The Dayanand Anglo-Vedic School of Lahore- A Study of Educational Reform in Colonial Punjab, c.1885-1925

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Was the British colonial education the only model available to Indian students during the nineteenth century? It is a well-known fact that several initiatives were undertaken by Indians to offer alternatives to colonial education. One such initiative, started by the Arya Samaj, was the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (D.A.V.) movement, which began at Lahore with the establishment of the first D.A.V. School in 1886. This book documents, for the first time, the complete story of the D.A.V. movement which was one of the earliest and most popular Indian indigenous responses to colonial education. This book attempts to resolve the predicament of categorizing the D.A.V. movement as 'modern' or "traditional. It also examines the successes and failures of the D.A.V. movement, and throws light on how it shaped the socio-political land- scape of India in the early twentieth century.

Ankur Kakkar received his doctorate degree in History from the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is presently a Fellow at the Prime Ministers Museum and Library in New Delhi, where he is working on the research topic titled, 'Rethinking Nationalist Education: A Study of Indigenous Enterprises (1880-1980)' He is also a member of the National Committee for the Development of Syllabi and Textbooks in Social Sciences in the light of NEP 2020 and NCFSE 2023. He has served as an Associate Professor at the Centre for Indic Studies, Indus University, Ahmedabad, where he taught core and elective courses on "Indian Knowledge Systems' (focussing on Indian history and Indian education) to the undergraduate students.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the colonial education system in India had come under heavy criticism from various individuals and non-governmental organizations. While it was already understood that English education was a handmaiden to serve the political agenda of colonial rule, a considerable section of Indians now realized that the new system of colonial education was certainly less viable than the pre-existing system of indigenous pathshalas that it had superseded. From a lower literacy rate to the lack of practical, moral, as well as religious instruction, exacerbated by urban unemployment and the marginalization of various social communities, to the threat of religious conversion, these consider- able drawbacks of colonial education were becoming glaringly obvious.In this situation, Indians were confronted with a unique predicament. On the one hand, they were cognizant of the eminence of Indian indigenous educational institutions which had become a largely defunct and could not be revived under the colonial dispensation; on the other, English education was considered indispensable to be able to function in the colonial milieu of the nineteenth century. Thus, various kinds of initiatives were established by Indians to resolve this predicament, and each of them played a role in shaping the social, political, and cultural history of India.

Aware of this historical background. I posed the following questions to myself. Was British colonial education the only model of education available to Indian students in the nineteenth century? Or, were there any alternative models? If so, how had Indians proceeded in developing such alternatives to colonial education? How far were these initiatives successful, and to what extent did they influence the socio-political landscape of India in the nineteenth century? Could such institutions be classified as 'modern' or 'traditional'?

British rule in India was characterized as much by the genesis of colonial institutions as by the establishment of indigenous enter- prises and movements. Indians were particularly active in the field of educational reforms and various kinds of 'nationalist' schools and colleges across the country. These educational institutions played a pivotal role in the formation of a political, social and cultural consciousness among a vast majority of Indians. Therefore, a study of these institutions is an indispensable part of the larger endeavour to understand the history of modern India. It is surprising, then, that much of the conventional historiography on modern Indian education has focussed almost exclusively on the British colonial education, thereby neglecting the importance of indigenous educational institutions. In the twentieth century, the dis- course on modern Indian education revolved around the 'colonial project', and how it was instituted with the passage of acts and legislations introduced by the colonial government. Standard histories written by eminent educationists like J.P. Naik, Syed Nurullah and Aparna Basu documented the evolution of colonial education policy in India and the corresponding socio-political impact on the Indian society. Other contemporary historians examined the role of English education in fostering a spirit of nationalism in modern India. With the 'post-colonial' turn in history writing, scholars such as Gauri Vishwanathan highlighted the use of colonial education as an instrument for political and cultural domination. Recent historiographical trends have led to a paradigm shift in the perspective of historians. Breaking away from conventional narratives that were premised on a sharp dichotomy between the colonizing ruler and the subjugated 'native', scholars now argue that the project of colonial education in India saw a higher degree of collaboration between the colonial state and its subjects than was hitherto believed.