National Education Movement: A Saga of Quest for Alternatives to Colonial Education

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National Education Movement represented multiple efforts for educational reconstruction, on national lines and under national control, to develop alternatives to the colonial education system during the Indian freedom struggle. National Education Movement: A Saga of Quest for Alternatives to Colonial Education is a pioneering study exploring in a holistic manner the ideas and experiments of national education during the British rule in India. The book begins with a survey of pre-British indigenous education in India and its subsequent replacement by the colonial education focusing on the nature and content of the two diametrically opposite systems of education. It highlights the fact that with the growth of national consciousness, Indian nationalists were able to comprehend the mismatch between the colonial educational objectives and the national requirements. Two chapters document the institutions and the pioneers of the national education in India. Lastly, the book explores how the Gandhian concept of Basic Education was an attempt to rectify and supplement the earlier shortcomings of the national education movement. The book will be useful for students of history of education as well as general readers concerned about the state of education in India.

Dr. Chander Pal Singh did his Ph.D. on national education movement from Ch. Charan Singh University, Meerut, as a recipient of Junior and Senior Research Fellowships from U.G.C. Besides history of education, his research interests include British census policy, revolutionary movement and colonial constitutional reform policy. He is the author of Bhagat Singh Revisited: Historiography, Ideology and Biography of the Great Martyr (Originals, 2011).

Even six decades after independence, there is a general consensus that the present system of education in India has not been able to wholly rid itself of the colonial elements. In many ways it is still pro-English and pro-rich. Critics still blame Macaulay (176 years after his famous Minute of 1835) for the shortcomings of the present system, which is ironical given that in the post-independence era several Commissions have been appointed and many policy initiatives undertaken to make the education meet national requirements. In a nutshell, there is still a lack of clarity on the objectives, method and content of the education needed for the nation.

It is almost forgotten that educational reconstruction on national lines was a crucial agenda of the freedom struggle. With the growth of national consciousness, especially in the late 19th century and after, Indian nationalists were able to comprehend the mismatch between the colonial educational objectives and the national requirements. Enlightened patriotic minds, from Akshay Kumar Dutt (1820-86) to Mahatma Gandhi, participated in the educational discourse and contributed in the development of what they felt should be the ideal education for India. Under the ambit of the term national education, various models of an education on national lines and under national control were designed to meet the needs of the individual as well as the nation. Significantly, there was no single or unanimous conception of national education; multiple conceptions ranging from the ancient Indian model of Ashram style education to the modern colleges devoted solely to the study of science and technology were discussed. But there was a consensus that colonial education was not suited to the Indian national interests and hence there was need for an alternative system wholly independent of the alien Government. The ideas and experiments of national education movement in pre-independence era, coming from intellectual giants of that age, could have proved valuable not only as a source of inspiration but also to act as a guide in the post-independence educational reconstruction. But they were ignored.

One plausible cause of the ignorance of discourse on national education has been the paucity of scholarly works on the subject. The studies of individual institutions and the educational ideas of some ideologues apart, the sole full length work on the subject in English so far has been Haridas and Uma Mukherjee's The Origins of the National Education Movement (1905-1910). Published in 1957, it is an excellent study of the national education movement in Bengal during the Swadeshi movement. Mukherjees' work was further supplemented by Sumit Sarkar in his monumental study Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908 in 1973. A quick glance at these works leads to the conclusion that so far only the national education movement in Bengal has been studied in detail and that too during the Swadeshi movement in the first decade of the twentieth century.

A valuable contribution to the subject was made in 2003 in the form of a compilation of documents: Educating the Nation; Documents on the Discourse of National Education in India, 1880-1920, co-edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Joseph Bara and Chinna Rao Yagati. But this unique attempt has been disappointing in the sense that instead of highlighting the achievements and constructive aspects of national education movement, the work focusses on the 'inherent antimonies' or 'differences and contestations' among the various groups, opinion leaders and spokesmen of different communities involved in the discourse of national education.