Educating India: New Controversy

The new education policy comprises of three documents. First is the Ambani-Birla report. Dealing mainly with higher education, the report makes proposals for reducing State expenditure on higher education by involving private enterprise. The second document is called the National Curriculum Program under which the Union government proposes to issue guidelines regarding the content of syllabi that State governments should adopt at various levels of schooling. The third document is called the Sarva shikshana Abhiyana or the Universal Education Program, which attempts to spread education universally across India.

It was in 1850 that Lord McCauley prepared the first education policy for British India. Right from the ancient era, India had pursued one education system. Learning was imparted from the Guru to the Shishya or the pupil in a gurukul. A Gurukul is a boarding school where children spend their youth learning Sanskrit Veda and the different forms of Indian philosophy, their critiques etc. Apart from a strong philosophical foundation, the gurukul also taught agricultural practices, animal husbandry, forestry, Ayurveda or ancient Indian medicine, warfare, trade and commerce. We can say that it was a mixture of value based learning and practical instruction. A pass out from the gurukul was treated as a complete human being who was able, stable and could tackle the vagaries and face the challenges that life presents to all of us. Passing out from a basic Gurukul at the age of 14, 16 or 18, the pupil could go on and specialise in an area of his choice. The choice of course depended upon the family and community of his birth. He could be a warrior and be assigned to a Guru of warfare. He could learn commerce, medicine or politics. He could become a guru himself by continuing to learn on those lines. Throughout the educational span, learning was very personal and informal. The pupil would live with the Guru’s family like his own child and respect his Guru even more than his own father. The gurukul had three sources of income. Donations raised from local community. Agriculture and animal husbandry. Finally, State grants, which the monarch would extend to the gurukul periodically. The pupil would get no University Degree or paper certificate. The name of the Guru was enough to make him successful in the area of his excellence across India.

McCauley’s education policy changed all this. His purpose was to prepare a breed of servants who could serve as clerks to British bureaucrats posted in India. Instead of bringing clerks and lower level functionaries from Britain, he sought to recruit them in India. Therefore, Indian values, Indian philosophy or Veda as well as practical Indian skills in agriculture, medicine, warfare etc were discarded as stupid. The new brigade of English public schools that mushroomed in India injected western ideas, British etiquette, English literature, science, math etc. Gradually, ancient Indian learning through the gurukul method was rendered defunct despite its completeness and advantages. The primary reason being that students educated on the British pattern in modern public schools could find a living. While a student passing out of a Gurukul could not. India’s monarch, the Kings who absorbed the breed of Gurukul pass outs no longer existed and the British could not tolerate a Gurukul pass out. They did not need his services. Therefore, for the sake of a bright future, parents began to pinch their pockets to educate their children in public schools. Despite the fact that ancient education was almost free and modern education cost a lot, people not only sent their child to Indian public schools, but also sent them to Britain directly.

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