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Miseducation in India: Historiographical Reflections
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2022
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India, a country with more than 1.3 billion people living in an area of 1,269,219 square miles has only three teaching positions dedicated to the history of education. This denotes little importance given to the discipline. India produced no historian of education during the first twenty-six years after attaining independence. Bhagaban Prasad Majumdar, the first historian of education in independent India, published his First Fruit of English Education in 1973, through a local publisher that no longer exists. The book analyzed the answers written in annual examinations during the first half of the nineteenth century to evaluate the growth of modern education in India. It is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand curriculum history in India, particularly a teacher education student. However, the book is seldom quoted and difficult to find. In all of Delhi, only one library holds a single copy. This is representative of the fate that has befallen even scholars who have worked in the field at the international level and published books and papers in recognized journals. This year, India is celebrating seventy-five years of independence, and so far, it has produced six sets of major historical works and five micro studies that are limited in scope, again, are seldom quoted and recognized in the public debates on education in India.
- Type
- Review Essay
- Information
- History of Education Quarterly , Volume 62 , Special Issue 4: Education in the Asia-Pacific Region , November 2022 , pp. 373 - 386
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the History of Education Society
References
1 Majumdar, Bhagaban Prasad, First Fruits of English Education, 1817-1857 (Calcutta: Bookland, 1973)Google Scholar.
2 For instance, the following works by Indian, British, and American scholars have been ignored: Emmott, D.H., “Alexander Duff and the Foundation of Modern Education in India,” British Journal of Educational Studies 13, no. 2 (May 1965), 160-69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laird, M.A., Missionaries and Education in Bengal 1793-1837 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Bellenoit, Hayden J.A., Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860-1920 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007)Google Scholar; Cutts, Elmer H., “The Background of Macaulay's Minute,” American Historical Review 58, no. 4 (July 1953), 824-53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sirkin, Natalie Robinson and Sirkin, Gerald, “The Battle of Indian Education: Macaulay's Opening Salvo Newly Discovered,” Victorian Studies 14, no. 4 (June 1971), 407-28Google Scholar; Frykenberg, Robert Eric, “Modern Education in South India, 1784-1854: Its Roots and Its Role as a Vehicle of Integration under Company Raj,” American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (Feb. 1886), 37-65Google Scholar; Frykenberg, Robert Eric, “The Myth of English as a ‘Colonialist’ Imposition upon India: A Reappraisal with Special Reference to South India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 120, no. 2 (1988), 305-15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitehead, Clive, Colonial Educators: The British Indian and Colonial Education Service 1858-1983 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitehead, Clive, “The Concept of British Education Policy in the Colonies 1850-1960,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 39, no. 2 (2007), 161-73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitehead, Clive, “The Historiography of British Imperial Education Policy, Part I: India,” History of Education 34, no. 3 (2005), 315-29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ellis, Catriona, “Remembering Pre-Independence Childhoods in South India: Interrogating Autobiographies and Identities,” Social History 44, no. 2 (2019), 202-28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Besides Majumdar's First Fruit of English Education, the other four are Aparna Basu, The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 1898-1920 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1974); Aparna Basu, Essays in the History of Indian Education (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 1982); Suresh Chandra Ghosh, ed., Development of Educational Services, 1879-1896 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992); Suresh Chandra Ghosh, The History of Education in Modern India 1757-2007, 2nd ed. (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2010); Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ed., The Contested Terrain: Perspectives on Education in India (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1998); Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ed., Education and the Disprivileged: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century India (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2002); Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ed., The Development of Women's Education in India: A Collection of Documents, 1850-1920 (New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers, 2001); Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ed., Educating the Nation (New Delhi: Kanishka, 2003); Rosinka Chaudhuri, Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and the Orientalist Project (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2002); Rosinka Chaudhuri, ed., Derozio, Poet of India: The Definitive Edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008); Parimala V. Rao, Foundations of Tilak's Nationalism: Discrimination, Education and Hindutva (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2011); Parimala V. Rao, ed., New Perspectives in the History of Indian Education (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2014); Parimala V. Rao, Beyond Macaulay: Education in India, 1780-1860 (New Delhi: Routledge 2020); Parimala V. Rao, “Modern Education and the Revolt of 1857 in India,” Paedagogica Historica 52, no. 1-2 (2016), 25-42. The micro studies are: Jata Shankar Jha, Beginnings in Modern Education in Mithila (Patna, India: K.P. Jayaswal Research Institute, 1972); Archana Chakravarty, History of Education in Assam, 1826-1919 (Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1989); Hamlet Bareh, Progress of Education in Meghalaya (New Delhi: Cosmos Publications, 1996); Zenobia E. Shroff, The Contribution of Parsis to Education in Bombay City (1820-1920) (Mumbai: Himalaya Publishing House, 2001); Sita Anantha Raman, Getting Girls to School: Social Reform in the Tamil Districts, 1870-1930 (Calcutta: Stree, 1996).
4 Majumdar, First Fruits of English Education, 17.
5 Board Collections, No. 50501, 1817, General Department, No. 13 of 1824, Note by T.B. Jervis, Maharashtra State Archives.
6 Progress of Education in India, 1882-1887: First Quinquennial Review (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing), 137.
7 Parimala V. Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 14-44.
8 Returns to the House of Commons 1859, Part II, 79-81, The British Library, London, UK.
9 Whitehead, “The Historiography of British Imperial Education Policy,” 315-29.
10 Whitehead, “The Historiography of British Imperial Education Policy.”
11 The interviews were conducted in preparation for lectures on historical methods of educational research. Students asked such questions as, “What is an archive?” and “Can we go inside it?” This inspired annual surveys of students about their knowledge of archives and what historical works they have read. Similar findings were observed when I interviewed teacher education faculty. On this general topic, both groups only demonstrated awareness of Krishna Kumar's The Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas (New Delhi: Sage, 1991).
12 A.J. Angulo, Miseducation: A History of Ignorance-Making in America and Abroad (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 6.
13 M.K. Gandhi repeated this many times. See, for instance, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (1946; repr., Ahmadabad: Navjivan Publishing House, 1998), 63-67.
14 Clyde Chitty, Education Policy in Britain (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 5.
15 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj or India's Home Rule, 67.
16 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj or India's Home Rule, 67.
17 M.K. Gandhi, The Problem of Education (Ahmadabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1962), 54.
18 Gandhi often used the phrase “untouchability is a sin.” For instance, see Harijan, Feb. 11, 1933, 3.
19 Gandhi, Hind Swaraj or India's Home Rule, 13.
20 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 104.
21 Laura Dudley Jenkins, A College of One's Own: An International Perspective on the Value of Historically
Dalit Colleges, in Rao, ed., New Perspectives in the History of Indian Education, 79.
22 Charles Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, Particularly with Respect to Morals and on the Means of Improving It—Written Chiefly in the Year 1792 (London: House of Commons, 1813), 153. There are various estimates of the total deaths in the famine, ranging from two to ten million people.
23 For more information on Scottish intervention in Indian education, see P.V. Rao, “Class, Identity and Empire: Scotsmen and Indian Education in the Nineteenth Century,” Social Scientist, 44, no. 9-10 (Sept.-Oct. 2016), 55-70; P.V. Rao, “Beyond Monolithic Colonialism: A Defiant Scot against British Elitism, Thomas Munro's Policies on Education and Employment of Indians,” Paedagogica Historica, Vol. 58, No. 2 (Feb. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2022.2034171; P.V. Rao, “Entangled Histories of Reforms: Scottish Radicalism of Joseph and Allen Octavian Hume and Indian Education,” Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, 9, no. 1 (2022), https://www.espaciotiempoyeducacion.com/ojs/index.php/ete/article/view/434.
24 General Department 10 of 1836, “A Note on Purandhar Schools,” Feb. 24, 1836, Maharashtra State Archives.
25 William Adam, Reports on the State of Education in Bengal 1835 and 1838, ed. Anath Nath Basu (repr., Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1941), 59-60.
26 Report by the Bombay, Bengal, Madras Provincial Committees with Evidence taken before the Committee, and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1884), 451-55. For more details of the educational activities of some of these reformers, see Rao, Foundations of Tilak Nationalism, and Rao, Beyond Macaulay.
27 T. N. Mukherjee, Selections from the Writings and Speeches of the Late Raja Peary Mohan Mukerjee (Calcutta: Tarak Nath Mukherjee, 1914), 31-34.
28 “Our System of Education—a Defect and a Cure,” The Mahratta, May 15, 1881, 3-4.
29 Young India, Sept. 1, 1921, 276.
30 M.K. Gandhi, The Problem of Education, (Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1962), 12.
31 M.K. Gandhi, The Problem of Education, 54.
32 Young India, June 1, 1921, 172.
33 Young India, Aug. 7, 1924, 260.
34 Education, March 5, 1923, 2-5 A, Education Department Files, National Archives, New Delhi, India.
35 S. Bahttacharya et al., Educating the Nation: Documents on the Discourse of National Education in India 1880-1920 (New Delhi: Kanishka, 2003), 34.
36 Bahttacharya et al., Educating the Nation, 25.
37 Young India, Jan. 29, 1925, 44.
38 D. R. Bhandarkar, Some Aspects of Ancient Indian Culture (Madras: University of Madras, 1940), 58.
39 Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 14-37.
40 C.J. Varkey, The Wardha Scheme of Education: An Exposition and Examination (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 82-84.
41 Varkey, The Wardha Scheme of Education, 85.
42 M.R. Paranjpe, A Source Book of Modern Indian Education 1797-1902 (London: Macmillan and Co, 1938), v-vi.
43 Syed Nurullah and J.P. Naik, History of Education in India during the British Period (Bombay: Macmillan, 1943), xi-xiv.
44 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 179.
45 Minutes of Meetings of the Managing Committee, 1951-1958, Hindustani Talimi Sangh, New Delhi.
46 D.Veeraraghavan, Half a Day for Caste: Education and Politics in Tamil Nadu 1952-55, ed. A.R. Venkatachalapathy (New Delhi: Leftword, 2020). Rajagopalachari was very close with Gandhi, as his daughter had married Gandhi's son.
47 Veeraraghavan, Half a Day for Caste, 87.
48 Veeraraghavan, Half a Day for Caste, 85.
49 Veeraraghavan, Half a Day for Caste, 108-23.
50 Dharmapal, The Beautiful Tree: The Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth Century (New Delhi: Biblia Impex,1983), 1.
51 Dharmapal, The Beautiful Tree.
52 General Department 63 of 1824, Thomas Best Jervis to the Secretary to the Government, Sept. 8, 1824, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai.
53 Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 37-40.
54 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 44, 179.
55 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 15.
56 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 167.
57 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 18.
58 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 14-15, 68, 73.
59 Lethbridge to Government of India, Oct. 10, 1877. For a complete list of books the schools used, see Report of the Committee Appointed to Examine the Textbooks in Use in Indian Schools, National Archives, New Delhi.
60 Progress of Education in India, 1912-1917, vol. 1, Seventh Quintennial Review (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1918), 214.
61 Shaan Kashyap, “Themes in History Textbook Controversy in India, circa 1947-1980” (unpublished dissertation submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2021).
62 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 91.
63 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 53.
64 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 52.
65 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 78.
66 Progress of Education in India, 1937-47, vol.1, Decennial Review (New Delhi: Central Bureau of Education 1948), 128-29.
67 Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 100.
68 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 48.
69 For the relationship between the local community and the indigenous schools, see R.V. Parulekar, Survey of Indigenous Education in the Province of Bombay (1820-1830) (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1951), xviii; Adam, Reports on the State of Education in Bengal 1835 and 1838, 21.
70 For school fees in different parts of India in indigenous schools, see Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 26-27.
71 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 173.
72 For details of working conditions in the Nai Talim schools, see C.J. Verkey, The Wardha Scheme of Education: Exposition and Examination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939).
73 Kumar, Political Agenda of Education, 87-88.
74 See examples of students’ critical questioning in Robert Earnest Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads (London: Oxford University Press, 1921); Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, The Principal Upanishads (London: Allen and Unwin, 1953).
75 For castes of teachers in indigenous schools in different districts, see Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 14-25.
76 For Macaulay's arguments for educating Indians, the details of his school, his forty-two education minutes, and how the colonial state replaced his education minutes and closed down his schools, see Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 149-96.
77 Harcourt Butler, “Imperial Grants for Education,” June 22, 1911, File: Education November 1911, no. 64 A, in Improvement and Expansion of Education in India Collection, National Archives, New Delhi.
78 Butler, “Imperial Grants for Education.”
79 National Education Policy 2020 (New Delhi: Ministry of Human Resources Development, 2020), 42-43.