An Indian Education

What is an Indian education?

I stumbled upon the debate pretty much unknowingly, attempting to call out a hoax (see here). Before that, I worked for ten years setting up Computer Education centres in hundreds of towns and cities across the Indian subcontinent but never questioned the cultural significance of my work. After that 2008 post though, I couldn't unsee it anymore. It became the focus of my academic work, which I took up only subsequently. 

If anyone asks what my big goal in life is, it will still be to return to India and set up, together in a community of fellow travellers, a truly Indian university. I consider all my current work to be a preparation, daily attempts to understand and to perfect my craft, so that, one day, it can all come together. Periodically, therefore, I get interested in projects in India and excitedly promote projects which show promise. However, within India's current privately driven mass higher education and its crass commercial culture, nuanced considerations - what it means to be Indian - and vaulting ambition - set up a truly Indian university - have no space.

Neither does it have in policymaking! I waded into the Macaulay debate at a time when a new form of nationalism - a European-style 'Hindutva' - was beginning to show up everywhere, and over the last ten years, this had become the dominant thinking mode in Indian policymaking. An assertive nationalism, an affirmation of India as world-teacher ('Viswa guru') and a hard push for soft power defined Indian education policy. A whole new education policy was unveiled to combine the modern industrial imperatives with Indian Knowledge System (IKS). Personnel at all levels - from the regulatory bodies to the non-teaching staff - were appointed with ideological considerations. Syllabuses were purged of 'external' influence. 

I was - and still am - fascinated by how quickly things changed. I remember a conversation in Delhi - in the presence of then-Chairman of India's University Grants Commission (UGC) - where I was asked if I believe that India should have an Indian education system. I always wanted it to be, I answered truthfully, but I doubted whether my conception what an India is matched that of my interlocutors. For me, India is the land between the silk route and the Indian ocean, the two busiest thoroughfares of trade, ideas and culture in the pre-modern world, the rimland of Eurasia where most of the humanity lived. It is a land of connections, defined by the movements and journeys. For me, an Indian education is, therefore, one of connecting the world, rather than in looking inward as a nation. Expectedly, this conversation exposed my ideological unreliability and ended my aspiration to establish an Indian university, at least for a period.

But my ideas remained as they were and more, I read and seek to understand, my thesis become more firmly entrenched. I agree that the colonial education has done untold harm to the Indian mind, but I see the current nationalist ideas very much as a colonial afterthought. Even when they rage against Macaulay, they do it in the mode and manner he taught them to; they see India through the colonial eyes, as the other, the opposite of European, rather than thinking of India as the connecting civilisation, of many people and connections, not superior to any in particular but greater than all, as it encompassed all and was open to all.

Increasingly, the idea of Indian education is crystallising in my mind. It is one that would teach one to love India as it is - with its land, people, and cultures - and not an imaginary idea of India which our colonial masters have passed on to us, a land divided in caste and religious lines, fragmented in regional identities, dependent on the 'West' for scientific and technical thinking. It is one which would reject the contemporary ideas of 'development', built around urbanisation, industrial activity and GDP, and seek to find how communities can build happier lives and resilient livelihoods. There is a lot to be found India's tradition and culture, and our different languages and eating habits can peacefully coexist as it did for thousands of years. We can happily reject the comparison of Europe's diversity to India's: In many senses, Ashoka, 2500 years ago, had created the equivalent of EU, one that was not dominated by technocrats, bankers and warmongers. 

For me, an Indian education should have one central idea: Harmony. Harmony among people, with the world, with nature! An Indian education should not and cannot be about exclusion and hatred. It is time for the Indian policymakers to learn from China, which is pursuing a remarkable transformation of their education system interrogating what it means to be Chinese with an open mind, embracing new ideas and inspirations wherever they can be found in the world.