functions of family, society at large, and institutional
education—a conceptual framework enunciated by Pierre Bourdieu—all
of that “educate” dominant Indian groups to look down upon manual
labor. This leads to the stigmatization of vocational education. Policy
texts point out that Indian universities have not embraced the sphere of
work or that they have kept the world of the artisan far away. What they
do not spell out is that the reason for this is the mentality of caste which
expresses itself in hierarchy and anti-labor mindsets. On the one hand,
this leads to the complete sorry state of civic facilities and to cities com-
ing to grinding halt, leading to huge losses to the economy. One step
further, this is also the reason why India does not become an innova-
tive society. On the one hand, the power stream and the consumer mid-
dle classes can depend on cheap labor provided by large sections of the
lower castes/classes, thereby reducing the need to create or adopt new
technology, and on the other hand, a complete rupture between learning
and labor handicaps intellectuals to the use of hands. Without the use of
hands, the mind’s ability to actually perform physical experiments mini-
mizes hugely. Commenting on the tendency among Indian scientists to
do more theory and less experiment, and as a result stagnate in levels of
research, the scientist Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (2011) talks about
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  115

a variety of self-inflicted injuries … important among them is a self-fulfill-


ing Brahmanical notion that activities involving only the brain are superior
to those that require the use of one’s hands, and that theory is superior to
experiment.

An education that does not stress upon and impinge on the mind the
need to use one’s own hands to do things, takes away from the individ-
ual the capacity to innovate through a skilful combination of mental and
manual work.

A Geography of Injustice
In the first four decades of independent India, a common plot in
many films was a “stupid villager” who lands in the big city of Bombay
(Mumbai) or Calcutta (Kolkata), the difficulties of the person and even-
tual victory of the rural underdog in the neon-lit city. While mainstream
Indian films portrayed the village as a backwater and the city as “mod-
ern,” the Indian university also espoused the same set of values. For the
university educated, whose number is still hovering around 10% of the
population, the village is a site to be looked down upon. You go through
educational institutions and the first thing you learn is to forget the dusty
village and the dirty moffusil (small town). Partly, the curriculum con-
tributes to this amnesia. More than the syllabi, what does contribute to
the educated turning their back to rural India is the educative functions
of the society of the educated, the rich, and the powerful.
Policy documents urge the setting up of major and national universi-
ties. And invariably, the sites of these, with indelible influences on their
knowledge worlds, have been big Indian cities. The Nehruvian as well as
post-1990 educational thinking has ignored the idea and ideals of rural
university that was advocated by UEC (1948–1949). Nehru’s India gave
a technological bend—IITs and IIMs embodying the trend, in the domi-
nant elite-centric patterns of university education—and at the same time
reinforced elitism. The higher education system in the 1960s onward
created techno-elites while post-liberalization of 1991, the system has
married technology with techno-commerce efficiently. There has been a
clear divorce between elitist ideals of higher education and the idea of
rural university addressing issues of rural poor; the rural university has
faded into oblivion.
116  S. Roy Chowdhury

While the rural university has vanished, the agricultural universi-


ties have languished, much like the vocational education colleges.
Agriculture was much talked about in the Nehruvian era and until the
1980s. On government-controlled All India Radio, there used to be spe-
cial programs for farmers; the new Indian nation tried to reach out to
its agricultural world and give valuable media recognition to their world.
However, with more glitter in consumer goods catching the imagina-
tion of a twenty-first century “new” India, talk of agriculture, which
was never fashionable, has gone into oblivion. And with it has suffered
the fate of agricultural universities and agriculture education. The agri-
cultural universities have stagnated; they are never in public discourse,
in the English language media, or in the media of Indian languages.
Successive governments have paid little attention. India’s annual agri-
cultural growth rate has stagnated at low levels of some 3%, and mal-
nutrition in rural and semi-urban India remains a silent killer. While
malnutrition and poor health cause suffering to millions of Indian citi-
zens, it also impacts educational and economic growth negatively.
The literacy level of non-scheduled caste urban male is three or four
times higher than that of a rural woman belonging to scheduled caste.
Yet, the university world and the policy environment conveniently
gloss over this reality. In the absence of rural universities and underfed
agricultural education, the vast area of India’s villages, home to nearly
two-thirds of the population—great part of which are lower and other
backward castes and poor Muslims—remains outside the higher educa-
tion map.
The injustice is even worse in districts inhabited by tribal peoples.
There may be a rare undergraduate college in a town at the center of an
area inhabited by tribal people, but a university will be almost unheard
of. Large sections of tribal students feel alienated in the upper-caste/
class dominated higher education establishments in big cities. That
results in their further marginalization in the education and employ-
ment structures. On the one hand, higher education institutions do not
go to their lands; on the other hand, when they come to the centers of
higher education, they face discrimination and eventual marginalization.
In recent years, the racist attitude of Brahminical India toward the peo-
ple of India’s northeastern states have inched its way to the first page of
daily newspapers. In Delhi, home to the political elite and to the larg-
est cluster of higher education institutions built after 1947, students
from Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  117

have faced constant discrimination, especially from landlords who give


out rental accommodation in the area adjoining Delhi University. The
worst case was the death of a student from Arunachal which led to pub-
lic outrage. While the somewhat more articulate people of the north-
eastern states have a feeble voice, the adivasis (first peoples) of central,
eastern, western, southern, or northern India are unable to raise even
a faint murmur. The geography of edu-cultural and economic injustice
­continues.

Disciplines, Development, and Underdevelopment


In Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie (2012) narrates, in England of 1960s,
he had gone to his college graduation ceremony with brown colored
shoes; he was forced to go back, change into black shoes, and come back
to receive his degree. Such was the power of convention. This power has
crippled the growth of knowledge institutions in independent India. In
the colonial period, when the first Indian universities developed, they
taught disciplines such as English, History, and Geography. The struc-
ture of the university was borrowed from Britain; the disciplines have
been imported from the West, both before and after independence.
While all universities have a department of English literature, not even
ten have a department of modern Indian literature. If the university is
in north India, it would have department of English and of Hindi; if
it is in Tamil Nadu, it will have department of Tamil and the English
department will be invariably there; in Ahmedabad, it will be Gujarati
department and again a department of English. A department of English
is common to all universities of India. And each one will also offer a lan-
guage that is dominant in the region where the university is located. But
only a handful will be intellectually vibrant enough to offer a course in
modern Indian literature. Moreover, the courses in English literature,
and I suspect, in Hindi, and Bengali literatures too remain frozen in the
black shoe syndrome.
While Indian university turns its back to the Indian village and mar-
ginalizes the vibrant world of Indian literatures, it also remains in a
pigmy stature so far as other world languages are concerned. The num-
ber of departments offering masters-level courses in French or German
will not cross 20 in all of India. The numbers for Italian, Japanese,
Chinese, or Russian are far less, and in all likelihood, a department of
Swahili does not exist in India. Departments of Arabic or Persian also
118  S. Roy Chowdhury

attract very few students. India’s institutional knowledge world has


shown little interest in developing language–cultural links and creat-
ing networks of knowledge, economy, and culture spanning universes
across the world. These trends in higher education not only reinforce
cultural backwardness but also have developmental and economic costs.
If this is the state of affairs in languages and literatures, let us see the
situation in social and human sciences. How are the worlds in History,
Geography, Political Science, or Sociology? Students of history at the
BA level in Calcutta, Delhi, or Bombay universities learn about ancient
Greece or medieval and early modern Europe but they do not learn the
histories of their respective regions in the last 70 years. In most universi-
ties, history courses will have a component of India, where Indian his-
tory stops at 1947. And even for 1947, while history teaching celebrates
independence and laments partition, not a single course is offered in an
Indian university that is titled “Partition/Independence/1947.” Not
only that students do not learn about the immediate past—a past which
lives within their present—but also they learn scarce little about their
immediate regions. In universities in West Bengal, a course called “his-
tory of West Bengal” does not exist, nor is there a course on the history
of Tamil Nadu in Chennai, and none learn a course called “history of
Indian states.” However, the impact of politics on shaping and reshaping
of histories continues unabated. The renaming of Indian cities or states
is one instance of this impact. Nor do history departments of Indian uni-
versities wake up to the possibility of studying histories of neighbors such
as Pakistan or Bangladesh. As in languages and literatures, so too in his-
tory, the study of world civilizations remains at the lowest level. In the
early 1990s, the history center in JNU had not been able to fill up a
position of professor of European history for a very long time because
it necessitated that the incumbent knows an European language well
enough to do historical research in that language. That is not all. The
history of history teaching in Indian universities, especially in the dom-
inant ones, has also been heavily centered on students’ competence in
English. The English-leaning educational culture in these departments
has successfully marginalized and ebbed out a large number of bright
students and scholarly minds who had lesser English because of their
non-Anglophone social backgrounds but were equally capable of being
great historians or successful teachers as their Anglophone peers. If one
stops at a department of political science or of sociology, the picture is
nearly the same. A general feature of the learning environment is that
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  119

of rote learning; teachers teach from and hand out “notes”—they or


their predecessors or their predecessors had taken notes from a famous
history/sociology/English textbook, and the notes continue. And, the
same dominance of English, the ebbing out of those with less English,
the absence of the living currents of Indian society and politics and a
teaching culture that “educates” the student away from the “immedia-
cies” of her environment. As a result, a vast number of students, espe-
cially from underprivileged backgrounds, cannot relate to the subjects
being taught within the classroom. The knowledge of French revolution
does not help her to understand why there is an increasing spiral of vio-
lence in Indian towns and cities. The alienation of the student from what
she learns is evident from an anecdote of a Calcutta college, related to
me by a friend. In an oral examination, a history teacher asked in Bengali
to a student, “what are the salient features of the capitalist system?”
The student replied in earnest—“Sir, I am from a poor family, I do not
know anything about the system of money.” (In Bengali, capitalist sys-
tem translates as monetary system.) The teacher failed the student and
lamented to my friend the sorry state of higher education.8 What he or
the huge majority of teachers and professors in colleges and universities
fail to realize is that it is theirs and the educational system’s failure. It is
the teachers who are to blame that their teaching and what and how they
teach are delinked from the world of the student.
Barring cosmetic changes, syllabi nearly unchanged for half a century
or more, teaching in a language alien to a vast proportion of students,
rote learning as the dominant form, absence of any encouragement to
rigorous questioning and of breaking new grounds, not to mention a
complete disconnect between the real world and the classroom, that is,
how Indian college education in humanities and social science is 70 years
since independence. A poor level of college education interwoven with
societal patterns of gender roles results in a huge number of women
graduates not entering professions; they stay or are culturally forced to
stay within the confines of households; they could have filled up much-
needed positions of teachers in the expanding primary, secondary, and
tertiary education or could have been successful executives and managers
in different sectors of the economy. Dominant cultural forces and poor
educational/economic planning lead to “brain-waste” within the coun-
try while policy environment at the most talks about brain drain to for-
eign shores. The dismal educational cultures of departments of history,
sociology, and political science ensure that there are less of good teachers
120  S. Roy Chowdhury

and scholars in the respective disciplines; a similar impact in geogra-


phy, economics, and psychology is of much greater consequence to the
nation.
These latter disciplines are more of an applied kind. The pattern of the
educational culture being same for these disciplines, there are greater and
more direct economic and developmental costs to the nation. If geogra-
phy departments produce less geography teachers and lesser competent
geographers, the society’s ability to grapple with floods and droughts
and climatic changes and calamities is far less. Though geography is
where the development of human geography has led to some interest-
ing encounters between the university world and the “real” world, even
if that has had little impact on undergraduate teaching. While India has
produced famous economists, the discipline’s contribution to areas such
as rural economics or economics of labor remains low. The impact of
underdevelopment of a knowledge discipline and an absence of effec-
tive and socially sensitive teaching is greatest in the field of psychology.
Recent studies have shown that India has a high proportion of people
with psychological stress. This malaise is a slow killer. Millions of peo-
ple, poor and affluent, go through severe depressions, not to speak of
disorders of higher magnitude. It is neither talked about vigorously nor
is there any societal effort to tackle the phenomenon. Another growing
phenomenon is youth violence. To tackle these, the nation badly needs
a large body of psychologists and psychiatrists. But the discipline of psy-
chology has remained stunted in India. Psychology is an applied disci-
pline. If you were to practice it, you will need to talk to your patient in
her language which is Hindi, Tamil, Oriya, etc. If you have been trained
in a knowledge universe with English and Western case studies as domi-
nant motifs, you will have a poor ability to relate to the patient. So, the
damage is compounded in a discipline such as psychology. The phenom-
ena of depression and of youth violence cut across psychology, sociology,
economics, and more disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.
This creates the opportunity to create new areas of knowledge and of
teaching where different disciplines can contribute meaningfully. The
measurable and immeasurable costs of depression to family economies
and to the national economy are quite high. However, the Indian uni-
versity is ill prepared to fashion or even attempt to fashion a response to
such issues of national importance.
Psychology–psychiatry is one of the many bridges between social sci-
ences and medicine. The teaching of medical sciences too is plagued
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  121

often with the same ailments as in social sciences. English domination


continues. And the medical establishment nurtures the tendency to
turn its back to hapless poor patients. As part of Centre for Research in
Education and Social Transformation (CREST), I have had the oppor-
tunity to interact with doctor-teachers of the AIIMS in New Delhi. In a
CREST workshop, one of our colleagues had asked teachers (who teach
undergraduate students of medicine) to do a strength, weakness, oppor-
tunity, threat (SWOT) analysis of AIIMS as a medical institution. One
participant said that the high number of patients, especially in the Out
Patient Department (OPD), is a threat for doing better work. I inter-
vened in the discussion and pointed out to him that the large number
of medical cases—which is possible only because there are “too many”
patients—can be seen as asset to study multiplicity and variations of ail-
ments. What he sees as a threat, an enterprising student of medicine
from a different cultural framework can see it as an opportunity. As
with other disciplines, here too, the medical establishment raises walls
between itself and the very people who the establishment is supposed to
serve.
This great wall of Indian higher education continues to the technol-
ogy disciplines too. When bright middle/upper-middle-class girls and
boys study at IITs, in an electrical engineering class, they never interact
with a lowly neighborhood electrician who fixes electrical problems in a
household. As a result, both the world of knowledge and that of work
suffer. The mentality of caste weighs heavy on Indian higher education,
and a flawed socio-educational culture leads to a stunted growth in edu-
cation and dismal national development. While knowledge and university
as its institutional home can be a banyan tree, the Indian university has
remained a bonsai.

Educational Freedom and National Well-being


An un-freedom shackles the Indian institutional knowledge world. The
import of the university structure and the structures of disciplines from
Europe and the copycat functioning of these are now nearly 200 years
old. However, there are strong critiques of these in modern Indian
thought. Gandhi and Tagore, in different and yet complementary ways,
showed how the system of education defeated the purpose of education.
From schools to colleges to universities, the malaise was clear. Tagore felt
that in Europe education was an integral part of the society’s life:
122  S. Roy Chowdhury

It grows, develops, and circulates in society, and leaves its imprint on what
people say, think and do in their everyday life … But the schools in our
country, far from being integrated to society, are imposed from outside …
There is nothing in common between the lessons the pupils cram up …
and the country where they live; no agreement, but many disagreements,
between what they learn at school and what their parents and relatives talk
about at home.

He felt Indian educational institutions copied from their European coun-


terparts and, as with most cases, remained poor imitations and lost the
central meaning of the European institutions:

…English models usurp the whole field of our vision and obscure the
achievements of our own country. Even in our keenest struggles for free-
dom from British rule we remain fettered to Britain in so far as we seek no
political models other than the British.9

Tagore’s critique of the educational system, and of the political and


educational cages being intermeshed, is in the same spirit as of Gandhi.
While they pointed out the un-freedom in politics and in education,
Ambedkar, the principal architect of India’s post-1947 Constitution,
stressed on the un-freedom in society. The persistence of social
­injustice and hierarchy fed into and nurtured the continuation of the
­un-­freedoms in politics and education quite well. Such critiques of the
system informed India’s freedom struggle and the public world of India
in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet, not much has changed
70 years from then. Why and how did the desired change fail to hap-
pen? Tagore built educational institutions where nature’s splendor, labor,
and esthetics were central to education; Gandhi articulated an educa-
tional ideal with rural life at its center, and UEC urged the setting up
of rural universities and colleges, and stressed that the university world
should work to lessen the hardships of the laboring poor. However, this
thought universe was elbowed out by a vision of “commanding heights
of economy” propounded by Prime Minister Nehru. In the 1950s, he
articulated this vision where big industries and large infrastructure pro-
jects like big dams, power plants, and steel factories were seen as saviors
to a poor nation. And to fuel these “commanding heights of economy,”
he envisioned commanding heights of education. The elite educational
institutions of 1950s and 1960s later reinforced the already existing elit-
ist nature of Indian higher education that was founded in the colonial
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  123

period. Far from a break with the un-freedom in education, Nehru and
his upper-middle-class advisers fashioned an educational policy and a
political economy that favored the upper castes/classes, marginalized
three-fourths of the nation and successfully turned the power elite’s back
to the vision of rejuvenation of education and society emanating from
Ambedkar, Gandhi, and Tagore. In the process, the Brahminical upper-
class/caste hold on Indian higher education continued from colonial
period to post-1947 India. The un-freedoms in education and in poli-
tics that Ambedkar, Gandhi, and Tagore challenged have been reinforced
in newer ways. Without any rejuvenation in education, India developed
a poor higher education structure which contributed to a thin slice of
the population enriching itself and its self-styled good living, while the
nation at large remained in a state of dismal development.
One could argue that the policy of upper-class/caste domination of
education, economy, and politics has worked well for the power stream;
Indians have gone to space, the nation has nuclear bombs, and the
GDP has been growing at an average of 6–8% for nearly two decades.
As I have discussed earlier, poor higher education results in poor mate-
rial conditions and ill preparedness of societal challenges; moreover, the
myopic vision in education and national life exposes a poverty of imagi-
nation. It was the social–political–literary imagination of Ambedkar–
Gandhi–Tagore that gave a foundation for a new India in 1947. That
imagination dreamt of a strong resilient India where each citizen could
flourish to her full colors. That imagination also had and has the pos-
sibility of a truly strong India and not a caricature which has nuclear
bombs and whose cities get flooded and stranded in every rainy season.
To unleash the just freedoms of 1.25 billion Indians, the university world
needs to unshackle itself from its own un-freedoms. It needs to break
out of, what I call, the “black shoe syndrome” and the “great wall syn-
drome.” A freer world in higher education can lead to a much higher
level of material life for every Indian villager and urban-dweller. It can
unshackle universities from their pigmy status, unleash new disciplines
born in the dirty, dusty world of contemporary India, and lead to greater
national well-being.
How will this new education and new disciplines look like? In terms
of the institutional ecosystem, the four-tier caste structure of the higher/
tertiary education needs to be reduced to three or two tiers. The under-
graduate colleges have so far taught physics and history; let them start
offering courses in plumbing and electrical craftsmanship as well. The
124  S. Roy Chowdhury

high walls between what is taught in the colleges and in the vocational
institutes need to be brought down. The vocational institutes should
have teachers, at least one to begin with, who offers a course in liberal
arts. The undergraduate colleges, especially the elite-tag ones, need to
embrace the world of work. With vocational courses being offered
within their walls, they will give much overdue critical recognition to
the courses and the students who study the courses. Similarly, students
in vocational institutes will be exposed to history, literature, and arts. If
pursued with vigor, this step can reduce the gulf between the two sys-
tems—one steeped in Brahminical upper caste and the other embody-
ing the lower castes of knowledge and everyday practice. There must also
be active linkages between the university departments and undergradu-
ate colleges, and between the elite-tag centers of excellence such as the
IITs and the universities and the colleges. The whole endeavor should
be toward dilution of the caste mentality-based four-tier hierarchy within
the higher/tertiary education universe.
India’s reality should inform the creation and development of new
disciplines. For example, if a college department in Bangalore offers
BA in English literature, then let the syllabus include at least two full
courses: one that focuses on translations of Indian literature available
in English and another on English literatures in the former colonies of
Britain. Both these courses will have the possibility of opening up young
minds to two distinct yet connected political–cultural worlds: one world
of the many literatures of India and the sub-continent where the chang-
ing social realities of life in contemporary India gets expression, and
another world where English transforms itself in exciting ways as it grows
in post-colonial societies. Such courses will lead to a new politics in lit-
erature studies and create the awareness of non-Eurocentric universe in
young Indians. Political decolonization may have found expression in
a particular way in 1947. But the decolonization of mind is still a far
way off; at times, the architecture of knowledge practices in contempo-
rary India even enacts a recolonization of mind. Hence, it is an urgent
business for the knowledge world of India to take the first decisive steps
toward a new architecture of knowledge.
This new architecture needs to spread its wings to the study of Hindi,
Bengali, or Malayalam literatures too. The syllabi in these are often heav-
ily dominated by the writings of upper-caste/class Indians and of men.
The syllabus of a Bengali or a Hindi department in a college/university
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  125

must include courses where Dalit writing, writing by women, and liter-
ary expressions from other marginalized worlds come into the classroom.
The histories and geographies of injustice need to be mirrored in the
texts that fill up minds of young Indians. A critical awareness of social
injustices and class/caste conflicts will give a new grounding to the study
of literature in Indian languages. Additionally, these syllabi should also
move out from Bengali or Telugu insularity and include translations from
different Indian literatures and world literatures in the BA and MA syl-
labi. So, the overall philosophy of each literature discipline should be to
break out of the insularity of class/caste and also the insularity of specific
language nationalism.
The study of history should also move out of its own “black shoe syn-
drome.” For long years, Indian history has been categorized as Hindu
period, Muslim period, and British period. The “secularist” historians will
want to break out of this categorization where ancient India is seen as
Hindu, medieval India as Muslim, and modern India as British. I feel that
the binary debate between the orthodox historians and the modernist/
secularist historians won’t be able to resolve this problem. What we need
to do is to get out of this “black shoe syndrome” altogether. History
learning can be reformulated in courses that are titled, and study: power,
women, material life, and several other themes. If the rubric of learning
itself is changed, then we will conceptualize new courses. A break from
sterile binary debates and from a geographical myopia is urgent.
The influence of British, American, or European schools of thought
on Indian sociology is well accepted. Recent scholarship (Jangam 2015;
Kumar 2016) has critiqued the dominant practices of history and soci-
ology in India for their upper-caste biases. I feel that even sociology’s
engagement with the dirty, dusty Indian world is much less than what
is possible. Apart from a disconnect with the continually changing soci-
ety in rural, semi-urban, and urban India, what sociology syllabi lack is a
study of modern Indian thinkers who have written extensively on Indian
society. For example, I doubt there is any Indian sociology department
that devotes a significant part of a course on the sociological writings
of Rabindranath Tagore. Even Ambedkar’s texts are not central in the
study of sociology at the BA or MA levels. It is urgent that the sociol-
ogy departments enmesh the learning–teaching process with dirty, dusty
world of India and bring Indian social thinkers into the world of the
young college-goers of today.
126  S. Roy Chowdhury

In psychology, the teaching should gear itself toward Indian realities,


and themes such as the impact of poverty and of dominant ideologies
such as caste ideology on Indian psyche should come into the class-
room. Moreover, as much as translations of Indian literature need to
fill up literature classrooms, the psychology departments need to trans-
late major psychology texts into Indian languages so as the practition-
ers have a vocabulary to communicate with their patients. The need for
translations, of course, cuts across all disciplines taught in the Indian uni-
versity. The process of informing the disciplines with the dusty chaotic
realities of India runs from psychology to law to management. What I
am advocating can be construed easily as an attempt to Indianize dis-
ciplines. However, the quest I have in mind and the one that I have
put forward in some measure is not one of Indianization. It goes a lit-
tle further than that. Since Indian higher education and India’s society
and politics are my fields of discussion, hence, it may seem I am giv-
ing a call for Indianization. The essential aspect of the call is that dis-
ciplines that emerged in a specific historical period in Western Europe
need to be rethought and reconceptualized in a different global prism
of today. The act of rethinking syllabi in Indian colleges and universi-
ties is a step toward a redefinition of disciplines themselves. In fact, in
several European and North American university systems, new disciplines
are being born. Societies in the global south such as India need to take
an altogether fresh look at what constitutes each area of study and how
the disciplines can relate to socio-political realities and give new mean-
ings to the existence of knowledge institutions that developed under a
colonial system that has long lost its significance. And such an endeavor
must cut across disciplines in humanities, social sciences, business, physi-
cal sciences, medicine, technology, and all other fields of education.
The political and intellectual inputs arising from injustice and conflict,
the reshaping of academic pursuit through breaking down of the “great
wall syndrome,” and the complete overhaul in syllabi can shake up the
Indian university from its stupor and stagnation and have the potential of
unleashing a creative knowledge universe which addresses injustice and
practices autonomy of knowledge, while contributing meaningfully to
the nation’s well-being, world knowledge, and global peace and under-
standing.
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  127

Notes
1. In an article (Roy Chowdhury 2013) written at the time I had discussed
the crisis of educated unemployed in India.
2. An editorial in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW Editorial 2016) has
outlined the social and psychological costs of the pressure on young people
to “crack” entrance tests for elite educational institutions. A detailed study
can hopefully bring out the extent of the national loss of the debilitating
culture of exams.
3. See Kapur (2010). Kapur has pointed out how far behind India has fallen
compared to China’s accomplishment in research. According to him, “The
contrast with China is stark. In the last two decades, the number of PhDs
in science and engineering (S&E) in India increased by around 50% (from
4007 in 1985 to 6318 in 2003), whereas in China, the numbers increased
from a tiny 125 in 1985 to 12,238 in 2003 and 14,858 in 2004.”
4. Craig Jeffrey (2010) has studied the sociology and politics of “time pass”
in the north Indian city of Meerut. What is importsant to note here is that
a bleak tertiary education landscape creates wasted youth.
5. Newspaper reports and analysis give a detailed picture. See Chopra (2016),
Vishnoi (2016), and Express Web Desk (2016).
6. In the 1960s two decades after independence, two outstanding social sci-
entists (Rudolph and Rudolph 1972a, b) had observed, “traditional struc-
tures like villages and castes are becoming more cosmopolitan.”
7. See a report published in The Hindu (2006).
8. Siddhartha Dasgupta, who teaches history in a Calcutta college, narrated
the incident to me.
9. See Dasgupta (2009).

Recommended Readings

Government Reports/Policy Documents


Education Commission. 1970. Education and National Development: Report of
the Education Commission (EC). New Delhi: NCERT.
Ministry of Human Resources Development. 1992. National Policy on Education
1986—Programme on Action 1992 (NPE). New Delhi: Government of India.
Ministry of Human Resources Development. 2010. Report of Committee to
Advise on the Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (CARHE).
New Delhi: Government of India.
128  S. Roy Chowdhury

National Knowledge Commission. 2009. National Knowledge Commission—


Report to the Nation (NKC). New Delhi.
Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry. 2000. Report on A Policy
Framework for Reforms in Education (PFRE). New Delhi: Government of
India.
University Education Commission. 1950. Report of the University Education
Commission (UEC). New Delhi: Government of India.

Books/Articles/Essays
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi. 2011. Indian Science Today: An Indigenously Crafted
Crisis. Social Research 78 (1): 255–280.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1990. Reproduction in Education
Society and Culture. London: Sage.
Broadfoot, Patricia, et al. (eds.). 1981. Politics and Educational Change: An
International Survey. London: Croom Helm.
Chopra, Ritika. 2016. IITs Estimate it will cost Rs. 22,000 Crore to Improve
Global Rankings. The Indian Express, 15 November 2016. http://indianex-
press.com/article/education/proposals-submitted-to-govt-iits-estimate-cost-
of-improving-global-rankings-rs-22000-crore-4375827/.
Dasgupta, Uma (ed.). 2009. The Oxford India Tagore: Selected Writings on
Education and Nationalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
EPW Editorial. 2016. Killing Children of the Middle Class. Economic and
Political Weekly 51 (2): 7–8.
Express Web Desk. 2016. Union Budget 2016: Mixed Reaction from Education
Sector. The Indian Express, 1 March 2016. http://indianexpress.com/arti-
cle/education/union-budget-2016-education-sector-analysis/.
Jangam, Chinnaiah. 2015. Politics of Identity and the Project of Writing History
in Postcolonial India: A Dalit Critique. Economic and Political Weekly 50 (40):
63–70.
Jeffrey, Craig. 2010. Timepass: Youth, Class, and Time Among Unemployed
Young Men in India. American Ethnologist 37 (3): 465–481.
Kapur, Devesh. 2010. Indian Higher Education. In Clotfelter.
Kumar, Vivek. 2016. How Egalitarian is Indian Sociology? Economic and
Political Weekly 51 (25): 33–39.
Roy Chowdhury, Sunandan. 2013. Uchchho shikshar babu-brittanto: 45 lokkho
shikshito bekar! Ei samay, 3 April 2013.
Rudolph, Susanne H., and Lloyd I. Rudolph (eds.). 1972a. Education and
Politics in India: Studies in Organization, Society, and Policy. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Rudolph, Susanne H., and Lloyd I. Rudolph. 1972b. The Political System and the
Educational System: An Analysis of Their Interaction. In Rudolph and Rudolph.
6  ELITE INSTITUTIONS, DISMAL DEVELOPMENT: POVERTY …  129

Rushdie, Salman. 2012. Joseph Anton. London: Jonathan Cape.


Sloss, Robert. 1981. Ideology and Politics in Chinese Education. In Broadfoot.
The Hindu Special Correspondent. 2006. Upper castes dominate national media,
says survey in Delhi. The Hindu, 5 June 2016. http://www.thehindu.com/
todays-paper/tp-national/upper-castes-dominate-national-media-says-survey-
in-delhi/article3115113.ece.
Vishnoi, Anubhuti. 2016. MHRD’s new project Vishwajeet aims to put IIT in
top league of global rankings. Economic Times, 10 August 2016. http://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/mhrds-new-
project-vishwajeet-aims-to-put-iit-in-top-league-of-global-rankings/article-
show/53626151.cms.
CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Toward a Democratic Higher


Education

Abstract   The concluding chapter, “Toward a Democratic Higher


Education,” points out that India is a political democracy and states that
in the picture sketched in the book, the Indian university and higher
education universe emerge as an undemocratic institution in a political
democracy. The author says, however flawed political democracy may
seem, it is still the system that addresses—in a very partial sense, the
great inequities and injustices that plague everyday life in India, whereas
Indian university addresses those same inequities and injustices far less,
and its middle-class inhabitants have failed Indian democracy. The author
sums up the book and says that he has explored a particular theme of
Indian higher education and development in each of the five main chap-
ters that constitute this book. “Brahmin Language, Hindu Growth” is
a look at English and the politics and power around it in colonial and
post-colonial India. The specifics of Indian nationalism, the crafting of
the nation-state, and the roles of Indian universities and the class that
constituted the university in the colonial era are explored in the chap-
ter titled “Western University, Indian Nationalisms.” The following
chapter fleshes out the developmental visions of the Indian power elite
from independence in 1947 till now, and while doing so shows the link-
ages between world politics and ideas and ideals in Indian higher edu-
cation and development. These three chapters together bring out a
central point. English language, Indian university, the specific fashioning
of Indian nation by the English-knowing class, the continuation of the
state structure of colonial India into post-colonial India, the particular

© The Author(s) 2017 131


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5_7
132  S. ROY CHOWDHURY

developmental vision of this English educated, university groomed, state-


centered, nation believers all of these have coalesced to give shape to
Indian higher education and the state of economic and cultural develop-
ment in independent India. The specific nature of this development has
meant that 10–15% of the population, largely university educated, have
enjoyed 90% of the spoils of economic and cultural growth in the last
70 years of India while the vast majority of 80% remain little educated
and make do with poor living standards, if not extremely harsh ones. It
has also meant that a myopic policy world that tries to ensure the inter-
ests of the tiny elite does that even at times, to the peril of the elite itself.
Two other chapters, namely, “Class Struggles in Classrooms” and “Elite
Institutions, Dismal Development,” show what has gone wrong in the
pattern of development that was sketched in the first three chapters. The
book ends with a call to break out of the continuing colonial knowledge
structures and of the elitism and myopia of India, and reorient higher
education and development so that the other India that is English-
fearing, lower caste, lower class, rural, semi-urban, often referred to as
Bharat could be brought into the fold of India and its higher education
universe.

Keywords  Power language · Power institutions · Science as power


Oppressive power of policy · Non-colonized education
Developmental futures

India is a political democracy. In the picture I have sketched, the Indian


university and higher education universe emerge as an undemocratic
institution in a political democracy. The systems of political democracy
in India are far from perfect, and the challenges of instilling adequate
democratic governance in the systems that be, are many. However flawed
political democracy may seem, it is still the system that addresses—in
very partial sense—the great inequities and injustices that plague every-
day life in India. Indian university, I think, addresses those same ineq-
uities and injustices far less, and its middle-class inhabitants have failed
Indian democracy. The class that benefitted from university and higher
education has let India down; it is this class that has let large parts of
India remain poor, impoverished, and institutionally uneducated. As for
this university class, they themselves have remained happy with improved
7  CONCLUSION: TOWARD A DEMOCRATIC HIGHER EDUCATION  133

material riches and a second- or third-class status in the global knowl-


edge universe.
I have explored a particular theme of Indian higher education and
development in each of the five main chapters that constitute this book.
In “Brahmin Language, Hindu Growth,” I look at English and the poli-
tics and power around it in colonial and post-colonial India. I explore
the specifics of Indian nationalism, the crafting of the nation-state, and
the roles of Indian universities and the class that constituted the univer-
sity in the colonial era in the chapter titled “Western University, Indian
Nationalisms.” In the following chapter, I flesh out the developmental
visions of the Indian power elite from independence in 1947 till now,
and while doing so, I show the linkages between world politics and
ideas and ideals in Indian higher education and development. These
three chapters together bring out a central point. English language,
Indian university, the specific fashioning of Indian nation by the English-
knowing class, the continuation of the state structure of colonial India
into post-colonial India, and the particular developmental vision of this
English-educated, university groomed, state-centered, nation believers
all of these have coalesced to give shape to Indian higher education and
the state of economic and cultural development in independent India.
The specific nature of this development has meant that 10–15% of the
population, largely university educated, have enjoyed 90% of the spoils
of economic and cultural growth in the last 70 years of India while the
vast majority of 80% remain little educated and make do with poor living
standards, if not extremely harsh ones. It has also meant that a myopic
policy world that tries to ensure the interests of the tiny elite does
that even at times, to the peril of the elite itself. Two other chapters,
namely, “Class Struggles in Classrooms” and “Elite Institutions, Dismal
Development,” show what has gone wrong in the pattern of develop-
ment that was sketched in Chaps. 2, 3 and 4.

Power Language
English came to India with the Christian missions. The first educational
encounters between Europeans and Indians were centered on teach-
ing of English and dissemination of Christian principles. In the early
period of British domination, the colonial rulers held Indian/oriental
knowledge and languages in high esteem and were favorably disposed
toward teaching of and in Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali, and Tamil. In the
134  S. ROY CHOWDHURY

1820s, the elite sections of Indian society, the school book societies in
Calcutta and Bombay as important vehicles, started to push for English
as the medium of education. In 1835 with Macaulay’s distinct articula-
tion and Viceroy Bentinck’s administrative ruling, the colonial govern-
ment gave the strongest and decisive push for use, and if I may add,
misuse, of English language in Indian education and development. The
preeminence of English has been challenged in policy documents in
colonial India, as also by sections of Indian elite. During the freedom
struggle, two visionaries with contrasting views of the use and abuse of
English championed the use of Indian languages and challenged the
Anglophonic hegemony. They were Gandhi and Tagore.
However, the inheritors of Gandhi and Tagore did not quite inter-
nalize their critiques of the abuse of English in India and by powerful
groups in Indian society. The University Education Commission (1948–
1949) led by the philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan opined that “no
student should be allowed to take a degree who does not acquire the ability to
read with facility and understanding works of English authors.” This trend
of privileging English and consciously or unwittingly de-privileging the
Indian languages has continued nearly unabated in the last 70 years of
independent India. Independent India continues to be mentally depend-
ent on the English language, the new Brahminical thread that adorns
and binds India. The foreign/world/international language—English in
the most part, with Russian emerging for a couple of decades during the
Cold War—does not cease to hypnotize the power classes of India. Even
so, the spread of English language remains extremely limited. In 2006–
2009, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) thought that not
even 2% Indians had any substantive facility with English—this almost
two centuries after Macaulay, Bentinck, and the school book societies
of Calcutta and Bombay! While there has been half-baked policy pushes
toward the use of Indian languages in higher education, only NKC gives
a distinct push toward translation of educational texts into Indian lan-
guages. And even that thrust has not gone much farther into colleges
and universities. In the elite centers of higher learning, I doubt whether
in a whole year we have ten PhDs in each of the natural and social sci-
ences written in languages other than English or even less that impor-
tant scholarly and scientific books of world repute written in German,
French, or English find their way into Indian languages through trans-
lations or that college and university teachers are able to explain intri-
cate and complex concepts in full measure in any Indian language.
7  CONCLUSION: TOWARD A DEMOCRATIC HIGHER EDUCATION  135

The power of English captures even the social change imagination from
colonial-era scientist S.C. Chuckerbutty to contemporary Dalit intellec-
tual Chanderbhan Prasad and a variety of modernizers. Never mind that
for 200 years, this “modern” language of power has failed to modernize
either the Indian university or its science or its humanities or its social
sciences. All this power language has done is to create islands which a
class self-proclaims as centers of excellence. In addition and in intimate
linkage to these islands, it has given India islands of opulence and a con-
tinent of malnutrition, poor education, low health and hygiene, and fear
and awe of a power called English.

Power Institutions: Colonial University and Indian


Nationalism
Colonialism and its Indian beneficiaries institutionalized English as the
language of power and ascribed power to the English/Western univer-
sity. The colonial university and the higher education it embodied took
shape as an institution of power in the second half of nineteenth century
and continued in full force till independence in 1947. Like English, its
power too has remained undiminished in post-1947 India, and its char-
acter remains nearly the same as in the colonial period. The university
and higher education universe played a key role in responses to colonial-
ism and in the development of Indian nationalism. It was India’s uni-
versities and its university educated who fashioned Pakistani nationalism
and Indian nationalism in late nineteenth century and in the first half
of twentieth century. While AMU was a hub of the growth of Pakistani
nationalism in 1920s and 1930s India, colleges such as Presidency and
universities of Calcutta, Bombay, Allahabad, and Madras formed the
intellectual hinterland of Indian nationalism. Though Gandhi took
Indian nationalism far beyond the confines of the colonial Indian univer-
sity and the English-educated, the university class retained the functional
control of nationalist movement and impinged its class power efficiently
at independence and after. For the university, the language of education
was English while the language of politics evolved from colonialism to
nationalism. English, university, and nationalism—a triad of power—
phased out colonial rule. But true to Macaulay’s thought, English and
British/European knowledge as also the systems of control outlived
colonial rule; their intrinsic power remains nearly undiminished 70 years
after independence.
136  S. ROY CHOWDHURY

There were attempts to fashion a non-colonized education in the


first half of twentieth century. Tagore’s educational institutions in
Santiniketan and Sriniketan in Bengal and Jamia Milia Islamia in north
India glow as examples where Indian thought and practice leaders tried
to develop an educational universe that challenged colonial education
and strived to create an education of freedom, civilizational harmony,
and peace. But these moments of luminous institutional education did
not grip the imagination of the larger sections of colonized university-
educated Indians, nor could these institutions light the passion of free-
dom and peace in the vast majority of the population. The light of a
Tagore or a Gandhi or a Gandhian like Zakir Hussain could not find
effective flame-bearers in the colonized minds of the bearers of Indian or
Pakistani nationalism. An alien language, an alien institutional transplant,
and an alien political technology inaugurated a new power structure in
India as colonialism came to an end.

World Powers, Science as Power, and Little or not so


Little Power of People
Britain exited India, its power too receded on the world stage.
Decolonization in large parts of Asia and Africa meant the colonial pow-
ers of France and Britain became weaker. The post-1945 world saw the
emergence of two rival world powers, America and Soviet Russia. Their
rivalry and competing economic ideologies of capitalism and socialism
greatly influenced Indian politicians, policymakers, and higher educa-
tion universe. While American help actively shaped the development of
a number of IITs and IIMs, Russians too were not left behind in their
active partnership with building and expanding India’s scientific and
technological base. Americans helped India in industrial agriculture;
Russians lent their expertise in building steel plants and factories to pro-
duce machines. With command of English, of nation, and of the state,
Prime Minister Nehru firmly espoused the development of these large
infrastructure projects which he called “commanding heights of econ-
omy.” And he and his policy advisers built the IITs and IIMs which I call
the commanding heights of education.
Indian elite was armed with English and nationalism, it had inher-
ited a state system with university as a key player in that system; now,
it aspired to science, especially high science and higher technology.
7  CONCLUSION: TOWARD A DEMOCRATIC HIGHER EDUCATION  137

The IITs were designed to be the new homes of technology and of sci-
ence; the IIMs were designed so as to disseminate the products of
technology to markets and to manage industrial and commercial organi-
zations. What the new world powers did to the Indian elite and insti-
tutionally educated middle-class imagination was to entrench veneration
for science, even more for technology than for science. Managing its
relationship with the world powers, Indian power elite equipped itself
and its associate classes with the power of science and the technol-
ogy that science generated. The IITs, the IIMs, and major universities
as envisioned in the EC (1964–1966) formed this commanding height
of education. The power elite in command of the state and the nation
framed policy and politics to create the commanding heights of edu-
cation in order to complement commanding heights of economy. The
immediate post-independence thrust toward a humanistic and demo-
cratic higher education with rural universities at the core of educational
planning, articulated in UEC, fell by the wayside. A culture and econ-
omy of command nurtured a command education meant to keep the
gates of institutional education closed for the largest sections of popula-
tion, a world that has often been referred to as Bharat in recent years.
India’s commanding heights of economy and of education closed the
gates of education and prosperity for Bharat.
By mid-1980s, India could also feel that it was far from being a sci-
entific and technological powerhouse, the charms of Soviet big indus-
try had also receded, and the pressure of the electorate was pushing
for greater democracy in education and development. The National
Policy on Education (NPE) (1986–1992) reflected this reality check.
Instead of major and metropolitan universities, we hear of open uni-
versities for the first time, and we also see a much-needed push toward
women’s education and the effort to open up university education for
larger numbers of lower-caste population. The late 70s and 80s also see
half-baked attempts at enhancing the possibilities of use of languages
other than English in education. These do not go far enough and, in
some instances, defeat the purpose of greater educational opportuni-
ties for largest section of population. Nonetheless, the late 1980s and
early 1990s are a time for greater educational democracy, not to men-
tion the extension of reservation of seats for OBCs in higher education
institutions.
At the time that nerve centers of power were getting more widespread
across the length and breadth of India and the Soviet Union collapsed
138  S. ROY CHOWDHURY

and the Berlin Wall fell, it was in those very years that the ideas of less
government interference and more private investment in economy was
gaining ground in the Western world. Reaganomics championed greater
private role in capitalism, and the socialist Soviet Union became a thing
of the past. The post-1991 world in India got enamored with liberali-
zation, privatization, and globalization. The push for democratic higher
education in the mid and late 1980s receded in the 1990s. Private higher
education became the new mantra. In 2000 during Prime Minister
Vajpayee’s tenure, industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Kumar Mangalam
Birla headed a committee on education and that gave a distinct push
toward private universities. From the philosopher Radhakrishnan chair-
ing UEC to physics professor Kothari leading EC to private industrialists
at the helm of education committee, the change in Indian elite percep-
tions was loud and clear.
In 2006–2009, NKC and, in 2008–2009, the CARHE analyzed
Indian higher education in substantive detail. Both the policy advisory
groups alerted the nation to the crisis in higher education. Through a
variety of measures, they advocated how higher education could be revi-
talized. NKC laid great stress on the importance of making translations
of scientific and educational texts available in all major Indian languages,
CARHE urged IITs to step out into the real world, and the policy mak-
ers sounded a clear alarm that Indian higher education and universities
must sit up before it is too late. In spite of their detailed analysis and
some appropriate recommendations, the pattern of India planning for
Bharat continued. An idea of decentralized policymaking was absent.
And like their predecessors such as Kothari, they too laid stress on cre-
ation of 50 “national” universities and centers of excellence. The elite
obsession in higher education policy planning did not quite fade away.
Yet from their analysis and recommendations, it was evident that the
post-1991 thrust on private higher education in an era of economic pri-
vatization and globalization was far from unproblematic. To the con-
trary, higher education was clearly on a downward slope even though
there was a modest increase in gross enrolment ratio (GER).
My survey of higher education policy from 1947 till now tells me
that the idea world keeps moving between two ends of a pendulum,
namely, between elite consolidation and educational democracy. For
the most part, elite-centric higher education has dominated colonized
India’s and independent India’s policy environment and policy thinking.
Occasionally with the influence of Gandhian leadership of the freedom
7  CONCLUSION: TOWARD A DEMOCRATIC HIGHER EDUCATION  139

struggle, and of Ambedkar’s push toward social justice, we find educa-


tional democracy finding prominence in policy thinking; UEC (1948–
1949) remains a bright example. Educational democracy returns to the
policy table again in late 1980s but is again elbowed out by the forces
of privatization and economic globalization that have ruled Indian
policy environment from the early 1990s till today. While Anglophone
techno-savvy upper-caste upper- and middle-class India has profited from
this policy environment—even that gain is not without its shortcom-
ings—three-quarters or more of the population, the world called Bharat,
has been denied of its political right to higher/tertiary education. The
self-seeking and myopic policy thinking of the university educated is to
blame for this to a great extent, but not exclusively. The political and
social movements that have aspired to change the status quo have also
not been able to assert an accurate set of policy recommendations. A new
language of politics and policy alone can change this English-nation-
class/caste-science-techno-modernity and its habitat—the Indian uni-
versity. For now, we can say, here I borrow a phrase from Mohammed
Yunus of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank fame, Indian higher education
could be a banyan tree but elite policy has made it a bonsai.

Oppressive Power of Policy, Undemocratic Polity


An elitist policy creates commanding heights of education. The popu-
lar aspiration, embedded in large part of the population, is to get the
advantage of these commanding heights. Reservation of seats for back-
ward sections of society, enforced by the forces of political democracy,
ensures that the elite institutions in technology, medicine, law, and vari-
ous professional disciplines are open to students from underprivileged
sections. The enormous pull of the elite institutions has resulted in an
unhealthy race to get into these places. Coaching centers that train stu-
dents to “crack” the competitive exams that are the gatekeepers to these
institutions have become a thriving business; the companies could well
get listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. For less than a 100 seats to
the AIIMS in Delhi, the number of students who sit for the entrance test
in a year is 1 million! A sickening culture of examinations has become
all pervasive, and the cost to the mental health of young Indians and
their families is not even measured. Alongside this disease comes another
social deformity. Young people who enter these centers of command-
ing heights, if they happen to be from Dalit or other underprivileged
140  S. ROY CHOWDHURY

sections, then they are exposed to discrimination in campus life. That has
resulted in student suicides, and the number of such cases seems to be
rising in the last two decades. Several young people are also elbowed out
by the culture of upper-caste/class cultural power in these institutions;
their educational aspirations die into dark silence.
The discrimination is not only along caste lines but gender also forms
an axis of discrimination. In many instances, women do not get the ena-
bling environment that is necessary to move ahead in educational and
professional careers. Physiological disabilities form yet another axis of
discrimination. While there are oppressive policy and a pattern of social
discrimination, there is also bureaucratic power. Often, higher education
institutions and the teachers who work in these places are within a hier-
archy of power; in many instances, the power of an educational adminis-
trator or an administrative body results in an oppressive climate. Instead
of governing institutions, the trend is to control them. In all of this, the
oppressive power of elitist policy is particularly disturbing. As I said ear-
lier, here is a clear case how a nation’s ill-thought policy—self-inflicted
injuries—to use a phrase of scientist Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, gives rise
to a bonsai nation.
What happens to the university in a bonsai nation? Parochial univer-
sity, an idea introduced by Susan and Lloyd Rudolph in 1970s, was a
formulation that when traditional institutions like caste became more
cosmopolitan in an era of political and economic mobility, cosmopolitan
institutions such as university started becoming parochial. I have argued
in “Class Struggles in Classrooms” that there were serious limitations
to the cosmopolitan character of university even in the early years of
independent India. Nonetheless, it is true that the limited expansion in
student numbers and the journey of higher education from the metropo-
lis to the moffusil made the university more parochial. As higher edu-
cation brought greater numbers into its fold and as, one could argue,
it became more open to a large section of society, it started losing its
international orientation and its cosmopolitanism. While there is merit
in this argument, this characterizes only one half of the phenomenon.
The Rudolphs also ask: Could the Indian university then create knowl-
edge that was sensitive to local needs; could the local get integrated into
knowledge? Nearly 40 years later, a committee to look into higher edu-
cation led by Indian academics thought the same; Indian university has
utterly neglected the process of even attempting to integrate local envi-
ronment into knowledge creation, and I will add, to teaching. As I have
7  CONCLUSION: TOWARD A DEMOCRATIC HIGHER EDUCATION  141

argued in “Elite Institutions, Dismal Development,” Indian university


is caught in a black shoe syndrome; its core created in the British colo-
nial structure remains unreformed. Cosmetic changes keep changing the
shine every now and again but the core of knowledge universe and pro-
cesses of teaching remain frozen in the colonial and colonized university.
Indian academics are fond of the word autonomy, while there is a case of
administrative autonomy, the greater and more urgent need of autonomy
is the unshackling of Indian higher education from the oppressive power
of colonial university and its parochial avatar. Freedom in the university
will also lead to a flowering of the bonsai nation into a banyan tree of
knowledge and economic prosperity for a billion plus civilization.

Educational Democracy and Developmental Futures


In the scholarship centering on higher education, some scholars focus
on numbers while others look at the endemic malaise in the system of
Indian higher education. GER, that is, the percentage of population of
college-going age, who actually enroll in tertiary education, is important,
and so is the quality of educational outcome/experience of students. As
a scientist has observed, only throwing money or increasing numbers of
institutions will not solve the problem. Endemic features such as caste/
class biases need to be addressed urgently. Public policy cannot change
in short or even in the medium term the long processes of culture that
form a people’s “habits of the heart.” However, policy can give signals
in the right direction. To begin with, the four-tier hierarchy in higher
education can be changed to a two-tier system; research centers can all
become universities and offer masters-level courses; and vocational/skills
education can be brought into undergraduate colleges so that the stig-
matization of this sector ends once and for all. The mentality of caste
and of hierarchy is the central malaise that plagues higher education and
India. Its tentacle spreads to the languages. A robust and dynamic trans-
lation program must be initiated to transform at least a dozen Indian
languages into languages of natural and health sciences, technology,
business, and social sciences. Caste and class are intermeshed, there are
patterns of the mind, and there is a language in which money speaks.
The high levels of funding to IITs and IIMs have to freeze at current
levels. If India wants to aspire for any target of “Viswajeet” or winning
the world, let the money be evenly spread out to the entire higher educa-
tion sector consisting 20,000 institutions, rather than giving to a handful
142  S. ROY CHOWDHURY

of elite ones. The way to promote excellence is not to create elite clubs.
Unlike some advanced economies, India has scarce little money available
for innovative ideas/projects. It is urgent to devise systems where money
should be disbursed through competitive procedures and not handed
out as an institutional birthright. There is a constant talk of becoming
a world power or conquering the world in the Indian elite and media
world. There is a national celebration for rocket launches, etc. but there
is no national shame or disgrace at periodic train accidents, at student
suicides, at farmer suicides, at floods every other year with the great loss
of life and livelihood, at malnutrition, at illiteracy, and at environmen-
tal degradation. This myopia needs to be replaced by a saner democratic
humane perspective of development values. Disciplines and course con-
tents need to be rethought, so too the regime of disciplines; the push
needs to be both local and international with a multi-polar power/
knowledge world in context, and planetary with a planet stretched to its
limits. When the educative functions of society start a new educative pro-
cess, only then will the learning and development outcomes of university
undergo a radical shift. A democratic change in the policy environment
alone can lead to educational democracy and meaningful development
for both India and Bharat, whose development has been long overdue.
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Index

A Ambedkar, 90, 97–99, 122, 123, 125,


Academic pursuit, reshaping of, 126 143
Adivasi(s) (First peoples), 117 America
Aesthetics, 122 atom-bombing of Hiroshima/
Africa Nagasaki, 57
Sub-Saharan, 30 rural education issues, 54
Agriculture(al) Ananda bazaar patrika, 87
industrialization of, 62 Andhra Pradesh, 64, 65
laborer, 69 Andrews, C.F., 46
new, 56 Anglo-American domination, 53
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad Anglophone
(ABVP), 96 Brahminical elite, 13
Alienation, 86, 87, 119 civilization, 13
Aligarh, 36–39, 41, 42, 46–48 higher education, 22
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Anglopolis, 30
36, 139 Anil (Meena), 82, 86
Ali, Syed Mujtaba, 45 Annihilation of Caste, 31, 98
Allahabad, 36, 41 Arabic, 117
Allahabad University, 139 Arab world, 46
All India Institute of Medical Sciences Arts, 2, 12, 124
(AIIMS), 86, 106 Arunachal Pradesh, 116
All India Muslim Students Federation Asia(n)
(AIMSF), 38 East, 21, 67, 69
All India Students Federation (AISF), South, 21, 30, 67, 69, 89
38, 96 South-east, 21, 67, 69, 82
Ambani, Mukesh, 18, 68, 142 Assam/Assamiya, 64

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 149


S. Roy Chowdhury, Politics, Policy and Higher Education in India,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5056-5
150  Index

Autonomy, 71, 73, 74, 109, 112, 141 entitlements, 89


language, 3
racist attitude, 116
B Brahminism, 22, 31
B.A., 42, 124 Brahmo/movement, 19, 38, 39,
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), 98 41–44, 46–48, 53, 55, 64, 66,
Banaras Sanskrit College, 14 68, 76, 89, 92, 94, 98, 99, 135,
Bangladesh, 3, 5, 29, 30, 63, 118, 139 139
Barbarism, 12 Brain drain, 119
Barmer, 88 “Brain-waste”, 119
Belief system, 56, 60 Brand(s)/Branding
Benaras, 36 wars, 4
Benaras Hindu University, 36 Bring-ins, 77
Bengal Britain, 4, 10, 52, 53, 117, 122, 124,
Presidency, 9 136
Bengal chemicals, 15 British/Raj
Bengali/Bengalis, 10, 11, 15, 26, colonial rule, 3, 4, 17, 39, 41, 52,
29–31, 37, 45, 64, 87, 113, 117, 102
119, 124, 133 India, 9, 10, 12, 13
Bentinck, Lord, 12, 13 Indian army, 13
Berlin wall, 138 Indian bureaucracy, 44
Bharat non-violent overthrow of, 52
control of, 74, 79 opinion, 10, 53
policy for, 73, 75, 76, 78, 138 Parliament, 10–12, 31
shackle for, 73 policy, 25
Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, 82, 114, power, 14
140 university, 141
Bhindranwale, Jarnail Singh, 64 Buddha, 46, 57
Bhojpuri, 15 Business, 8, 11, 13, 18, 19, 27, 29,
Bible, 11 64, 67, 69, 114, 124, 126, 139,
Bi-lingual(ism), 19 141
Birla, Kumar Mangalam, 18, 68, 138
Black shoe syndrome, 117, 123, 125,
141 C
Bombay Cages, political and educational, 122
Presidency, 11, 135 Calcutta, 6, 9, 11, 14–16, 36, 37, 39,
Bonsai nation, 140, 141 41, 42, 44, 47, 87, 88, 97, 99,
Born, Max, 27, 31, 44, 45, 63, 82, 87, 103, 115, 119, 138, 139
98, 123, 126 Calcutta Madrasa, 14
Bose, P.N., 40 Calcutta Medical College, 40
Brahmin/ical Calcutta University, 87, 92
domination, 13, 31 Cambridge, 10
Index   151

Capitalism/capitalist, 52, 53, 68, 86, Climatic changes, 120


119, 136, 138 Cold War, 4, 25, 49, 52, 58, 60, 67,
Caste(s) 134
ideology, 41, 112, 126 Colleges, 10, 13, 16, 60, 66, 74, 91,
inequities, 61, 89 93–95, 103, 106–109, 111, 112,
ist democracy, 2 116, 121–123, 126, 134, 135,
lower, 41, 45, 87, 89, 96, 112, 114, 141
116, 124 Colonial
marker, 3, 88 Brahminical pattern, 36, 134
mentality, 5, 61, 98, 108, 112–114, domination, 3, 53, 137
121, 124, 141 education/planning of, 3, 9, 25, 36,
Centre for Research in Education and 41, 43, 44, 123, 141
Social Transformation (CREST), education system, 72, 90
121 government, 42, 43, 48, 72, 82
Center–state relation, 66 Colonialism
Chaitanya, 46 anti-, 38, 43, 52–54
Chanakya, ix struggle against, 53
Chatterjee, Partha, 42 Commanding heights
Chhattisgarh, 107 of economy, 58, 60, 122, 140, 141
China, 21, 30, 46, 65, 127 of education, 58, 60, 122, 140,
Christ, 46 141, 143
Christian of science, 58
missions, 137 Committee to Advise on the
principles, 9, 137 Renovation and Rejuvenation of
Christian missionaries Higher Education (CARHE), 142
America, 9 Communism, 52, 55, 65
Denmark, 9 Communist Party of India (Maoist),
England, 9 97
European, 3 Communist Party of India (Marxist),
Scotland, 9 64, 95
Chuckerbutty, S.C., 15, 16, 40, 135 Conflict, 4, 13, 86, 88, 125, 126
Citizen(s), 11, 19, 81, 86, 104, 105, Congress, 37–39, 41, 63, 64, 80, 90,
110, 114, 116, 123 91, 96
Civilization, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 28, 40, Control, 2, 5, 18, 39, 40, 43, 52, 53,
53, 63, 141 68, 73, 74, 79, 93–95, 108, 112,
Class(es) 139, 144
inequities of, 5, 61 Cosmopolitan, 92, 144
lower, 4, 22, 61, 73, 87, 89, 102, Courses
114, 141 academic, 60
struggles, 4, 86, 97, 133, 140 professional, 61
upper and middle, 53, 86 Culture
“Claste”, 88, 89, 91, 92 of power, 88
152  Index

D underdevelopment of, 24
Dalit Discrimination
activist, 29 axes of, 4, 88
Deccan, 10 Divide
Delhi/New Delhi, 3, 6, 8, 18, 37, 42, accent, 31
59, 64, 66, 86, 102, 103, 106, digital, 31
116–118, 121, 143 India/Bharat, 73, 75
Delhi School of Economics (D Draughts, 120
School), 106 Dreze, Jean, 30
Delhi University, 102 Drop-outs, 77
Democracy
political, 79, 80, 90, 98, 136, 143
Department of E
Arabic, 117 East India Company, 9–13, 31
English Literature, 117 Economy
Gujarati, 117 command, 56
Hindi, 117, 124 Education
Modern Indian Literature, 117 agricultural, 55, 56, 60, 61, 116
Persian, 117 “basic education” buniyadi talim, 5,
Tamil, 117 39, 43, 47
Depression(s), 120 Chinese, 111
Developmental futures, 145 crisis, 5, 105, 108, 142
Development democratic vision, 63
dismal, 5, 119, 121, 123, 137, 145 distance, 67, 105
dominant ideology, 126 early childhood, 23
elite-serving view of, 4 electorate and, 63, 141
human, 29, 30 elite vision, 63
ideas of, 4 engineering, 14
Indian, 2–4 expenditure on, 69
mega projects, 81 health, 2, 5, 67, 76, 77
rural, 5, 54, 56, 76 idea of, 44
technologies of, 2 inclusive, 71, 77
under, 24, 30, 109, 117, 120 indicators/of, 5, 30, 67, 69
vision, 4, 16, 53, 54, 137 investment in, 69, 70
Dhaka University, 3 management, 70, 77, 78
Disability, physiological, 5, 88, 89 manual work in, 39
Discipline(s) medical, legal, technological, 14
conceptualizations of, 5 non-colonized, 140
humanistic, 21, 22 open, 67, 105
Indianize, 126 oppressiveness of colonial, 45, 47
new ordering of, 5 orthodox Muslim, 43
redefinition of, 126 peace in, 57
Index   153

for physiologically challenged, 66 Elphinstone College, 41


reconstruction of, 62 Emotion, 29
religious, 39, 44, 56, 57 Empire, 12, 13, 29
reservations in, 65 England
system of, 47, 121 justice system of, 2
technological, 14, 22, 56 English
tertiary, 2, 67, 74, 82, 91, 103, 106, abuse of, 29, 138
108, 111, 112, 119, 123, 124, assertion of, 19
143, 145 authors, 19, 138
vision of, 54, 63, 71, 112, 123 believing elite, 27
Wardha scheme of, 39 Brahminical power of, 27
for women, 60 classics, 10
Educational command over, 22, 30
campus, 3 educated, 13, 16, 18, 37, 137, 139
democracy, 78–80, 143, 145, 146 educated elite, 18
ideal, colonialist/nationalist, 2, 36 education, 9, 12, 13, 18, 31, 39,
institutions, 2, 3, 5, 14, 19, 22, 36, 82, 141
55, 57, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 82, empire of, 29
93, 94, 115, 116, 122 fearing, 73, 75
philosophy, 6, 39, 44 knowing classes, 22
planning, 41, 61, 66, 119, 141 language, 2, 3, 8, 14, 15, 17, 22,
system, 3, 4, 11, 20, 21, 23, 25, 39, 23, 53, 116, 137, 138
44, 47, 69, 70, 73, 97, 103, Law, 10
111, 112, 115, 122 learning, 11, 30
Tagore’s vision, 45 literature, 87, 117, 124
thought, 37, 39, 48, 52, 53, 80, medium schools, 8, 26
112 metropolitan, 27
universe(s), 43, 44, 53, 136, 140 nations, 29, 30
Education Commission (EC), 18, 31 power of, 3, 16, 22, 27, 28, 30, 32,
Educative functions, 114, 115, 146 138
Egypt, 65 privileging of, 20
Elite roles of, 17
club, 31, 146 spell of, 53
consolidation, 142 students’ competence in, 118
institutions, 4, 5, 73, 75, 103, 107, superiority of, 53
111, 143 use of, 8, 15, 17, 18, 24, 26
power, 3, 4, 13, 15, 62, 73, 123, English education, 3, 9, 12–14, 18,
137, 141, 144 36, 82
upper caste, 14, 31, 80, 86, 89, 113 English Language
Westernized, 64 in India, 17
Elmhirst, Leonard, 46 power of, 3, 7
Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 11 Entrepreneur/ship, 40, 106, 110
154  Index

Environmental degradation, 146 thought world of, 55


Equality, 4, 55 Gandhi, Indira, 63–65, 67
Equity, 71 Gandhi, Rajiv, 32, 64, 67
Ethics, breakdown of, 63 Gender, 5, 46, 66, 89
Europe Geography, 5, 10, 92, 117, 120
contribution of, 60 Geological Survey of India, 40
India encounter, 44 German, 26, 117
modern languages of, 10 Ghana, 65
European knowledge/sciences, 11, Globalization
14, 139 impact of, 4
Examination/exam(s) Global
oppressive culture, 106 processes, 4, 60
Exclusion, 69 South, 126
Experiment, 114 Governance
technologies of, 2
Government
F schools, 22
Federal Grant, Charles, 11
government, 18 Greek, 10
language, 19 Green Revolution, 58
Flood(s) Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 106
shelters, 114 Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), 142
Fort William Guru Govind, ix
College, 10
France, 52, 140
Fraternity, 55 H
Freedom “Habits of the heart”, 141
civic, 63 Hadith, 43
educational, 5, 45 Haryana, 58
of speech, 63 Hastings, Warren, 9
Freedom movement/struggle, 41, 46, Health, 2, 30, 67, 68, 76, 77, 105,
48, 55, 57, 65, 90, 111, 138 110, 116, 143, 145
Free Thinkers, 97 Hierarchy, 89, 105, 113, 122, 144,
French, 30, 55, 119, 138 145
Higher education
affordable, 73
G British structures of, 53
Gandhi class character of, 74
developmental vision of, 54 crisis, 105, 108, 142
economic ideal, 52 decentralization of management of,
educational universe, 46 70
political ideal, 52 democratic, 136, 142
Index   155

elite contents of, 5 Independence


enrolment, 88 India’s right to, 54
excellence in, 89, 91 political, 53
foreign direct investment in, 70 Independents Consolidation, 97
governing bodies in, 72 India
government role in, 70 colonized, 52, 142
institutions, 3, 36, 46 conceptions of, 3
medium of, 20 contemporary, 4, 12, 55, 96, 113,
new entrants in, 74 124
private role in, 73 developed, 6
privatization of, 70 Dravidian, 29
rankings, 79 eastern, 9, 15
space, 4, 91, 95, 97 economy, 53, 61, 103
thinking, 18, 54 Government of, 54, 82
transformative role, 55, 109 independent, 3, 18, 19, 27, 28,
Higher education/education policy, 2, 52–54, 56, 90, 117
4, 18, 71, 142 intellectual communities of, 26
Hindi middle class, 5, 26, 53, 80, 89
imperialism, 29 modern, 2, 4, 39, 117, 125
medium school, 8 multi-religious, 44
Hindu Nehruvian, 63
greatness of civilization, 40 new, 2, 13, 16, 68, 71, 123
identity, 3 old, 16
Law, 10 partition of, 56
Hindu College, 11, 36, 37, 102 plurality of/pluralist, 44
Hindu Growth, 3, 137 polyphonic, 43
Hindustan, 10, 80 rural, 39, 58, 59, 115
Hindustani, 10 secular state, 57
History software industry, 5
“A History of Hindu Chemistry”, 40 southern, 9, 117
“A History of Hindu Civilisation”, sustainable growth, 5
40 Indian Constitution, 2, 55, 97
Horrors, political and military, 63 Indian Council for Social Science
Human capital, 21, 69 Research (ICSSR), 59
Humanities, 9, 60, 104, 120, 139 Indian Higher Education
Hussain, Zakir, 39, 43, 140 failings of, 103
great wall of, 121
poverty of, 1, 101
I Indian higher education policy, 2, 3
Ideology, 37, 41, 58, 68, 111 Indian Institute(s) of Management
Illahabadi, Akbar, 42 (IIM(s)), 58, 90, 103, 140
Imagination, socio-political-literary, Indian Institute(s) of Science Education
126 and Research (IISERs), 103
156  Index

Indian Institute(s) of Technology state-controlled, 56


(IIT(s)), 27, 58, 90, 140 townships, 58
Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), 103 Inequities, reproduction of, 5
Indian languages Injuries, self-inflicted, 115, 144
empowerment of, 20, 25 Injustice
intellectual homes in, 27 architecture of, 111, 112
modern, 10 economic, 117
vernacular, 9, 25 edu-cultural, 28
Indian Nationalism geography of, 5, 115
competing visions, 4 Innovation, 21, 26, 82
Indian nation Instruction
idea of, 3 medium of, 8, 22, 25, 48
Indian nationalist, 25, 40 religious, 39
Indian(s) International, 20, 29, 65, 69, 93, 144
developmental planning, 58 International Monetary Fund (IMF),
educated, 3, 11–14, 39, 53 67
educational thinkers, 17 Islam(ic)
educationists, 60 identity, 3
education system, 72, 90
films, 115
History Congress, 91 J
language moffusil, 27 Jamia Milia Islamia/Jamia, 15, 37, 41,
political opinion, 53 42, 140
power-stream of, 27 Janata Party, 64, 96
rulers, 13, 137 Jangam (Chinnaiah), 125
Science Congress, 91 Japan
scientists, 15, 40, 80, 114 Japanese path, 40
thought leaders, 17 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), 3,
thought world, 55, 58 59, 81, 103
upper caste, 36 Joseph Anton, 117
urban-centric planning, 59 Journalism, upper caste domination
village life, 47, 52 in, 113
Indian society Justice, 2, 55, 98, 111
underdevelopment of, 24
Indian university, 2–4, 42, 92, 107,
115, 117, 120, 126, 136, 137, K
139, 145 Kabir, 57
Indira Gandhi National Open Kannada, 10
University (IGNOU), 67 Kapur, Devesh, 106
Indonesia, 65, 82 Kashmir, 98
Industry (ies/ial) Khan, Sir Syed Ahmed, 16, 37
cottage, 56 Khilafat movement, 43
Index   157

King, Robert D., 28 outcome(s), 20


Knowledge through doing, 55
autonomy of, 126 Liberty, 4, 55
fragmentation of the idea of, 104, Library(ies), 12, 102, 104
109 Literacy rate, 88
global centers, 90 Literature, 11, 12, 18, 21, 24, 27,
lower castes of, 124 46, 60, 75, 87, 88, 117, 118,
modern, 29 124–126
new architecture of, 124 Ljubljana University, 2
oriental, 9 Local community(community), 21,
portals, 105 36, 45, 57, 75, 80, 104, 107, 108
universes of China, Japan, Europe, London, 6, 10
46 London university, 53
useful, 10, 11
Korea (South), 21, 106
Kothari, D.S., 18, 20, 58 M
Kottayam, 88 Macaulay, William Babington, 12
Kshatriya, 13, 48 Madhava, 57
Kumar, Dipak, 15, 40 Madhya Pradesh, 8
Kumar, Krishna, 40 Madras, 9, 14, 36, 41, 47, 103, 139
Kumar (Vivek), 125 Madrasas, 43
Kunjalal, 45 Magahi, 15
Mahalonobis, P.C., 58
Maithili, 15, 22
L Malayalam, 26, 30, 31, 113, 124
Labor Malda, 88
anti-manual, 28, 55, 76, 108, 113, Malnutrition, 116, 139, 146
114 Mandal Commission, 67, 89, 90, 98
cheap, 114 Mandal, Mohitosh, 87
Language(s) Manipur, 98, 116
international, 20, 29, 138 Maoist movement, 76
of government, 25 Marathi, 10, 31
natural, 21, 22, 30 Market Raj, 68
oriental, 9, 137 Marx, Karl, 55
policy, 21, 25, 28, 67 Masters level, 25
of power, 8, 13, 25, 30, 139 Mathematics, 10, 104, 105, 110
regional, 19, 31 Meghalaya, 116
world, 20, 22, 25, 75 Ministry of Human Resources
Latin, 10 Development (MHRD), 78
Learning Minto, Lord, 11
“Liberalization, privatization, glo- Mizoram, 116
balization”, 68, 70, 71, 142 Modern industrialism, 39
158  Index

Moffusil, 27, 115, 144 Muslim Indian, 36, 37, 39, 41, 47
Moghul rule/Mughal Empire, 13 Pakistani, 41, 139, 140
Moira, Lord, 11 trumpeting of, 42
Mother tongue Nationalist
education though, 17–19, 21, 24, ideas and ideals, 53
43 ultra, 62, 81
Muhammad, 6, 37, 38, 42, 46 National Knowledge Commission
Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental (NKC), 18, 90, 103
College, 36, 37 National Policy on Education (NPE),
Multiculturalism, 26 18, 65, 141
Multi-lingual(ism), 19 National Students Union of India
Mumbai, 5, 114, 115 (NSUI), 96
Municipality(ies), 27 Natural tongue, 30, 32
Muslim Nature, 5, 12, 36, 46, 73, 78, 80,
law, 10, 14 103, 123, 137
South Asian, 89 Nehru, 3, 6, 28, 58, 60, 63, 65, 71,
students, 9, 38, 46 81, 103, 122, 140
Muslim League, 38 Nkrumah, Kwame, 65
Nobel Prize for Literature, 46
Non- Aligned Movemement (NAM),
N 65
Nagaland, 116 Non-cooperation, 38, 43
Nanak, 46, 57 Nuclear
Nandy, Ashis, 6, 42 arsenal, 60
Narayan, Jayaprakash, 64 bomb, 62, 81, 123
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 65 energy, 62
Nation power, 62
two-nation theory, 38 powered nation, 114
National
awakening, 37, 41, 43
education, 3, 5, 24, 39, 40, 123 O
well-being, 61, 121, 123 Oppression, 2, 16, 98, 99
National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Oral history, 3
61 Oriya, 120
Nationalism, 2–4, 36, 38–43, 46, 47, Osmania University, 36
96, 137, 139, 140 Other Backward Classes (OBC), 67,
aggressive, 38, 47 89, 111, 141
contrast in, 44 Ottoman emperor, 43
elite domination of, 41 Owen, John, 9
Hindu, 36, 38 Oxford, 9, 10, 44, 74
as ideology, 41
Indian, 3, 36, 37, 39–42, 47
Index   159

P Polity, undemocratic, 143


Pakistan, 29, 30, 37, 38, 42, 43, 46, Postgraduate, 86, 107, 108, 110
47, 49, 118 Poverty, 5, 68, 69, 71, 97, 123, 126
Panchayat(s)/Panchayati Raj, 27, 65, Power
67, 81 of convention, 117
Pandey, Gyanendra, 29 institutions, 2–4, 14, 139
Paramedics, 77 language, 137
Parliamentary democracy, 2, 63 of people, 140
Patriotism, 39 science as, 140
Periyar–Ambedkar Study Circle, 97 Practice, 6, 10, 14, 44, 55, 57, 72,
Persian, 9, 10, 13, 16, 25, 137 104, 120, 124, 140
PhD, 3, 6, 20, 25, 107, 138 Prasad, Chanderbhan, 29, 30, 139
Philosophers, 63 Presidency College, 6, 36, 41, 97
Philosophical Private
universe(s), 41 capitalists, 68, 70
western and eastern traditions, 54 industry, 68
Pitroda, Sam, 18, 75, 78 institutions, 72, 75
Pluralism investors, 72
linguistic, 27 schools, 26
Policy University Bill, 70
advocacy, 60 Project Vishwajeet, 111
educational, 6, 65 Psychology, 120, 126
environment, 4, 15, 76, 79, 112, Public
116, 119, 142, 146 health, 47
makers, 2, 5, 17, 20, 26, 55, 62, 67, life, 54, 66, 78
75, 76, 105, 140, 142 opinion, 61
oppressive power of, 143, 145 world, 4
prescriptions, 2, 3, 73 Punjab, 58
Policy Framework for Reforms in
Education (PFRE), 18, 68
Policymaking Q
decentralized, 142 Quran, 43
Political Economy, 10, 123
Political Science, 118, 119
Politics R
on campuses, 89 Radhakrishnan, S., 18, 20, 54, 56, 138
elite domination of, 64 Rajasthan, 88, 107
majoritarian, 27 Rajivlochan, M., 47, 53
poverty of, 5, 97 Ramamurti Committee, 65
regional parties, 64 Ramanuja, 57
region-centric, 64 Ram Mohan/Rammohun Roy, 16,
state-centric, 64 44, 46
160  Index

Ramnad, 9 School book societies, 11, 16, 138


Rao, N.T. Rama, 64 Science
Rao, P.V. Narasimha, 18, 32 benefits of, 62
Ray, P.C., 15, 40 blind belief in, 63
Raza, Moonis, 88 in command, 58
Reagan, Ronald, 67 education/teaching, 11, 23, 40,
Reaganomics, 67, 142 120
Reason, 11, 12, 30, 45, 114 as liberator, 62
Reddy, Janardhana, 65 national academy, 62
Religion(ous), 19, 43, 46, 57, 89 universal, 13, 44, 62, 63
Republican Party of India (RPI), 98 western, 2, 11, 13, 15, 37, 40
Research Scientific/technological literature, 24,
environment, 26 27
oriented learning, 24 Secularism, 3
scientific, 26 Sen, Amartya, 30
social scientific, 26 Sepoy Mutiny, 13, 37
Reservation, 65, 67, 89–91, 97, 98, Shankar, ix
141, 143 Sikhs, 56
Revolution Siksha satra, 46, 47
scientific, 28, 60, 62 Singapore, 21, 106
Revolutionary Students Front (RSF), Singh, Charan, 64
97 Singh, Manmohan, 75
Rickshaw drivers, 102, 106 Singh, V.P., 32, 65, 67, 89, 97
Rudolph, Lloyd, 92, 144 Sivaganga, 9
Rudolph, Susanne, 92 Skill(s)/skilled
Russian craftsman, 61
language, 20, 25 education, 3, 24, 27, 61, 76, 79,
Revolution, 52 82, 145
India, 3
Sloss, Robert, 111
S SNDT Women’s University, 37
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics Social
(SINP), 103 change, 3, 15, 46
Saha, Meghnad, 58 gate-keeping, 91
Samajwadi Party (SP), 98 justice, 55, 71, 97, 98, 105, 110,
Samkara, 57 143
Sanskrit, 9–11, 13, 16, 19, 25, 137 sciences, 59, 103, 120, 121, 126,
Santiniketan, 37, 41, 42, 44–48, 53, 138, 139, 145
140 status, 95, 97
Sarabhai, Vikram, 58 Socialism(socialist), 2, 52, 53, 55, 56,
Sarkar, Mahendralal, 40, 45 64, 65, 80, 140, 142
Scheduled Castes, 89, 90 Sociology, 60, 118–120, 125
Index   161

Socrates, 57 industrial, 2
South Africa, 6, 45, 52 mercantile, 71, 74
Soviet/Russia/Union scientific, 24, 27, 59, 60, 140, 141
influence on India’s educational Telugu, 10, 22, 29, 64, 125
thought, 53 Thailand, 21, 67
knowledge base of, 53 Thatcher, Margaret, 67
Model, 20, 56 Theory, 38, 55, 87, 104, 114
power of, 53 Thought
Space, 4, 5, 36, 41, 60, 91, 93–96, 99, economic, 10, 52, 56, 112, 144
104, 105, 107, 123 Gandhian, 52, 54
Sriniketan, 48, 53, 140 political, 42
Stephens (St.), 74 “Time-pass”, 127
Student(s) Tito, Josip Broz, 65
non-Brahmin, 45 Trades, 43, 44, 47, 48, 82
politics, 95–97 Tradition, 10, 43, 44, 54, 63, 104
unions, 70, 95 Translation(s)
Suicide(s) of Indian literature, 124, 126
farmer, 146 of scientific and educational texts,
student, 86, 144, 146 142
Swadeshi/movement, 39, 53 role of, 26
Swaraj, 54, 68 Tribal
Sweden, 6, 21 children, 23, 24
Syllabi dialect, 24
overhaul in, 126 languages, 29, 76
rethinking, 126 peoples of central India, 76
schools, 24
Turko-Afghan Sultanate, 13
T
Tagore, Rabindranath
sociological writings of, 125 U
Tamil, 10, 22, 31, 113, 117, 120, 137 Undergraduate, 57, 59, 66, 71, 74,
Tanjore, 9 86, 107–112, 116, 120, 121,
Tata, J.N., 58 123, 145
Teacher(s) Underprivileged, 82, 98, 119, 143
movement, 94 United Front, 65
unions, 94, 95 United Progressive Alliance (UPA), 61
Technology(techno) United Provinces, 14, 38
absorption of, 21, 69 Universe(universalism)
bureaucratic, 59, 71 non-Eurocentric, 47
commerce, 70, 91, 115 University(ies)
elite, 71, 115, 141 academic life of, 73
162  Index

agricultural, 59, 60, 62, 116 Wellesley, 10


colonial, 139, 145 West
European and North American, servile imitation of, 39
106, 126 West Bengal, 95, 106, 118
major, 59, 65, 112, 141 Western
metropolitan, 59, 67, 141 civilization, 13, 17, 53
national, 105, 107, 115 education, 36, 43, 102
number of students in, 104, 106 imperial powers, 52
open, 3, 20, 66, 67, 141 languages, 20
parochial, 92, 93, 144 medicine, 2
private, 70–73, 79, 108, 142 modernity, 38, 53
rural, 53, 55, 59, 60, 66, 115, 116, modes of economic progress, 53
122, 141 Western University
social transformation, 3, 112 Indian variant of, 2
University Education Commission Women(’s)
(UEC), 18, 54 in colleges, polytechnics and univer-
Unorganized sector, 69, 71 sities, 91
Urban/rural, 88 conservative view on, 54
Urdu emancipation, 3
imperialism of, 29 marginalization, 91
USA, 4, 52, 65, 67 resource centers, 66
USSR, 4, 20, 52, 65 studies departments, 66
Uttar Pradesh, 58, 64 Wood’s Dispatch, 14
Wood, Sir Charles, 14, 25
Work, 2, 3, 9, 15, 23, 43, 47, 59, 65,
V 75, 104, 114, 121, 124
Vaidya(s), 45, 48 Worker(s), 27, 69, 78, 104
Vaishya(s), 45, 48 World
Values, 6, 44, 78, 79, 115, 146 diverse cultures, 57
Village languages, 20, 25, 117
reconstruction, 47 political processes, 55, 56
republic(s), 39 politics, 4, 52, 54, 137
Violence, 119, 120 powers, 54, 140, 141
Vishakhapatnam, 9 World war
Viswa Bharati, 37, 42, 44, 46, 47 First, 43, 46
Vocational education (institutions) Second, 52
stigmatization of, 22, 104, 108, Writers
110, 114, 145 Dalit, 113
Indian English, 113
Indian language, 113, 126
W marginalized Indian languages, 113
Warsaw University, 2
Index   163

Y Z
Yashpal, 18, 71, 78 Zoroaster, 57
Young India, 74, 125, 143
Yugoslavia, 65

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