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
AND HIGHER
EDUCATION
IN INDIA
Politics, Policy
and Higher Education
in India
Sunandan Roy Chowdhury
Sampark Global Journal
Kolkata, India
1 Introduction 1
Bibliography 143
Index 149
vii
An Unmitigated Evil
ix
x An Unmitigated Evil
M.K. Gandhi
Young India
April 1921
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
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
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
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.
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
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
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:
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
Taking a cue from Macaulay, Lord Bentinck, then the Governor General,
ruled:
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)
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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)
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
Recommended Readings
Books/Articles/Essays
Barra, Joseph. 1998. Colonialism and Educational Fragmentation in India. In
Bhattacharya.
2 BRAHMIN LANGUAGE, HINDU GROWTH—POLITICS AND POWER … 33
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:
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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
are some of the problems that characterize the growth of the Indian higher
education system.
The report puts forward its unease with private higher education
institutions:
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
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
Over the years, health related education and training has become more
urban oriented, doctor-centric and technology-driven.
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
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
Recommended Readings
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
the author points out that this becomes possible because of a poverty of
politics in India.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
“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.
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:
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.
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
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
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
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.
…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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
Y Z
Yashpal, 18, 71, 78 Zoroaster, 57
Young India, 74, 125, 143
Yugoslavia, 65