A Brief History of India’s Education System
Part 1: Freedom Struggle and ‘Education for All’
Education in Pre-British India
Until the early 18th century, the Indian subcontinent was one of the world’s most developed regions. Europe caught up with it and became more developed because of its industrial revolution, stimulated and financed by the barbaric plunder of Latin America and Africa. This made it possible for Europe to colonise and plunder India. It was British colonial rule that destroyed India’s flourishing civilisation, reducing it to one of the world’s poorest nations.
This may surprise readers exposed to the false narrative propagated by Hindu fundamentalists about India’s past. They describe the late medieval period (roughly 1200 AD to 1700 AD, covering the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire) as a Dark Age, as a period of slavery—claiming that Muslim kings looted India’s wealth, carried out large-scale massacres of Hindus, destroyed thousands of temples, forcibly converted people to Islam, and imposed oppressive foreign rule that supposedly led to the decline of Indian civilisation.
In reality, this distorted history was first ‘manufactured’ by the British in the early 19th century to justify their colonisation of India. They used it to portray themselves as liberators of Hindus from Muslim tyranny. Hindu communal forces have appropriated and amplified this colonial fiction, to further their agenda of transforming secular India into a Hindu Rashtra.
Through a rigorous scientific analysis of historical facts, independent India’s historians have thoroughly debunked this communal version of history. The reality is that the advent of Islam and Muslims in India during the medieval period led to the intermingling of the diverse indigenous culture of the Indian subcontinent with Islamic culture. A new syncretic culture was born, resulting in great advances in the realms of art, literature, music, architecture, painting and crafts.
This socio-cultural development was paralleled by considerable economic progress. During the period of the Mughal Empire, India was the world leader in manufacturing, producing around a quarter of the world’s industrial output up until the mid-18th century.[1]
Such cultural and economic dynamism indicates that Indian society was not stagnant during the medieval period. Contrary to the popular belief of social decline, this period saw cracks appearing in the feudal system. The Bhakti movement emerged during this time, which can be described as the Indian reformation and renaissance rolled into one, with saint thinkers like Kabir, Nanak, Sheikh Nizamuddin Auliya, Basav and Tukaram questioning the feudal social system, including the caste system, social hierarchies, and even the power of religion over the individual. These thinkers were not marginalised voices, but voices of dominant groups like the traders and artisans.[2]
To support such an extensive and developed manufacturing system, there obviously must have existed a fairly well-developed traditional system of imparting education, including vocational education. The rigidity of the caste system must have weakened, children must have been taught various trades, and there must have been cooperation between workers specialised in different crafts, because without that, such extensive industrial development would not have been possible.
Unfortunately, we do not have much information about the education system in pre-British India. British colonialism not only destroyed indigenous industries but also erased much of the knowledge about pre-colonial India’s social structures. The British sought to propagate that India was a stagnant and backward society before their arrival, to justify their rule. And so they also propagated the view that India did not have any education system before their arrival, and whatever education that existed was confined to the upper castes, especially the Brahmins. However, British archival records reveal that early surveys conducted by British officers found the existence of a very widespread education system across castes and communities—comparable in quality and extent to the education system in Britain in those days.[3]
Colonial Intervention
The British had come to India to colonise and plunder it. The caste system and the feudal mindset eminently suited them, as they helped them consolidate their rule, so they made little effort to educate Indians in the values of the Enlightenment.
On the contrary, their systematic destruction of India’s flourishing industries and agriculture also disrupted the Bhakti movement—India’s renaissance—and decimated the indigenous education system. Colonial powers understood that education could empower people to challenge authority and seek independence, which is why whenever they colonised any country, one of their first steps was to systematically dismantle the local education system.
Simultaneously, to cement their rule over India, the British introduced a limited Western education system, for which they promulgated the English Education Act in 1835. Its aim was not genuine education, but rather to establish the hegemonic influence of English as the medium of colonial ‘instruction’. Thomas Macaulay, on whose Minute the Act was drafted, was very clear about its objective:
To form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect …
During their 200-year rule over India, the British established only a handful of ‘arts’ colleges—to produce the limited number of clerks and civil servants needed to staff the lower rungs of their administration. They also set up a few engineering colleges to produce the few technicians needed for minor public works like roads, canals, bridges and railways. As a result, at the time of independence, there were only 496 colleges in India—420 of which were ‘arts’ colleges.[4]
The British rule further strengthened the caste system in India. The few jobs created in administration, law, teaching and media were monopolised by the upper castes, who were best placed to access this limited colonial education.
The British were so successful in creating a class of people so loyal to their worldview that more than seven decades after independence, India’s upper classes remain trapped in a colonial mindset.
The Freedom Struggle and Education
Demand for ‘Education for All’ as a Fundamental Right
By the mid-19th century, a middle class had started taking birth in India. Not all were ‘English in opinions and intellect’; many were concerned with the plight of their fellow countrymen, and began social reform movements as well as laid the foundations of India’s struggle for freedom. One of the early demands raised by them was ‘education for all’.
In September 1882, the nationalist economist Dadabhai Naoroji called upon the Indian Education Commission to ensure that four years of compulsory education be provided to all children. Mahatma Phule, in a detailed memorandum to this Commission, too demanded that “primary education of the masses should be made compulsory up to a certain age, say at least 12 years.” He urged the Commission to open separate schools for Mahars, Mangs and other lower classes as these children were practically excluded from all schools due to caste prejudices, and also sanction measures for the spread of female literacy at the primary level. In 1910, Gopal Krishna Gokhale moved a resolution in the Imperial Legislative Council seeking provision of ‘free and compulsory primary education’ in India.
The Indian National Congress too voiced the demand for State-funded free primary education for all children in several of its resolutions. Thus, the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress in 1931 pledged: “The State shall provide for free and compulsory primary education.” On 22–23 October 1937, the Wardha Conference on Education approved Mahatma Gandhi’s proposal that free and compulsory education in the mother tongue be provided nationwide to all children for seven years, from the age of 7 to 14.
Simultaneously, during this period, several social reformers like Syed Ahmad Khan, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Begums of Bhopal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil and many others took the initiative to open schools. A few rulers of princely states like Baroda, Kolhapur, Vizianagaram and Travancore also either supported or set up school systems to universalise free primary education.
With higher education being even more neglected by the British, Indian nationalistic leaders and social reform movements attempted to address this lacuna too by setting up nationalistic higher education institutions such as Fergusson College, Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Jamia Millia Islamia, Kashi Vidyapeeth, Vishwa Bharati and Banaras Hindu University. While these institutions played an extremely useful role, they were too few to provide a viable indigenous alternative to the Macaulayan education system.
Beginnings of Dalit and Women Education
The British were not willing to antagonise the upper castes. While in theory the British-run schools were open to Dalits, in practice they were inaccessible because of upper caste opposition; at best, Dalit children followed the classes from the school verandah.
A more crucial role in the spread of education among Dalits and women was played by Dalit intellectuals and other social reformers. Prominent among them were Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule, Vithal Ramji Shinde and ‘Karmaveer’ Bhaurao Patil in Western Maharashtra; Ayyankali, Sree Narayana Guru and Poykayil Appachan in Kerala; and Iyothee Thaas and several other Dalit intellectuals in Tamil Nadu. Enlightened rulers like Sayajirao Gaikwad, the Maharaja of Baroda state, and Chhatrapati Shahu, the Maharaja of Kolhapur, also did much for the spread of Dalit education. One of the greatest of these reformers of the early 20th century was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. He exhorted the Dalit youth to acquire education for their social and economic advancement, for which he established the Depressed Classes Education Society in 1928, and the People’s Education Society in 1945.
Reaction
That, however, is only one side of the educational discourse in India during the early 20th century. These proposals for universalisation of primary education faced strong resistance from India’s traditional elites, the ‘native’ princes and the zamindars, as well as many prominent Brahmanical intellectuals. When Gokhale moved his Bill for compulsory primary education in the Central Assembly, the Maharaja of Darbhanga collected 11,000 signatures from princes and landlords on a memorandum expressing concern about what would happen to their farm operations if all children were required to attend school!
At the Wardha Education Conference, Mahatma Gandhi had to use all the moral powers at his command to persuade the Ministers of Education of the seven provinces where the Congress had won the recently held elections to give priority to basic education for all children for seven years and allocate adequate funds for this purpose. The Ministers continued to parrot the British argument that there was no money.[5] It is this strong right-wing within the Congress that played an important role in hobbling the progressive agenda pushed by Nehru after India won independence (see the next chapter).
Education in the Constitution
During India’s freedom struggle, the leaders of the movement made no distinction between fundamental rights and social and economic rights. [Fundamental rights include the right to equality, the right to freedom, etc. Social and economic rights, included in the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution, are those that guarantee all citizens the basic necessities of life.] The distinction between these two sets of rights was only made during the drafting of fundamental rights by the Constituent Assembly. The Fundamental Rights Sub-Committee of the Constituent Assembly recommended that fundamental rights and social–economic rights be split. The latter were included in the Directive Principles—that is, they were meant only as general guidance for the government and were not cognizable in any court. Dr. Ambedkar, K.M. Munshi and K.T. Shah (all members of this Sub-Committee) were not very happy with making the Directive Principles non-justiciable; they in fact would have preferred an even more rigorous social programme than that laid out in the Directive Principles, and a justiciable one at that. However, in the end, they went along with the majority view in the belief that half a loaf was better than none.[6]
The Rights Sub-Committee had included the right to “free and compulsory education” for all children up to 14 years of age in the list of justiciable fundamental rights. But the Constituent Assembly decided to make this also non-justiciable and shifted this too under the Directive Principles of State Policy.[7] This was how free and compulsory education became Article 45 of the Constitution. It reads:
The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.
Higher Education and the Constitution
It is true that the Indian Constitution guarantees the right to free and compulsory education for all children only up to the age of 14. But it is obvious from the efforts of nationalistic Indians to set up secondary / higher secondary and higher education institutions that our country’s founding fathers visualised that as the country developed, the policymakers would take steps to ensure that affordable and equitable higher education became available to all. This dream was encapsulated by our Constitution makers in Article 41 of the Indian Constitution:
The State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to … (all levels of) education …
Further, Article 46 directed:
The State shall promote with special care the educational … interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes …
Notes
1. David Clingingsmith, Jeffrey G. Williamson, India’s Deindustrialisation in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Harvard University, 2005, http://www.tcd.ie; Professor Angus Maddison, “The World Economy (GDP): Historical Statistics”, http://www.theworldeconomy.org.
2. See for instance: Purshottam Agrawal, Akath Kahani Prem Ki: Kabir ki Kavita aur Unka Samay, Rajkamal Prakashan, 2009.
3. See for instance, this paper by Dr. Kanchan Sharma (Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, Delhi), प्राक-औपनिवेशिक शिक्षा का आयना. It was presented at a 2-day national seminar on ‘National Education Policy’ organised by Ambedkar University, Delhi in July 2023. Also see: Essential Writings of Dharampal, Publications Division, Government of India, 2015; and: Himanshu Roy, Pre-Colonial Education in India, Frontier Weekly, https://frontierweekly.com.
4. Kavita A. Sharma, Sixty Years of the University Grants Commission, University Grants Commission, New Delhi, http://www.ugc.ac.in.
5. For a more detailed discussion on all the issues discussed in this chapter, and also references to the facts given in this chapter, see: Neeraj Jain, Education under Globalisation: Burial of the Constitutional Dream, Chapter 2, Aakar Books, Delhi, 2015.
6. G. Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1972, pp. 95–101.
7. Anil Sadgopal, “Right to Education vs. Right to Education Act”, Social Scientist, September–December 2010, http://www.scribd.com.
[Neeraj Jain is a social activist and writer. He is the convenor of Lokayat, an activist group based in Pune. He is also the editor of Janata Weekly, India’s oldest socialist magazine. He has authored several books, including Globalisation or Recolonisation?, Education Under Globalisation: Burial of the Constitutional Dream, Nuclear Energy: Technology from Hell, and most recently, Union Budgets 2014-24: An Analysis.]
