Education and Inequality: Historical and Contemporary Trajectories focuses on the ways in which despite different claims of expansion and improvement, education in India continues to be marked by overwhelming levels of inequalities and exclusions in access, participation, completion and outcomes. The essays in this volume use the perspectives of class, caste, gender and disability, and the lenses of culture and religion to understand the overall normative pattern of education in the way it tends to exclude the majority of our population, its concerns, languages, and knowledge. The contributors to the volume are experts with diverse interdisciplinary interests. Besides critically examining contemporary education, the volume also deals with the historical context of modernity and inequality and its reciprocal relationship with education. It expresses serious concern about the increasing withdrawal of the State from education and the growing disintegration of structures of public education in our own times.
Vikas Gupta teaches at the Department of History, University of Delhi, where his courses include History of Education in Colonial India, and Language, History and Nationalism in South Asia. He is Advisory Editorial Board Member of the Contemporary Education Dialogue and has published widely on historical and contemporary aspects of education in India with special focus on curricular knowledge, social inequalities, state policies, educational structures and school practices.
Rama Kant Agnihotri, DPhil (York, UK), retired as Professor and Head, Department of Linguistics, University of Delhi. He is interested in and has taught and written extensively about Applied Linguistics, Morphology, Sociolinguistics and Research Methods. He is Professor Emeritus at Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur.
Minati Panda is Professor, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, and Director of National Multilingual Educational Resource Consortium, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has published widely on issues related to education, pedagogy and higher education.
List of Tables and Figures Preface Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors
Part 1: Encounter with Modernity and Colonialism in the Domain of Education
1. Some Perspectives on Education in Modern India - Vikas Gupta
2. Poverty and Equality in Education: Transnational Survey of Historical Trajectories and the Neoliberal Challenge - Andreas Gestrich
3. Colonial Vision of Education versus Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Caste Educational Discourse - Anil Sadgopal
4. The School Teacher in India - Janaki Rajan
5. Seeking Freedom from Slavery and Ignorance: Phule’s Theorisation of Knowledge and Education - Umesh Bagade
Part 2: Colonialisation–Decolonisation and the Domain of Knowledge
6. Some Aspects of Education and Knowledge: Formation in Nineteenth-Century Delhi - Amar Farooqui
7. Rethinking Inequality and Education: Crime, Labour, and the School Curriculum in Indian Reformatory Schools (1880s–1920s) - Arun Kumar
8. Developing a ‘Physical Education Curriculum’: A View from Colonial Bombay - Namrata R. Ganneri
9. Revisiting the Idea of the Gurukul: Challenges of Teaching Music in a New Setting - Lakshmi Subramanian
10. Eurocentrism, Brahmanical Hegemony and Colonial Science Education: Conflict and Collaboration - Harjinder Singh (Laltu)
Part 3: Challenge of Language Inequalities in Education
11. ‘Apabhransha’ - Kumar Shahani
12. Multilinguality and Challenges to Education - Rama Kant Agnihotri
13. Multilingualism, Multilinguality and Translanguaging: Southern Theories and Practices - Kathleen Heugh
14. The State, Market and Multilingual Education - Minati Panda
15. Examining the Linguistic Dimension of Draft National Education Policy, 2019 - Rama Kant Agnihotri
Part 4: Social Exclusion
16. Teaching about Inequality - C. N. Subramaniam
17. Are We All Alike?: Questioning the Pathologies of the ‘Normate’ - Tanmoy Bhattacharya
18. Have We Moved Ahead? - Issues of Education of Children with Disabilities: An Indian Scenario - Anita Ghai
19. Who Bears the Burden of Reforms?: A Study of Education and Gender in Delhi, 1947–75 - Manjushree Singh
20. Neoliberal Barriers in Education: Return of the Manu Era - Anand Teltumbde
Part 5: Impact of Neoliberalism on Educational Inequality
21. Why it is Possible and Imperative to Teach Capital, Empire and Revolution, and How - Rich Gibson
22. Destroying Public Education: Neoliberal Policy and Structural Shifts in State Provision in Mumbai - Padma Velaskar
23. India’s Education Problematique and State Betrayal: NEP 2020 and Beyond - Poonam Batra
24. Post-Independence Political Economy of Education: From Welfarism to Neoliberalism in Alliance with Fascism - Anil Sadgopal
25. Common School in the Neoliberal Era: The Challenge of Equity, Quality and Justice - G. Haragopal
Index