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Conceptualizing the State-Nation via Education Reform: From Multicultural to Intercultural Citizenship

by

Neville Gustad Panthaki

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of

Social Education

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto

© Copyright by Neville Gustad Panthaki 2016

Conceptualizing the State-Nation via Education Reform: From Multicultural to Intercultural Citizenship

Neville Gustad Panthaki Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto 2016

Abstract

Transnational movements of sociopolitical culture defy the integrity of the nation-state. Its organizational principle of singularity, and struggles to accommodate increasing diversity within homogeneity, are challenged by the increasing prominence of alternate and multiple ways of being and knowing. Nation-state education systems organized to deliver citizenship values, fail to rectify the fracture between their quest for multicultural participation and their promotion of conformity within a single ‘national’ identity.

Systems of education are products of their respective sociopolitical systems. Hence, notions of citizenship (inclusion) and (participation) must be reformed to facilitate genuine education reform. The nation-state is a sociopolitical project that confines pedagogical reform within the framework of a paradigm.

Education reform can only be achieved by substituting the concept of multi-cultural, with inter-cultural citizenship, thereby transforming the unidimensional nation-state into a pluralist state-nation. The state-nation is an ideal-type conceptual framework which is predicated upon a constant (re-)negotiation of categories and their corresponding

ii belonging-identities, so that all boundaries remain liminal and permeable rather than immutable and exclusionary.

India has witnessed the longest sustained attempt at education reform, as well as the largest in size and scope, by any national , international organization or non- government organization. This dissertation examines the participation of statist, civil and multi-national participants, within the context of education reform in . It also explores the capacity of the state-nation model of education reform to contribute to an

Indian education diplomacy that could influence global Education For All (EFA).

Intercultural citizenship as the root of the state-nation, has the potential to become an avenue for South-South dialogue and a means to create alternate notions of ‘modernity’,

‘development’, and ‘’. De-linking education from the nation-state and viewing it in relation to the state-nation, makes possible a profound and far reaching

‘reform’ of ‘education’ from a social justice perspective.

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Acknowledgements No action undertaken by an individual can succeed without the involvement of a collective group of people, and the harmony of the individual within their environment. It is not only material and physical aid which is rendered to the individual by this collective, but more importantly, an intellectual and spiritual strength which is generously offered.

This interdependence of life creates the opportunities, allows respite, and renews the courage and vigour of the individual to complete their work. Life is a fellowship journey and communion of spirits. No one walks alone. Many are unaware of this phenomenon of spiritual reciprocity. Others deny its existence.

It would be arrogance for me not to bow before this truth. Interdependence and multiplicity are part of natural design and human excellence. Acquiring this wisdom is the goal of education. It is through this process that education becomes transformative citizenship. It leads to greater participation and interaction by way of service. Education leads to spiritual strength.

In this respect, I acknowledge my debt.

In Vedic lore and other South Asian traditions, a student pays homage to those who have aided in the process of knowledge acquisition. This is termed dakshina, and was usually paid for by the success of the student translating into righteous action in the aid of others. One could term this, the South Asian version of paying it forward.

It is said that those who are true teachers, parents, guardians, relatives, loved ones, and friends, desire only your greatness. They are mindful of the wisdom that reciprocity and service, represent, love and worship. Reciprocity is the greatest gift and simultaneously the greatest reward.

Therefore, I commit myself to honour the people who have contributed to my success, by my “good thoughts, good words, and good deeds”.1

1 A central concept of Mazdayasni Daena (Zoroastrianism).

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With awareness from Social Justice Education2, I also acknowledge my complicity, knowingly or unknowingly, in the plight of indigenous people upon whose land I am a settler. I thank them and honour the spirits of their people.

I also pledge that my future research will continue to acknowledge the plight of the marginalized communities who are unintentionally objectified within my dissertation. I shall endeavour to create spaces for the wisdom of their multiple ways of knowing and being.

2 The department to which I was affiliated at OISE.

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Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………...vi List of Acronymns………………………………………………………………………….ix Chapter One: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter Two: Historical Overview and Literature Review ...... 12 An Inheritance of Education: The Cosmopolitan-Secularism of South Asian Pedagogical Traditions in Indian Space...... 12 Dharmic Traditions ...... 13 Vedic Traditions ...... 14 Buddhist Traditions ...... 18 Persian Convergence ...... 22 Well-Being as an Intercultural Pedagogy of Well-Knowing ...... 23 India as a Location for Heterodoxy ...... 26 The Fracturing of Knowledges ...... 28 National Education ...... 30 Deculturalization, Sociopolitical Fragmentation, and British Imperial Education ... 30 Democratizaing the Imagined Nation by Reconceptualizing National Education ... 33 Prioritizing the Nation-State While Negotiating State-Nation Education ...... 38 as Indigenous and Intercultural ...... 47

Chapter Three: Conceptual and Methodological Framework ...... 50 The State-Nation: An Ideal-Type to Re-Conceptualize Citizenship for Democracy ...... 50 The Indian Constitution as Cosmopolitan-Secularism: An Alternate Statehood ...... 53 Indigeneity as an Anti-Oppression Framework: An Studies Approach to De-Colonization ...... 61 Communalidad As An Intercultural Alternate Citizenship ...... 67 Death Democracy, A Palliative Care Pedagogy for Inclusivity...... 73 Evoking the Ideal-Type of the State-Nation ...... 85

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Chapter Four: Indian Government: Post-colonial Reform and Expansion ...... 88 Nation-State Legitimacy Through Education ...... 88 The Quest for Identity 1947-1968 ...... 90 National Education Policies 1968, 1986, 1992 ...... 99 Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Equity, Access, Excellence Post-1991 ...... 107 New or Renewed Directions? National Education Policy 2016 ...... 114 A Summary of Indian Government Policies Concerning Education ...... 116

Chapter Five: Indian Civil Society: Non-Government Actors ...... 124 Avenues for Activism and Democracy ...... 124 Pratham: Massification of Quality ...... 126 The Foundation: Transformative Pedagogy ...... 138 Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA): Democratic Empowerment ...... 154 A Summary of Civil Society Involvement in Indian Education ...... 162

Chapter Six: International Organizations: Global ...... 165 International Involvement in Indian Education ...... 165 The World Bank: Skills Development for Global Capital ...... 166 UNICEF: Child-Centred Development for Humanitarian Internationalism ...... 182 Facilitating Decentralization via Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) ...... 197 The Panchayati Raj Act and its Extension to Scheduled Tribes ...... 198 The World Bank: Reforming the State, by Facilitating the Nation ...... 206 UNICEF: Beyond the State, to the Nation ...... 209 PRI as Democratic and Collaborative Spaces for the State-Nation ...... 215 The Commonwealth: Citizenship Development for Transnational Democracy ...... 217 A Summary of the Policies of International Organizations in Indian Education ...... 226

Chapter Seven: Indian Education Diplomacy: Re-Conceptualizing Globalization via State-Nation Intercultural Citizenship ...... 234 Scaling of Vision: From Intra-National to Inter-National Reform ...... 234 Indian as Global Revolution ...... 236 A Multipolar Cosmopolitan Approach to Globalization ...... 244 Internationalization as Interculturalidad ...... 250

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Education Diplomacy as the Future for Indian Foreign Policy ...... 257 The Potential of State-Nation Education to Inform An Alternate Globalism ...... 268

Chapter Eight: Conclusion ...... 272 Evoking the State-Nation Within Indian Education Reform ...... 272 Currents of Reciprocity: Co-Constructed and Multi-logical Knowledge ...... 275 Currents of Affirmation: Nomadic and Liminal Identities ...... 275 Currents of : Sustainable and Scalable Wisdom ...... 276 Cosmopolitan-Secularism: Transnational and Composite ...... 276 Communalidad: Inter- for Multiple Knowledges ...... 276 An Adivasi Studies Approach: Indigeneity Informing Anti-Oppression ...... 277 Death Democracy: Spirituality and Authentic Identity ...... 277 Supporting the State-Nation With Allied Approaches ...... 278 Shiv Visvanathan: Cognitive Justice as Social Justice ...... 280 Vandana : Earth Democracy and Eco-Feminism ...... 280 P.(Palagummi) Sainath: PARI and Bearing Witness to Genocide ...... 284 Rajni Kothari: Lokayan and De-colonializing the Academy ...... 290 Yogendra : Abhiyan and the Re-Imaging of Equality ...... 294

Findings and Limitations ...... 303 Further Research Possibilities ...... 307

References………………………………………………………………………………...309

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List of Acronymns

APF Azim Premji Foundation APU Azim Premji University ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations ASER Annual Status of Education Report AYUSH , Unani, Homoeopathy and Siddha BEP Block Excellence Program BIMARU , , Rajasthan, BIMESTEC Bay of Initiative for Multi-Sector Technical, Economic Cooperation BJP Bharatya BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, , South Africa CABE Central Advisory Board of Education CBE Council for Basic Education CEE Centre for Extension Education CEMCA Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia CEO Chief Executive Officer CIA Central Intelligence Agency COL Commonwealth of Learning COO Chief Operating Officer CRC Convention on the of the Child CSA Civil Society Actor CSDS Centre for the Study of Developing CSO Civil Society Organization CSR Corporate Social Responsibility CSS Community Service Scheme DPEP Primary Education Program EAPC European Association for Palliative Care EC European Community EEC European Economic Community EFA Education for All EOL End of Life EU European Union GIWA Global Interfaith WASH (Water, Sanitation, Health) Alliance GoI GMO Genetically Modified Organism GNP Gross National Product GSB Gandhi Shiksha Bhavan HDI Human Development Index HDR Human Development Report HIPC Heavily Indebted Poor HRM Her Royal Majesty IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ICCR Indian Council for Cultural Relations

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ICWR Indian Council of World Relations ICT Information, Communication, Technology ICT4D Information Communication and Technology for Development IGNOU National Open University IIT Indian Institute of Technology IMF International Monetary Fund IO International Organization IOR Indian Ocean IONS Indian Ocean Naval Symposium ITEC Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Program MDG Millenium Develompent Goal MDM Mid-Day Meal Program MEA Ministry of External Affairs MGNREGA National Rural Employment Guarantee Act MHRD Ministry of Human Resource Development MME Measuring, Monitoring, Evaluating Unit MOIA Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs MoU Memorandum of Understanding NAEP National Adult Education Program NAM Non-Aligned Movement NCERT National Council of Education Research and Training NCTC National Council for Teacher Education NCTE National Council for Technical Education NDA National Democratic Alliance NGO Non-Government Organization NIOSI National Institute of Open Scholarship in India NPE National Policy on Education NRI Non-Resident Indian NSS NUEPA National University for Education Planning and Administration OED Operation Evaluation Department OER Open Education Resource OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries PAN Pan-African e-Network Project PAHELI People’s Assessment of Health, Education and Livelihoods PESA Panchayat’s Extension to Scheduled Tribes Areas PIO Person of Indian Origin POA Program of Action PM Prime Minister PPP Public Private Partnership PRI Panchayati Raj Institutions PRIA Participatory Research in Asia RTE Right To Education RRCEE Regional Resource Centre for Elementary Education RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

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SAU South Asian University SC Scheduled Caste SDG Sustainable Development Goals SHEPARD Science and Humanities for People’s Development SSA ST Scheduled Tribe UEC University Education Commission UGC University Grants Commission UK UN United Nations UNESCO United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNFPA United Nations Fund for Populations Activities UNICEF United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund UPA United Progressive Alliance USA of America USD United States Dollar USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics WB World Bank WHO World Health Organization WTO WWII World War Two

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Chapter 1

Introduction The goal of education is not merely knowledge, but action. And throughout history the purpose of education has clearly been transformative revolution as much as it has been progressive evolution. But since the end of the Second World War, there has been a lingering debate regarding whether policy framers should adhere to the human capital or social transformation model of education. The choice is actually a false dichotomy. It cannot be an exclusive choice, because both are required. One of the for this vacillation between priorities is that education, or at least modern education, has been associated with the establishment of the nation-state. Insofar as the goal of the nation-state has been the centralization of resources and the establishment of an ethos of singular nationhood, education has been utilized to implement this agenda. Hence the framework of pedagogical practise has been limited to the choice between human capital and social transformation, in lieu of the ultimate goal of the nation-state which is unity via sociopolitical conformity and eco-industrial development.

The nation-state evolved through the development of political concepts which became normative in the geopolitical space of Europe, and hegemonic in a world dominated by the West. This process was cumulative. It began with the legitimacy of the sovereign to declare the official religion of the realm, which was mandated as a result of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which concluded the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants. This was followed by the legitimacy of the sovereign to centralize all human and material resources and to construct a singular law code, during the era of absolute monarchs such as Louis XIV of France, Maria Theresa of Austria, and Peter I of Russia. This resulted in ethnic boundaries being constituted as state boundaries, and the definition of citizenship became coincident with ethno-national affiliation. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era (1789-1815) gave further expression to this notion of nation-state. The nation-state was then empowered with capital wealth during the Industrial Revolution, creating a vested interest between those who held sociopolitical power and those who

1 controlled production mechanisms. European power then began to expand overseas which resulted in a cultural and intellectual imperialism of concepts. Over time, a Western educated colonial elite began to aspire to and replicate the nation-state in the newly independent which they gained through the process of national struggle.

However, the increasing fluidity of transnational capital and populations, has begun to erode the integrity of the nation-state. Globalization threatens the sovereignty of national and their claim to the immutability of national borders. Correspondingly, the nation-state’s organizational structure, rooted in the principle of singularity of identity and affiliation, struggles to accommodate increasing patterns of diversity. Nation-state homogeneity is challenged by the influx of alternate ideas and culture. Education systems which are organized to deliver citizenship values allied to the concept of nation-state, seem unable to rectify the fracture between theoretical concepts of inclusion, and the realities within classrooms and greater society. This is why many recent innovations in education routinely emphasize a holistic approach to pedagogy.

The global quest for EFA (education for all) has faltered when attempts are made to implement a single education policy universally, irrespective of local sociopolitical conditions, and without consideration being given to local cultures which possess different systems of knowledge. A singular policy, representing a monolithic universally applicable paradigm, is culturally hegemonic in its approach. Not only is this very dogmatic, but in fact it is also the very antithesis of the notion of education.

There have been several attempts to implement corrective measures to reform education in a gradual process of redress. The goals are for education to become decolonized, decentralized, and democratic. These projects have been conducted throughout the world by national governments, civil society actors, and international organizations. Yet the limitation of all these approaches is that their location resides within the parameters of the nation-state as a conceptual framework. I believe that this interdependence between the model of statehood and its ethos of identity construction and sustainability, which is the centrally and unified education system, has been overlooked. Or perhaps it is that the

2 project of education reform is the lesser of two perceived insurmountable objectives for revision.

All systems of education are products of their respective sociopolitical systems. The most glaring and obvious example of this would be that one could not reform educational methodology under fascist governance, because the values and framework of the pedagogy are inevitably tied to the ideology of power and the replication of its social basis and institutions.

So then what about the rhetoric and aspirations of grass-roots democracy? How do they develop, and how do they influence or enact change at the level of the state and in the relationships of power between institutions and individuals? History teaches that when such things do occur, it is an elongated process which is nurtured over generations in a gradual trajectory that is adaptive, collaborative and constructive. Rarely, if at all, does reform occur as a singular destructive or revolutionary event. Civil society is a broad based phenomenon whose inauguration and expansion involves the educative experiences of participation and belonging. More importantly, such historical processes usually succeed when they have state patronage or at least no active resistance from power elites.

It is insightful to juxtapose the previous example of with the attempts at education reform within Mikhail Gorbachev’s , and of course democratic societies where consultative and collaborative possibilities exist to enact change.

Hence, the question then becomes whether it is possible to conceive of and proceed with a reform of the notions of citizenship and democracy, inclusion and participation, which can facilitate and sustain education reform. I propose that this may be accomplished by constructing an ideal-type model of alternate statehood based on a state-nation model (Stepan, Linz, Yadav, 2010). By conceptualizing education reform in relation to the state- nation, it is possible to envisage a move from multicultural to intercultural citizenship. In this way, a greater degree of sustained progressive change may be affected. A core feature of the state-nation is that it is predicated upon intercultural rather than multicultural inclusion. This creates a constant negotiation and re-negotiation of categories and their

3 corresponding belonging-identities, so that all boundaries are in fact liminal rather than exclusionary.

Through an elaboration of the conceptual framework of the ideal-type state-nation, I will demonstrate how intercultural pedagogies facilitate ways of knowing and being that fundamentally influence the pedagogy of sociopolitical organization and its education system. Intercultural citizenship has the potential to become an avenue for South-South dialogue, and a means to influence alternate notions of modernity, development, and globalization. De-linking education from the nation-state affords the potential for a greater degree of reform and a more genuine education, from a social justice perspective.

The nation-state framework, being a creation of specific European historic developments, is most problematic when grafted upon developing societies whose does not lend itself to monolithic understandings of identity expressed via language, religion, ethnicity or indeed, common sociopolitical history. Besides the continent of Africa, the subcontinent of South Asia, and specifically the nation-state of the Republic of India, represents the most territorially bounded diversity in relation to the aforementioned criteria. In addition, India is delineated by vast differences between class, caste and gender. Their potential for being the elements of marginalization, are further magnified within non-hegemonic social, cultural or political groups.

Regarding the previous discussion concerning the potential for reform within existing nation-state structures, India has the distinction of being one of a very few states, and the longest and the largest functioning democracy, whose national movement for independence created a constitution in 1950 that endorsed affirmative action and universal suffrage earlier than that of the United States of America3.

In this way, India represents “a microcosm of the world macrocosm” (Kamdar, 2007, p.3), as it also contains the most cases of global illiteracy, AIDS and preventable disease, the highest child mortality, the largest area of intrastate conflict, and the largest single-state indigenous population. Mira Kamdar of the World Policy Institute suggests that India is a

3 Although Adult-male suffrage was granted (including African-Americans) in 1870, by the 15th Amendment, it was not enforced in the Southern states until The Voting Rights Act 1965.

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“planet” unto itself and the “future” of our world (Kamdar, 2007). She conceives of India as a nation-state test case for evolving alternate forms of citizenship and democracy, as well as pluralistic regional and global associations. As GDP rises, causing additional sociopolitical fractures within its borders, India is moving from developing world to industrialized global power. Observers of globalization and national development are eagerly watching to see whether India, in comparison to authoritarian China, can resolve its problems. If India succeeds, the world may have a chance (Kamdar, 2007, p.23).

For all of the above reasons, this dissertation focuses its investigation on the nation-state of India. India has experienced the largest and longest sustained attempts at education reform implemented by its national government, civil society actors, and international organizations. This has often been undertaken in collaboration. Hence, India allows one to examine the rich experiences of education reform simultaneously directed at massification, access, and quality. The various education policies and reform programs under examination in this dissertation also serve to highlight the distinctions between stakeholders, targeted recipients, policy priorities, and implementation mechanisms by all the actors involved.

In order to accomplish this, the following are the research directions that guide the dissertation:

 To determine the mandate and ideology of each organization and its positionality within the global context of EFA and the national context of Indian EFA.  To determine the perception of knowledge in each organization.  To determine each organization’s relationship to their targeted stakeholders.  To determine which model and approach, if any, is closest to the ideal-type conceptual framework of the state-nation.

Immediately following this introduction, there is a chapter which provides a literature review as well as a historical overview of indigenous and colonial , and the development of the National Education movement. This provided an integral and critical framework for the Indian Independence Movement which will be viewed through

5 the umbrella organization of the Indian National . This historical investigation into the pedagogical traditions of South Asian cultural history, illustrates the reconciliation of multiple ways of being and knowing in the Dharmic, Persian and British imperial periods. This is vital for an understanding of the secular-cosmopolitanism4 which is indigenous to South Asia.

The third chapter outlines my conceptual framework. I explore how an ideal-type of the state-nation has been produced at the nexus of various components which are brought together to evoke it. In a unique way this has been an exercise of reverse engineering. This has been done by reflecting upon how to explain the state-nation, and how to ally it with known subaltern epistemologies. The ideal-type which I create re-conceptualizes citizenship in terms of inclusion and democracy and in terms of participation in a format that challenges the commonly used paradigm for both sociopolitical organization and education. Multiculturalism is replaced with inter-culturalism as an organizing principle and pedagogy.

The state-nation is evoked at the intersection of four components. Cosmopolitanism- secularism is an integral part of the ideal-type because it is rooted in South Asian history and the Indian constitution, providing an alternate concept of statehood. Indigeneity from the perspective of an Adivasi Studies approach5 (Rycroft and Dasgupta, 2011) is utilized as an anti-oppression framework. Communalidad6 becomes a framework for alternate citizenship. And death democracy7, the affirmation of spirituality as a core feature of human dignity and identity within palliative care, is used as a framework for intercultural practice. These sources converge to produce the conceptual framework for the state-nation and its development as an endogenous postcolonial pedagogy.

4 My term. 5 Adivasi is the term for indigenous people in general, within India. Rycroft and Dasgupta (2011) along with other authors attempt to construct Adivasi Studies within The Politics of Belonging: Becoming Adivasi. An Adivasi Studies approach to anti-oppression is itself a new and novel way of conceptualizing marginalization, through the lens of indigeneity, in a similar vein as a disabilities paradigm is sometimes utilized for the same purpose. In practise, there have been transnational collaborations between indigenous groups, Dalit (former ‘untouchables’ of India) and African-American activists to understand oppression in common terms. 6 Latin and South American indigenous way of being and knowing. 7 My term.

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In seeking to inaugurate alternate and anti-hegemonic ways of conceptualizing identity and belonging, the ideal-type of the state-nation purposely resists status-quo theoretical tools, such as Marxism, which I view as simply an alternate Western framework of discourse analysis. The aforementioned components of the state-nation are meant to draw from the heritage of its Asian8 traditions, inform it as a collaborative multi-logical and inter-cultural platform for sociopolitical development, and promote awareness of the mind-spirit-nature connection.

Moreover, the state-nation is a purposely provocative concept. In constructing it, I am seeking not only to reform the nation-state, but develop this concept as an instrument for further sociopolitical and education reform. This ideal-type exhibits multiplicity by design so as to promote an aesthetic that is not meant to become an alternate hegemony replacing the nation-state, but to serve as a platform for increased participation, decentralization and continued discourse.

In this sense it could be argued that the state-nation invites its own demise through innumerable corrective processes at the hands of its stakeholders. Not simply progressive, the state-nation is a progression, an envisaged continuous process of renewal and reflection of sustainable action-research in search of social justice for all rather than building upon itself or reaffirming a model.

It would be counter-productive for the state-nation to become entrenched or be considered a new paradigm. Categories such as paradigm are problematic due to the artificial and often violent means through which they attain that status. Paradigms easily become reactionary and dogmatic, which would be the anti-thesis of the state-nation as a pedagogical approach.

The state-nation concedes its failure not to be universal and not to represent all. But it does not concede a zeal for constant dialogue nor a flexibility in the face of continuous modification. The state-nation is not arrogant in portraying itself as the solution, but offers

8 Indian, understood as being part of regional South Asia, and sharing affiliation with elements of Central Asian, Persian, and South East Asian cultural experience.

7 itself as shared space for life-long learning in pursuit of wisdom rather than an accumulation of knowledge9.

The ideal-type state-nation forms the research tool that is used to critically analyze the case studies of education reform in India. This is accomplished within three separate chapters of this dissertation: the postcolonial expansion and reform of education by the nation-state government of India, the involvement of Indian civil society organizations in broadening participation within the education sector and promoting alternate pedagogies for the deepening of democracy, and the role of international organizations in implementing transnational policies within the Indian nation-state. These choices delineate the thematic categories of statist, non-government, and multinational organizations, as policy participants within the history of Indian education reform.

Regarding the choice of organizations themselves, this will be elaborated upon within the respective case-study chapters. But they were chosen on the basis of their importance in terms of duration, influence and, contribution within the Indian education sector. In addition, I was naturally directed towards a study of the policy formation and implementation strategies of three distinct levels of sociopolitical authority and sponsorship, those of the nation-state, intra-state actors and, inter-state actors. The intention is to investigate the limitations of the nation-state to effectively promote an education system that does not simply replicate itself.

The case studies were also chosen with an awareness of the positionality that education occupies in post- with its constitutional mandate to democratise the right to citizenship across a nation of huge socio-economic diversity. It is important to emphasize that education was and is currently still located at the centre of the debate regarding Indian identity, Indian indigeneity, and an endogenous state model in the context of an anti- imperialist struggle against Great Britain.

The actors who will be showcased as part of the case studies in chapters four, five, and six, are:

9 This distinction will be clarified further in the following chapters.

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 The statist national government of India (the Government of India—GoI)  three Indian national CSOs (Pratham, the Azim Premji Foundation, and PRIA10)  an international humanitarian organization (UNICEF11)  a financial institution of global capital (the World Bank)  an international organization of former British espousing shared ideals of development democracy (the Commonwealth)

The state-nation is the lens through which the case studies are passed to determine each actor’s proximity to the ideal type, and to discern which if any of them might contribute most to the development and implementation of state-nation pedagogy and an alternate model of citizenship. These findings become the basis of my conclusions regarding the connection between pedagogies of knowing and being, and their influence upon sociopolitical structures.

I begin each case study with a synopsis of institutional history. This is followed by a narrative of organizational objectives and the determinants of how policy is formulated based on the strategic objectives of each institution. An overview of each organization’s efforts in the area of education and development within India is provided. This reflects implementation procedures. An attempt to focus the time period of these projects from 1991 to the present has been made. This is because 1991 was the year India required an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the precondition for which was that India under-take austerity measures and capital market liberalization.12

Therefore 1991 began a process of the re-evaluation and reform of a wide range of Indian social programs and education. These events link the actors within the case studies and their endeavours with regard to education reform in India. However, it is necessary to

10 Participatory Research in Asia. 11 United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund. 12 It is often incorrectly assumed that Indian economic reforms began in 1991. In actuality a slow liberalization of national economic assets had begun from the mid-1980s under the government of Indira Gandhi. What occurred in 1991 in part due to the dramatic rise in oil prices as a result of the First Gulf War was that India’s gold reserves were extinguished, requiring the IMF loan. The preconditions of the loan were that liberal reforms be undertaken in a dramatically short period of time akin to the shock therapy which had been prescribed to the Eastern European post-communist states. The loan itself was doled out in increments allowing the IMF to monitor the progress of Indian government acquiescence.

9 briefly situate each actor within the context of the post-1945 reorganized state system. There is an important basis of commonality and linkage here too, between the GoI which had just achieved independence (1947) and the WB and Commonwealth which were also created from the same collusion of events.

National education is tied to national development in every . But from 1991, Indian education policy was affected by contradicting narratives regarding strategies for development. Post-colonial Indian education acts and commissions (1949, 1951, 1968, 1986, 1992, 2009) unanimously declared EFA as an objective for the purpose of “national cohesion” and “societal transformation” (“National Education Act 1968”, n.d.). However, after the IMF imposed reforms, an ideological conflict emerged between the notion of education as a right to citizenship, and education for the purpose of human resource development for a globalized economy.13

India is therefore, a worthwhile case study representing a multicultural secular democracy which has sought to balance industrial-economic development with sociopolitical development under the auspices of the legacy of its national struggle and the development of the nation-state. In addition, within the history of Indian education reform, we witness the interplay between the nation-state and institutions of the emerging neoliberal global order. And in many ways it is Indian civil society which has determined the outcomes of this interaction, due to its long pre-independence history and its experience as an interpreter of South Asian cultural traditions of pedagogy. I would go so far as to suggest that this last point is unique and remarkable enough to warrant its own investigation.

The final chapter of this dissertation, prior to the conclusion, explores the capacity of the state-nation model of education reform, to contribute to an Indian education diplomacy influencing global EFA, South-South solidarity, and an alternate globalism.

Libertarians and neo-Marxists decry the erosion of nation-state sovereignty in face of globalization and the, infringements of world-government, or transnational corporations. Both of these critiques and their respective solutions to neoliberalism generally revolve

13 The best illustration of this is that education is currently under the responsibility of the minister for human resource development.

10 around reaffirming the defences of the nation-state by arming it with even more hegemonic practises. Prevalent discussions surrounding the rescue of the nation-state are concerned with the failure of multiculturalism. But the advocated solution is to promote intra-state conformity by narrowing the concept of citizenship.

One hears talk in the parliamentary United Kingdom, in Republican France and the United States of America, and most recently in republican and parliamentary India, that diversity is problematic and that governments are paralyzed due to their pandering to minorities or attempting to appease everyone. Previous governments may have been well intentioned in their secular-humanism. However, their surrender of the nation-state to those that sought to reform it, has allowed transnational forces to encroach on state sovereignty.

What tends to follow such sweeping remarks is that the health and security of the nation- state requires a strengthening of the nation by renewed patriotism. This involves curtailing civil liberties and dissent. Protest is viewed not as democratic participation of citizenship rights within a polity, but as undisciplined or treasonous anarchy by minorities against the will of the majority.

In the chapter prior to my conclusion, I therefore attempt to assess the potential for an Indian foreign policy based on education diplomacy to re-conceptualize globalization. This is done with reference to my findings from the three previous chapters that formed the case study investigations. Can a state-nation pedagogy contribute to a reformed alternate globalism that is non-Western and non-hegemonic and that can be sustained on the basis of a conceptual framework of inter-cultural citizenship? That is my final question.

I conclude my dissertation with a chapter summarizing my findings, acknowledging what I consider components of the state-nation in action, and suggesting possibilities for future investigation.

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Chapter 2

Historical Overview and Literature Review

An Inheritance of Education: The Cosmopolitan-Secularism of South Asian Pedagogical Traditions in Indian Space

A survey of South Asia (India) through a critical appreciation of developments in the area of educational pedagogies, illustrates a rich composite tradition of knowledge. This Indian history forms the foundation upon which aspirational documents such as the Indian Constitution (1950) and various versions of India’s National Education Policy (1968, 1986, 1992) and the Right To Education Act (2010) were conceptualized. The pedagogical implications of such policy documents are evident. They reflect the belief, drawn from an educational heritage of over 2000 years, that the learning process should be experiential and reflective.

The transfer of information, as a teaching goal, and the accumulation of information by the student, were less important than the process by which knowledge was attained. Education was considered to be the process by which acknowledgement of the phenomenon of interdependence was acquired. This wisdom was demonstrated by those promoting social harmony, in accordance with natural and divine law.

Within this chapter I conduct a historical overview and literature review of the three eras within South Asia which contributed to this educational aesthetic which I have identified as cosmopolitan-secularism. It is this ethos which informed the Indian National Movement when it began to create the parameters of belonging and identity for its project of a post- colonial India. This cosmopolitan-secularism is also the pedagogy which produced India’s politically conscious and socially diverse democratic civil society. This chapter is therefore, essential, to provide the historical and pedagogical background for the conceptual framework of my dissertation which I evolve in the third chapter.

The literature review of the current chapter also serves to reference the positionality of the various actors whose efforts within the context of Indian education reform shall be explored

12 in chapters four (GoI), five (Indian CSOs) and six (international organizations). In a very real sense, actors involved in Indian education, including the GoI and Indian CSOs, were competing with the aspirational models envisaged within critical pedagogies of their immediate and past history. If not quite the ideal-type state-nation these histories sought to provoke an ideal version of the nation. It is clear that each actor participating in Indian education reform is aware of this comparison, because they reference South Asian traditions multiple times in their policy documents. It is almost as if they feel a need to justify their actions in the reflection of history, seeking credibility by virtue of their proximity to the ideal.

As alluded to within the introduction, the ethos of the state-nation is multipronged and shall be elaborated upon within the third chapter. However, the explanation of its location in South Asian socio-cultural pedagogies begins in this chapter. It shall be demonstrated that all cultural traditions located in Indian space, developed as heterodoxies, regardless of their nativeness. The Dharmic traditions, while technically indigneous to South Asia, incorporated and were heavily informed by, Adivasi ways of knowing and being. The period of Mughal rule in South Asia, demonstrates how a Central Asian Turkic ethnic group affiliated themselves with Persian culture and thereby contributed to Islam’s assimilation within Indian space as a heterodox tradition. The product of this convergence of multiple pedagogies, on multiple occasions, directly produced a heterodox interpretation of the Western nation-state. It was this ethos of the multiply rooted nation, which was promoted by the Indian National Movement, and became the basis from which post- colonial National Education was conceptualized.

Dharmic Traditions Much consideration has been given to the topic of the development of a pedagogy for global citizenship whose inclusivity is represented by an ethos of cosmopolitanism. Many are equally concerned that the bifurcation between liberal-humanistic and scientific- professional subcategories of education should be eliminated. While many novel frameworks for pedagogical reform have been devised, the possibility of creating such a theoretical ideal-type model from the basis of the South Asian (India’s) past, also exists. A

13 brief reflection upon South Asian history illustrates that in all its periods, education was considered a holistic endeavour. The purpose of education was to develop mind, body and spirit. The aim of education was to create a comprehension of the human biosphere and theological precepts.

This was a pedagogy of awareness as much as it was of acquisition. This education emphasized environmental rootedness and social interdependence. It was imparted via critical thinking and rhetoric. Schools were located in natural surroundings away from urban centres. “It is the forest that has nurtured the two great ancient ages of India, the Vedic and the Buddhist” (Mookerji, 1944, p.77). Many great works of the are known specifically as aranyaka meaning “belonging to the forests”. These were produced in hermitages such as Nimisa under the guidance of Saunaka, the overseer of 10 000 students (Mookerji, 2012, p.78).

The appreciation of natural phenomenon and interconnectedness were tasked as the key performance indicators of educational success. Thus, claims of exclusive ownership of knowledge and its associated arrogance as an expression of a single ethnic preserve or historic tradition, were avoided. This allowed for the convergence of many philosophical traditions and the acceptance that there were several, equal, ways of knowing and being. Instead of competing pedagogies, a syncretism of plural truths was nurtured in Indian space. This resulted in hybridity, intersectionality, and multiplicity. Correspondingly, identity manifested as multidimensional, non-hierarchical and coexisting. India was multi- centred in its cultural expression (Anantha Murthy 1992; quoted in Raina and Srivastava, 1999). The idea of India and Indian would similiarly evolve as expressions of interculturality. This is distinct from the Western fabrication of state and nationhood, whose criteria for belonging are singular well defined normative categories possessing immutable boundaries.

Vedic Traditions According to Crozet (2012), the notion of the process of education during Vedic times was “sophisticated” and derived from “an understanding of the subject (the knower) in relation to the object (the known) and the process of knowing…understanding the inner map of

14 subject/the person (the vehicle for learning)…” (Crozet, 2012, p.262). Indeed the appreciation and acceptance of non-Vedic pedagogies which would lead to continuous hybridization throughout Indian history, occurred precisely because several of the foreign systems were rooted in similar understandings of the education process. For example, the of Pythagoras, and Epicurus also focused on self-awareness to accomplish inner transformation (Crozet, 2012, footnote 1).

All education systems are derived from cultural ways of knowing one’s environment and the individual’s relation to it. In the European lexicon this has been termed: world- outlook, weltanchauung (German), mirovazrenniye (Russian). “Education in any particular culture builds up a worldview constantly reinforced by symbols and images that are contemplated throughout life” (Thurman, 2006, p.1766). Pedagogy is the outcome of how education systems follow through with their endeavour to impart the knowledge that is considered most necessary. During the Vedic era the perceived ideal fulfillment of life was (liberation). Moksha must be understood in relation to the concepts of atma, , and . The purpose of education was for one to realize that their atma (spirit, soul) is but a piece and reflection of brahma (that unifying which links all creation). The pedagogy through which this goal of education was to be reached, was dharma. Dharma has been translated as duty, governing laws and religion.

While dharma can definitely be manifest within such categories, it relates to the cosmic order which is the basis of creation. Hence although dharma is virtuous “it is not based however on a sense of morality but rather on a scientific understanding of natural law” (Crozet, 2012, p.263). Dharma as the pedagogy of moksha was to be accomplished through action-research, participating correctly and in all aspects together with society for its betterment. The outline this process of the student moving from unknowing to knowing. The first stage of this process is faciliated by instruction, called sravana. This is followed by reflection of the subject, termed . However it is the final stage nididhyasana, which attests to wisdom. This is because it is in the final stage where the student displays comprehension thourgh action (Mookerji, 1944, p.69).

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In other words, the process of education is instruction (reception of concept), internalization (contemplation of concept), and instrumentalization (implementation of concept as lived experience). It is noteworthy that “the Upanisads themselves are in a sense to be regarded as the record and outcome of such academic disputations, the transactions, so to speak, of the philosophical societies or circles of the literary celebrities of the times” (Mookerji, 1944, p.75).

Objectivity and impartiality in judgement were regarded as a highly valued skill set which is why law, logic, philosophy, poetry and literature were studied as part of the curriculum (Altekar, 1944). Mindfulness and introspection were practiced through a daily regime of . This was an activity of both physical exercise, and seated meditation. The separation of ego from correct thought and the removal of ideological constraints, from the pursuit of truth, were prized as accomplishments. This is partially the why there are so many creative works of South Asian music, painting, and poetry, which are anonymous. Comparatively little importance was placed upon the artist as opposed to the product. Composition was deemed to be a mark of inspiration rather than skill.

Mindfulness is not exclusively an Eastern or Indian invention. However, it has slowly disappeared in the history of the West due to the pursuit of a sociopolitical education whose pedagogy insists on the separation of passive intuitive and reflexive spirit, from active- body. “I think it can be quite misleading to speak of our culture (West) as lacking contemplative mind. When we make that claim, we are rather lamenting the deplorable contemplative states within which the common mind is absorbed” (Thurman, 2006, p.1766).

The correction to this incorrect way of being and its corresponding way of knowing, the delusion which we suffer and that clouds judgement, was the same in Vedic times as it is presently. “It is unfortunately a trance in which sensory dissatisfaction is constantly reinforced, anger and violence is imprinted, and confusion and the delusion of materialism is constructed and maintained. Thus, when we talk about seeking to increase and intensify contemplative mind in our culture, we are actually talking about methods of transferring contemplative energies from one focus to another” (Thurman, 2006, p.1766).

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The self-reflection of meditative practice represents a form of experiential learning since it can not be taught. The terms for meditation are dhyana, bhavana, and , which are “organizations of the mind-body complex considered different from the sensory and intellectual receptive states (as in learning) and intellectual reflective or discursive states…” (Thurman, 2006, p.1765). Realizing that one’s belief constituted a single location-specific commentary, whose deductions may not be replicable or applicable elsewhere and by others, was a path to moksha. This means that moksha was the liberation from attachment to one’s own reality as representing truth. Transcending one’s perception also meant critiquing sensory information (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) as the basis of knowledge acquisition, or acknowledging it as limited by point of reference.

This was the basis of or pratibha, meaning revelation, literally a flash of light. It was the liberation of overcoming the limiting abilities to perceive beyond oneself. “It may be called the supersensuous and suprarational appreciation, grasping truth directly” (Raina and Srivastava, 1999, p.102). Meditation can be calming (shamatha), but the aforementioned practice of meditation was for seeing-through insight (vipashyana) (Thurman, 2006). And it should be noted that it was the journey toward moksha via dharma which was commendable, rather than the attainment or accumulation of information along the way. This means that “according to the Indian view, excellence is a relative term. No one can claim to have achieved excellence in any field” (Raina and Srivastava, 1999, p.103). Thus excellence is not competence, but rather the pursuit of excellence itself.

Education was “a system of both learning and living”. It was neither passive nor mechanical, but “a biological process” (Mookerji, 1944, p.66). The term for education was brahmacharya, meaning the practice and realization of truth. Although the teacher could and did impart empirical based knowledge, he functioned more as a spirit guide for the student. This is similar to how an elder supports a youth on a spirit quest in indigenous culture. The “main business of education” was “to overhaul the mental apparatus” (Mookerji, 1944, p.65) so that one could perceive the interconnectedness of all beings and actions:

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The right way is directly to seek the source of all life and knowledge, not to acquire knowledge piecemeal by the study of individual objects. Individuation is the concretising of the mind. The mind takes the form of the object in knowing it. It unites itself to the object, like the water that limits itself in a tank. Thus individuation is bondage. It limits vision. Knowledge, omniscience, perception of life in the perspective of the whole is Mukti or emancipation. Individuation is death. (Mookerji, 1944, p.66). “This is the most revolutionary insight that ancient India can offer into what could constitute an important aspect of global education, which may be called secular spirituality” (Crozet, 2012, p.264).

As a pedagogical concept, spirituality can be defined as the “connectedness of all living things that stresses the harmony between inner14 and outer life” (Bhatta, 2009, p.51). This is also the cornerstone to developing individualized curriculum which respects the learner environment, as it emphasizes “meta-learning” where, “students learn in their own way” and pace (Bhatta 2009, p.51). Another facet of Vedic education was that there was no dichotomy between science and spirit. J. Krishnamurti (1981, 2000) has written that both quests are complementary. Both seek the truth of order, in terms of matter and energy, but also in regard to patterning and harmony. The goal of Vedic pedagogy was to nurture a mind that was “enquiring, precise, rational, and skeptical but at the same time had the sense of beauty, wonder, aesthetics, sensitivity, and an awareness of the limitations of the intellect…flexible and not dogmatic, open to change and not irrationally attached to an opinion or belief” (Bhatta, 2009, p.54).

Buddhist Traditions Buddhism is often understood as a reform movement that broke with what had become, an overly ritualistic ‘’, and rigid casteism. However, this categorization is a modernist post-facto analysis of the situation. It obscures the fact that there were multiple Hinduisms, or more accurately multiple pedagogies which expounded on the path to moksha.

14 Note that in Sanskrit means inner-world, while means outer-world. The word for education and learning is vidya. Also, as in, the Rg Veda.

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Within what we currently call Hinduism, and also what existed at the time of the Buddha, there were renouncers, surrenderers, indulgers, Vashnavites, Saivaites, and ascetics, to name a few. Buddhism was essentially one such trend within Dharmic philosophy which emphasized, in the Buddha’s own words, “the Middle Path/Way”. Via the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path, Buddha preached that the cause of all suffering was ignorance defined as “an active misknowing of unreality as if it were reality”. “The Buddhist tradition should thus be viewed essentially as an educational tradition” (Thurman, 2006, p.1768).

The case of Nalanda university15(circa 427) is illustrative of the cosmopolitan-secularism that existed in India. More significant than its origins are the consequences which Nalanda inspired. Nalanda altered the curriculum and methodology of Indian education, by the reaction that it sparked in Brahmanical centres to reform pedagogy. Those familiar with Western history, might relate this to the Counter-Reformation of Catholic institutions. “Nalanda was a Buddhist institution in a world of competing worldviews. In some sense, its purpose was to provide a locus for a Buddhist outlook while it vied with others for ideological and political dominance” (Pinkey, 2015, p.121).

I mention this legacy as important given that after 1200CE, there was a near erasure of Buddhism and its religious and education institutions from northern South Asia. This was caused by the Turkic Islamic invasions from Central Asia and what is present day Afghanistan. The argument is therefore, that Nalanda should not be studied as specifically Buddhist, because its origins and legacy are pan-Indian and pan-Asian. The latter is evidenced in the migration of Buddhist philosophy throughout south-east Asia, China and .

Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha: 563-482 BCE) was a product of the era of the Upanishads. This was a period of pedagogical evolution, diversification, and reinterpretation or questioning of the primacy of the Vedic texts (the four ). The Buddha’s message of the Middle Way was based on self-restraint, self-education, and

15 Self designation was mahavihara (great monastery). Founded by Mahasudassana Jataka in 427, and lasting until -i-Bakhtyar Khaliji sacked the site in 1193. Tibetan chronicles list that certain activities associated with medicine, continued until 1235 (Scott, 1995, pp.141-155).

19 compassion. The Buddha preached that giving up worldliness did not mean giving up service. In , the Buddha delivered this understanding via what has become known as the Eight Fold Path: perfect vision, perfect aspiration, perfect speech, integral action, proper livelihood, proper effort, thorough awareness, full absorption (“The Eight Fold Path”, n.d.).

The language of the Vedas was by the time of the Buddha, not comprehensible to any except the priests. Sanskrit was thus confined to an elite class, and hence, the Buddha began the practice of teaching in the vernacular language of Prakrit. Regarding the Vedas themselves, he did not consider them divine or the sole source of knowledge. Monasteries (viharas) were set up to admit all castes who were accepted as students (bhikshus—monks), and it was from among these graduates that teachers were ordained. Eventually, a Buddhist educative community (sangha) was established.

Although Nalanda, presently south of Patna in the state of Bihar, existed in Buddha’s time, it is from 427 to 1197 CE that there existed a university in the . Major patronage for this project was provided by Guptan dynasty (320-550CE), the Buddhist ruler Harsha (606-647 CE), and the Buddhist Pala dynasty (750-1174 CE). Nalanda daily received 1000lbs of rice and several thousands of pounds of butter and milk in the form of remittances from between 100 to 200 surrounding (Pinkey, 2015, p.119, quoting I- Tsing A record of the Buddhist religion). Excavations at Nalanda have indicated that it had accommodation for 10 000 monks and 1500 teachers. There were a total of 108 monasteries, many of which had two storeys. Each monastery had several podiums for lectures, a brick oven, a well for drawing water, and its own sewage system.16 Hsuan-tsang (Xuanzang) visited Nalanda during his travels in India between 637 to 649 CE. He wrote of this in the book Journey to the West (Xi You Ji), which testifies to the size and scope of the education centre at Nalanda.

According to him, the higher education curriculum was composed of five subjects whose vidya (disciplines) were: discourse analysis (sabdavidya), arts (silpasthanavidya), diagnostic medicine (cikitsavidya), epistemology (heuvidya), (adhyatmavidya)

16 Quoting the Archeological Survey of India (“Nalanda”, n.d.)

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(Pinkey, 2015, p.119, quoting Hui Li’s The Life of Hiuen Tsian). Basic knowledge of the Tripitaka (Buddhist canon) was expected from enrolling students. An admission test of this knowledge was administered, with an average of 7 out of 10 candidates failing (Pinkey, 2015, p.118). The primary texts of discourse were those from what is presently known as the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. However, works from eighteen other philosophical traditions within Buddhism were also included, as were texts from the Vedic canon such as the Artarva Veda and Panini’s Sanskrit grammar. (Pinkey, 2015, p.118).

The monks at Nalanda also contributed to extension programs. They taught primary education at schools set up outside the main monasteries complex (Sen, 2007). Indeed, there is a Buddhist tract called Silas (circa 450 BCE) which gives a list of the descriptions of educational games for children such as Akkharika (lettering) in which a tracing-guessing method is employed for alphabet recognition. I-Tsing (Yijing) who was inspired by Hsuan- tsang, traveled and stayed at Nalanda from 676 to 685 CE. I-Tsing also mentions the extension activities of Buddhist monks regarding primary education. He notes that grammatical science (sabdavidya) was studied by six year old children for a six month period. At eight years of age, children read the book of three khilas which continued language training for a three year period (Sen, 2006, p.31).

Since the Vedic era, there were three divisions of grants which were given by rulers to religious institutions: for state worship (based on the ruler’s religion), reward for intellectual pursuits (open to all who established schools), and for those religious groups who held beliefs different than the ruler. “No institution, it should be noted, was debarred from royal bounties because of its sectarian creed” (Patwarda, 1939, p.8). What Buddhism managed to achieve through its monasteries, was to create an education system which was not controlled by the state. “The Order challenged the law of the land and the constitution of the State, and yet they did not attempt either to regulate or to reform the administration. The result was a Church which was independent of the State, and yet protected by a law the sanction of which it defied” (Patwarda, 1939, p.14).

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Persian Convergence Cultural exchange between Vedic and Adivasi (indigenous) civilizations began from 1700 BCE, with migration into the Iranian plateau and South Asia. However, it was the consolidation of Persian rule by the Achaemenian dynasty up to present day Sindh and Gandara () during the late 6th century BCE, which inaugurated a period of pedagogical convergence and hybridity. Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian and Greek knowledge was received in the , just as Vedic and Buddhist knowledge was absorbed in Persian controlled territories. After the eclipse of the Harappa and Mohenjodaro civilizations in the Indian subcontinent, a period of Perso-Indian convergence lasting nearly two centuries, contributed to the advancement of intellectual exchange and trade during what has been described as the second urbanization of South Asian (Thapar, 1966, 1968, 1992, 2002).

Takshashila (Taxila)17 and Pushkalavati became centres of advanced learning. It was during this era that Panini composed his magum opus of Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi, and opened his school at Solatura which remained a centre of education for 500 years. The Persian Achaemenian dynasty had just adopted a reformed version of the Aramaic script to write Avesta18, and this provided a model upon which the Kharoshthi script was developed to transpose hitherto spoken Sanskrit. Kharoshthi was utilized for 1000 years from the 5th century BCE to the 5th century CE (Ahmad, 2012, pp.226-227). This was the age of the Upanishad traditions and that of the Buddha, which promoted a spirit of discourse analysis of normative sociopolitical and epistemological hegemonies. The Pali canon19 of the Theravada Buddhist tradition mentions the prestige of Takshashila during this time, as a pinnacle institution of education to which students were drawn from Kashi20 and Magadha21. Northwest India became the site of heterodoxies, as multiple traditions engaged with each other and in this process, caused pedagogical development through critical reflection. There was a broadening of ways of knowing and being.

17 Near present day Rawalpindi in the Punjab of Pakistan. 18 Old Persian, and sister language of Sanskrit. 19 Pali is a form of Prakrit language. 20 Also known as Benares or Varanasi. A centre of Vedic education. 21 Presently in Bihar state. A centre of Buddhist education.

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Well-Being as an Intercultural Pedagogy of Well-Knowing A particularly illustrative example of the pedagogical product of South Asian co- constructed curriculum in the spirit of a syncretism of knowledges, is medical education. I use the term medical education only to create a familiar association, however, it would be more appropriate to characterize Indian Ayurveda as an intercultural pedagogy of well- knowing. Ayurveda is a knowledge system which premises health upon the proper relationship of the person to their environment. Proper spiritual and physical integration of the human microsystem to its cosmic and natural macrosystem, is what ensures well-being. Ayurveda, therefore, classifies health as well-being through well-knowing. It is also an example of a pedagogy whose approach (treatment) is based on the notion of the unity of disease. This is a characterization of Ayurveda from the discipline of naturopathy as it was developed by proponents of and German Sanskritists. Louis Kuhne and Henry Lindlahr reflected that the cause of illness is “lowered vitality, abnormal composition of blood…and accumulation of morbid matter…all of which are due to violations of nature’s law (Nair et. al., 2014, pp.141-142).

Ayurveda (the knowledge of life) was developed from the Atharva Veda22, while the commentary and exegesis of physicians such as Charaka and Susruta became the compendia (samhita) of the discipline (Jacob, 2013, p.352). Practitioner healers became known as Vaidyas. Student aspirants would approach a Vaidya and live at his house as a resident student for seven years. “Anatomy was taught as a part of surgery and embryology was included in pediatrics and obstetrics, whereas physiology and pathology were interwoven in the teaching of all clinical disciplines, especially internal medicine” (Jacob, 2013, p.352). Ayurveda is an example of pedagogy based on an interdisciplinary and integrative approach. It is “the science of life, focusing on bringing harmony and balance in all areas of life including mind, body and spirit” (Parasuraman et. al., 2014, p.73, quoting U.S. Department of Health).

Ayurveda considers five elements (panchamahabhuta) to be present in every living being: air (vayu), fire (teja), water (aap), earth (prithvi), ether (akasha). These elements, when

22 The fourth of the four Vedas, composed 1500-1000 BCE.

23 combined in pairs (dosha), regulate the functioning of the body as follows: movement (vata), metabolism/temperature/chemistry (pitta), and sustenance (kapha). Ayurvedic treatment is administered to “eliminate root cause of disease by restoring balance, at the same time create a healthy life-style to prevent the re-occurrence of imbalance”. This can be in the form of: ingested herbs23, dietary adjustment, aroma/colour/music therapy, or yoga. Ayurvedic treatment is different from allopathic medicine which uses synthetic chemicals to target receptors, to yield symptomatic relief (Parasuraman et.al., 2014, p.73). Ayurveda is a pedagogy that treats the person rather than the disease. The Atharva Veda which first discussed pathogenesis, mentions eight sites of investigation: internal medicine (kaya chikitsa), surgery (shalya ), ear/eye/nose/throat (shalakya tantra), pediatrics (kaumarbhritya), toxicology (agada tantra), psychiatry (bhuta vidya), rejuvenation (rasayana), aphrodisiac (vajeekarana) (Parasuraman et. al., 2014, p.74).

Ayurveda travelled to Persia where it was nurtured, with aspirants and instructors travelling to India for training. It was incorporated during the Sassanian era in Persia, into the teaching hospital of Gondi-Shapur24 (beginning 309 CE) which became known for its cosmopolitan ethos and innovative pedagogy composed of multiple knowledges: Persian, Greek, Indian, Jewish, Nestorian-Christian, Chinese, and Indigenous. Due to the intercultural collaboration of teachers, acceptance of multiple knowledges, and the enrollement of a multi-ethnic student body, education at Gondi-Shapur was conducted in multiple languages. The prominance of Gondi-Shapur would have been impossible without state patronage.

The concept of Persia as an entity, and Persian as an identity, was multivalanced. Neither were restrictive or eliminationist so as to be associated with single ethnicity or territory. As with the concept of India as it would develop, Persia, was also a participatory intercultural idea. The education at Gondi-Shapur was thus a direct reflection of the multidimensional

23 The WHO estimates that 80% of the world rely on traditional medicines. India is a global centre of biodiversity with 45 000 plant species, of which 15 000 are known for their medical properties. (quoting abstract of Parasuraman et. al., 2014). Ayurveda lists 700 plants from its several compendium. The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has created a (sub)Ministry of AYUSH an organization that regulates and promotes: Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy, and Sowa-Rigpa (“Ministry of AYUSH, Homepage”, n.d.). 24 Recorded as “j”undi shapur in Arab sources.

24 sociopolitical conceptualization of Persian sociopolitical identity and belonging. For example, the Nestorians were granted refuge in Persia by Shapur II, after their school at Edessa was forcibly closed (457-489 CE) and they were driven out of Byzantine lands as Christian heretics.25 By contrast, the pedagogical approach in Persia at this time was that almost nothing could be classified apocryphal. Truth was considered multi-dimensional, and so multiple ways of knowing were normative. A pluralism of faiths and faith practises was deemed appropriate and necessary, as multiple epistemologies contributed to thorough investigation, whether cosmological, environmental, or biological.

Similarly, neo-Platonist Greek scholars of the Athenian school, and their community which remained pagan, were cast out of Roman lands by Emperor Justinian (529 CE). The neo- Platonists sought refuge and were accepted with honour in Persia (Miller, 2006, p.615). The archway leading to the Gondi Shapur complex was engraved with the motto “knowledge and virtue are superior to sword and power”, and the library contained a treasure of 400 000 manuscripts (Miller, 2006, p.617).26 Many Indian scholars, physicians, and were recruited from India to teach at Gondi Shapur and much Indian scholarship was translated from Sanskrit to Pahlavi27 (Modanlou, 2011, p.237). Correspondingly, Persian and Greek works found their way to India where they were treasured. and philosophy were taught alongside medicine in both Persia and India. It is thought that the former two disciplines were ranked superior to medicine because they laid the pedagogical foundation from which illness was understood (Miller, 2006; Modanlou, 2011).

This intercultural and interdisciplinary syncretism had a greater impact after Arab contact with India began after the 7th century CE. This is because, by this time, education and transmission of knowledge was organized in a manner which combined the best of the Greek and Arab traditions. This fusion had occurred in Persia and was then replicated eastward throughout South Asia, during periods of enlightened Islamic rule following the

25 After the Council of Nicea declared the doctrine of the Trinity to be dogma. 26 By contrast the largest library in Europe in the 14th century at the University of Paris, had 400 manuscripts (Miller, 2006, p.617). 27 Middle Persian.

25 initial Arab conquest of Persia (Jafri, 2012). Shortly after the conquest of Sindh28, Arab rulers began to act as patrons for educational institutions, as a mark of their prestige. Many Indian Muslims attended these cosmopolitan institutes of learning. They contributed to the development of Islamic learning outside of India, due to the breadth of their knowledge in many subject areas, and as inheritors of layered traditions (Jafri, 2012, p.82, 2012). This is one of the reasons why the sociopolitical and pedagogical character of Islam outside the Arab Middle East, retains a distinctly Perso-Indian ethos29.

India as a Location for Heterodoxy

The Mongol conquest of Central Asia and Persia caused a massive brain-drain. India became the inheritor of this wealth, as scholars sought refuge from the Mongol onslaught. An explosion of hybridity resulted, even affecting the nature of Islam. Persian inflected Sufism converged with the spiritual traditions of the Dharmic faiths. The Sufi khanqah (spiritual lodges) became a site for the organization of schools. Their proliferation would lead to an expansion of education.

India () developed a hybrid culture, which has been given the moniker Perso-Indian. After the demise of Persia, India (Delhi) would rank as a rival with Baghdad and the Middle East, as a reputed centre of Islamic scholarship and interpreter of the Islamic ethos and tradition (Jafri, 2012, p.84). This was even more evident after the Persian renaissance and a revival of Persian language scholarship within Persia and India, during the 10th century. India increasingly became the centre of alternate Islam, due to India fostering a spirit of inquiry which was originally at the heart of Arab education traditions but which was succumbing to dogmatism in its place of origin.

Many schools of Sufism fostered fraternities of scholars and students in India. They regularly held inter-fraternity conferences and conducted public debates. New forms of music and art were the reciprocal consequence of the cultural fusion that began to take place in India. Much of this art, portraiture, music and, drama contravened Islamic

28 Presently, the province of Pakistan whose capital is Karachi. 29 The World Sufi Forum is annually held in Delhi. Sufism is the historic development of Perso-Indian pedagogical convergence. Sufism has an immense following in South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa and the Western world. Sufism is considered heretic by orthodox Sunni Islam.

26 orthodoxy. This represents nothing less than an insurgency of spirit guided by the pedagogy of Eshgh/Ishq (Farsi/: love), at whose core is the notion that knowing cannot be taught, but must be inspired and gained through experience or association.

Punjab, the land at the juncture of the “5 waters”30, served as a conflux for the civilizations of India, China, Central Asia, and Persia. Punjab “became a major centre for the transmission of knowledge. The of was one such major centre during the 17th century.” (Jafri, 2012, p.86). The Sufi khanqah “in addition to their acquiring knowledge in the tenants of theology and higher discipline of Islamic sciences, also acquired the knowledge of other religions and had interest in the natural sciences as well” (Jafri, 2012, p.89). Fusion, and cosmopolitan, culture and education became a mandate for Mughal emperors like who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Interested in utilitarian aspects of knowing to rationalize the administration for the sake of efficiency, as well as shrewdly aware that the best pacification policy toward his majority non-Islamic subjects was tolerance; Akbar is known as one of the most enlightened monarchs of history. The Mughal dynasty, itself, was an expression of syncretism. Turkic decendants of the Timurid dynasty, led by Babar, they fled what is present day Uzbekistan, capturing Kabul (1504) en route to Delhi (1526). The Mughal dynasty which Babur inaugurated, adopted Persian language and culture and contributed to its assimilation in India.

Akbar declared that “no one should be allowed to neglect those things which the present times require”, mandating that “every boy ought to read books on morals, arithmetic, agriculture, menstruation, geometry, astronomy, physiognomy, household matters, and the rules of government; in addition to medicine, logic…and history” (Jafri, 2012, p.90). Akbar went so far as to positively discriminate against Islamic theology which in “this new syllabus (was) accorded…less space” (Jafri, 2012, p.91). “Learning Arabic was looked upon as a crime…Qur’anic commentaries and the tradition and those who studied them were considered bad and deserving of disapproval. Astronomy, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, poetry, history and novels were cultivated and thought necessary” (Jafri, 2012, p.91).

30 Panj (five) ab (water)

27

The Fracturing of Knowledges While it is true that there were periods of enlightened rule which fostered the growth of education as a whole, it must also be mentioned that learning was partitioned into ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ realms especially during the waves of invasion into the subcontinent which saw the replacement of the ruling dynasty by a different ethnic group.31 Educational institutions were considered part of the prestige and support system for the ruling elite. Therefore, most invaders destroyed schools in the same way as they destroyed temples or razed urban centres. This is true irrespective of whether those same rulers, upon consolidating their over-lordship, began to patronize the arts (eg. Babur). Unlike the Achaemenian Persians who were Zoroastrians, or even Alexander’s Greeks32, Muslim marauders generally despised the natives who were considered ethnically inferior and their faith which they considered pagan.

Even Mughal emperors who established royal libraries, discriminated regarding the holdings and their circulation. It was clear that not all knowledges were viewed as either equal or necessary. Although many scribes were employed to replicate books by hand, the value of the information was directly proportional to their ornate presentation as extravagantly leafed adorned calligraphy manuscripts representing the owner’s purchase power.

With the evaporation of state patronage for non-Muslim educational centres, there was a decline of ‘Hindu’ schools (the ashrams and parishads). The latter began to relocate to the peripheries of Muslim rule in India. “Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered…Kashmir, Benares…” (Jafri, 2012, p.95). In seclusion in places such as Kashmir, Kashi, Puri, Vrindavan, and Madurai, Hindu education became somewhat introverted as it detached from cosmopolitan dialogue as a means of defense33. Education was no longer the venue for critical thinking. It became the receptacle for the preservation of cultures under siege. In Kashmir and Kashi, the siddhmatrika script was developed (after 600 CE), and used to chronicle ‘Hindu’ culture and knowledge to prevent the loss of

31 Eg. From late 7th to late 17th century: Arab, Afghan, several Turkic waves, Mughal, and British. 32 It is more accurate to state that Alexander’s force was composite Greco-Persian, as was its culture. 33 This would correspondingly occur to Islamic education in South Asia during British rule.

28 an oral tradition under threat. Increasingly, language and script became associated with specific religious traditions and ethnicities, rather than serving as an impartial vehicle for the transmission of knowledge.

Nevertheless, European traveler accounts, such as those of Tavernier (1640-67) or Bernier (1658-67), praise the degree of scholarship and astronomical accuracy in Kashi34. They describe such centres as “the Athens of India” (Jafri, 2012, p.96). Lacking funds and disallowed the establishment of larger schools, the ancient Gurukul system was renewed, whereby one to a dozen students lived with their preceptor for 10-12 years. Education became a guarded preserve. Students were taught an archaic form of Sanskrit for the recitation of liturgy but also to serve as a secret language which could be used to transmit information among their fraternity. Bernier does mention that Sanskrit was still utilized to compose treatises on philosophy and medicine, but this was probably to reflect a lineage tradition similar to European science, medicine and law being published in Latin (Jafri, 2012, p.97).

This state of affairs, the scattering of education into regional centres of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ learning, continued as British imperial domination displaced Mughal rule in South Asia. The Company had begun the process of British imperialism from 1600. By the time of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the cosmopolitan-secularism of South Asian education traditions had been replaced by a siege mentality between Hindu and Muslim religious communities competing for sociopolitical hegemony. Indian pedagogies were simultaneously being eclipsed by British attempts to mainstream Western education. It would be those opposed to British imperialism, who also rejected the immutability of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ communities, who would recover South Asian cosmopolitan- secularism through their re-imagination of it. This cause was taken up by the (INC) which was inaugurated in 1885. The project of restoring an Indian National Education to articulate composite identity and multiple ways of knowing, became the main focus of the INC.

34 Also known as Benares or Varanasi.

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National Education Education reform that would lead to ownership of process and pedagogy, social transformation and cultural renewal, was a focus of political agitation during the period of Colonial India under the . Education remained a principle concern for the Indian Independence Movement (led by the Indian National Congress), as a strategy to mobilize the political consciousness of the people. National Education referenced identity and was intended to reflect a postcolonial secular education understood to be syncretic, cosmopolitan, liminal, multi-valanced, and democratic. The importance of this issue is illustrated by the fact that both the Imperial authority and the nationalists regularly fought for control of curriculum as a means of establishing or denying sovereignty at the local and provincial levels of government. Therefore, the history of the quest for Indian national education can best be understood as the history of , or at the very least as facilitating its dialogue.

Deculturalization, Sociopolitical Fragmention, and British Imperial Education During the ‘age of exploration’, the Portuguese and the French were the first to make contact with India. Over a period of two centuries (c. 1600-1857) the British moved in- country from their coastal Presidencies of Bombay in the west, Madras in the South, and Calcutta in the east. The Presidencies were utilized as regional capitals of administration. This was a process that continued during the period of rule under the , as treaties were made with, or military campaigns were conducted against, the Indian rajas.35 The EIC was established in 1600, and their rule of India as proxy of the British government grew in phases, lasting until the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. After the Mutiny, the EIC was replaced by direct Imperial control from 1858 to 1947.

The British process of ordering Indian diversity, constructing primitiveness and creating a hierarchy of racial, caste and tribal categories, was facilitated by the implementation of the census in 1871. After 1858, the Secretary of State for India and his Council of India36 were

35 The EIC operated in much the same way as the Hudson’s Bay Company, a crown-monopoly which was protected by the government and given the legitimacy to rule in the name of the monarch. It was a means of indirect rule which was most cost effective and ensured culpable deniability for the Crown. 36 Ministerial portfolio and executive committee in London, created as part of the formal establishing of the Crown India.

30 tasked with centralizing power in the form of a Vice-Royal administration in Calcutta, and implementing uniform legal practices. The Viceroy’s government decided to enumerate their human resources via a census for the purpose of classification, taxation and military recruitment. The questions created for identification purposes were formulated from a Western geopolitical experience of the nation state, predicated upon a singularity and homogeneity that was constructed through the violence of eliminating difference and the establishment of unity in the pursuit of religious and ethno-lingual nationalism. This concept of the nation state assumed that every ethnicity was a nation, and that every nation should be a state with territorial boundaries coinciding to their cultural boundaries (Stepan et. al., 2010).

The census obliged respondents to define themselves, for example, as ‘’ or ‘Muslims’, or ‘’, or according to their caste affiliation. However the social history of the subcontinent had created a situation of multiple locations and multiple identities for individuals. The negotiation of identity within Indian space meant that one’s public representation might simultaneously be manifest as several allegiances, without being a traitor to any. There was no compulsion to negotiate away, or create a hierarchy of self. Categories and their discrimination such as caste, existed. However, the census began to create hard boundaries and mutually exclusive locations to which a legal definition of rights, owed or denied according to one’s identity, was attached.

British enumerators were motivated by a European notion of bonded communities, and the new science, of race. Along with the burgeoning discipline of anthropology, race began to inform imperial histories and their corresponding theories of civilizational development. Anderson (1983) noted that communities are imagined, while Chatterjee (1993) has written that the dominant discourse of the nation is a myth which is reductionist, violent, artificial and requires constant public performance. The census projected a mindset of ethnically labelled collectives upon the Indian population, who began to appropriate these identities in competition for political space. Individuals began to attach greatest importance to their religious and caste identity. As a consequence, caste-occupational and religious- occupational distinctions hardened, making social relations between castes and religions stricter. This in turn, made invisible or caused the social death of entire sections of the

31 population. Individual transcendence within the caste system or the formation of individual bonds across religious boundaries in marriage, commerce, and governance, became nearly impossible.

In this process of , cultures were essentialized by ignoring intra-group heterogeneity. Cultures were then ranked vertically in a hierarchy of civilizations under Europe (Said, 1978) as well as horizontally with respect to a time-until-modernity quotient that was based upon how far behind their capitalist development ranked compared to Europe (Skaria, 1997). The latter has been termed anachronistic calculation (Skaria, 1997) and included: industrialism/technology primarily identified as steel machinery and military prowess; literacy and a written script for language (Adas, 1989); a written law code (Kuper, 1988); and an economic interpretation of historical progress that rivals Marxist formulas in which societies passed from subsistence to hunting, then to pastoralism, reaching settled agriculture before moving on to commercialism (Meek, 1976).

It is not coincidental that imperial judgments of colonial peoples, their cultures, and their histories, evolved to produce counter-narratives of European supremacy based upon the science of race. Nor is it surprising to note that many proponents of the new fields of knowledge in the Western academy during the nineteenth century, were former British colonial administrators: Thomas Malthus (food scarcity and population increase); Richard Galton (anthropometric studies, hereditary genius, eugenics); L.H.D. Buxton (1925) The People of Asia; (survival of the fittest); Cecil Rhodes (rationale of powerful nations to dominate); Rudyard Kipling (White man’s burden to civilize).

The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885. It attempted to be an umbrella organization to gather support from as many Indian communities as possible, and represent itself as a united India front against British imperialism. For example, the Muslim League was one of the affiliated groups under the Congress. The Congress was mainly an organization dominated by the urban upper class and upper caste Hindus. They were also largely, a Western educated intelligentsia. British criticism of the Indian national movement rested upon an assertion that India was a geographic expression comprising a multitude of dis-similar peoples who were only united under British guidance. And, that it

32 was only due to benevolent British rule, that minoritiy communities were not terrorized by the Hindu majority. The British also chastised the Congress for being a thoroughly un- Indian upper class corporate body which sought political power for itself in the name of an imaginary united Indian people37.

Democratizing the Imagined Nation by Reconceptualizing National Education Mohandas K. Gandhi helped transform the anti-colonial freedom struggle of the Indian National Congress into a democratic mass movement during the 1920s. This was accomplished through the inclusion of popular participation in against British authority. This rendering of a non-violent means to assert indigenous rights against imperialism, by evoking the indigenous spiritual belief that resistance to injustice is the moral duty of every righteous citizen, served to establish and reinforce a cultural identity around the sense of an Indian spirit among the people. At the same time it facilitated familiarity with the emerging construct of an independent Indian nation that was united in diversity. Gandhi “imbued the concept of swaraj with a broad meaning which included economic self-reliance and social justice. The freedom struggle thus sought to recover the nation for the people and to eliminate the imperial control” (Panikkar, 2003, p.107). The quest for National Education38 ran parallel within the context of the Indian Nationalist Movement, from 1905-4939.

What emerged was the notion that a post-colonial Indian education system should reflect an Indian cultural identity. This was defined as secular and understood to be syncretic, cosmopolitan, liminal and, democratic. There was no compulsion to negotiate away, or create a hierarchy of self. Those concerned with fabricating a post-independence Indian

37 Churchill’s speech Our Duty India, delivered in Albert Hall 18, 1931 (“Our Duty in India”, n.d.). 38 Led by Satish Chandra , the editor of The Dawn. From 1902-07, he established Dawn Society at Vidyasagar College, which was an indigenous university with an indigenous curriculum. Mukherjee influenced to advocate for the National Council of Education in 1906 to include 92 Indian members and begin discussions with the Colonial government regarding education on an all-India basis. Tagore created Santiniketan university. 39 1905 began the massification of the nationalist movement, with the Swadeshi Boycott (to be explained below). 1949 is the submission of the University Education Commission Report (which summarized opinions on typologies of pedagogy in the context of what post-colonial Indian education should be).

33 education policy, therefore sought to promote the ethos of a secularized Saraswati40 fostering cosmopolitan-secularism.

In 1905, the British government attempted to quell the nationalist agitation in Bengal41 by dividing that province according to religious affiliation. This created Muslim and Hindu parts along with separate administrations. This was an effort to divide the opposition along sectarian lines.42 Although contributing to the rise of religion as a factor within the Indian independence movement, the immediate reaction of the Bengali population was to revolt against the decision to partition Bengal. They demanded re-unification, and their call to resist communal politics led to an invigorated nationalist movement against the British.

This resulted in the development of an all-India agitation. It allowed political consciousness to transcend region while moving toward the imagined nation. Moreover, political sovereignty was now linked to economic autarky. It moved the Congress from an advocacy group of elite leadership, into a broad based movement with mass participation. This was all accomplished via the Swadeshi43 campaign of 1905, an all-India protest to support the Bengali reaction to partition. It manifested as an economic boycott of British goods, such as cotton and salt.

However, Swadeshi also included a boycott of British schools, British courts, and a general campaign of non-cooperation and non-participation with the structures of British rule in India. As a tactic to deny legitimacy to imperialism, Swadeshi’s inherent and underlying strategy was to promote parallel indigenous institutions. As much a symbol, as the basis of success for this endeavour, was the declaration of National Education. This was defined as “a three-dimensional system of education—that is, literary education in combination with

40 Patron Goddess of Knowledge, Consort of Brahma, and part of Mahadevi (divinity, god-head, conceived as female). 41 Of the three administrative centres of the Imperial rule, Bengal was the most important as it was: the largest single area (regionally) under direct British rule, the capital of their Indian Subcontinent administration of Calcutta was within that province, it was the closest to the Central and Delhi which still represented the seat of Moghul rule. 42 This division, enacted by Viceroy Lord Curzon, lasted until Bengal was reunified in 1911. At that time, the British also transferred their seat of power (the capital) from Calcutta to Delhi. 43 Literally, ‘our own’ or ‘that of our country’.

34 scientific and technical—on national lines and exclusively under national control for the realization of national destiny” (Mukherjee and Mukherjee, 1957, p.3).44

In 1835, General Lord William Bentinck45, having been influenced by Thomas Babington Macaulay46, replaced Sanskrit and Persian (the language of school and administration in India) with English. Thereafter, Governor General Dalhousie was advised in 1854 by Charles Wood47, to create an education department in every British Indian province, universities in larger on the basis of the University of London, a government sponsored school in every district, and partnerships with private run schools which would affiliate with British institutions.48 Pursuant to Wood’s Dispatch, Dalhousie inaugurated the Universities of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta in 1857.49 Criticism of these, and the other universities which followed, resounded.

The first Indian Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta’s University Presidency College, remarked in his convocation addresses between 1890 and 1892, that mother-tongue should be the medium of instruction. He also noted that technical education should be included in the curriculum, and fellowships should be awarded to encourage original research (Mukherjee

44 Proposed manifesto of the National Council of Education, Bengal. 45 While India was ruled by the East India Company, the highest ranking British official in India was termed the Governor General. As of 1858, under direct Imperial rule, this post was renamed as Viceroy. 46 Member of the Governor General’s council, and famous for his Minute on Indian Education, in which he espoused the view that a loyal bureaucratic class of Indians should be produced through an English medium education system that was sponsored by the East India Company (British government). The products of this system would be ‘Brown on the outside and White on the inside’: “ We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.” (“Minute by the Hon’ble T.B. Macaulay”, n.d.). 47 Served in the U.K. government as President of the Board of Control (overseeing the East India Company) 1852-55, and later as Secretary of State for India 1859-66. 48 He also stipulated that Indians receive some vernacular education (Moore, 1965). 49 The three Presidencies of the East India Company (ie. Administrative Regional Capitals). After the Government Resolution on Education Policy 1913, mandated a university for each region: Banares Hindu University (1916), Mysore University (1916), Osmania University (1918), Lucknow University (1920), Aligarh Muslim University (1921).

35 and Mukherjee, 1957, p.5). Satis Chandra Mukherjee50, the founder and editor of Dawn, a nationalist newspaper (1897-1913), remarked that university education was:

…a failure, since as an examining and not a teaching University, the Indian University has hardly succeeded in drawing to itself a body of learned men who devoted their time and energies wholly to the cause of original research…from the commercial point of view, it is looked upon with disfavor by the large majority…who with a smattering of literary or semi-scientific instruction find it hard even to earn a bare pittance…Foreign education has note enabled us to be self- reliant, self-dependent, self-sacrificing, patriotic. …has failed to bring to the front the stamp of men who can hold their own in the great industrial struggle which is the marked feature of the great civilizations amidst which we live (Mukherjee and Mukherjee, 1957, p.6)51

It is clear that from the outset, the British universities of India aroused trepidation among Indian nationalists.

Prior to 1835, there had been several attempts by Indian nationalist reformers to utilize the Company/Metropole as an instrument of reform.52 However, the East India Company and later the Imperial British government, were reluctant to interfere with Indian customs and traditions, since their early attempts to do so had drawn greater monetary and manpower resources than anticipated. In other words, ‘white man’s burden’ was trumped by white man’s profit making capacity. Anything that threatened the smooth operation of expropriation of wealth would not be tolerated. Hence, the allocation of British resources for education, like social reform, only served the interests of the British as an instrument of control.53 Seen in this light, the British education policy may be described as an Imperial pacification strategy. Its purpose was to remodel and effectively control thought process and thought production. The creation of an imperial education system was an attempt to

50 Received Law degree, MA in Philosophy. Was appointed Lecturer in History and Economics at Behrampur College. 51 Quoting The Dawn, February 1898. 52 Raja Roy (1772-1833) who helped found Samaj, a movement that sought to fuse modern-progressive aspects of Western thought with Hindu- culture. This lead to several attempts to inculcate social reform via education: Hindu College 1817, Anglo-Hindu School 1822, Vedanta College 1826. Roy wanted a curriculum to include English, Math, Science, Technology. 53 This is generally also true for infrastructure, such as banks, railways etc., all of which were created for the increased efficiency of exploitation. Track lines were laid from plantation to port, banks served the commercial imperial interests of British commerce at point of departure and in-country to collect/store/calculate revenue.

36 quell growing Indian nationalist discontent, by relocating schooling and curriculum, with the hopes of thereby preventing the education of rebels.

It is for this reason that Satis Chandra Mukherjee could categorically state:

The Indian Universities are, if we may so express ourselves, copies of copies: for the English Universities themselves being bad copies themselves (sic) it is clear that the Universities here in India suffer from a double taint; (1) that of being bad imitations, and (2) that the original itself requires to be very far perfected before it will be able to assimilate the true functions of education…(the British education policy) has been only fruitful of effect in directing the ambitions and aspirations of educated Indians along a narrow line of thought, along the line merely of seeking official patronage, or professional advancement, without their being able to bring into operation forces that tend towards a wider rapprochement with higher Western thought (Mukherjee and Mukherjee, 1957, pp.10-11).54 Thus the Indian nationalists were aware that the key to their success was tied to the control, reform, and proliferation of an indigenous education system.

In January 1902, the Viceroy’s government organized an Indian Universities’ Commission, in response to the Indian nationalist demand for “National Education, a system of education rooted in the soil, respectful of the best heritage of the past, alive to modern requirements, and directed to balanced national growth” (Mukherjee and Mukherjee, 1957, p.13). The Commission, with the sole Indian member dissenting, offered its report in June 1902. This report stated that education should be even further controlled by the government. Efforts should be made to reduce the “popular element” within the system by limiting enrollment, vetting teachers, and tightening curriculum (“Report of the Indian Universities Commission”, 1902). The Indian response was instantaneous outrage, carried within the pages of the nationalist press. The editor of The Dawn, Satish Chandra Mukherjee, established the Dawn Society at Vidyasagar College in July 1902.

Lasting until 1907, it represented sedition, because the Dawn Society had created an indigenous university based upon the nationalist concern for what curriculum must be taught (Mukherjee and Mukherjee, 1957, pp.14-15). It gave birth to the National Council for Education in 1906, which was constituted by 92 public intellectuals such as

54 Quoting The Dawn, September 1899.

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Rabindranath Tagore55. A Provisional Education Committee was also set up to coordinate further discussions regarding education reform on an all-India basis56. Meanwhile, Viceroy Lord Curzon had passed the Indian Universities Act in 1904 (based on the Commission Report, 1902) which led to a student boycott of Calcutta University.

Prioritizing the Nation-State While Negotiating State-Nation Education Educational sociologists such as Piaget and Vygotsky would agree that although education possesses the ability to transform society, it cannot be the prime factor for social change. This is because pedagogies seldom transcend the socio-economic and socio-political environment in which they are embedded (Kamat, 1985). Indian nationalists believed that education was vital for achieving economic growth and eliminating , however, it was clear to them that the British colonial education system was “an attempt to initiate students into the rituals of the dominant culture” (Davies, 1973, p.334). In the process of the India Acts of 1919 and 1935, transferring provincial administration including control of education to Indians, the Congress began to debate the content and process of pedagogical control which would facilitate the idea of India and an Indian identity.

In the interrum, the education franchise was widened beyond the upper, to the middle, classes. And despite the curriculum being set in London, many of the teachers were upper class Indians, and “consequently, the message which was actually conveyed to the receivers got considerably modified when passed through this filter.”(Kamat, 1973, pp.26-28). Gradually, the composition of the teachers who were socializing agents, also began to reflect a middle class bias. Similarly, more students began to be enrolled from the rural and lower classes. This allowed vernacular medium instruction to creep into the Imperial curriculum. This infestation of Indian identity within British Indian education, did manage to contribute to a social awakening and the raising of a political consciousness. “One can trace the origin and rise of a substantial non- political leadership of the later period to this spread of education” (Kamat, 1973, p.28). Gopal Gokhale, a former president of the Indian National Congress and member of the Viceroy’s Imperial

55 Poet and playwrite 1861-1941. The first non-European to win the for Literature in 1913, for Gitanjali. His poetry is the basis for the national anthems of India and . 56 The main Indian nationalist organization , the Indian National Congress, took up the issue during its 1906 session, calling for “national education” defined as aforementioned in the body of the text above.

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Legislative Council, attempted to push through a bill in 1910 for free and compulsory primary education, but it was defeated.57

The British reneged on their promise to negotiate full Dominion status for India, as the quid pro quo for Congress support of the British WWI effort. In 1919, the British extended Powers Act which had been in place since 1914, in order to control Indian protests.58 This caused Congress in its Nagpur session of 1920, to call for the “gradual withdrawal of children from schools and colleges, and the establishment of national schools and colleges in the various Provinces” (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.45). It led to the creation of the National Muslim University of Aligarh, Gujarat Vidyapith, Bihar National University, Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapith, and Quami Vidyapith, within the next 6 months (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.45).

A major contribution, building upon the ideas of the National Education Council curriculum, was made by Lala Lajpat Rai’s The Problem of National Education in India.59 Rai, associated with the radicals in Congress for his uncompromising anti-British statements in regard to Indian independence, nevertheless made it clear that national education should not be an apology of everything Indian:

We cannot assume that everything ancient was perfect and ideal. Some of the ideas held by our ancestors have been proved wrong; we have to readjust them. Some of their methods were faulty; we have to improve upon them. Some of their institutions, very well suited to their age and conditions of life; we must replace them. We do not want to be a mere copy of our ancestors. We wish to be better. …It is in this spirit that we should approach the problems of national education. …Truth is neither local nor national nor even international. It is simply truth. Science and philosophy expound truth. Are we going to reject the sciences and philosophers, because the discoverers of these sciences and the writers of books on philosophy happened to be non-Indians? Are we going to reject Shakespeare, Bacon, Goethe, Schiller, Emerson, Whitman, because they were not Indians?...In my judgment it will be folly and madness to try to discourage the study and

57 It was drafted, based upon the Compulsory Education Act of England 1870, 1876 and Irish Education Act 1892. (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.37). 58 The Jallianwalla Bagh massacre 1919, was a result of the use of legitimate legal force used by General Dyer to clear the public square and disperse a crowd. 59 Published in 1920. Rai, along with and , had helped to transform Congress from 1907 onwards, toward a stance demanding independence rather than sovereignty association. In fact, they split Congress at the December 1907 session (Surat) into two factions, which were unified again in December 1915.

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dissemination of European languages, European literatures and European sciences in India. The fact is that we have not had enough of them (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, pp.45-48).60

Philip Hartog had participated as part of the Sadler Commission of 1919, which had transferred education to the Provinces, as part of the India Act of 1919. Hartog was appointed the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Dhaka in 1920. In 1928, Hartog headed a committee to review the state of education in India. His report concluded that although expansion had taken place, the lack of funds allocated by the Viceroy created a crisis in the system. With regard to higher education, “the theory that a university exists mainly, if not solely, to pass students through examinations still finds too large acceptance in India” (Biswas and Agarwal, 1994, pp.50-51).61

The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) was reinstituted in 1935; it had been established in 1920 and disbanded in 1923 (“The Central Advisory Board of Education”, n.d.). CABE was tasked by the Viceroy to further investigate the findings of Hartog, specifically to advise whether vocational training should be included in schooling. A. Abbot the former Chief Inspector of Technical Schools within the Board of Education of England, and S. Wood, the Director of Intelligence within the Board of Education of England, were tasked to CABE to take on this assignment (Biswas and Agarwal, 1994, p.53). They concluded that “general and vocational education are earlier and later phases of a continuous process. Each subject in a vocational school has its origin in the non- vocational school” (Biswas and Agarwal, 1994, pp.54-55).62

It is noteworthy, at this juncture, to point out the antagonistic views of M.K. Gandhi in respect to national education. Heralded as the face of Congress after assuming its presidency in 192163, Gandhi’s “Basic Education” was a rural and centered religio- vocational schooling that sought to eliminate the use of industrialization and technology

60 Quoting L.L. Rai, The Problem of National Education in India. 61 Quoting the Hartog Commission Report, 1928. 62 CABE report concerning Vocational Schooling, 1936. 63 Previously he had campaigned against apartheid in South Africa. He returned to India in 1915.

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(Gandhi, 1970).64 In contrast to most other nationalists, Gandhi associated Western science and Western culture with decadence, and as explicitly anti-Indian. Gandhi’s original ideas on Basic Education were published in a series of articles in Harijan during 1937. He termed his idea Nai Talim (New—, Education—Urdu)65, a holistic pedagogy of body- mind-soul imparted through the teaching of handicrafts to children. Gandhi maintained that one of the fundamental problems with the colonial education system was that it created a new elite in society that possessed knowledge, and a corresponding disdain for manual work. For Gandhi, education had to be connected with moral development and had therefore, to be a lifelong endeavour.

Vinoba Bhave, part of Gandhi’s movement and later chief promoter of the Basic Education concept in post-colonial India, commented that “the crux of Nai Talim lay in overcoming distinctions between learning and teaching, and knowledge and work” (“Vinoba’s Thoughts”, n.d.). The argument was that colonial education focused upon literacy and text- based knowledge, so that knowledge became the domain of the upper castes. Nai Talim created the possibility for a “radical restructuring of the sociology of school knowledge in India" in which the literacies of the lower castes came to the forefront (“The Story of Nai Talim”, n.d.). Basic Education also sought to make schools financially and socially independent of the state. Gandhi wrote in Harijan in 1937, that “literacy in itself is no education. I would therefore begin the child's education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training. Thus every school can be made self-supporting”.

It was this last aspect, vocational and technical education, that was endorsed by the First Indian Congress of National Education which met at Wardha in October 1937. Free and compulsory education for the first seven years with instruction in mother-tongue and centred around a productive form of manual work/handicraft, was tabled by the Committee in a report known as the Wardha Scheme of Basic Education. This

64 In this endeavour, the figurehead of Congress was opposed by his entire Party, including his protégé and eventual first prime minister of Independent India, . 65 There is symbolism in the title, as it represents a fusion of 2 languages of 2 cultures, both Indian.

41 was endorsed by the Congress at their Haripura session in 1938 (Biswas and Agarwal, 1994, pp.53-63).66 The report noted that:

Modern educational thought is practically unanimous in commending the idea of educating children through some suitable form of productive work. This method is considered to be the most effective approach to the problem of providing an integral all-sided education….This, if we may be permitted to use the expression, is the literacy of the whole personality. Socially considered…will tend to break down the existing barriers of prejudice…(Biswas and Agarwal, 1994, p.55). As with all previous schemes considered by the Congress, the aspect of General Education that focuses on social sciences and humanities loomed large within the curriculum.67

The emerging concept of the Indian ideal type for national education was by this time vested with the following criteria: secularism (inclusive of class, caste, religion), literary heritage (3 language policy: mother-tongue, Sanskrit or Persian, English)68, cosmopolitanism (study of Western-World key events and leaders), science (the study of the laws of natural phenomenon and their control), and vocational applicability (applied science and labour towards regional/national development).69 With the exception of Gandhi, Indian socio-educational reformers did not possess overly romanticized and uncritical positions regarding the national past:

There was no attempt to resurrect the pre-colonial or to adopt the traditional as the ideal. Instead, the concern of all those involved with educational reform was to marry the traditional with the modern. A national system of education which the colonial intellectuals and nationalist leaders tried to evolve was based on a possible synthesis of all that is advanced in the West with all that was abiding in the traditional. In other words, the national policy was not lodged in dichotomy between the indigenous and the Western. The impact of such a policy was the internalization of a universal outlook and the location of the indigenous in the wider matrix of human history. The educational policy adumbrated by independent India,

66 Quoting the Wardha Report, 1937. 67 The INC (Indian National Congress) in 1938 appointed a National Planning Commission under Nehru. Educational planning was undertaken by two sub-committees: General Education, and Technical Education for Development Research. 68 This was sometimes a 4 language policy with the inclusion of Hindustani as compulsory (ie. the fusion dialect of Hindi, itself a merger between Sanskrit and Persian/Urdu, spoken in the North region surrounding the United Provinces, Delhi). From 1937 onward, Hindi replaced the classical Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic language criteria. Thereafter, the 3 Language Policy became Hindi, English, Mother-Tongue. 69 All previously quoted Reports and Memoranda are prime source documents which contain these explicit curriculum details, itemized as number of hours per subject per grade (primary, elementary, lower-secondary, upper-secondary, higher education).

42

even if it faltered on many a count, was informed by an open-ended view (Panikkar, 2003, p.93).

In this way, the Indian concept of incorporating the new or foreign was not anathema. Rabindranath Tagore’s school Santiniketan (abode of ) represented this ideal. Tagore connected learning and environment. Santiniketan was located in lush beautiful surroundings. This school was expanded after Tagore won the in 1913, becoming a university known as Visva-Bharati in 1921. The motto of the institution, dedicated by its founder, reads: “Visva-Bharati acknowledges India's obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India’s right to accept from others their best” (“Visva-Bharati”, n.d.).

Along with Hartog’s Commission concerning educational reform in 1928, there was also the Simon Commission of the same year. The Simon Commission (1928) planned the reorganization of Indian provincial boundaries in preparation for a renewed Government of India Act (1935). The previous Government of India Act (1919) had provided diarchy through the establishment of Indian control at the provincial level, but according to the existing super-state structures of the colonial Raj. For example, British administered Bengal would on a current map, encompass the entire north-east and north-central parts of India and all of Bangladesh. The situation thus arose whereby education control would not be handed to the Congress without the latter’s aquiesence in territorial reorganization.

The resultant Government of India Act (1935) included a stipulation for communal elections in which Muslims would elect Muslim candidates. Moreover the new Act (1935) mandated reservations of one-third seats for Muslims in all provincial cabinets, in representation to the Viceroy as a federal level executive, and in all administrative positions in the country. Muslim education, cultural and social institutions, would also receive a proportional-to-representation (1/3) transfer of funds from the Indian budget. Finally, it was agreed that Sindh should be separated from Bombay province to create a Muslim majority province. And that any future territorial reorganizations should not affect the majority population status of Muslims in Punjab, NWFP (North-West Frontier Province)

43 and Bengal. This 1935 Government of India Act would begin a process of devolution of power that would see home rule at the provincial level.

The inclusion of these mandates regarding Muslims, known as the Fourteen Points, was the achievement of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah had formed an advocacy group under the Congress in 1906, called the Muslim League. However in debates leading to the Simon Commission report, when the Congress had at first refused to accept the aforementioned reservations for Muslims, Jinnah formally separated the Muslim League from Congress (1929). This tension between the two visions of India, a union of equals versus a confederation of autonomous states, would lead to Jinnah’s Lahore Resolution (1940) calling for ‘Pakistan’. Argument continues upon the issue of whether this was an immediate call for secession or simply a threat by means of justifying the legitimacy of a distinct Muslim identity in the subcontinent. Pakistan was an acronym which stood for ‘Punjab + Afghan (NWFP) + Kashmir + Sindh + Baluchistan’ while translating as ‘land (stan) of the true/pure (pukka)’ in Urdu. It was devised by C.R. Ali in 1933, when he wrote an article entitled Now or Never and founded the Pakistan Independence Movement.

Ali and later Jinnah, believed that Indian Muslims constituted a nation in the historic Western sense of the term. This inspired the ‘two nation’ proposition espousing a historicism that regarded Hindu and Muslim sociopolitical development as being entirely separate irrespective of the shared geo-cultural history of the subcontinent. This position justified Jinnah’s advocacy for a nation-state (Pakistan) to be founded upon a distinct and singular ethno-nationalism. Added to this argument was Jinnah’s appeal to the British for the latter’s support in inaugurating sociopolitical civilizational development via the normative Western model of the nation-state (Pakistan). In the post-independence period (post-1947), Pakistan’s education curriculum has continued to reinforce this idea for its students, while India has generally maintained a secular and syncretic historicism regarding South Asian history.

When the British tabled the Government of India Act (1935) it made Congress’s acceptance of Muslim reservations a prerogative for the allowance of Indian education control, India

44 wide elections and Indian representation at the provincial level. Congress accepted and elections were conducted in 1937.

The elections of 1937 created Congress ministries in 9 of 11 Provinces. Of the 9, the Congress won 5 absolute majorities, created 2 Congress ministries with support of other parties, and had to settle for being the largest single party in the remaining 2 provinces. However, the Congress resigned from all its government positions in 1939, as a protest against the British declaration of war on behalf of India. As it became clearer through Allied victories from 194370, that WWII would soon be over, Viceroy Lord Wavell’s government asked CABE chair John Sargent to submit a plan, entitled, the Post-War Educational Development in India. Commonly known as the Sargent Report, the Viceroy requested a schedule for creating in India within forty years, the same educational standard as in Britain.

At that time, on the Viceroy’s Executive Council was Ardeshir Dalal who had been appointed the Member in Charge of Planning and Development in June 1944. Dalal had been the first Indian to become Municipal Commissioner of Bombay in 1928, and had worked as a managing director at the first Indian industrial firm of TISCO (Tata Iron and Steel Company). Dalal was one of the eight people to create the post-war colonial Bombay Plan 1944 (“Sir Ardeshir Dalal”, n.d.). The former Director of IIT Madras, P.V. Indiresan, wrote in 2003, that:

we were lucky to have on the Viceroy's Executive Council a visionary in Sir Ardeshir Dalal. With rare foresight, Sir Ardeshir foresaw that the future prosperity of India would depend not so much on capital as on technology. He, therefore, proposed the setting up of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. To man those laboratories, he persuaded the US government to offer hundreds of doctoral fellowships under the Technology Cooperation Mission (TCM) programme. He knew that such assistance would not help us forever and we should learn to train our own technologists. That is how the Indian Institute of Technology was conceptualised (“IITs: Invaluable Institutions”, n.d.).

70 British victory at El Alamein in Egypt, Soviet victories at Stalingrad and at Kursk in the USSR, American victory at Midway in the Pacific. Sir Lawrence Oliver, narrating the World At War series (Thames production TV series, 1973-74), described these victories: “it was not the end, it was perhaps not even the beginning of the end, but it was, perhaps, the end of the beginning”.

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Viceroy Wavell had also requested that Dr. A.V. Hill be sent from the Royal Society, to aid in the drafting of policy for post-war Indian education. Hill’s India visit from November 16, 1943, to April 5, 1944, resulted in his observational report of forty pages concerning higher education facilities in Aligarh, , Bombay, Calcutta, Kanpur, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jamshedpur, Kirkee, Madras, Mysore and Poona (Putcha, 2008). On the twentieth page of Hill’s report, it is stated that modeling Indian education upon the British system would be a mistake, since “there is no institution as yet in the United Kingdom comparable in magnitude, in the quality of equipment and in excellence of teaching and research work, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, Mass, USA…” (Putcha, 2008). Furthermore, Hill’s observations of colonial Indian universities created his impression that:

the future of Indian industrial and agricultural development must depend upon the supply of first-class technical brains, trained in an atmosphere both of original research and of practical experience. ...one or two technical institutes of the highest possible standing should be founded or developed from the existing ones (e.g., at Bangalore, where the Indian Institute of Science comes most closely of existing institutions to what is wanted)…(Putcha, 2008)

The Sargent Report submitted to the Viceroy, was no less blunt. The first line of its introduction stated that “It is inconceivable that within a reasonable period a really national system could be developed or evolved from what now exists or by the methods hitherto followed…the present system does not provide the foundations on which an effective structure could be erected…” (Biwas and Agarwal, 1944, p.64). Sargent also made reference to the CABE report of 1936, in the following way: “in view of the prospective needs of post-war industry and commerce for skilled technicians…the establishment of an efficient system of technical education at all stages…due regard should be had to the recommendations of the Abbot-Wood Report” (Biswas and Agarwal, 1994, p.66).

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This was the last educational survey and report sponsored by the British government. As the Union Jack was lowered over Delhi’s Red Fort on August 15, 194771, Sargent’s report was an indictment of the legacy of the British Raj concerning its education of Indians.

It would be left to the Constituent Assembly of postcolonial India to devise their Constitution (1950) and (re)-inaugurate the cosmopolitan-secularism of their historic traditions within a reformed education system.

Cosmopolitanism as Indigenous and Intercultural The agenda of this chapter was to lay the basis for an understanding of the undercurrent of cosmopolitan-secularism that is prevalent within the major pedagogical traditions that make up Indian cultural history. This guiding ethos of education ensured that the student products of such a system were aware that interdependence and multiplicity were reflections of both nature and divinity. As such, the highest goal of education was for knowledge to lead to wisdom, via the translation of individually acquired information into social action. Cosmopolitanism was the organizing principle of both education and society in all eras of Indian history. The relationship between government and various social groups, as well as inter-group relationships, were secular not by virtue of a humanist disdain for religion, but originating from a spirit of intercultural exchange.

All indigenous Indian traditions, as well as those foreign to India but assimilated within it, abided by this notion of secular cosmopolitanism. The Vedic period began the process of syncretic evolution of pedagogies. The period of the Upanishads and Buddhist discourse layered critical inquiry and the acceptance of multiple knowledges upon Vedic foundations. Intercultural co-constructed curricula were the products of the period of Persian convergence. This actually resulted in a hybrid pan-Asian Perso-India culture. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that had this rich South Asian history not occurred, British imperial rule may have radically altered India’s post-colonial future. However, the idea of India survived. It was revived by the Indian movement for National Education, a pedagogical resistence movement whose byproduct was the quest for sociopolitical sovereignty. The Indian National Congress represented both of these foci and revived the

71 Indian independence.

47 pedagogy of interculturalism, with its location in multiple ways of being, as the measure for what constituted Indian authenticity.

The development of South Asian pedagogical traditions in Indian space clearly exhibit interculturality as the basis of epistemology. Regardless of their date of arrival in India, all spiritual traditions were ingenized in a very short period. This attests to the flexibility of these dogmas and their comfort with liminality. It could be said that ways of knowing and being evolved in these liminal spaces, at the intersection of multiple traditions, rather than within their individual confined spaces. A historic scaling of knowledges occurred in India. Time contributed to an enhancement of multiplicity and a reservoir of knowledges rather than a streamlining towards hegemonic and normative pedagogy.

The most evocative example of this is the plural tradition which the British identified, and which we still term, Hinduism. If we continue to use the term Hinduism, it must be understood that there are multiple Hinduisms. Each of these represents an autonomous, local and decentralized citizenship. Each community’s spiritual curriculum, their methods of worship, their depicition of divinity, and the stories they tell which interpret their existence, were co-consturcted through social participation. This, in and of itself, represents a unique culture of self-determination and sovereignty. Moreover, each curriculum of these multiple Hinduisms is rooted in a specific local environment. This has served to create an intimacy and awareness of interdependence between inhaitants and their ecosystem. These multiple Hinduisms are not fractured epistemologies. They stress reciprocity.

This is the result of the encounter between Aryan Vedic, and Adivasi, pedagogies. Buddhism did not break from Vedic foundations, but expounded on its metaphysics in the same manner as other pedagogies of investigation during the Upanishad period. And unlike the process of Western Reformation, which would occur 1000 years later72, Buddhism did not elevate man above nature or give rise to an economy of exploitation.

72 published his 95 Theses in 1517.

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That India became a location for heterodoxy is well documented by a series of Persian convergences spanning Zoroastrianism to Sufism. Each of these meetings caused a broadening of the conceptualization of identity and a deepening of sociopolitical and intellectual participation. Indeed, it was only India’s encounter with the intransigent imperialism of the Western nation state, that promoted reductionist and eliminationist identity and participation as the model for sociopolitical and epistemological organization.

And more to the point, when this did occur, the consequence for India was deculturalization and sociopolitical fragmentation. The Indian movement for National Education was a pedagogical course correction to recover the intercultural basis of India’s cosmopolitan- secularism. The contradiction which the Indian National Congress faced, however, was that while democratizing the imagined nation via curriculum, it also prioritized a desire to gain the political apparatus of a nation state. Chapter four will elaborate upon whether these inherent incompatibilities were resolved, and how successful the GoI would be in realising the aspirations of the national movment for providing India with a pedagogy of state and education whose basis is intercultural identity and participation.

The next chapter will create the basis of this dissertation’s conceptual framework. The historic traditions discussed in this literature review, are the basis from which arises the latent potentiality of the state-nation, an ideal-type that constitutes the conceptual framework for the dissertation. The state-nation, as an ideal-type model, will be used to critically analyze the case studies of this dissertation that follow in the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters.

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Chapter 3

Conceptual and Methodological Framework

The State-Nation: An Ideal-Type to Re-conceptualize Citizenship for Democracy Within this chapter I outline the conceptual framework of my dissertation which is the ideal-type of the state-nation. I construct the state-nation using four components which firmly anchor this ideal-type within an ethos of alternative pedagogies with respect to four aspects of education and governance, where the nation-state fails to provide accommodation for diversity. These are simultaneously the areas where the nation-state inherently produces conflict because it is inflexible regarding its industrial development agenda. This singular pursuit of modernity following the liberal-capitalist patterns of the Western nation-state demands conformity and limits democratic participation and citizenship. It is intolerant of alternative aspirations and frameworks for sociopolitical organization, developing transformative practice, promoting environmental stewardship, and affirming multiple belongings and interdependence through spiritual awareness.

My state-nation ideal-type framework identifies four components that are intended to re- conceptualize citizenship for democracy. These are the pedagogical practice of cosmopolitan-secularism for governance, an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression pedagogy, communalidad as an indigenous intercultural pedagogy, and spirituality as affirmed in palliative care pedagogy as the basis of human dignity and personhood. I believe that all frameworks become hegemonic once they lay claim to being singular or universal. The ideal-type of the state-nation creates the basis for a paradigm, and its pedagogy, which challenges the intellectual discourse that has historically been associated with the nation-state.

The state-nation does not portray itself as either a liberation strategy that can be applied universally, or an alternate-hegemony. This ideal-type is simply a working model which invites constructive criticism to evoke further education reform and, by extension, richer

50 understandings of citizenship and democracy. Any attempt to fuse the four components of this ideal-type together, would defy the multi-logical principle which the state-nation is built upon. This would be reductionist in the same way that the ideal-type of the nation- state has tended to facilitate hegemony by essentializing or promoting exceptionality in history or path dependency. Rather than threaten to eliminate core features of the sociological location of each of my four components by blending them together or reduce their specificity with regard to cultural history and environment, the state-nation celebrates its unity in diversity.

The first component, that of cosmopolitan-secularism as the foundation upon which the state-nation concept is rooted, began to emerge in the previous chapter and will now be linked to its allies as the mortar which unites the remaining elements of the ideal-type state- nation.

I will show that the state-nation simultaneously emerges as the intersection between: the inter-cultural traditions of the South Asian historic past, the inter-cultural ways of knowing and being within indigeneity, and spirituality which has begun to be implemented as an inter-cultural translator in palliative end of life (EOL) curricula. This ideal-type of the state-nation which emerges shall be utilized as a critical tool of analysis to examine the case studies that will be presented in chapters four, five and six. Education and its reform, in each case, is juxtaposed against the state-nation which might be seen as a preferred future. The state-nation has diverse origins and is thus an example of how multi-logical ways of knowing can contribute to new, alternative and holistic pedagogies.

As an ideal-type, the state-nation aspires to continue the path and create the circumstances for the production of a truly post-colonial endogenous and anti-imperialist education system. The citizenship framework of the state-nation re-conceptualizes the concepts of social justice, participation and democracy because these categories become detached from the nation-state’s priorities of singularity, conformity and replication.

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The state-nation might be less subversive as a conceptual construct if its framework borrowed from or was devised with the aid of Western paradigms such as postcolonial theory or neo-Marxism. Although critical, these have become appropriated and normative. They remain valid tools for deconstruction, but are nevertheless conventional paradigms of dissent insofar as they are products of Western philosophical discourse () and the intellectual urban elite (the academy). By contrast, the state-nation is more authentically alternate, making no claim to be infallible, while acknowledging multiple ways of knowing and being. Within it are represented ideas of the subaltern and marginalized, being those of the indigenous, the impoverished, the rural, and the dying.

Through a deconstruction of the nation-state model and demonstration of its fundamental incompatibility with the sociopolitical and cultural history of South Asia, I derive one component of the state-nation from which citizenship and participation can be re- imagined. This is accomplished through an examination of how cosmopolitan-secularism is evident within the foundations of the Indian Constitution (1950), an aspirational document containing many directive principles. The Indian Constitution is in fact a unique example of a constitution which not only provides the basis of law and rights, but directs its current and future caretakers, to aspire towards an ideal which could not be made law at the time the Constitution was drafted. These are termed “directive principles" in the Indian Constitution.

It is from this vantage point that I see an Adivasi studies approach, as colluding with the intentions of cosmopolitan-secularism. The former is an indigenous framework for anti- oppression that seems perfectly suited as a pedagogy for achieving the latter. Correspondingly, the cosmovision of communalidad which is the basis of indigenous notions of plurality, works synchronously with EOL palliative care which considers spirituality a core feature in pedagogical practise. Regarding the latter, I have termed my understanding of how spirituality is evoked during EOL, as death democracy. This is the affirming of spirituality as the basis of authentic identity in the final moments of citizens as they exit the nation. I use the example of the employment of spirituality in palliative care, thus, to illustrate the necessity of spirituality as a component of curriculum.

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All four of the state-nation's components concretize the centrality of culture and belief as unalienable features of human identity and dignity. Through their convergence I evoke the ideal-type of the state-nation.

From this, a new understanding of statehood emerges through the re-education of its citizenry within re-envisaged notions of plurality. The conceptual framework of the state- nation therefore provides a distinct possibility for the re-imagination of both the national and the global. It also posits an alternate modernity to that which is envisaged in current hegemonic and normative assumptions, which are predominantly Western. It offers an alternate and sovereign course of development that is sustainable and rooted in indigenous forms of knowing and being. Indeed an alternate globalization also emerges, which is expressed as the solidarity or rather the intercultural plural democracy of the subaltern marginalized.

The Indian Constitution as Cosmopolitan-Secularism: An Alternate Statehood

It should be duly noted when considering the methodology of education reform to promote global citizenship, that “though we Euro-Americans like to think of ourselves as primarily individualistic…Western societies have tended to suppress over the millennia…Sparta was the dominant model, not Athens…if the liberal education so essential to a modern democratic society really wants to empower the individuals who must constantly re-create democracy, it needs to incorporate contemplative dimensions in its curriculum” (Thurman, 2006, p.1767). Humanists like Johann Pestalozzi and progressives like agreed with currents in South Asian pedagogies that education should be holistic and based on experiential learning with an emphasis on relationships, “understood as the art of cultivating the moral, emotional, physical, psychological, artistic, and spiritual—as well as intellectual—dimensions of the developing child” (Bhatta, 2009, p.50).

The post-independence (1947) model of Indian secularism has been described as an attempt at inclusivity and cosmopolitanism seeking to resolve the Western versus Eastern,

53 rationalist versus religious dichotomy. Yet this is an incorrect understanding of Indian secularism because it works from an epistemological supposition that science and spirit are contradictory. In Western secularism there are no multiple understandings of being. Within such a concept of secularism, the mind and body are separate, free will cannot exist if there is predestination, and education involving learning must necessarily involve un- learning. This means that education within Western secularism involves the losing or relinquishing of knowledges in favour of a single way of knowing which is described as truth. These suppositions stem from a tradition of Western philosophy that existed for , Aquinas, Calvin, Decartes, Mill, Hobbes, and Locke. These ideas of Western secularism reached their maturity in the period from the Reformation and Renaissance, to the Enlightenment and through the period of French Revolution until Napoleon, from 1515 to 1815. However they are not innate to Indian or Persian philosophy. The historical development of Central and South Asia witnessed fusion rather than the hegemony of singularity, manifesting itself as cosmopolitanism within composite forms of governance, religious traditions, poetry and literature, science, music, and language as the medium of cultural expression. This resulted in hybridity, intersectionality, multiplicity, and non- hierarchical coexisting identities.

The first charter of rights expressing legal guarantees of the equality of subjects and non- discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, and language, was created by Cyrus I (the Great) for the Acheamenian Persian Empire. This was the model for the UN Charter of Universal Human Rights (“A Brief History of Human Rights”, n.d.). Alexander, a non- Greek by Athenian classification, conquered Persia and then fused Greco-Persian ethno- religious traditions and law to create a society that identified with this cosmopolitan identity. Genghis Khan (Temujin) protected all religions and incorporated utilitarian aspects of subject peoples as part of Mongol governance such as Chinese administration, Steppe military organization, and Persian literature and science. The Mughal ruler of South Asia, Akbar, prohibited Sunni Islamic clerical edicts against his Hindu subjects, and created a religion based on the unity of beliefs of his subjects known as the Din Ilahi. The Ottomans with their Millet system, allowed regional self-administration according to customary laws, for each religious group within their empire. Russian rulers up to

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Alexander III encouraged a Eurasian identity, not specifically tied to Slavic ethnicity, which from European perspectives was wholly Asian73.

This can be juxtaposed with the evolution of the state, nationhood, and faith in the West, whose organizational character was singular, with definite and immutable categories. Central and South Asian empires tolerated and protected multiplicity, and did not equate religious faith with political allegiance. By contrast, nonconformity was prohibited and punished in the West, in an attempt to create uniformity. Christians persecuted Jews, Catholics fought Protestants. One of the main preoccupations of law was the manufacturing of national languages, inaugurating state sponsored official religions, and criminalizing divergent forms of worship. This secularism that evolved in the West was not the product of historical patterns, spiritual beliefs or enlightened thought. Rather it is the product of majoritarian political violence seeking to create immutable determinants of belonging within segregated spaces that became national identity. This is why citizenship, the criteria for belonging to the nation, essentially remains ethno-cultural.

All systems of law emanated from religion, an epistemology which frames the relation between an individual and their environment. Western religious traditions are monotheist, affirming a singular expression of truth, and a singular way of knowing it. This became the underlying ethos of government and its corresponding education system for producing citizens. Even in India the project of nation-state was forwarded:

in the name of modernization, South Asians were asked to relinquish their traditional values and opt for values that were purely western and projected as rational…the colonial masters dissected the composite society into compartments, thus unwittingly preparing the grounds for debasing the concept of a composite nationhood that was endogenous to the Indian subcontinent.” (Mishra, 2014, p.71).

Poets and philosophers such as Rabindranath Tagore (Hindu) and Muhammad Iqbal (Muslim), both cited the British introduction of the nation-state model as the cause of increased inter-communal violence and fractures within South Asian communities. Secularism is credited with removing religion from the sphere of politics and thereby reducing a category of differentiation, and thus source of conflict, within society. Yet

73 Used as a pejorative.

55 paradoxically Western secularism has contributed to increased social conflict and political fragmentation wherever it has been taken root. This is because the Western notion of nationalism made “religion relative rather than universal” and made “religion territorially specific and unsuited to the temperament of other nations” (Mishra, 2014, p.73).

Since according to Anderson (1983) nations are artificial constructions of “imagined communities”, it is necessary for governments to constantly reinforce a political allegiance among several ethno-nationalities. This is done by manufacturing a supra-identity into which the ethno-nationalities are subsumed. However the supra-identity is mutable because group identity formation is constantly evolving. This means that the process of imagining the nation-state is never ending. The nation-state is therefore insecure because it relies on “a psychological phenomenon, which is evident from the affiliation of individuals to a set of symbols and beliefs emphasising commonality among the members of a political order” (Mishra 2014, p.81).

A constitution had been a cornerstone demand of the Indian National Congress due to their belief that the precedence and case-law traditions of the British bred abuse among the judiciary. Moreover the socialist and republican sentiments of the Congress favoured a codified document which would resolve many of the competing issues which were brought to the forefront of the freedom struggle.74 A demand for a Constituent Assembly was made by the Congress in 1935 and accepted by the British in August 1940. The Constituent Assembly convened on December 9, 1946, and met for 11 sessions (11th: November 1949). As of June 3, 1947, after the Mountbatten Plan had resolved to create an independent Pakistan out of the united British subcontinent, the Indian Constituent Assembly continued until its final session with 299 members. Its final meeting on January 24, 1950, was not a session per se, but a ratification to sign the Constitution which it had produced through the course of its eleven sessions from 1946-1949 (“First Day of the Constituent Assembly”,

74 Such as the place of caste and religion within society and governance, and any possible affirmative action programs by way of reservations of seats in education facilities and electoral procedures.

56 n.d.). The context of ‘rights’ attached to socio-cultural communities were debated in the sessions of the Committee75 on Fundamental Rights.

In respect to the aforementioned discussion of this and the previous chapter, it is extremely relevant to note that the actual term ‘secularism’ did not feature in the original Indian Constitution (1950). ‘Secular’ was added as a definition of what India was declared to be, within the altered preamble to the Constitution document, as part of the 42nd Amendment in 1976. India went from being described as a “sovereign democratic republic” to a “sovereign socialist democratic republic” (“The Constitution {Forty Second Amendment} Act, 1976”, n.d.). This shift in the self-designation of the state was utilized as a thesis statement of sorts, according to which Indira Gandhi resolved to defend those values which were under threat from reactionary forces to progress. The 42nd Amendment was created during the authoritarian rule period of ‘the Emergency’ (June 25, 1975- March 21, 1977) with an aim to curb the interference of the judiciary and political opposition. This is extremely important since it is often assumed that India was both secular and socialist by definition, as per the wishes of its initial founders. This is perhaps why there are still so many lingering debates regarding the nature of Indian secularism which range from it being inadequately applied (Sinha, 1992; Gajendragadkar 1966; Engineer, 1998) to it being disingenuous pseudo-secularism (Madan, 1987; Nandy, 1985; Das, 1990;Shafee, 1998).

Although many within the Congress considered themselves as both secular and socialist, the issue of enshrining these categories in a binding document was contentious specifically because the terms lacked clarity and could therefore be determined by those who controlled the state. B.R. Ambedkar, the Dalit leader who was most radical in his desire for social revolution and opposed to Nehru and Gandhi on many issues, argued against the application of such vague or binding terms. Ambedkar pointed out that defining India as secular and socialist would actually be anti-democratic since it might limit the options of labour to choose their employment and predetermine the exact nature of social organization. Ambedkar emphasized that “such language was purely superfluous and unnecessary as socialist principles are already embodied in our Constitution” (“Constituent

75 The Constituent Assembly convened as several committees which were tasked with specific issues.

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Assembly of India, Volume 7”, n.d.). Such sentiments were echoed by those opposed to Indira Gandhi’s 42nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1976. Justice Hormusji Maneckji Seervai objected to its implementation because he found “such language ambiguous” (Deol, n.d.).

Western disagreement regarding India’s secular credentials is rooted in assessing whether disestablishment as per the Western example has taken place.76 Article 25 (1) not only yields the right to profess and practice religion, but taking “cognizance of the specific needs of particular communities” it allows the right to propagate and observe the practices associated with religion as distinct from the right to worship (Mahajan, 2000, p.38). In addition, “what gave secularism a distinct flavor in the Indian context was that the commitment to religious liberty for all was not accompanied by an equal commitment to the liberty of the individual” (Mahajan, 2001, p.40). The members of the Constituent Assembly (and the Congress party) viewed democracy as “an instrument for promoting social non-discrimination” and “group equality was the strategy that it adopted for realizing this end. In other words, it operated with the belief that promoting equality between groups and communities is the appropriate way of minimizing existing patterns of discrimination within society” (Mahajan, 2002, pp.40-41). This was based on the assessment that within Indian history, group affiliation was the basis of segregation and religious conflict. “Consequently, it was equality of different caste groups on the one hand, and of religious communities on the other, that became the cornerstone of the Indian Constitution” (Mahajan, 2002, p.41).

The Constituent Assembly came to the conclusion that the pure separation of church from state77 would disadvantage the traditionally disenfranchised and socially marginalized communities, who would suffer further hegemonic dominance:

After all, a strict division between state and religion would mean that the work undertaken by these communities would not receive assistance from the state. The

76 It is however important to note the case of the official Church of England. Here, restrictions of a discriminatory nature against non-Anglicans were gradually removed, although there was no disestablishment. 77 Not guaranteeing right-to-practice in the Constitution, and not enshrining government support for the upkeep of religious communities or socio-cultural groups.

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educational institutions and hospitals set up by them would not receive any financial support, or for that matter any other kind of assistance, from the state. While the economically and politically stronger communities may be able to survive under those circumstances, the relatively weaker groups would not be able to sustain their activities and institutions. Considerations of this kind prevailed in the decision not to pursue the policy of separation, and the various religious communities represented in the Assembly supported this point of view. (Mahajan, 2002, pp.41- 42). It is unique that the concept of affirmative action in India has revolved around entire communities rather than individuals. What this accomplishes, or at least what was in the minds of the Constitutional framers, was the protection of a distinct group culture by nurturing their continued practice of traditions in a social and economically stable political climate of coexistence:

The functionaries of the state were not called upon to forsake their religious identities in the public sphere and, what is of even greater importance, religious communities could enter into the public and political domain. They could carry on with their own way of life. They could have a public presence, from political parties, mobilize for their demands, and join in competitive politics. In other words, religious communities were treated like any other group in society and they were to receive the same consideration from the state and opportunities in the public domain. (Mahajan, 2002, p.42). In this reckoning, state intervention was decidedly positive and necessary because the Indian state considered itself obliged to maintain multiplicity (Bhargava, 2002, pp.18-19).78

Implicit in such an understanding is that religion, unlike personal faith or spirituality, is a collective and not an individual matter. Indian secularism sought to make social groups politically accountable by giving them a vested interest via corporate status. “In this view, then, the public presence of the religious practices of groups is guaranteed and entailed by the recognition of community-differentiated citizenship rights” (Bhargava, 2002, p.25). This also contributes to a “strategy of principled distance” which defines “whether or not the state intervenes or refrains from action depending on what really strengthens religious liberty and equality of citizenship for all”. However, the state does not abrogate its responsibility to intervene on behalf of individuals within faith groups because

78 Of course the nature of support is not stipulated in advance, but it has led government to support Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca or create the conditions for a public procession for festivals of faith.

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“impartiality does not entail the crude view of neutrality as equidistance…Treating people as equals is entirely consistent with differential treatment” (Bhargava, 2002, pp.26-27). This explanation can be used to understand why the Indian government chose to enact legislation to reform many aspects of the discriminatory caste system within Hinduism, while allowing personal law a jurisdiction among the Muslim community.

In Indian secularism “there did not exist an unambiguous project of dismantling religious communities as a condition of the operation of individual-specific liberal neutrality” (Bhargava, 2002, p.28). Moreover, “far from being a limiting factor to state formation in India…has generated the space essential for the foundation of a multicultural, poly-ethnic, and multicultural state” (Mitra and Fischer, 2002, p.100). The lack of a uniform civil code has “helped articulate preferences, aggregate them in terms of political positions, and, in the process strengthened the legitimacy of the state” (Mitra and Fischer, 2002, p.126). This contrasts with official multiculturalism in the West where a uniform law code exists, under the assumption of universal values (Barry, 2008; Kymlicka, 1995; Young, 1990; Shankar, 2003).

The Indian Constitution thus provides evidence of its capacity to be the platform from which further pedagogical reform is undertaken with regard to democratic participation and inclusive citizenship. Its directive principles79 provide an ethos for the state-nation. These include aspirations for the welfare of people through social, political and economic justice, and EFA. It is noteworthy that the Indian Constituent Assembly drew inspiration from the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The two found common cause in cosmopolitan- secularism, which was also the guiding ethos of the Indian National Movement and pre- colonial South Asian pedagogies.

79 Articles 34-50 in Part IV of the Indian Constitution.

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Indigeneity as an Anti-Oppression Framework: An Adivasi Studies Approach to De-Colonization

Minority communities encounter friction between the nation-state’s professed political identity and its national identity80. Most communities consider themselves nations in their own right, and therefore find it difficult to reconcile themselves to the status of being a minority within the nation-state. Minorities self-designate as nations, demonstrating nation-state criteria such as a dominant language, religion, culture, bounded home territory, and the desire for political sovereignty. In this way the nation-state nurtures its own rebels due to its lack of accommodative structures and because of “the incongruity between the social and the geographical connotations of these identities” (Mishra, 2014, p.75). The ethno-nationalism associated with the nation-state further complicates the dichotomy of inclusion (legitimate) versus exclusion (foreign) by stipulating that ‘indigeneity’ is a source of legitimacy.

However this indigeneity is conceptualized with an association to property ownership and possession, which is anathema compared to how indigenous spirituality (cosmovision) conceives of conjoint ownership in a shared ecosystem. In any case, indigeneity as a basis for state-hood, is impractical in South Asia because its history contains multiple migrations. G.S. Ghurye in The Aborigines—So-Called and Their Future (1943), argued that “to adjust the claims of the different strata of Indian society on the ground of their antiquity or comparative modernity of their settlement, is a formidably difficult task” (Ghurye, 1943, pp. 16-17). Many groups who claim homeland-indigeneity, migrated into their present areas, displacing other indigenous populations.

The Santhals may have settled in the territory where they live now, the Santhal Pargana or its adjacent areas, in the beginning of the 19th century. They may have even settled there later than the Bengalis. But that in no way negates the fact that their settlement in India is prior to that of the groups commonly referred to as the such as the Bengalis or Gujaratis…Conversely, the settlement of the Mizos in the country called India may have been a later development than those of the Gujaratis or Bengalis, but the fact remains that they are the original settlers of the place where they live now (Xaxa, 1999, p. 3592).

80 Gellner (1964) in Thought and Change wrote that political and national identity must be made interchangeable.

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Dominant communities whose power is expressed as political hegemony with resource control, even if they are indigenous to an area, only express their indigeneity when their power is threatened from those outside their own community. The nation-state appropriates indigeneity only as a function for the justification of sociopolitical dominance and resource control. This is false indigeneity or not indigeneity at all.

Andre Beteille argues that “tribes” in India are no different in their socioeconomic development and condition than peasants. He states that both histories are intertwined through the shared experience of victimization at the hands of upper-castes and colonial rulers (Beteille, 1974). Beteille like Ghurye, is of the opinion that unlike Western settler societies, there are no populations in India which can be labeled either settlers or aliens. Beteille blames British administrators for creating this differentiation between animist (rural-indigenous) and Hindu (urban-foreign) populations. He notes that the concept of a monolithic imported ‘Hinduism’ was itself a misrepresentation by the British, whose gaze upon Indian religious practice occurred through the lens of a Western search for singularity, hegemony and dogma to identify religion81.

In the absence of any evidence for the existence of these categories, ‘Hinduism’ was reversed engineered by the British who promoted the Gita and Vedas as ‘the book’ of the Hindus, while Brahmanism became its performance. The British ignored that there were in practice, multiple regional , all of which were syncretic and cosmopolitan in their development and ways of knowing:

The distinction is misleading, for one can hardly argue that animism and Hinduism exclude each other or have done so at any stage of Indian history. The thousands of castes and tribes on the Indian subcontinent have influenced each other in their religious beliefs and practices since the beginning of history and before. That the tribal religions have been influenced by Hinduism is widely accepted, but it is equally true that Hinduism, not only in its formative phase but throughout its evolution, has been influenced by tribal religions…In any case, Hinduism is indigenous to India in a sense in which Christianity is not indigenous to Australia or North America or, for that matter even Europe (Beteille, 1998, p. 190).

81 For example, the need to isolate and define one holy book, one set of ritual practise, one code of worship and behaviour, and generally a set of rules which were required to be followed by laity and enforced by clergy.

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N. Bose (1941) and S. Sinha (1958) would have concurred, seeing tribes as a dimension of the little tradition within Hinduism (Xaxa, 1999).

Another assumption that should be questioned is whether the loss of isolation coupled with interrelationships with or within non-indigenous society, leads to a loss of ‘tribalness’. Upon reflection, this seems as pedantic an argument as claiming that one’s ethno-cultural identity, or the legitimacy of the claimant’s self-designation, is relinquished upon removal of their physical self from a specific environment. This would mean that culture, rather than being performed in order to be lived and replicated, is solely dependent on location for the basis of its authenticity. If this is the case, then African-Americans, Italian-Canadians, Jewish people outside of Israel, and all Parsis82 are inauthentic and misguided in their assumption that they constitute members of a historical and cosmopolitan community.

Culture by this definition is stagnant and immutable, while diaspora is a nonsensical term. This is the argument behind tribe ceasing to be tribe and becoming caste. However, while members of any ethnic group may practice various religions, speak several languages, and partake in a variety of occupations, they remain part of a single ethnic group in some socially significant sense. Hence “tribes have become peasants and socially differentiated entities but, contrary to views held, without any loss of their distinctive identities” (Xaxa, 1999b, p. 1519).

It “is possible to embrace a form of Hindu faith and practises without becoming a part of Hindu society in the caste sense” (Xaxa, 1999b, p. 1521). Rather than Hindu civilization or plains agriculture, it was British colonialism that “inaugurated a radically new process of acculturation, in part by altering the material context in which Hinduism operated” (Kela, 2006, p. 509). Added to this, the emerging Indian nationalist movement began a “cultural standardization as an essential element of nationalism” leading to “homogenized patterns of worship as much as language, exemplified in the invention of modern Hindi” (Kela, 2006, p. 509). The consequence of this dual phenomenon was the emergence of an indigeneous (Adivasi) identity that “corresponds to an empirical and verifiable social reality” which makes the debate regarding whether were the original inhabitants, meaningless,

82 The Persian ethnic, Zoroastrian religion practising, Gujarati speaking, Indians.

63 since “they were certainly the original inhabitants of the they occupied in the colonial period” (Kela, 2006, p. 510).

Beteille has been engaged in re-conceptualizing theory and practice towards a South informed postcolonial sociology:

The native man was a man of colour who carried his identity as a native with him no matter where he went or what he did. Is there now such an essentialist view of indigenous people in which they carry their identity with them wherever they go and whatever they do? Has the crude anthropological association of race and culture acquired a more refined form in the concept of the indigenous people? (Beteille, 1998, p. 190).

Indeed he cautions that indigenous is slowly becoming a normative notion with implicit assumptions of validity and redress attached to it. Beteille seems worried that the imperialist underpinnings of sociology as a discipline, may potentially result in a neo- imperialism couched in the rhetoric of re-distributive justice. This threatens to become hegemonic, since it provides a pretext to claims of blood and soil (Shah, 2007).

An alternative, as J. Pathy suggests, is that indigeneity can be utilized to conceptualize an anti-oppression framework. I agree that an Adivasi approach to anti-oppression would contribute to a decolonized pedagogy. Adivasi scholar and activist Virginius Xaxa also concurs. He notes that the Adivasi experience is the sum of marginalizations, as a victimized and colonized people which has suffered a loss of customary territorial resources, cultural annihilation and powerlessness (Xaxa, 1999). As an Adivasi and sociologist, Virginius Xaxa notes that:

…this term of administrative convenience has now been adopted by the tribals themselves to mean the dispossessed, deprived people of a region. There is no claim to being the original inhabitants of that region, but a prior claim to the natural resources is asserted vis-à-vis the outsiders and the dominant caste. The tribal identity now gives the marginalized peoples self-esteem and pride (Xaxa, 1999, p. 3589). Hence the term Adivasi which was “forced upon them from outside precisely to mark out differences from the dominant community” has now been appropriated and internalized (Xaxa, 1999, p. 3589). This is why Luisa Steur claims that “indigenism is as much about claims for redistribution and democratization as about cultural recognition” (Steur, 2011b,

64 p. 91). She is of the opinion that “it is precisely in the lack of consensus on the ground on what indigenism means that there is hope that the present wave of indigenist mobilization can contribute toward reviving and deepening democracy” (Steur, 2011b, p. 91). This is why several socialist or peasant based organizations have begun to shift their activities to focus on indigeneity as a methodological framework through which claims for legitimate political space can be made (Steur, 2010).

Steur’s (2011b) reconceptualization of Tsing’s (2007) “travelling modes of indigenism” results in several possibilities regarding how to create an Adivasi studies framework for anti-oppression pedagogy. Organic-Indigenism is based on a respect for the environment as part of sustainable development and is a South-South dialogue represented by what Steur terms the -India axis. Autonomous Indigenism which advocates resource control within the framework of existing nation states, is part of the US-Australia axis. Democratic Indigenism which defines indigeneity as the lens through which historic dispersion of peoples and their dispossession of power and resources occurs, is a model which Steur notes is unique to India. It has resulted in creating alliances between various marginalized communities. A final variant is Communist-Indigenism which considers ethnic struggle as the precursor to class struggle, thereby giving primacy to rural movements within a socialist rhetoric. An example of this trend would be the movement of Mariategui, the communist leader of Peru, in the 1920s.

An Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression creates alliances between minority groups by re-conceptualizing and extending the identity of indigeneity to include all groups with minority power who have an attachment to the land83. “Democratic indigenism thus formulates its aspirations towards equality and justice in a cultural discourse of indigeneity…mixes the proud assertion of previously despised identities with an emphasis on equal opportunities in participating in modern society” (Steur, 2011b, p. 102). In so doing, an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression pedagogy mimics Ambedkar’s use of the term Dalit to include all oppressed people and not simply ‘untouchables’. The Adivasi studies approach also furthers the process of decolonizing pedagogy because “your caste

83 Refer to the KHAM alliance in Gujarat for another example. This was a government lead by Solanki based upon the electoral support of Khshtriya castes-Adivasi-Muslims and Dalits during the 1980s.

65 and religion don’t matter, it’s the intensity of oppression that counts” (Steur, 2011b, p. 103).

The association of indigeneity with subordination is also what the UN Special Rapporteur from 1982 to 1983, Jose Martinez Cobo84, highlighted as most critical to a definition for indigenous people. He noted that “subordination, often attributed to or described in terms of internal colonization, and cultural difference is thus stressed, whereas the question of being original settlers is regarded as less significant” (Karlsson, 2003, p. 407). Moreover it is on this basis, the UN definition of indigeneity, that a Dalit (former ‘untouchables’) delegation claims inclusion to the UN-WGIP meetings. Within India the Dalit-Indigenous alliance has re-located Dalits according to their sociological realities, as indigenous- oppressed peoples. Adivasis are represented at the UN-WGIP by the Indian Council of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples (ICITP) which was created in 1987, and is headed by Dr. Ram Dayal Munda85. The distinct use of both terms, indigenous and tribal within the ICITP title, is further evidence of the complexities of terminology, identification and status86. It is also important to reflect that “self-identification has been adopted as one of the fundamental principles in international law and practice relating to IPs (eg. ILO Convention 169)…it is the central aspect of their self-determination” (Karlsson, 2003, p. 413).

Recent scholarship has, therefore, advocated sidestepping tribal studies paradigms which engage in the aforementioned debates about the creation, positioning and maintenance of identity. Rather, an Adivasi studies approach seems to be sought which combines the fields of indigenous and subaltern studies to highlight conditions of de-coloniality (Mignolo, 2007). An Adivasi studies framework could utilize intersectionality as developed by Black feminists, to create ‘standpoint’. Darley Kjosavik describes indigenist standpoint epistemology as the intersection between class and indigeneity which could create

84 Cobo’s successor as UN Special Rapporteur, Miquel Alfonso Martinez, criticized Cobo and wrote a report in 1998 which stated that Asian and African people could not use the term indigenous because it applied specifically to European colonized areas. 85 PhD Linguistics (), former Vice Chancellor of University, leader of the movement which created a new ‘indigenous’ state (Jharkhand) from out of Bihar state in 2000. 86 Kent Wolf uses an ethnomusicology approach to conclude that music is part of self-articulation, and therefore by whatever name, tribes exist. (2001).

66 knowledge towards indigenous emancipation as well as other underprivileged peoples. This might yield alternate “conceptualizations of the social world; the epistemic privilege comes from the structured nature of oppression” (Kjosavik, 2011, p. 120).

An Adivasi studies approach to decolonization of pedagogy creates an anti-oppression framework which facilitates the state-nation. It allows the causes of victimization to be analyzed without objectifying the victims. More importantly, the Adivasi studies approach prohibits victimhood becoming an identity or category of contest between communities. Inter-cultural, as well as cosmopolitan global, discourse is facilitated by this multi-logical pedagogy.

Communalidad as an Intercultural Alternate Citizenship The foundation of indigenous cosmography87 is that multiplicity88 exists in nature by design. Hence, any attempt at reductionism is counter-intuitive to life itself. This core feature of indigenous pedagogy, its rootedness to nature, contrasts it with Western models. The latter are the product of a conquest dialectic rather than a cosmovision of interdependence. Western pedagogies originate from the 18th century Enlightenment and 19th century Industrial Revolution that projected man as the measure of all things. Science, having demystified nature, proceeded to empower man to dominate his environment. By contrast, pedagogies affiliated with indigenous cosmovision considers environmentalism to be their operating principle. Respect for nature and its stewardship is understood as a spiritual mandate.

Communalidad is a term that has been created in Spanish “with no exact translation”. It means “more than solidarity or community”. It refers to a “way of being” and to “relationships of individuals with their surroundings and inter-connectedness of communities” (Meyer and Alvarado, 2010). Communalidad has been utilized to foster a South-South dialogue concerning post-colonial, alternate and endogenous development. Communalidad is the application of South and Latin American indigeneity as a means of re-conceptualizing inclusive citizenship. De-centralization, the community control over the

87 Noted as Cosmovision (worldview) in Spanish, to express the indigenous concept. (Lupien, p.775, 2010). 88 Noted as plurinacionalidad (plurinationality) in Spanish, to express the indigenous concept. (Lupien, p.775, 2010).

67 content and direction of education, is the foundation of communalidad. Through it, the state-nation may be evoked “according to an indigenous worldview that promotes alternative concepts of democracy, citizenship, land ownership and resource use.” (Lupien, p.744, 2010).

Communalidad is a component of the state-nation because it resists the hegemonic uni- cultural nation-state. Communalidad provides the state-nation a:

political-institutional approach that respects and protects multiple but complementary sociocultural identities. State-nation policies recognize the legitimate public and even political expression of active sociocultural cleavages, and they include mechanisms to accommodate competing or conflicting claims made on behalf of those divisions without imposing or privileging, in a discriminatory way, any one claim. State-nation policies involve crafting a sense of belonging (or “we-feeling”) with respect to the state-wide political community…(Stepan et. al., 2010, pp. 4-5) This is relevant to India since the post-colonial state aspired to Gandhi’s idea of anekta mein ekta (unity in diversity). India refuted the claims of Muslim League leaders such as Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who founded Pakistan based upon the ‘two nation theory’, proclaiming that Muslims constituted a separate South Asian history and culture from their Hindu counterparts89. India’s constitution proclaimed the post-colonial state’s recognition of multiple national languages90 and an affirmative action program for scheduled castes and tribes (Chatterjee, 2004; Chakrabarty, 2002). Hence:

the trajectory of multiculturalism in the context of India is therefore distinctively different from the experience of Western , because prima facie, starting from a pluralistic self-image, there is no ostensible ‘culture’ (other than, of course, that of the imagined national community) against which the ‘multi’ must be calibrated. Equal dignity for all cultures is already implicit in this position, if not in the present, then at least in an imagined future (Kapila, 2008, p. 120).

Dr. Fidel Tubino, Coordinator of the International Network of Intercultural Studies in Peru91 and co-author of Interculturalidad, un desafio (1992)92, has stated that inter-

89 Recall that the British also refuted that India was a single country, culture or civilization. Hence the Indian independence movement stressed the legitimacy of India as a concept as well as a culture and a nation. 90 Of which there are 22. 91 Red International de Estudios interculturales—RIDEI. Professor, Department of Humanities at the Pontificia Catholic University of Peru (PUCP).

68 culturalism is a process of “necessary conditions for a new social configuration that allows historically marginalized indigenous groups and others…to pursue cultural, political and economic equality in nations refounded on an anticolonial basis” (Tubino, 2013, p.605).93

Successful political mobilization, coupled with progressive anti-oppression education, has contributed to the growth of intercultural praxis in the Andean-Amazonian region of South America. These pedagogical reforms have made such an impact that intercultural is mentioned 23 times in the amended constitution of Ecuador, and on 27 occasions in the amended constitution of Bolivia. “Interculturality is envisioned as a new approach to a decolonized national re-foundation in which the indigenous peoples would serve as a socio- political-cultural agent in a new attempt to achieve national sovereignty” (Tubino, 2013, p.605.

The success of indigenous movements across South and Central America has allowed Evo Morales to become Bolivia’s first leader of indigenous origin. More importantly communalidad has raised the prospect for a re-conceptualization of citizenship and participatory democracy, not simply by enfranchisement into the status quo, but through a reform of the nation-state itself. This is noteworthy because it is the nation-state concept which replicates hegemonic singularity and therefore makes the most genuine attempts at citizenship education and pedagogic reforms, problematic. Most colonial nations were liberated via the replacement of their imperial hegemony with a class and mono-ethnic- cultural hegemony. This entrenched the model of the nation-state. Inter-culturality offers the chance to launch ‘postcolonial 2.0’ “to re-found the nation on an anticolonial and intercultural basis that will provide cultural, economic and political equality and diversity in a vision that includes ecosystems as well as human cultures” (Tubino, 2013, p.605).

Tubino states that intercultural education is opposed to acculturation. Whereas the aim of nation-state multiculturalism has been affirmative action, Tubino notes that inter- culturalism must make possible transformative action whose aim is to create the space for dialogue. It is the dialogical context that Tubino highlights as being necessary for the

92 Interculturality, a Challenge. 93 Article has been translated to English by John H. Sinnigen.

69 success of inter-culturalism. This is because it is invisibleness and the lack of agency that cause marginalization. Rather than doing something to indigenous and marginalized groups, Tubino desires to afford them sociopolitical sovereignty. Inter-culturalism is a political ethos as much as it is a facet of education policy. Communalidad is the “basis of a new postmodern variegated national identity” (Tubino, 2013, p.606).

Although inter-culturalism has been accepted in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador “this arrangement is a strange one because nation-states have always made the creation of a homogeneous national identity through so-called policies of national construction an essential task…transmitted through public education…” (Tubino, 2013, p.607). Inter- culturalism may not succeed in its transformation initiative “precisely because it questions the existing model of the nation-state” (Tubino, 2013, p.607). Therefore “the real issue is not one of finding ways to decentralize the current homogenizing nation-state by extending social coverage and making the state more efficient”. Instead, communalidad seeks to assist in evoking a sociopolitical revolution by re-conceptualizing citizenship and belonging. Inter-culturalism like any other revolutionary pedagogy, may actually suffer from its association with the nation-state. “Do socially critical discourses tend to become functional and technical when they are incorporated into the state apparatus?” (Tubino, 2013, p.608).

Communalidad enacts change because it is an experiential pedagogy through which “cultures begin to be understood as a diachronic process that develop in time rather than as static synchronic structures” (Tubino, 2013, p.611). Cultures are not inherent but evolutionary, and do not require the preservation or saving of their essential or timeless essence. As such, communalidad posits culture as “conserved through change” through an “improvement of the exchanges and the symmetry of contacts rather than a return to an idealised past or an abstract cultural essence” (Tubino, 2013, p.611). This view of culture, especially that of the marginalized, avoids risking the withdrawal of communities which insist on recovering something lost or ancestral. Inter-culturalism thereby supports the heterogeneity of identity formation. This is both personal and community based “formed by a diversity of forms and conceptions that come from inside and from outside the group” (Heise et.al., 1992; Monsonyi et. al., 1983).

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Intercultural education recognizes that external influences “are and should be welcome. The important thing is preparing subjects from the subaltern culture to challenge the hegemonic cultures actively rather than limiting themselves to passive assimilation” (Tubino, 2013, p.611). This differs from multiculturalism as a pedagogical approach because inter-culturalism “stipulates that the strengthening of indigenous ethnic cultural identity must be achieved through dialogue rather than as a necessary precondition for that dialogue” (Tubino, 2013, p.612). Cultural entities do not exist in a vacuum that pre-exist intercultural relations. Moreover, “identity is a self-conception that is always constructed in relation to an Other rather than a self-contained entity that is independent of otherness and outside of socializing processes” (Tubino, 2013, p.612). The value of inter-culturalism is that it “reconstructs processes of socialization that are produced in asymmetrical multicultural contexts” (Tubino, 2013, p.612). By extension schools can then become spaces of social deliberation.

The multicultural education model was propagated by nation-states in the West during the 1980s and 1990s to avoid the reality that besides food and folklore, different cultures may possess “fundamentally different and opposing ideas regarding God, the family, the State, the earth, society and basic moral and political obligations” (Kymlicka, 2003, p.64). Multiculturalism attempts to tease out universal truisms and beliefs which bind humanity together. This approach unwittingly ignores or minimizes differences which may contribute to distinct social identities. This is accommodation effected by the tactics of tolerance, avoidance, reductionism, and essentializing. In this manner multiculturalism functions to avoid confrontations but seldom produces equality. Inter-culturalism actively attempts to create new understandings of citizenship and participatory democracy. “There is not one, but rather many ways to be a citizen…What is at stake, then, is the possibility of recreating modernity based on multiple traditions” (Tubino, 2013, pp.617-618).

This is “one of the greatest distinguishing features of the indigenous worldview”, that it involves the concept of plurinacionalidad whose framework is based upon “participatory democracy, local decision-making, communal ownership of land and the capacity to exercise full citizenship without abandoning cultural practises” (Lupien, 2010, p.776). In the preamble to the Ecuadorean constitution (2008) which was approved by referendum

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(64%), cosmovision is affirmed through a recognition that Ecuador is composed of “different races and spiritualities”. Sumak Kawsay94, the Quichua concept of “good life in harmony”, is declared as an aspiration of Ecuadoran society (Lupien, 2010, p.780). Throughout the Constitution, collective rights are given equal status to individual rights because personas (people), comunidades (communities) as well as pueblos y nacionalidades (peoples and nations) are legitimized through their legal recognition (Lupien, 2010, p.780).

Article 71 stipulates “the right of Pacha Mama (Nature)95 to exist and regenerate” (Lupien, p.783, 2010). The right to be educated according to one’s own culture, and also with intercultural education, is enshrined in Articles 29 and 347 (Lupien, 2010, p.783). The Bolivian Constitution (2009) contains similar edicts such as that of Article 8 which recognizes that the state is based on “Aymara values of ama qhilla, ama llulla, ama suwa, suma qamana, nandreko” which means don’t be lazy/lie/steal, live well and in harmony (Lupien, 2010, p.787). It also charges schools with recognizing that there are various ways of knowing and spirituality. Universities and government are held responsible for educating and maintaining indigenous knowledge in medicine.96

Communalidad and interculturalidad seek to create multiple sites for identity to manifest, so that these interactions can lead to new understandings of culture and community. As Stepan et. al., (2010) have stated, this is a “most urgent conceptual, normative, and political” task, to “think anew about how polities that aspire to be democracies can accommodate great sociocultural and even multinational diversity within one state” (Stepan et. al., 2010, p.50). This is because the “logic of nation-state building and the logic of democracy building will come into conflict” due to the fact that within the nation-state only one ‘nation’ is “privileged in the state-building effort, while the other ‘nations’ remain unrecognized and may even be marginalized” (Stepan et.al., 2010, p.51). By contrast, state-nation policies are those that “protect multiple but complementary sociocultural

94 Understood in Spanish as Vivir bien. 95 Quichua terms are utilized in the Constitution. 96 Articles 35, 42, 86, and 95.

72 identities…accommodate competing or conflicting claims” and under whose initiative “we- feeling” is fostered (sic. Stepan et. al., 2010, p.53).

Communalidad adds the dimension of intercultural citizenship as an alternative framework which is referenced by the state-nation in its quest to evoke education reform. Communalidad is allied to an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression, since both share their inspiration from indigenous concepts of knowing and being. These multi-logical pedagogies facilitate cosmopolitan-secularism.

Death Democracy, A Palliative Care Pedagogy for Inclusivity: A case study of curriculum reform in palliative care End Of Life (EOL) is illuminating. This has been an effort to achieve the globalization of best practices regarding the most humane and democratic practices during the end of life process. It has been an effort to radically alter Western dominated intellectual discourse and practice concerning the pedagogy of EOL care. The quest for death democracy97 is the final component which contributes to my ideal-type of the state-nation. A discussion concerning death democracy illustrates how spirituality is a pedagogy for inclusivity, whose foundation is shared by cosmopolitan-secularism, an Adivasi studies approach, and communalidad. Death democracy, how spirituality is evoked during EOL, is an affirmation by the nation state that the basis of authentic identity resides in the articulation and expression of the spiritual self.

This is why a case study of curriculum reform, globally effecting palliative care, is important. It is an acknowledgement that in the final moments of citizens, as they exit the nation, their spiritual identity must take precedence over all other sociopolitical affiliations. Hence, I use the example of the employment of spirituality in palliative care, to illustrate the necessity of spirituality as a component of curriculum. India is known for the plurity of its spiritual practises. It is often repeated that India is the birthplace of many major spiritual traditions, and one of the few places in the world where diverse spiritual traditions interact with each other. As illustrated in chapter two, India’s history exhibits a cosmopolitan- secularism whose basis has been intercultural and multi-logical. Moreover, each of India’s spiritual traditions has evolved from pedagogical convergence and intersection. It is for

97 My term.

73 this reason that an examination of India, in the context of re-inculcating spirituality as part of education reform, proves instructive. Moreover, as will become obvious through an elaboration of death democracy, India’s pedagogical traditions espouse notions of death as being a life process of intimacy and fellowship. As such, spirituality emerges as the performative aspect of pedagogical wisdom, a wisdom that attests to love, compassion, communion, interdependence, and reciprocity. This wisdom has long been absent from the curriculum of death (EOL palliative care), and life (education).

It may be argued that palliative care has been the only field in which spirituality has gained recognition as an essential dimension of holistic education. This is remarkable, especially since palliative care is a medical-scientific field, where Western methodologies have long been hegemonic and universalized. It is therefore, even more remarkable, that spirituality has been affirmed by the UN as a globally recognized human right for both identity and dignity. The WHO (World Health Organization) in 2002, recognized that the absence of spirituality as a performative, vocative and mental-emotional experience, was a crucial oversight in the delivery of health services during EOL. The WHO determined that ignoring cultural preferences and knowledges was tantamount to invisibilizing the person and denying their experiences. Accordingly, spiritual care was declared to be a core element of palliative care curricular reform (“Palliative Care is an Essential Part of Cancer Control”, n.d.).

Eastern and pre-Industrial Revolution Western sociocultural practices treated death as part of the life cycle. Prior to the advent of the funeral home and the professionalization of death services beyond the undertaker, most people experienced the intimacy of loss within their own homes (Wilde, 2014).98 Bodies of the deceased were washed, dressed and lain out by their families in the parlours or confined areas of their own homes. Friends and family would morn and grieve together while religious services or wakes were held on the premises. Death and the departed were not ostracized or separated from the living, and this

98 The industrialization of the furniture industry and the popularity of embalming during and after the American Civil War also contributed (40 000 were embalmed of 650 000 deaths) as did Lincoln’s assassination after which his embalmed bodied was toured through 444 communities (Wilde, 2014).

74 performative responsibility of families to the deceased was an engagement which served to celebrate the love and connectivity of the spirit as a pedagogical praxis.

“We’ve taken death out of the home, and when we took death out of the home we stopped learning about dying and what to do about it. And when you stop learning how to do something…we get scared…and we stop talking about it” (Atkins, 2013). The professionalization of a death industry has thus “rendered the rest of us death amateurs…the leap from a culture of death acceptance to death denial” (Wilde, 2014).99 With the gradual removal of death and the intimacy of its experiences, one may say that a natural and regular life phenomenon has “become pornographized” (Gavrieli, 2013). What this means is that death is now treated as something most unfamiliar and un-natural (Bennett, 2013). Our association with death has changed from one which was considered natural and not to be feared, to something that is to be shunned. In this process our mental and emotional relationship with EOL has become perverse due to a fractured emotional- mental awareness. In this way, death has become juxtaposed to life, as pornography is to love (Saul, 2013).

The hospice movement of the mid- 20th century led by Dame , attempted to reclaim the EOL process. Saunders’ conceptual framework drew upon her multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary training in nursing, social work and medicine (doctor). From her experiences as well as academic qualifications, Saunders began to humanize the EOL process by reintegrating elements beyond the treatment of symptoms for patients. She noted that there were many components to pain beyond the physical. Saunders stated that the alleviation of spiritual pain would serve to ease the apprehension and terror of both patients and their loved ones. Saunders also criticized the sterile environment of unfamiliar surroundings within the hospital, as most damaging for the psyche of the patient. She considered this to be an artificial separation, removal and seclusion of a victimized person. It was like a pre-death, ceremonial, out-casting of the patient from their surroundings, material and human attachments. Saunders wrote that this

99 Wilde goes on to note how unsustainable and eco-harming the death industry is regarding the statistics of steel, wood, embalming fluid that is underground.

75 was a great source of psychosocial distress (“Brief History of the Hospice Movement”, n.d.).

The evolving global consensus regarding a conceptual framework for palliative care, represents a non-fractured interdisciplinary pedagogy for EOL that attempts to “occupy death”100 by reclaiming patient and family agency regarding the death process. This effort is no less than an attempt to re-conceptualize citizenship by broadening inclusion. This is accomplished by accepting spirituality as an alternate ways of knowing. Palliative care EOL affirms spirituality as a core feature of identity and personhood. Essential as an aspect of life, it is criminal to neglect or deny a person’s spirituality during EOL when they are at their most vulnerable and without agency or advocate. Moreover by denying a patient at EOL their spirituality, refusing to engage with them on their terms, or by assessing their spirituality as delusional, we trivialize human emotions and infantilize a person who has reached the maturity of their existence.

The similarities between this and imperial narratives concerning subject peoples being tribal, effeminate, irrational, and ill-educated, should be evident. The current discussion also substantiates the previous sections of this chapter where it was illustrated that there is a commonality between methodologies of hegemonic oppression, and also a commonality of the circumstances of the marginalized victims. Spirituality, as the root of a curriculum reform for death (EOL), allows spirituality to be taken seriously and more easily inform pedagogical reforms for life. Gandhi said that how we treat the most marginalized in our society is an indication of the worth of our democracy. I believe that an equally valid statement is that, we can gauge how inclusive our concept of belonging and participation is by witnessing how we treat the dying.

Refusing to listen to an EOL patient or interact with them during their last moments of consciousness/speech/receptiveness, creates spirit injury and fractures the living from the departing. It also overlooks the utility of these ‘visions’ which have been documented for over six centuries, as being mostly comforting and creating hope and security for the patient. This is a case where “it doesn’t matter why they happen (visions), it matters that

100 Saul’s quote, analogy to “occupy Wall Street” (ie. reclaim the death process) (Saul, 2013).

76 they do…More often than not, people (patient’s families) reach for medication to quell something they don’t understand... They (families) miss an opportunity to meet the dying person where they are…Is any of this real? I say yes, because it’s real to the people it’s happening to…I’m a researcher and I don’t know how to measure wonder, but I do know what it feels like” (Atkins, 2013).

Palliative care’s embracing of spirituality has earned the grudging tolerance of the medical community. The latter admit that while medical interventions are currently nearly 100% reliable to ease physical pain, that 90% of patient distress during EOL is caused by the lack of attention to and alleviation of the patient’s psychosocial state (Saul, 2013). The confrontation or ambiguity between medical personal towards palliative professionals, arises from doctors perceptions that their own goals are life-saving or prolonging while palliative services are caregivers when all else has failed and doctors have given up.101 This mentality regarding EOL is replicated in the general population. Both patients and their families, rarely speak of death or EOL choices regarding medical interventions and palliative services, prior to the onset of the most grave circumstances. At this time the wishes of the patient may not be known, and the conversation by the family is conducted under duress of impending doom or at the request of the hospital staff.

Studies have shown that dying in intensive-care is seven times more stressful than dying out of that ward. Yet more than one in five people are estimated (in the USA) to die in intensive-care (Saul, 2013). Hospice allows people to retain the dignity of their physical and spiritual selves during the most vulnerable, and possibly most important, part of their lives (Indrawan, 2012). Hospice, which is part of palliative care EOL pedagogy, advocates that all attempts should be made not to divorce an individual from the safety of their environment.

The palliative care EOL pedagogy involves active listening and mindfulness. “Their hearts opened and they shared with me the stories of their life…that they had never shared before…their fears and their regrets. They shared love” (Indrawan, 2012). The palliative care framework thus allows “a living memorial service” to occur through which family can

101 In this manner, palliative care givers are sometimes even despised as gatekeepers for death.

77 dialogue and express intimacy with the patient prior to departure in a safe environment. Fellowship and communion, as well as confession, may be achieved in this manner, whereby a celebration of life occurs in the presence of the patient (Indrawan, 2012). Murphy (1999) determined that the EOL family meeting was a “sacred event” following a pattern of including the patient in the process of re-telling the family story, confessing fears and worries, allowing all members to speak equally validating all feelings, and closing with a blessing or feeling of peace. The roles of “story-teller” and “witness” are equivalent in this model (Tan et. al., 2011). Kashiwagi (1995) who studies Japanese EOL palliative situations, concurs that the basic spiritual need of the patient is “to be listened to with respect. Active listening is very important for understanding and gaining insight into the messages, sometimes symbolic, which might be given by the dying”.

Hence, as with the other components of the state-nation, reciprocity is an important aspect of death democracy. This reciprocity is an expression of the interdependence between individuals, a strong current in communalidad. The sharing of intimate feelings as part of death democracy reflects the goals of education to create safe spaces of inclusion, where all opinions are equal and where multi-logical discourse can occur. This speaks to an Adivasi approach to de-colonialize ways of knowing that facilitate anti-oppression frameworks. While, the symbolic act of the re-telling of stories and the vocalization of memories in death democracy, is similar to South Asian pedagogical traditions where contemplation results in renewed understandings.

A study of death and dying is informative as a lens to critically deconstruct identity, culture and belonging. Death presents liminality which is a feature that confounds the immutable categories of life presented in normative understandings:

In death we find the cohabitation of utter darkness and blinding light. The darkness is of separation, of powerlessness, of grief, and the light, of togetherness, of community, of love. In death we find the conflicting desire for both words and silence. We have everything to say and yet nothing to be spoken. We find in death the mixture of both the sacred and the profane. In the same breath we curse God and we bless God. In death we find our most earthly reality and our most transcendent thoughts. And this paradox is difficult for us in North America to grasp. We like confidence, we like certainty, we like strength, we like speed, we like knowledge, we like the exceptional, and death is none of these things. And the

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farther we move away from death the farther we move away from humanity (Wilde, 2014). A palliative care EOL framework is a case study for re-conceptualizing participation and citizenship intercultural death democracy. It is also holistic and mindful in respect to acknowledging that grief is a learning process. Grief is therefore, continuous, rather than how Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (1969) described it as a five stage complete and terminating, process.102 Here, we once again encounter the distinction between education as a life-long process of acquiring wisdom, as opposed to a finite journey of acquiring information or skill.

The WHO facilitated the acceptance of the notion of spirituality within pedagogical discourse, not simply due to its stature as a global organization which is both ‘medical and scientific’ in orientation, but because it allowed for a clarity of definition to be brought to the word spirituality. In 2014, the WHO produced a Global Atlas of Palliative Care at the End of Life. Religion may be defined as:

a fusing of memories and experiences around symbols that are regarded as possessing powers that transcend ordinary life, and the shared experiences that unite people into a community. It is such communities that give religions, their role in public life, for in them very often people find a sense of identity…Religious beliefs are therefore understood as an ineradicable part of culture, that is, all those patterns of behaviour through which are transmitted from one generation to another. Religion is not, then, a self-sufficient entity, but it is embedded in the historical process that shape, and respond to, all human creativity (Embree, 2002, p.54). Spirituality however, can mean different things to different peoples. 103 The point of convergence regarding its definition is as it references humans as spiritual beings. This inform the connection between spirituality and healing (Narayanasamy, 2007). When the WHO mandated that spirituality was a core feature of palliative care104, it leant credibility for the mainstreaming of both the term and its inclusion in the curriculum of health-

102 Kubler-Ross, (1969). On death and dying. According to this one moves from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance. 103 For example: a dimension of being human and giving sense and love (Chandler et. el., 1992); a capacity for inner knowing and strength (Burkhardt, 1994); a subjective experience of sacredness (Vaughan, 1995); an experience of radical truth (Legere, 1984); ultimate values (Cawley, 1997); connectedness (Sherwood, 1995); the idea of meaning and purpose, hope and value (Swinton, 2002). 104 The four pillars of palliative care: advance care planning, pain management, caregiving support, spirituality.

79 sciences. Suddenly there was an opportunity for the inclusion of hitherto, alternative practices of medicines and healing and their corresponding multiple ways of knowing and being.

There have been many studies to indicate that spiritual distress is directly proportional to lower recovery rates and adjustment to illness. It has also been known for a long time that medical personnel are required to resolve distress as part of their treatment plan (Fitchet et. al., 1999). The next step was to create psychosocial spiritual assessment questionnaires (Anandarajah and Hight, 2001; Puchalski et. al., 2000). Their acronyms suggest the criteria being assessed. For example, HOPE stands for: sources of Hope, role of Organized religion, Personal spirituality and practices, and Effects on medical care and EOL decisions (Anandarajah and Hight, 2001; “Assessing Spirituality”, n.d.) .105 Sociological studies conducted, indicated that 83% of patient respondents wanted medical personnel to inquire about their spiritual beliefs or discuss spirituality (McCord et. al., 2004; Bussmann et. al., 2015). The main criticism of patients and families was the lack of “interpersonal humane interaction” regarding “support for families” in the category of “psychological and spiritual welfare” (Bussmann, 2015).106

The marginalized cannot locate themselves within hegemonic curricula. Neither do they receive any knowledge which is applicable to the improvement of their condition. They are effectively pushed-out of the system. Death democracy seeks to provide a framework for inclusion, so that the needs of the marginalized are prioritized. Recently, a European, American and Canadian initiative was created to globalize the reform of medical curricula (Abbas et. al., 2011) in accordance with WHO recommendations and to improve upon the aforementioned findings of the studies.107 The first Ph.D. in palliative care has also been created. It is founded upon a cross-curricular intercultural and cosmopolitan perspective.108

The most progressive example of how the education reform represented by the inclusion of spirituality integrated into pedagogy and praxis, can be illustrated via the EAPC (European

105 Other assessment guide mnemonics are: SPIRIT, FICA, BELIEF, RESPECT, LEARN, ADHERE, and ETHNICS. 106 A study of 12 European countries in 2012 found the worst (Aiken et. al., 2004). 107 Eg. Canadian Association for Spiritual Care (“Canadian Association for Spiritual Care, Homepage”, n.d.). 108 The University of Lancaster in the UK.

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Association for Palliative Care), specifically using the example of the Netherlands (van de Geer and Leget, 2012; “European Association for Palliative Care, Homepage”, n.d.).109 In 2001, the Dutch government mandated that hospice and palliative care be integrated as regular features of health care in the Netherlands. This led to a Dutch consensus-based national guideline for multidisciplinary spiritual care as part of palliative care, and a professional curriculum for healthcare chaplaincy (van de Geer and Leget, 2012). As part of this initiative and its experiences, the Dutch led in the creation of the Taskforce on Spiritual Care in the European Association of Palliative Care (van de Geer and Leget, 2012). It was felt that “the compartmentalization of Dutch society, where healthcare was being organized along confessional/denominational lines, spirituality became neglected or implicit for decades”. In addition, that “during the modernization of healthcare in the 1960s, the development of professional language concerning chaplaincy and psychosocial care in a secularizing society created a blind spot for this fundamental dimension of care” (van de Geer and Leget, 2012, p.98).

In 2002, the Dutch Association of Spiritual Caregivers in Healthcare Institutions (VGVZ) amended their definition of healthcare chaplain as one who gives “professional and official guidance of and caregiving to people in the process of seeking meaning for their existence, from and on the basis of religious and existential convictions, and professional consultation in ethical and philosophical aspects of healthcare and management” (van de Geer and Leget, 2012, p.98). But this definition failed to explicitly mention spirituality and “this linguistically peculiar situation was one of the reasons that spirituality was often neglected…healthcare chaplains had to establish their role within a bio-psycho-social model of healthcare, without using an important part of their specific expertise: the language of spiritual care” (van de Geer and Leget, 2012, p.98).110 Further debate ensued in 2007, surrounding how to integrate a multidenominational chaplaincy. There was also much “fear of being taken less seriously by other professionals and being seen as associated

109 The report is How spirituality is integrated system-wide in the Netherlands Palliative Care National Programme (van de Geer and Leget, 2012). 110 In a 768 page book on Comprehensive Cancer Centres, for example, ‘spirituality’ was mentioned twice, in the index. (van de Geer and Leget, 2012, p.100).

81 with representatives of trendy, popular, or vague spiritual movements” (van de Geer and Leget, 2012, p.99).

Between 2009 and 2012, the Dutch government supported the organization and facilitation of European conferences in conjunction with the EAPC111. In 2009, a Consensus Conference was held in California (USA)112 to discuss how an agreement that spirituality was an essential but overlooked aspect of palliative care, could be moved into a global counter-hegemonic discussion regarding EOL practices (Puchalski et. al., 2009). This encouraged the EAPC to create and expand its research and education department for spirituality. The EAPC also began to create an inventory for competencies, to sponsor regular programs and conferences with invited regional and global specialists, and to gain a wider audience for its advocacy through the globalization of its initiatives.113 In 2010, the EAPC Taskforce on Spiritual Care in Palliative Care was established. It produced the following definition:

Spirituality is the dynamic dimension of human life that relates to the way persons (individuals and community) experience, express and/or seek meaning, purpose and transcendence, and the way they connect to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, to the significant and/or the sacred. It is multidimensional: existential challenges (identity, suffering, guilt, death, shame, reconciliation and forgiveness, freedom, responsibility, hope, love, despair, joy); value based and attitudes (what is important for each person, relationship, family, work, things, art, culture, ethics, morals and life, friends, nature); religious foundations and considerations (faith beliefs, relationship with God or the ultimate) (“EAPC Taskforce on Spiritual Care in Palliative Care”, n.d.; Nolan, Saltmarsh and Leget, 2011). The Dutch Spiritual Care Nation Wide Guideline approved in 2013, notes that spirituality is “the philosophical/life reviewing functioning of man, to which questions of experiencing meaning and giving meaning can be accounted”. It also accounts for variations in the definition of spirituality by stating that “for some people the accent is on the emotional

111 Established December 1988 with 42 founding members. As of 2015, it has 48 global members. 112A good summary of the history and documents of multinational participation in this and other conferences regarding guidelines for spiritual chaplaincy can be found in the collated Canadian (CASC) (Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association, 2013). 113 14 European countries as well as India, Canada, USA, Georgia, Argentina, South Africa and Peru are also EAPC Taskforce. Note that India and Peru are examples of intercultural state-nation used in this chapter. In the USA, Dr. Christina Puchalski’s GWish (George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health) offered to collaborate with EAPC. Incidently, GWish is also collaborating with Canadian initiatives at curriculum reform for medicine (“The GW Institute for Spirituality and Health, Education”, n.d.).

82 inner life (eg. prayer, enjoying nature, literature music, art) or activities (meditation, performing or participating in rituals, or putting effort for a good cause), others experience it more intellectually (contemplation, study)”. Furthermore, that spirituality “has more to do with the source of our attitudes than with a defined area of life” (“Spiritual Care Nation- Wide Guideline”, 2013). This is an instructive example because it supports the idea of the state-nation as a concept with flexible boundaries that are open to negotiation. In other words, that singularity and paradigms need not be goals when accomplishing effective pedagogical reform.

An innovative conceptual framework for spiritual assessment which is utilized in the Netherlands, developed by Carlo Leget, is the Ars Moriendi. Ars Moriendi is a contemporary commentary upon the medieval text by the same name which was adopted as a pedagogy for clergy attending casualties of the Hundred Years War and Black Death (“Ars Moriendi”, n.d.). Ars Moriendi translates as the art of dying well. In Leget’s reconceptualization, inner space is given a central space in the framework because it is one’s state of mind that allows one to be aware of thoughts and feelings without being overwhelmed. Spiritual care is therefore “directed to the restoration or enhancement of that inner space of the patient, the family, and/or the caregiver” (de Geer and Leget, 2012, p.104). Leget’s model is complementary, rather than oppositional. It perceives each emotion as having a counter emotion, rather than a negative or opposite emotion. For example, forgiving and forgetting are grouped together, as are: knowing/believing, oneself/the other, doing/undoing, holding on/ letting go (de Geer, p.104, 2012). Leget is an executive member of the EAPC Taskforce. EAPC initiatives represent a unique opportunity to compare education reform towards informing pedagogy with interculturalidad in the service of expanding democratic citizenship.

It seems quite similar to the Buddhist Dharma Chaplaincy of ’s guideline which states that spirituality is “the ability to respond to, to realize and to understand the right Dharma”. The patient is “regarded as receiver, but also giver and demonstrator, as someone who shows us how to face death” (“Spiritual Care in Taiwan”, 2014). Janet Bregar terms such occurrence “Kairos moments” from which to “acquire wisdom” (Bregar, 2013). This is an engagement, a “psychological/spiritual reflection upon the character and

83 events of one’s life and a sense of moving beyond the here and now to a reality beyond one’s contemporaneous self” (Bregar, 2013). Quite similar to Vedic and Chinese understandings of knowing beyond the senses as discussed in the previous chapter, Bregar notes that EOL experiences should be incorporated as knowing via “intuition (which) is the complex process by which individual perceptions, feelings, and insights form a gestalt or unifying experience that is described as having the character of the manifestation of ultimate reality” (Bregar, 2013, p.54). She agrees with Atkins that:

as a minister I do not need to accept a certainty of belief in the end stages of life as a passage into an , but I do need to recognize and assist those in this process to validate and acknowledge their experiences of union with “something larger” and the accompanying existential experience of self-reflection and spiritual peace (Bregar, 2013, p.55).

She notes that it is essential for the discourse surrounding EOL palliative care to be vocational praxis and co-constructed due to it emanating as a “phenomenological methodology in which those who are dying and those who assist in the dying process communicate their existential experiences and from that discourse concepts and practices can be imagined” (Bregar, 2013, p.55). EOL is indeed, conceptualized as a pedagogy of learning, by grief counsellors who invoke Buddhist traditions (Wada et. al., 2008; Kelly, 2008). Bregar states that the EOL is about “the attainment of wisdom—that is—self- understanding, self-acceptance”. Listening to the patient “liberates the dying process” from being painful “and too often a denial and minimizing of dying persons’ perceptions” into “a creative process that involves letting go, grieving, self-realization…changing perceptions of reality” (Bregar, 2013, p.56).

Death democracy, the use of spirituality within palliative care EOL pedagogy, is an important component of the state-nation. Death democracy shares a common belief with cosmopolitan-secularism and communalidad that the purpose of education is reflective mindfulness. Death democracy also promotes an intercultural basis for citizenship since its prime concept, spirituality, is open to interpretation by any who choose to partake of it. Death democracy adds an important dimension to the state-nation, which is the connection between national reform and reform of the inter-national system. With death democracy we

84 are afforded a case study of how education reform led to national reform and was scaled into a collaborative effort for global reform. Moreover, this confounds conflict paradigms which suggest that change cannot be achieved by CSOs, subalterns, and is usually accompanied by violence. A palliative care pedagogy for EOL employs the only universally applicable category, death, as the basis for promoting an effective anti- hegemonic framework for life.

As we democratize the curriculum of death, we need to be aware that a pedagogical reform of the education of life, how we relate to our environment and each other, is correspondingly a requirement. Education reform needs to follow EOL palliative care curriculum reform which has accepted spirituality as core and authentic identity. The dignity of spirituality now being afforded to the dying, must also be invested into pedagogies of life. We must not leave the acquisition of wisdom and enlightenment for our last moments of corporal consciousness. Death democracy affords us a case study of how and why education must be democratized. Spirituality must be given access in education, so that spiritual awareness can reform education. The ideal type of the state-nation is therefore, incomplete, without examining the final moments of citizens’ participation and belonging as they exit the nation.

Evoking the Ideal-Type of the State-Nation The state-nation was a concept first advocated by Stepan et. al., (2010) to describe how institutional arrangements within multi-ethnic democratic nation-states could result in a more participatory and inclusive sociopolitical framework for governance. Stepan et.al., suggested that India might be a potential ideal-type test case model for the transformation of nation-state to state-nation, because India already possessed several elements of ‘state- nationhood’ manifest in its sociopolitical development, civil society history, constitutional framework, coalition parliament and regional federalism.

This chapter sought to evoke an ideal-type of the state-nation as a conceptual framework for this dissertation. While Stepan et. al., itemized political and structural arrangements necessary for transforming the nation-state, they neglected to provide a conceptual

85 framework for the state-nation. My ideal-type state-nation is generated from the convergence of four components: cosmopolitan secularism, an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression, communalidad, and death democracy.

I discussed the parameters of each of these components, and how each of them contributes to the development of the state-nation. The Indian Constitution serves as an aspirational document which contains the ethos of cosmopolitan-secularism. Adivasi studies allows indigeneity to become re-conceptualized as a discursive tool for the examination of causes resulting in marginalization. Communalidad provides the basis for an awareness of intercultural interdependence and reciprocity within a shared ecosystem. Death democracy elaborates on how spirituality is the foundation of human identity and dignity. In total, and due to the diversity of their locations, these four components also allow the state-nation to continue to be dynamic, and accept alliances across the globe. In this manner the state- nation truly is an ideal-type which is multi-logical and anti-hegemonic.

The Indian Constitution represents an alternate vision of secularism compared to the West. It is therefore, a platform from which the post-colonial Indian nation-state might make a steady transition toward the state-nation. India is unique in that it does not have to manufacture new pedagogies for citizenship, so much as revive and re-interpret its historic and constitutional past. The example of death democracy as a case study of how education reform became part of a discourse on reinterpreting the parameters of democratic citizenship towards the adoption of a global consensus; it shows that the potential for change does exist to a certain degree within the nation-state.

This transformation to state-nation however, must be educative and experiential. Members of the emerging state-nation must participate in the reorganization of sociopolitical processes and administration to truly be invested. This will provide a firm civil society base for continuing the decolonization of education. Inclusivity is directly proportional to the availability of resources among the marginalized. Indigeneity provides the basis for the state-nation to be guided by an anti-oppression framework. An Adivasi studies approach to governance provides distributive justice as well as the access to state institutions.

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Communalidad is an example of such an indigeneity informed by sociopolitical practice which alters current nation-state notions of citizenship towards an expanded framework. In some cases, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, multiple identities and ways of knowing are enshrined within reformed constitutional frameworks. This may be evidence, once again, that certain possibilities for reform exist within the nation-state.

The intercultural pedagogy of palliative care EOL, is an equally valuable insight toward the development of the state-nation. Globally it is being affirmed that EOL care must administer to the spiritual needs of the individual, as this constitutes a prime component of their being as well as well-being. Palliative care is therefore an innovative globally acknowledged site of inter-culturalism providing alternate definitions for participation, belonging, and rights. Death democracy provides the state-nation a unique experiential example of how multiplicity may be incorporated.

The conceptual framework of the state-nation, reflects the idea of India, as a composite. The state-nation is an ideal type which I constructed, evoked at the convergence of: cosmopolitan secularism, Adivasi studies, communalidad, and death democracy . The themes of reciprocity, affirmation, and wisdom, are the critical elements that comprise the ethos of the state-nation. These are prerequisites for any element of education reform irrespective of its origin (national or international) or operator (government, organization, societal). The state-nation ideal-type does not seek to replace hegemonies by substituting, alternate hegemonies. Rather, the state-nation desires the co-construction of a multi-logical pedagogy for the education of citizens toward their sociopolitical participation.

In the following three chapters (4,5,6) I shall examine the role of the GoI, Indian CSOs, and international organizations, with regard to Indian education reform. I shall utilize the conceptual framework of the state-nation as the lens through which I shall critically examine the case study actors. This will determine the degree to which each of the actors comes close to the ideal-type model of the state-nation.

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Chapter 4

Indian Government: Post-colonial Reform and Expansion

Nation-State Legitimacy Through Education Through the national struggle for independence, expectations were raised regarding the character of the post-colonial Indian state. As the Indian National Congress transitioned from the leader of an anti-imperial struggle, into the ruling government of an independent state, it sought to implement education reform with a vision of supporting the cosmopolitan and secular character of citizenship which had been a core feature of Congress ideology. The issue however, was deciding how education reform should be conducted to achieve the Congress goal. Various commissions reported their recommendations to the government regarding the concrete steps and the sequence, whereby reform should be implemented.

The GoI undertook a herculean challenge. It was not simply of reforming a system of education whose structure and logic would remain intact. The GoI would attempt to create a comprehensive curriculum for humanist education at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. This education system was required to be accessible to all Indians irrespective of where they lived (rural, urban, migrant, homeless), or their socioeconomic status (caste, religion, ethnicity, language, differently-abled). Hence, it was understood that education reform in India required coherent and scalable policies, which were financially sustainable over decades.

However, the Congress was now operating a nation-state whose administrative structures also required systemic expansion and reform. Immediate social attention and the creation of welfare programs were equally important, given that India had emerged impoverished from imperialism, and out of the ethnic violence of the partition of South Asia. Moreover, strategic concerns of the Indian nation-state in the areas of industrial development and military defence were brought to the forefront. India was isolated because it was the first newly independent nation in Asia, and had proclaimed its intention to pursue a non-aligned policy in an effort to preserve its sovereignty in the midst of the Cold War.

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Constraints of revenue, and concerns that education should facilitate rapid heavy industry development, caused the GoI to focus its first efforts within education in the area of university reform. Rather than begin comprehensive and systemic education sector expansion, the GoI’s policy was to create institutions of scientific and technical skills acquisition. It was only nearly 20 years after its independence in 1968, that India implemented its first National Policy on Education (NPE).

NPE 1968 reaffirmed the National Movement’s concern that comprehensive and thorough pedagogical planning with the goal of providing redistributive justice and sociopolitical enfranchisement, must be the goal of Indian education reform. It can be argued that this same task, first encountered in 1947, became even more herculean for the GoI in 1968. This is because India’s population, poverty, illiteracy, strategic and financial constraints, had all increased dramatically in the interim between 1947 and 1968.

Any policy which attempts to dramatically alter the pedagogy, curricula and the ‘location’ of education, while correspondingly attempting to massify education across the nation, requires both infrastructure and human resources. Neither of these supports were available to the GoI prior to its declaration of NPE 1968. Therefore, in addition to the usual lag between policy legislation and policy implementation, the GoI found that its education budget and time were being absorbed as it was required to create the bureaucratic and physical infrastructure for education in India.

Revisiting education reform as a strategic policy statement in 1986, the GoI found that the goals of NPE 1968 had not been implemented. Education reform and massification had begun, but it had not kept pace with India’s growing population. NPE 1986 declared that while the GoI remained committed to the comprehensive goals of NPE 1968, the GoI would focus its efforts on primary education reform and massification.

In 1991, the GoI faced a balance of payments crisis. It began liberal economic reforms to secure a World Bank loan, and this began to alter the policy discourse surrounding the goals of education. NPE 1992 was the result. It reaffirmed the GoI’s commitment to NPE 1968 as an ideal, while raising caveats about the necessities for education in India to be tied

89 to the emerging trends of globalization. Another issue also became evident. The GoI’s expansion of tertiary education since 1947 had resulted in fewer institutes of quality higher education than was required for an increasingly literate and in-school population. NPE 1992 and subsequent policies concerning education reforms, have supported the entry and expansion of private-sector providers at all levels within Indian education. This has been justified by the GoI as helping to achieve NPE 1968’s goals of providing India with quality and access in education which is cosmopolitan in its orientation.

Within this chapter I will use the conceptual framework of the state-nation as the lens through which I shall critically examine the policy formation and actions of the GoI with regard to education reform.

The Quest for Identity 1947-1968 Education and cultural reform of faiths and traditions in India was an indigenous process prior to British colonialism. Most Indian nationalists within the Congress also believed that education was vital for achieving economic growth and eliminating poverty. It was clear to them that the British colonial education system was an attempt to initiate students into Western culture. The massification of the Indian independence movement under Gandhi’s leadership, was directly proportional to the concern for implementing a system of national education.

When the British extended their wartime Emergency Powers Act 1919114 and reneged on their promise to negotiate Dominion status for India, in return for Indian support during WWI, the Congress declared (Nagpur session 1920) the “gradual withdrawal of children from schools and colleges, and the establishment of national schools and colleges in the various Provinces” (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.45). Six months later the National Muslim University of Aligarh, Gujarat Vidyapith, Bihar National University, Tilak

114 This was a suspension of civil liberties such as the right to assemble. The Act was used to justify the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre on April 13, 1919. General Dyer used legal force (machine/Gatling gun) to clear the public square (bagh) on that day, when inhabitants were celebrating Vaisakhi, which is a new year’s celebration in Punjab. Vaisakhi is also the anniversary of the declaration by the 10th (last) Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh, of the inauguration of the Sikh spiritual community (Khalsa) in 1699 under the continued guidance of the Sikh scripture (Guru Granth Sahib). The extension of the Emergency Powers Act was not widely published and many of the celebrants were likely unaware of it.

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Maharashtra Vidyapith, and Quami Vidyapith, were created (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.45).

The Indian nationalist quarrel was with British imperialism and not with Western science, British parliamentary democracy, or the English language which was considered a vehicle of learning. Having achieved independence in 1947, the Congress embarked on implementing their ideas concerning the character of pedagogical reform which were rooted in fifty years of debate (1905-47). The immediate focus for this project would be the transformation of the colonial university. Due to financial constraints limiting sector wide education reform, and the decision to develop heavy industries, the GoI decided to create indigenous institutions of tertiary education whose features would be replicable throughout all levels of education during the next phase of education reform115.

The outline for this postcolonial education system was to be a cosmopolitan-secular curriculum that could create human resources who would enact social and redistributive justice in India. The three people who most contributed to its shaping were: Jawaharlal Nehru (Prime Minister), Radhakrishnan (Vice President/President), and Maulana (Minister of Education).

Azad served as the first post-Independence head of CABE116. In 1948, he created a University Education Commission (UEC) and University Grants Committee (UGC) to oversee higher education reform. The last survey of tertiary education in India had been the Sadler Commission of 1919 (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.73). Azad appointed Radhakrishnan as the director of the UGC, with the task of creating Indian universities (“Genesis”, n.d.).

The UEC suggested that a review of secondary education take place, resulting in the creation of a Secondary Education Commission (SEC) in 1952. The SEC recommended that secondary schools become centres of both technical as well as academic learning, as per the ideas of National Education in the pre-Independence period. The SEC also

115 The method of central planning was endorsed by the Indian Government, not only for education, but all sectors of the economy. The government set up a National Planning Commission for the first of its Five Year Plans, beginning in 1951. 116 Central Advisory Board of Education. First established in 1920.

91 highlighted to the GoI that it should not ignore secondary education reform, since these schools were integral to the success of higher level education (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, pp.73-76).

Azad stipulated that the social sciences and humanities should remain part of an interdisciplinary education curriculum at all levels. He particularly emphasized that the teaching of South Asian religious traditions, from a historical and philosophical basis, was a necessary complement to the pursuit of holistic education. Azad also considered this to be a fundamental feature of a pedagogy for citizenship:

At first it was considered that religions would stand in the way of the free intellectual development of a child but now it has been admitted that religious education cannot be altogether dispensed with. If national education was devoid of this element, there would be no appreciation of moral values or molding of character on human lines…(Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.78)117

Azad reflected that religion might become the sole property of clerics, if it were not included as a subject for study in schools. The absence of religion as a subject in education, would limit the discourse regarding participation in faith to clerical interpretation. Azad understood that religious traditions were a large part of the basis of the history, culture and politics of South Asia. Therefore, religion must continue to be a site for multi-logical discourse for it to retain its character of cosmopolitan-secularism in post- colonial India:

What will be the consequence if the government undertakes to impart purely secular118 education? Naturally, people will try to provide religious education to their children through private sources. How these private sources are working today or are likely to work in future is already known to you…To them religion means nothing but bigotry. The method of education, too, is such in which there is no scope for broad and liberal outlook…if we want to safeguard the intellectual life of our country against this danger it becomes all the more necessary for us not to leave the imparting of early religious education to private sources (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.78).

117 Quoting the CABE Report, 1948. 118 He is referring to the Western definition of secularism as ‘pure’, while the Indian definition is ‘modified’

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Despite his opposition to the ‘Hinduism’ practiced by upper castes (Brahmanical tradition), and his admiration of rational humanism, B.R. Ambedkar119 also believed that the study of religion had a place within education. He noted that while religious instruction taught dogma, that “religious study, by implication, is bound to be self-reflexive and critical” (Bhargava, 2002, p.17).

CABE recommended the “formation of a National Education Commission to cooperate with the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization…to derive the full benefit of India’s membership in this international organization” (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.80).120 It is noteworthy, that both Azad and Radhakrishnan served as UNESCO presidents. Azad stated at the CABE meeting in 1949 “that we are citizens of a secular state does not mean that we should deliberately insulate ourselves against that living presence which pulsates in and through and around all of us.” (Biwas and Agrawal, 1994, p.81)121 Post-colonial Indian identity was considered synonymous with, and rooted in, the cosmopolitan identity of a global citizen. It is for this reason that both Azad and Radhakrishnan consider their UNESCO postings as an extension of their national employment.

In 1957, the first Vice Chancellors Conference was held. In attendance were the State and Central government officials for education. Central government Minister of Education K.L. Shrimali chaired the session. He spoke about the Preparatory Conference of Representatives of Universities, held at Utrecht by UNESCO in August 1948, where there was a debate about the role of the university. The Americans had advocated massification of higher education, while France believed in limiting university education to the training “of an elite by an elite” (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, pp.251-252).122 Shrimali stated that India intended to develop universities to provide the immediate labour requirements of the nation.

119 Leading member of the Constituent Assembly, responsible for formulating the Constitution. He was a Dalit leader, who later organized a mass conversion of ‘untouchables’ from Hinduism to Buddhism. 120 Quoting CABE Report, 1948. 121 Quoting the Fifteenth Meeting of CABE, Report, 1949. 122 Quoting the First Conference of Vice Chancellors August 1957.

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Shrimali stated that the massification of higher education had been the goal of the National Movement, and the aspiration of the directive principles of the Constitution. However, India lacked the revenue to support a government sponsored land-grant expansion of higher education. He made a striking comparison: while 15 000 American students per million in the population entered university, only 2000 Indian students per million gained admission. Moreover, the Americans were able to allot ten times more funding per student, than the GoI (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.253). The GoI committed itself to plotting the technical training requirements of scientific manpower for the next ten years (1948-58), and also considered in what capacities these trained personnel would be employed.

There is no record of any Indian discussion regarding the possibility of promoting private- public partnerships (PPP) or allowing educational entrepreneurship. It seems likely that this was due to pre-Independence opinions that education must be a government implemented activity if it was to become the instrument of post-colonial societal reform. This explains why education eventually became a joint responsibility of both the nation and the states. Decentralization had in fact been the pattern of education until independence. However along with the nation, came national priorities which required central planning for the commitment of limited resources to ensure an all-India national development. Signs of this began a few years prior to Independence. For example, the CABE report of 1944, stipulated that although education was a provincial responsibility, technical education at the higher stages must be organized on a national basis by the Central government, to ensure that sustainable industrial growth could take place (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.315).123 As per this recommendation, a National Council for Technical Education (NCTE) was set up in 1945.

In 1946, Dr. Humayun was appointed Joint Education Advisor, to assist Azad who was the Minister of Education.124 Kabir established a 22 member commission that was

123 Quoting the CABE Report, 1944. 124 Somewhat confusing, this status “Joint Advisor” betrays the importance of education in planning, rather than the creation of parallel bureaucracy. As Minister of Education, Azad was tied to Congress Party and government (ie. he had to work within certain confines); whereas Kabir could be far more blunt in his reports and recommendations as well as criticisms, as he was appointed to the Government. Kabir had accepted the invitation of Radhakrishnan to teach at . Kabir would become Education Secretary, Chairman of UGC, twice Minister of Education, Minister for Civil Aviation.

94 headed by Nalini Ranjar Sarkar, to work within the NCTE but report directly to Kabir.125 The NCTE was tasked to decide which branches of technological education should be set up and in which specific states of the Indian union. The NCTE would serve as a regulatory body to ascertain whether existing technical institutes could be conglomerated into an all- India scheme. The NCTE would also review the government plan to reform “senior All India Polytechnics on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the establishment of a Technical College for Electrical (Power) Engineering, and to assign to these their appropriate place in an All India Scheme” (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.316).

Sarkar had been a member of Viceroy Wavell’s Executive Council since 1942, serving as the Member Responsible for the Department of Education, Health and Lands (Putcha, 2008). As chairman of the NCTE meetings from 1946 to 1956, Sarkar was a part of various committees that would determine the administration and pedagogy of post-colonial Indian education. In 1948, Sarkar stated that the GoI should establish “regional higher technical institutions in the east, west, north and south on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. The GoI began to create the first of these institutes near Calcutta and Bombay (Biwas and Agrawal, 1994, 318-319).126 Measures were also undertaken to upgrade fourteen existing institutions whose syllabus and curriculum for different technical subjects would be made uniform throughout India (Biwas and Agrawal, 1994, p.320).

This was based on the NCTE interim report, Facilities for Technical Education, which surveyed ninety-five institutions (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.321).127 Sarkar wrote that the goal of technical education was not only the proper correlation of education with India’s industrial/agricultural needs, but that the education imparted:

should be broad-based and considered as a form of mental training, a training of the mind, not less than that of the hand or of the eye. A sound technical education should not only equip our youth to face the demands of the modern world but it should also instill in him the mental and moral discipline that is necessary to make his skill fruitful in the services of humanity (Biwas and Agrawal, 1994, p.320).

125 The first and second meetings of NCTE were pre-independence, May 1946 and May 1947. It should be noted that the 1946 Report is also known as the Sarkar Report (after its chairman). 126 Quoting the Third Meeting of NCTE, April 22, 1948. 127 Quoting the Fourth Meeting of NCTE, April 28, 1948.

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Unlike other committees which were subordinate to CABE, the UEC was created by executive order of Prime Minister Nehru and Minister of Education Azad. The UEC was appointed on November 4, 1948 “to report on Indian University Education and suggest improvements and extensions that may be desirable to suit present and future requirements of the country” (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.469).128 Radhakrishnan chaired the UEC until 1950 (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.469).129 Alongside him in the UEC was a cosmopolitan group of ten education specialists who represented various perspectives with regard to the priorities of post-colonial Indian education. The UEC members included:

- Dr. Tara Chand: Secretary and Educational Adviser to the GoI. - Dr. Zakir Husain: Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University (future Vice President and ). - Dr. A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar: Vice Chancellor of the , Principal of , Deputy Head of Indian Delegation to First World Health Assembly (future Chairman of World Health Organization). - Dr. Arthur Morgan: first president of the Progressive Education Association, former president of Antioch College, first Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority for Conservation. (Unitarian and later Humanist Quaker, he fought to preserve Native American land and helped set up rural universities in India). - Dr. James F. Duff: Vice Chancellor of the University of Durham. Former Professor of Education at Manchester University, Member of the Asquith Commission on Higher Education in the Colonies 1943-45. - Dr. John J. Tigert: former American Commissioner of Education 1921-28, former President of the National Association of State Universities 1939-40. Advocate of American curricula reform, public rural education. Radhakrishnan’s report on behalf of the UEC, suggested that post-colonial Indian universities (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, pp.474-476):130 - Adopt the practices of general education to correct the extreme specialization which was common in intermediate and degree programs. - Ensure that a Ph.D. students did not become narrow specialists, and that doctoral programs be characterized both by breadth and depth of knowledge.

128 Quoting the Report of the University Education Commission, 1948-49. 129 Radhakrishnan was Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford at the time of his appointment. He had also served as professor and vice chancellor at Andhra and Benares, had been the representative of India at UNESCO, the , and would after his assignment at UEC become the Ambassador to the USSR, and President of India. Teacher’s Day in India, is celebrated on his birthday Sept 5. He was also nominated 5 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. 130 Quoting the UEC Report.

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- Facilitate the study of agriculture in primary, secondary and higher education, and that the agricultural sector be given a high priority in national economic planning. - Establish new engineering colleges or institutes promoting critical inquiry. - Begin each school day with a few minutes for silent meditation. In higher education institutes, it was suggested that first-year curricula include the study of the Buddha, , Zoroaster, , Jesus, Samkara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Mohammad, Kabir, Nanak, and Gandhi. In second year curricula it was suggested that textual analysis of passages of scriptures and philosophy was conducted to promote an idea of cosmopolitanism. In third year curricula, students should discuss the central problems of philosophy and the history of religion. - Research the creation of a hybrid, federal language, developed through the assimilation of words from various Indian vernaculars. It was suggested that this national language, not be cleansed of foreign loan words.131 It was suggested that a three language policy be implemented from the secondary education level so that citizens spoke their regional language, the federal-national language, and English.

In general, the UEC recommended that pedagogical reform support the creation of a curriculum that was designed to “develop character, outlook and mental ability” for “useful citizenship” (Altbach and Chitnis, 1993, p.341).

By this time, Sarkar had already submitted a report that endorsed the UEC view.132 Technical education should be planned in correlation with India’s industrial and agricultural needs, but the education imparted:

should be broad-based and considered as a form of mental training, a training of the mind, not less than that of the hand or of the eye. A sound technical education should not only equip our youth to face the demands of the modern world but it should also instill in him the mental and moral discipline that is necessary to make his skill fruitful in the services of humanity (Biswas and Agrawal, 1994, p.320).133

Despite revenue and policy resources clearly on tertiary reform and expansion, some meagre attempts were made to address primary and elementary education reform. Following upon the logic of the Sarkar Report of 1964, the GoI established the India

131 It is posited that the Federal language refers to Hindustani, the Hindi-Urdu dialect spoken in the area of Delhi. That no attempt to purify Hindi, by extracting Persian, Urdu, Arabic, English words be made. Likewise, that no attempt be made to Sanskritize Hindi, by returning to common Hindi, some classical- archaic diction/grammar. All previous documents consulted within this paper, touch upon the issue of language, its use within education (vernacular, national tongue, English), and the democratization of the common tongue spoken by the masses. 132 Sarkar Commission 1946-48. 133 Quoting the Fourth Meeting of NCTE (National Council for Technical Education), April 28, 1948.

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Council of Basic Education (CBE) in the same year. As previously discussed, the idea of basic education had been promoted by Gandhi134, and accepted as part of the Congress platform at Wardha135and via the Dr. Zakir Hussein Committee Report.136

The CBE organized Gandhi Shikshan Bhavan (GSB) in 1969 (Singh, 1980, p.1). Gandhi Shikshan Bhavan (GSB) is affiliated with the University of Bombay (). GSB offers B.Ed. and M.Ed. degrees, and also has its own research and publication division which is devoted to reforming primary and elementary curricula on the basis of Gandhi’s thoughts concerning Basic Education. GSB conducts its own extension work in schools, while also providing bridging and continuing education programs for adult education. The findings of this work and other research projects are published in a quarterly journal called Quest in Education (Singh, 1980). GSB also hosts an annual conference, the Foundation Lectures, where lectures are delivered by a plenary speaker on a particular theme such as: work experience in general education (1970), education in home-school-community (1971), progress and development of adult education in India (1973) (Singh, 1980).

Basic Education (Nai Talim) had three early phases which can be characterized as: beginning and experimentation 1938-47, transition 1947-49, and development 1950-58. Thereafter, the Indian government brought the Institute for Basic Education under the NCERT137 which was established in 1961. As aforementioned, the GoI began to centralize affairs of education reform in an attempt to rationalize its national project of social transformation via pedagogical reform. What is noteworthy, is that although the promotion of the CBE was influenced by the Sarkar Report (1964); the latter was the basis for India’s first National Education Policy (NPE) in 1968.

NPE 1968 is still the main policy framework, besides the Constitution (1950), which informs the ethos of the education reform conducted by the GoI.

134 Articles written in Harijan in 1937. 135 All India Education Conference, held at Wardha, 1937. 136 Hussein was the co-founder of Jama Milia Islamia (university) and third President of India (1967-69). At the Wardha session, the INC appointed Dr. Hussein to create a plan for primary and elementary education reform based on Gandhi’s idea of Basic Education. 137 National Council for Education, Research and Training (“NCERT, homepage”, n.d.).

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National Education Policies 1968, 1986, 1992 Prior to 1976 in India, education was a state (provincial) responsibility. The 42nd Amendment to the Indian Constitution (1976), placed education on the concurrent list as being both, a state and national responsibility. Education policy in general has remained shaped by government commissions and committees, rather than being the product of action-research. The GoI organized a University Education Commission (1948-49), and a Secondary Education Commission (1952-53). It began to realize that despite financial constraints, post-colonial education reform required comprehensive and systemic, rather than piecemeal, measures for reform.

An attempt was made to draft a holistic national policy for education under the guidance of D.S. Kothari. Known alternately as the Kothari Commission or the Commission, of Education, this body was in session from 1964 to 1966. The findings of the Kothari Report of 1966 led to the creation of India’s first post-colonial National Policy on Education in 1968.

The Kothari Commission’s mandate was to ensure that India possessed a target goal for education sector reform, and a corresponding plan to achieve it. It was tasked to review the ethos of pedagogical philosophies during the National Movement, in order to devise a strategy to promote an ethos of democratic participation and inclusive citizenship via education reform.

The Commission recommended that the “highest priority” and the “largest proportion of GNP” should be allotted to education (Tilak, 2007, p.874). The Commission also detailed how education reform and expansion could be paid for by the GoI. An entire chapter of their report was devoted to financing: total expenditure analysis, sourcing of funding, and an estimate of resource requirements for education expansion towards the goal of massification until 1986 in real term pricing (Kothari Commission Chapter 19). The Kothari Commission recommended that 6% of India’s annual GNP be devoted to education so that EFA would be achieved by 1986 (“Report of the Education Commission”, 1970).

However it is important to remember that the period in which Kothari conducted his examination was just after the death of Nehru (1964), who was the major instigator of

99 education reform during his tenure as president of Congress (National Movement) and . In addition, the Kothari Commission was conducted in the midst of major regional crises in South Asia, the Sino-Indian War (1962) and the second Indian war with Pakistan (1947-48, 1965). This had major Cold War foreign policy ramifications, as India’s Non-Aligned Policy began to require reorientation. Domestically, India suffered its first major post-independence drought, and inflation and unemployment soared. Additionally, the GoI suffered further chaos, as Prime Minister Shastri died unexpectedly in 1965, during peace negotiations with Pakistan conducted in Tashkent (USSR). Questions regarding who would emerge to lead the GoI and how the GoI would cope with its geopolitical isolation, took immediate precedence in comparison to the findings of Kothari’s report.

When India’s National Policy on Education was passed in 1968, the GoI accepted the 6% GNP annual target for funding massification and reform. However, India has never come close to reaching it (Tilak, 2007, p.876).138 Subsequent commissions, prior to the inauguration of NPE 1986, and NPE 1992, have all re-affirmed the 6% fiscal requirement. With regard to tertiary education, the Kothari Commission recommended that new institutions be created to research education, agriculture, engineering, and that a network of state sponsored universities be created through Centre-State139 budget sharing mechanisms (Tilak, 2007, p.878).

The NPE 1968 also inaugurated India’s education pattern of 10+2+3; that is, 10 years of primary/elementary schooling (grades 1-10 corresponding to ages 5-14), followed by 2 years of secondary schooling (grades 11 and 12 corresponding to ages 15 and 16), followed by 3 years of university education (ages 17-19) (Khaparde, 2002, p.24).

The Indian Constitution (1950) outlined free and compulsory education for children aged 6- 14yrs as a “Directive Principle”, rather than a fundamental right. It was only with the 86th Amendment to the Constitution (2002) that education became a fundamental right as per

138 Average allocation to education has been 2%, while a 4% upper limit was reached in 1989-90 and 1999- 2000 (Tilak, 2007, p.876). 139 In India, the federal/national government is referred to as ‘the Centre’, while the provincial governments are referred to as ‘State governments’.

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Article 21-A. Legislation towards this end, succeeded as The Right to Education Act (2009)140. This represents a sixty year delay in constitutional enforcement of EFA. Within this period, the national government has been unwilling or unable to enforce state spending for education or state implementation of nationally sponsored schemes in the realm of education. Hence, despite the lofty recommendations of the Kothari Commission and NPE 1968, Indian education reform has languished.

Compounding inactivity was the political and economic turmoil of the two decades between NPE 1968 and NPE 1986. Nehru’s vision had been that, given India’s extremely limited resources at the time of independence in the areas of labour, revenue, and technical expertise, a centrally organized (Five Year Plan) focus on heavy industrial expansion would serve to concentrate efforts and yield the basis from which the nation could develop. Nehru’s ‘commanding heights’ policy was continued by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This meant that, irrespective of any of Kothari’s recommendations, or the NPE 1968 itself, whatever revenue was allotted to education would be apportioned to universities specializing in industry, technology, engineering, and science.

Indira Gandhi emerged as Prime Minister, not as the Congress Party’s hereditary or chosen favorite, but after a prolonged and bitter internal Party power struggle that lingered from 1965141 to 1968. While Gandhi secured the office of the PM, she did not win the support of the entire Congress. As a result, the Party bifurcated into old and new sections. It could be argued that Indira’s entire tenure as PM, was a failed attempt to prevent members of Congress from forming new bases of power along communal, lingual or other interest based lines. In this environment, education policy was sidelined by the GoI, or became a proxy during political battles.

It is not a coincidence that education was made a concurrent responsibility by Indira Gandhi in 1976, which was the same year she suspended the Constitution and declared the

140 Enacted August 4, 2009, and becoming active law on April 1, 2010. 141 Recall that after Nehru, Lal Bhadur Shastri became PM but died within a year, 1965.

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Emergency142. Both measures were a means by which Gandhi could establish a long reach into unruly and nonconformist State apparatus. Education and national concerns had always been interwoven since the National Movement. Education was synonymous with a pedagogy of citizenship, and Gandhi’s actions admit as much.

Another way that education and governance suffered was by Gandhi’s creation of a parallel bureaucracy to subvert or bypass her opposition. In such cases, duties overlapped while lesser civil servants and the public were left to determine (by bribery or goonda- giri143) which license, permit, or bureaucrat could secure their request, and by what illicit means. The contravention of government and corruption become normative. This completely undermined the ethos of nationalism and citizenship pedagogy aspired to by the anti-colonial movement and NPE 1968. Needless to say, since nothing could be achieved in the uber-centralized ‘permit raj’ without patronage or bribery, most education initiatives moved at a snail’s pace.

Briefly from 1977 to1980, India elected its first non-Congress government. This was a result of public outrage at the displayed during the Emergency. However, the political coalition that came to power in India was not unified regarding the direction of their policies.144 Not much legislating was accomplished due to the polarization of interests. Education reform was obscured by oil prices skyrocketing as a result of the OPEC embargo and 1970s economic recession. Remarkably, Indira Gandhi was returned to power by election in 1980.

She continued her futile attempts to reign in unwieldy subordinates within the Congress infrastructure. The Congress Party continued to fracture, and groups became ascendant, forming the (BJP). Indira Gandhi’s fixation on re- establishing Congress dominion led her to destabilize Punjab by covertly promoting an extremist Sikh faction against her own Party members. This eventually resulted in her assassination in 1984.

142 Period of suspension of the Constitution for 21 months by Indira Gandhi 1975-77, with a declaration that there was ‘an emergency’ created by opposition political groups and social movements which hindered national well-being. 143 Hooliganism, thuggery, cronyism, organized crime etc. 144 There were market capitalists as well as Marxist-Leninists.

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One could say that from Emergency to Assassination, this was a decade of domestic instability in India (1975-85) and stagnation in the education sector. This stagnation caused the quality of education to drop dramatically, because there was no maintenance of the standards of access and infrastructure . In real terms, any progress which the GoI had made toward education reform and massification from 1947 to 1991, was squandered. Moreover, the results of inaction were regressive, and the problem compounded as the Indian population continued to grow and become more urbanized. Much of the social malaise regarding the corruption and decay of society, along with the loss of the vision of the Independence era’s lofty goals for social transformation, was captured in the Hindi cinema of that time, depicted by icon actor in his “angry man” phase (“Top Ten ‘Angry Young Man’ Films of Amitabh Bachchan”, 2011).

The University Grants Commission continuously informed the GoI from 1968 onward, that the goal of a holistic education system with linkages between primary and tertiary education, were slipping further and further away. In 1977, the UGC145 mandated that tertiary education institutes “participate in extension programmes” with “the specific objective of giving equal importance to extension as a third dimension with teaching and research” (Chanana, 2004, p.150).146 An immediate result of this was the National Adult Education Programme (NAEP) launched in October 1978. It involved a large number of universities and colleges with the goal of curbing illiteracy (Mullins, 1978).

Surprising for this period of domestic crises in India, the NAEP was able to inspire the creation of a National Service Scheme (NSS) and Community Service Scheme (CSS) for tertiary education students. The features of all these organizations reflect their Gandhian inspiration (“National Service Scheme”, n.d.).147 The NSS and CSS currently have 2.6 million student volunteers who complete 120hrs of service over a two year period in a rural locality. The GoI-CSO basis of such programs would become the basis of larger projects, like Read India (GoI-Pratham) which would be developed and scaled from the mid-1990s onward.

145 Recommended by Radhakrishnan of the UEC 1948, set up in 1953 by Azad, made a statutory regulator of tertiary education in 1956 (“Genesis”, n.d.) 146 The author is quoting the UGC report which I have italicized. 147Conceived of in 1969, with the motto “not me, but you” (“National Service Scheme”, n.d.).

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When the UGC reviewed the progress of university extension programs in 1985, they “recommended that extension should become an integral and inherent part of the academic life of the teachers and students in all subjects” (“National Service Scheme”, n.d.). As of 2003, 100 Indian universities had complied (Chanana, 2004, pp.304-306). For example, St. Joseph’s College of Bharathidasan University in Tiruchirappalli ( state)148 has created an extension program called SHEPARD (Science and Humanities for People’s Development). Students enrolled in any Bachelors degree must annually spend a month to:

make his/her studies more responsive to contemporary needs. Underpinning this aim is the belief that exposing students to rural realities will result in a personal transformation that may help them to serve the masses of the country. The second aim leads to a broader goal: empowering rural communities so that they can take up developmental projects for their own welfare (Chanana, 2004, p.152) Botany students analyze haemoglobin and blood grouping tests for villagers, while chemistry students examine water and soil or food adulteration. Other projects may include supporting immunization promotion or documenting and supporting indigenous medical practices. The nutritional status of children is measured and programs are devised for improvement (Chanana, 2004, p.158). Many CSOs are involved with the university and GoI to promote tree planting, enviro-friendly agriculture, and small plot gardening.

The organizational aspect of SHEPARD activities is most important, as it leads to the community itself developing participatory bodies of advocacy such as farmers unions, women’s groups, and village level associations for political advocacy. Sustainability is a core feature of the SHEPARD programs. The students and faculty may also act as:

the link between the rural people and the government officials. Their mediation normally yields good result as the officials see the demand as reasonable and urgent. The students succeeded in getting more teachers appointed to rural primary schools, upgrading primary schools, starting new schools in the villages. Some hamlets have got electricity connection and the street lights. Construction of overhead water tanks as done in many villages as the government accorded priority to such schemes. Students’ interventions have hastened the process and the people could get their basic facilities sooner. The students also worked for the rehabilitation of bonded labourers (Chanana, 2004, p.158).

148 http://www.bdu.ac.in/index1.php

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Consultation is also a feature of SHEPARD extension programs. A village committee is formed, leading to the election of people’s representatives who then begin to control the pace and direction of the extension services. Initiative begins to swing in the direction of the village, as its representatives will approach the SHEPARD extension department with various initiatives of their own design (Chanana, 2004, p.158).

Contrary to opinion, limited reforms occurred in India prior to 1991149. , Indira Gandhi’s successor as Prime Minister, supported the reform and expansion of the IT industry and education from 1985. Attention has generally been devoted to lauding the achievements of the Indian cellphone and computer revolution which was inspired by these measures. However, the equally important education revolution is less well documented. In fact, the mobile telecommunication and digital technology , along with the launching of several Indian communications satellites, were the platforms upon which the GoI launched its most access oriented attempt at higher education massification.

This was the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) which was inaugurated in 1985. IGNOU was conceptualized as a means by which the GoI could reach into all corners of India without the need for the physical infrastructure of the university. More importantly, education could quite literally be transformed beyond the classroom. The technology revolution in India had the potential to achieve equity within education and to promote the social justice which the GoI had pledged itself to achieve since 1947. Citizenship could become more inclusive as the level of democratic participation in education was broadened. The National Movement’s aspiration, based on South Asian pedagogical traditions, that education be tied to community service, would also be realized as IGNOU began to ‘transport’ knowledge to those who needed it in remote or marginalized location.

IGNOU’s Centre for Extension Education (CEE) was set up in 1995 (Chanana, 2004, p.304). Former Director for the CEE, Anita Dighe writes that:

149 The point is usually missed that reform was being undertaken, but not as wide-spread, affecting social sectors, or as fast paced, as after 1991.

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When compared to the traditional media such as television, radio, and the press, the new technologies are showing that they have an enormous potential for engaging in learning and teaching at the individual, community, and societal levels…the gap between those who have access to information and those who do not is widening…between the ‘information rich’ and the ‘information deprived’…with growing pauperization of vast sections of the population, what kind of education would be relevant to deal with the forces of globalization…what would be the role of extension education using the distance and open learning mode…? (Chanana, 2004, p.311). IGNOU’s CEE created community centres equipped with technology, as spaces for participants to explore, learn, and apply information for their own needs. This facilitates mutual learning and learner-control control over the implements of their learning which are technology and information (Chanana, 2004, pp.312-313). The four main areas of CEE’s service are: agriculture, animal husbandry and resource management; vocational skills training and entrepreneurship development; social engagement programs; and a program for the professional development of functionaries (Chanana, 2004, p.314).

In 1986, India drafted its second National Policy on Education. The expressed policy opinion was that the GoI’s economic shift also necessitated an education reform. NPE 1986 was the first consultative education policy in India. The GoI gathered the opinions of national and state-level functionaries in the education sector, teachers, academics, CSOs, and international organizations. The GoI also polled sections of the public throughout the country, representing communities of minority status by culture, language and power (Khaparde, 2002, p.24).

NPE 1986 did not outline new goals or suggest novel ways of achieving education reform and massification. Instead, NPE 1986 indicted the GoI for its lack of political initiative in implementing NPE 1968 (“National Policy on Education 1986 with Modifications Undertaken in 1992”, 1992). Essentially therefore, the NPE 1986 reads like a repetition with urgency, of NPE 1968. The one major exception is that NPE 1986 directs the GoI to rapidly reform and expand elementary education. The Kothari Commission (1964-66) recognized that the GoI’s almost exclusive focus on higher education reform since 1947 had cause a desperate state of affairs in the primary education sector. Nearly twenty years

106 later, NPE 1986 highlighted the point that elementary education was also languishing from neglect.

The decision by the GoI to comply with World Bank directives to enact widespread liberal reforms, caused it to launch another consultative process along the same lines as NPE 1986. Perhaps the GoI and the World Bank hoped for a different outcome. But NPE 1992 did not allow the GoI to abrogate its responsibilities to the ethos of the National Movement, the Constitution, and NPE 1968. NPE 1992 was termed a “revised Program of Action 1992 (POA)” by the GoI to minimize the reaffirmed mandate which the exercise had provided (Khaparde, 2002, p.24).

As the century drew to a close, after 50 years of Indian independence, three policy frameworks essentially expressing the same goals, continued to highlight the path of pedagogical reform that the GoI should follow. The Wardha Scheme of 1937, leading to the Dr. Zakir Hussein Report of 1938, was the culmination of the National Movement’s desire for pedagogical reform to facilitate democratic reform. The Constitution of 1950, was the codification of the cosmopolitan secularism which was to serve as the framework for an Indian post-colonial identity rooted in inclusive citizenship and participation. And NPE 1968 was the first and most important of India’s strategic plans regarding the measures and goals for systemic pedagogical revolution within both education and society.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Equity-Access-Excellence Post-1991 Even though education had been declared as a right by the Indian Constitution (1950), the reasons behind the failure to provide EFA (6-14yrs) have been discussed. Two main themes emerge from this examination. The first, is a lack of physical infrastructure such as schools and school-facilities within 1km of each Indian dwelling. The second, is the absenteeism and retention issues surrounding both students and teachers (Azim Premji Delegation, 2010). Both of these issues affect the quality of education delivered, and the motivation of parents for sending their children to attend school. Besides a high drop-out rate as a consequence of the aforementioned, “a significant proportion of students go through schooling and learn very little. It is not uncommon to come across children who have been to school but remain functionally illiterate” (Ramachandran, 2003, p.2).

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With the beginning of liberalization and decentralization policies in 1991, a proliferation of private schools emerged on the Indian landscape. However it is still widely acknowledged that over 70% of education is provided in state run facilities (Kochhar, 2010; Azim Premji Delegation 2010). This figure rises to 95% in rural areas, which accounts for 85% of the Indian population (Azim Premji Delegation, 2010).150 It is only the urban middle and upper classes that possess a choice of schools to pick from due to their ability to pay fees, so that they might benefit from private education facilities. However, it is unlikely that massification of Indian education will succeed without government funding, government reform, and the expansion of the public system. Moreover, it is important to realize that systemic education reform, following the guidelines of NPE 1968, is impossible without a coherent nation-wide strategic initiative and the resources to implement it. Furthermore, achieving EFA for the age 6 to14 age group in the Indian context, requires corresponding attention to be paid to pre-school education, primary education, elementary education, remedial education, bridge programs for dropouts and migrant children (Ramachandran, 2003, p.4).

Unlike reforms prior to 1991, post-1991 reforms included cuts to social services and were not just measures to allow private sector entrepreneurship. India had already embarked on a plan for District Level151 education massification. This decentralization was the District Primary Education Program (DPEP)(“The District Primary Education Program”, n.d.). DPEP began to allow local communities more determination of the implementation process in education and the curriculum. This would ultimately lead to India’s first post-colonial legislation of municipal village governance at the block and district level. This was the Panchayati Raj instituted by the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution in 1992 (“Ministry of Panchayati Raj”, n.d.).

It was during the planning for both these processes of decentralized autonomy, that the first foreign aid package, which came from the World Bank, was accepted by India. The GoI sought to prevent its default on a balance of payments which was caused due to the loss of

150 Anurag Behar, Chief Operating Office of Azim Premji Foundation, was quoting GoI census, and Pratham ASER figures. 151 Sub-provincial administrative unit, roughly size, approximately like Peel, TDSB, York Region, Windsor-Essex.

108 hard currency reserves. This loss was precipitated by the following events: the dramatic spike in oil prices during the First Gulf War, the loss of massive Indian remittances from workers in the Gulf region due to their mass exodus during the First Gulf War, and the collapse of a stable and profitable trade relationship with the Soviet Union due to the latter’s collapse in 1992. When the credit crisis caused India to ask for a World Bank loan in 1991, a precondition for the receipt of this loan was that India make cuts to social sector subsidies, and allow WB input in education policy.

The DPEP was conceived as a means of broadening community participation in education in 1994. It followed on the heels of the Panchayat Raj reform of 1993 which created the political and administrative environment for the possibility of the decentralization of curriculum and education authority to the block and district level. The mandate of DPEP was to provide primary education to all children, either in a formal or alternative school setting (“District Primary Education Program”, n.d.). Within this larger goal, were several other targets of focus such as providing free textbooks and reading/writing materials to all Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) students, and all female students in general (“District Primary Education Program”, n.d.). As previously mentioned, NPE 1986 was the first policy document which attempted to set a guideline and create a mandate for EFA at the primary level. DPEP was correspondingly, its first policy implementation.

While massification via access in terms of school infrastructure was clearly the target, DPEP also set out to resolve equity issues with the goal of reducing the “gap among gender and social disadvantaged groups” (“District Primary Education Program”, n.d.). The DPEP goal with regard to quality, was to ensure that “learning outcomes increased by 25%” (“District Primary Education Program”, n.d.). DPEP attempted to shift the responsibility for, and authority of, resource planning at the operational level, from State to District. This began to make the planning process more consultative and transparent. It also created sustainability through the creation of sub-district level capacities in local administration (“District Primary Education Program”, n.d.).

These DPEP design parameters were approved in April 1993. A National Core Team was formed, which went on to prepare state and district level documents for DPEP policy

109 implementation. This National Core Team consisted of 12 functional areas: district planning, teacher training, curriculum development, early childhood education, state finances, gender issues, tribal education, text book production and distribution, school effectiveness, baseline assessment studies, non-formal education, and a management information system (“District Primary Education Program”, n.d.). Each of these areas was chaired by an education specialist from NCERT or NIEPA (National Institute of Education Planning and Administration). Both organizations had been created in 1961 to advise the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) (Khaparde, 2002, p.24; “District Primary Education Program”, n.d.).

DPEP was formally launched in November 1994. In its first phase, DPEP covered 42 in 7 states (out of 28)152: Assam, , Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu (“District Primary Education Program”, n.d.). Regarding the financing of DPEP which extended until 2001, the Central government provided 85% , while the participating states contributed the remainder. By 2000, DPEP was operating in 219 districts of 15 states (Unterhalter and Dutt, 2001, p.58). DPEP was also the first GoI program which received foreign funding. In total, 50 million children were served by DPEP (Jalan and Glinskaya, n.d.).

Unlike the period from 1977 to 1980, the second non-Congress government of India from 1998 to 2004, was more stable. It was termed, as at present, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and led by the Bharatya Janata Party (BJP). This professed right-wing Hindu nationalist political group is economically liberal, but socially conservative (Hindutva). Regarding the latter agenda, it seeks to inaugurate Hindu Rashtra (a Hindu state). Part of this platform is obviously to revise education, and reform curriculum away from its secular spirit. The NDA began ad hoc reform in this direction without consulting CABE. Textbooks, for example, began to feature predominantly Hindu history while Vedic sciences and Yoga became academic pursuits for scholarly activity (Ramakrishnan, n.d.; Menon, 2014). Under the NDA, education privatization accelerated. It served as a cover for the subcontracting of Hindutva to assure the GoI culpable deniability.

152 Note that as of 2015 there are 29 states. Telangana is the new state.

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Corresponding, ‘pseudo-secularism’153 was dealt a blow by reducing GoI support for the humanities and social sciences in favour of business schools which served progress, development and the nation. The private universities, which sprouted during this period, diluted the standards of higher education while contributing to the skyrocketing of tuition fees.

The world’s largest national experiment with EFA was a somewhat bipartisan effort which took place during this decade (2001-2010). Although 2001 and 2010 are respectively taken as the benchmarks of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) program (approximate translation as: Education for All), a more accurate depiction is that SSA was a transition and scaling up of previous efforts at massification and reform such as the DPEP. Retaining the goals of access, equity and quality from DPEP, SSA added retention as one of its goals. Thus, SSA represents a continuation of working towards the aspirational goals of Indian education reform and massification. Irrespective of which political party has held the reigns of government, both DPEP and SSA were continued.

The Congress Party returned to power for a decade from 2004 to 2014, winning two elections and leading the United Progressive Alliance, twice (UPA I, UPA II). The stability and duration of UPA rule for 10 years allowed DPEP and SSA to serve as flagship programs of the GoI. Education budgets constantly rose in this period to reach their maximum in the history of post-colonial India. Quite possibly this is also due to the fact that both of these massive programs, which were the world’s largest, were partly funded by international agencies, foreign CSOs and governments, which demanded accountability and the regular monitoring of progress. What is novel about SSA in comparison to its predecessors however, is that within SSA planning were devised education interventions. These were thought of as asymmetric necessities which were conducted as distinct and extremely ambitious programs within their own right, such as the following: providing a Mid-Day Meal (MDM), ensuring safe water drinking facilities, building of separate toilets for female students, creating a National Curriculum Framework, and providing teacher resource and training supports (“Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan”, n.d.).

153 The disparaging term used by Hindutva groups for a secularism that tolerates and encourages minority distinctness apart from majoritarian religion, language and customs.

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The Right To Education Act of 2009 (“About”, n.d.; “RTE Rules/Guidelines/Notifications, n.d.), marks India’s first legislation to mandate EFA (6-14yrs age group). It is also the first policy document where Universal Elementary Education (UEE) is considered from a “rights based framework” (MHRD, 2011). Hence, while retaining the goals of equity, access, quality and retention, RTE can be said to have added compulsion as both a goal and instrument of policy. RTE prohibits the use of corporal punishment of students, and school capitation fees. RTE also makes it illegal for school administrators to ‘screen’ students prior to granting their admission, meaning profile them according to socioeconomic background and bio-data (MHRD, 2011).

Furthermore, RTE also provides for the creation of autonomous school monitoring committees with “quasi-judicial powers” (MHRD, 2011). That RTE is considered both a “continuation” as well as a “re-vamp” of SSA is clearly evident in the Act introduction. This states that a “holistic curriculum based upon the National Curriculum Framework of 2005” is the goal of RTE, along with providing a “convergent and integrated system of education management” (MHRD, 2011). The RTE Act goes so far as to lay out that access is not just conceived of as providing physical infrastructure but that “the significance of social access in universalizing education cannot be undermined” (MHRD, 2011). The RTE Act was conceived of as continuing the heritage of the Constitution, NPE 1968 and SSA. Prior to RTE’s activation, the GoI commissioned a report entitled, the “Committee on Implementation of RTE Act and the Resultant Revamp of SSA” (MHRD, 2011).

Concerning tertiary education, the Act notes that Deemed Universities154 and all private institutions should seek proper registration and confirmation of their status as higher education providers with the UGC within 2-5 years (from 2010). The Act seeks to standardize and regulate quality, while also determining the process and progress for the tertiary expansion of education. Toward this end, foreign institutions are allowed to set up

154 A term used to describe institutions which enroll (receive fees) students and operate as tertiary institutions (of learning and granting degrees), but which have not applied for or received UGC status as universities. Some of the early Deemed Universities, such as the Tata Institute, earned official sanction based on research evidence of their credibility and worth to National education. Most Deemed Universities however, receive ‘deemed’ status proportionate to their longevity without being officially sanctioned (ie. they continue to exist for so long with students enrolling, paying, and graduating).

112 off-shore campuses in India so long as they abide by the current reservation allotments within higher education facilities in India (MHRD, 2011).

The category of child-labour is one example of the multiple complexities surrounding the determination regarding what is the best and all-encompassing approach to achieve EFA. Many rural and urban children in Indian government schools are subject to heavy chores before and after they are in the classroom. A majority of these students may actually be child labourers, bonded to employers and absent from school during peak business periods or agricultural periods such as sowing and harvest.155 Within this group, are girl-child concerns. These include gender discrimination, malnutrition, and abuse. Complicating matters further is the fact that some GoI documents and NGOs define child work as different than child exploitation.156

Their rationale for this distinction is that it provides them with a non-confrontational stance towards the violators of Indian law prohibiting child labour (“National Legislation and Policies Against Child Labour in India”, n.d.). These NGOs “without any level of justifying child labour…argue against stigmatizing the practice”, so that they may advocate for a long term strategy with the GoI that would improve the condition and treatment of child labourers. Part of this facilitation is to develop educational support157 for all children, and promote awareness so that children are conscious of their rights (Ramachandran, 2003. p.19).

The renowned pedagogue J.P. Naik158 commented that the challenge for Indian education is the “elusive triangle of equality, quality and quantity” (Ramachandran, 2003, p.167). As illustrated by the aforementioned example of child-labour, making education free and providing a mid-day meal is insufficient as a stand-alone policy, to address the needs of

155 An excellent perspective regarding the social and economic consequences of child-labour (banning or regulating) policies, and its relationship to Education For All policies, can be viewed on the television channel NDTV’s talk-show We the People (episode—“Is the Ban on Child Labour Unrealistic?”). 156 This is the approach of The Concerned for Working Children (CWC) (“The Concerned for Working Children, homepage”, n.d). 157 Out of classroom, evening/weekend classes, bridge courses. 158 Naik’s approach to education was multifaceted and interdisciplinary. He linked education reform and masification with health, rural development and understood the connection between Adult education-Basic education. Naik created NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training) and was the secretary of the first Education Commission (post-independence reform and review) 1964-66 (Kamat, 1999).

113 children and families with socio-economic barriers that prevent them from attending school regularly. NGOs which tackle single aspects of equity or focus on a particular issue (eg. female education), or quality (eg. school improvement in a single district), are rarely able to make their commendable efforts bring about a systemic change in education. This is because quantity, understood as the mainstreaming of change, remains unachieved. Although these efforts are genuine and may provide insights into education reform, they “will continue to languish at the margins” because of their lack of sustainability and scalability (Ramachandran, 2003, p.168).

The GoI delayed creating a comprehensive National Policy on Education until 1968, twenty years after independence. Nearly fifty years later, NPE 1968 remains the most important and relevant policy pronouncement on education reform. This is a testament to its legacy, due to its insights and vision. However, this is also a testimony to the herculean task which the GoI has undertaken in attempting to create a post-colonial pedagogy which is inclusive, sustainable and democratic at its core. NPE 1968 lingers as a beacon of hope and path forward, because the GoI has been unable to achieve the aspirations of the National Movement and Constitution with respect to education reform and massification.

New or Renewed Directions? National Education Policy 2016 The NDA returned to power in 2014 with a BJP majority. CABE and other education bodies that advise the government began having their members replaced by Hindutva sympathizers (Aiyar, 2015; Thiyagarajan, 2015). Ad hoc decisions have once again begun to shift state policy away from its underpinnings of cosmopolitan-secularism. Having finally been legislated 70 years after Indian independence by the RTE Act, EFA has now been sidelined. In the same manner as it did after the onset of liberalization in 1991, the GoI declared that it intended to consider a ‘revised program of action’159. The GoI has decided that its new program of action will be called NPE 2016.

Indian education reform pursued by the GoI has hitherto been based on two policy directions: policies whose goal is equity-access; and policies whose goals are to build capacity-sustainability. These two strategies represent competing goals based on the

159 NPE 1992 is alternately called Program of Action 1992.

114 inability or lack of initiative of the GoI to allocate enough human and capital resources within the education sector to achieve both necessities. Hence the problem has been assumed to be reductive, to find the best way to massify Indian education. Should one expand access and provide equity, or should one create infrastructure and human resources? In other words, is reform, or massification, the priority? And will one inevitably lead to the other, or can both be undertaken simultaneously?

The question is whether the government has the capacity (financial, managerial and human resources) to organize/provide all the backward and forward linkages that would make meaningful elementary education a reality for those who are left out of the system. Even if physical access is ensured, does the system have the capability to ensure good quality education?...it is obvious that the government does not have the capacity to work simultaneously on several fronts—access, quality and relevance (Ramachandran, 2003, p.2).

Based upon the GoI’s policy history and goals for post-colonial Indian education, the following themes emerge as conclusions for what the NPE 2016160 should take into account:

o While a common national policy is necessary to maintain the secular-cosmopolitan character of Indian identity (and hence its education), this centralization should be in the form of prerequisites and curriculum goals. The diversity of the socio- economic landscape of India, to say nothing about its lingual and ethnic pluralism, requires local approaches for education implementation.

o Community participation is a fundamental necessity for the success of both, education reform and massification. Community participation creates a civic consciousness through the involved actions of its participants within their specific environment, and links socioeconomic transformation to the reform and massification of education. A cultural capital for education reform and can thus be affected. Ownership of adult education, bridging, and informal programs will provide the community (rural and urban disadvantaged) incentive. This creates a self-regulatory and sustainable, scalable, solution (community-locality-region-state level-national level).

o There can be no two tiered approach to education. It is not a question of quality or quantity, but the striving for quality in quantity that India requires. One of the pressing issues of education is that liberalization has promoted more private institutions (primary as well as tertiary) that proclaim themselves as solutions. However, the vast majority of the population does not have access to nor do they

160 Projected for mid to late 2016.

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find equity within private institutions. Private proliferation threatens to widen the gap between rich-poor, educated-uneducated. Private institutions will neither reform nor massify, they build parallel structures and limit broad based expansion. It is only the GoI that possesses the capacity to provide nationwide infrastructure, it simply needs to increase and maintain its funding of the education sector. However, the GoI can utilize NGOs and private institutions in its endeavor as part of the local solution, local capacity building, and in solidarity. As with anything, private initiatives need to be supervised towards the completion of government standards in order to meet the goals of education reform and massification. Education itself is a government responsibility to its citizenry. History has shown that no industrialized nation has achieved its economic growth and social transformation without a central and common public education framework. This presumes however, that the NEP 2016 will be a renewed and corrective effort towards achieving the goals of education as laid out by the Constitution (1950), NPE 1968, SSA, and RTE 2009. It remains to be seen whether the present Indian government of Prime Minister (BJP lead) will instead produce a revised NEP, that will be the first in India to promote the neoliberal agenda of contemporary globalization. Perhaps a greater concern is that the prospective NPE 2016 will fundamentally alter the citizenship concept of cosmopolitan secularism. What threatens to replace it is Hindutva guided fascism.

A Summary of Indian Government Policies Concerning Education From 1947 to present, the GoI has launched a succession of education policies which have attempted to achieve the multiple goals of the state-nation. These are social and redistributive justice, skills development along the lines of Gandhi’s notion of Basic Education, and citizenship education to sustain the character of an Indian identity based upon the global consciousness of cosmopolitan secularism. Initial post-independence financial constraints limited the ability of the GoI to accomplish all of its goals through a systemic reform of the entire education sector. Additionally, conflict with its neighbours and the superpower confrontation, restricted the state-nation orientation of India’s foreign policy. India nevertheless, continued to develop itself in a cosmopolitan secularism represented by its activities within the Non-Aligned Movement, the UN and UNESCO.

All committees and commissions which examined education reform as a holistic endeavour, produced reports which emphasized the poor quality of India’s primary

116 education system and the crucial requirement for the GoI to overhaul it entirely. Many concluded that education was in fact, a national security concern, linking domestic stability and national cohesion, to the implementation of curriculum reforms and education access. Moreover, policy advisors clearly emphasized the point that tertiary education and its expansion could not be sustained without massification and reform at the primary level.

The GoI decided to enact its first NPE in 1968, based on the extensive recommendations of an all-India education survey (Kothari Commission,1964-66). With a framework for comprehensive reform, the GoI seemed to be embarking along the path towards the creation of post-colonial EFA in India. Unfortunately, NPE 1968 was inaugurated during an era of Indian domestic instability which would continue until the mid-1990s. Ironically but not coincidently, domestic crises were partially brought about by the lack of pedagogical reforms toward the state-nation. This lack of effort and ability in achieving the aspirational goals of the National Movement and Constitution, resulted in public malaise due to the: lack of education and labour opportunities, continued poverty and social marginalization, stagnancy and corruption within the bureaucracy, and the lack of transparency in the sociopolitical system.

Placing education on the concurrent list of dual jurisdiction at state and national levels in 1976 was not done by the GoI in the spirit of prioritizing and directing the implementation of NPE 1968 throughout India, but rather to control curriculum, curb dissent, and promote conformity. This was the antithesis of what had previously been considered the fundamental goal of post-colonial India, the re-conceptualizing of democracy by broadening inclusion along the patterns of multi-logical notions of belonging. It may be argued that in its first fifty years of existence, the GoI steadily moved away from the state- nation through its actions, although its proclamations were clearly in line with the idea of the state-nation.

NPE 1986, along with NPE/POA 1992, are simply re-affirmations of NPE 1968 with an emphasis on the seriousness of India’s education predicament 20 years later. The GoI has never come close to allotting sufficient resources for education reform. This is the estimate of 6% of GNP per annum over a 25 year period as per the Kothari Report 1964-66 (listed at

117 the time of suggestion as 1968-86). The GoI’s lack of financial commitment since 1947 to the task of education reform and massification has actually created a logarithmic increase in the overall task and requirements for revenue. Astute commentators and Indian education sector specialists admit that, apart from the initial post-Partition period (1947-71161), it has been the lack of implementation, rather than lack of funds available to the GoI, which has been the main obstacle toward achieving EFA along the aspirations of the National Movement, Constitution and NPE 1968.

More recent developments in the successful implementation of programs such as DPEP, SSA and the Mid-Day Meal program (MDM), clearly illustrate both the capacity for GoI action in terms of funding as well as the soundness of its policy direction and goals. These are three examples of the largest sustained global efforts of EFA (DPEP and SSA), complemented by with the largest education-intervention of supporting the education sector by contributing to social welfare and health (MDM). Perhaps the most glaring example of the GoI’s noncommittal attitude has been its failure to legislate for EFA, a Directive Principle within the Constitution and the foundation of Gandhi’s Basic Education, until RTE 2009.

It is hence extremely worrying that the UPA, which was returned to government in 2014, has taken steps to dismantle its political rival’s policies162. In the process, the BJP led NDA is also attempting to overturn the ethos of two millennia of Indian citizenship, democracy and education.

Unlike China’s authoritarian political system, India’s constitutional and secular democracy defies the punditry of modernization theory which mandates that stable and progressive nations exist on the principle of hegemonic singularity of language, ethnicity, history, geography, and religion. Surrounded by dictatorships, theocracies, and failing states engulfed by civil wars, why India works remains a mystery to most observers. But it has indeed been a clear concept of pedagogy in terms of both education and the nation, which

161 This was not only a period of revenue constraints for the GoI, but a period of successive conflict: Partition 1947, 1st Indo-Pakistan war 1948, Sino-Indian war 1962, 2nd Indo-Pakistan war 1965, 3rd Indo-Pakistan war and Bangladeshi refugee crisis 1971. 162 UPA government supported policies such as the: MDM, Common Minimum Plan, MGNRGA rural employment scheme, RTE.

118 has been at the foundation of the idea of India. From its National Education Movement, to the Indian National Congress, to its codification of these aspirations in the form of a legally binding charter (Constitution), the idea of India has been indistinguishable from an Indian education. This pedagogy of being and thinking Indian can be understood in terms of the state-nation.

The critical elements of the state-nation which GoI policies, if not actions, have displayed, are themes of reciprocity, affirmation and wisdom. These are the prerequisites for any element of pedagogical reform that coincides with the objectives of the ideal-type. The GoI has attempted to decolonize its inherited imperial pedagogies of state and education. It has obviously not achieved this task. However, its policies illustrate that it has not sought to replace existing hegemonies by substituting its own. Although Hindutva critics will state that the Congress has indeed implemented a hegemonic pseudo-secularism, it is clear that these disparaging remarks originate from fascist disdain of the GoI’s limited success in deepening democracy.

Documents like the Indian Constitution, NPE 1986, and actions like DPEP-SSA, provide evidence that the GoI was legitimately provoked societal discourse concerning Indian definitions of participation and belonging. This proves that the GoI has been committed to state-nation type initiatives that promote the co-construction of a multi-logical pedagogy for the education of citizens toward broader inclusion within their sociopolitical environment.

Likewise, the GoI’s policies for reforming the education curriculum to allow students to examine the diversity of the cultural traditions within Indian history, promote the idea of a composite unity in diversity ideal as the basis of identity. GoI policies have regularly stated their agreement that education should be interdisciplinary and oriented within local environments. This represents a continuation of pedagogical thought with links to Tagore, Gandhi and the state-nation.

Where the GoI does not provide as much synchronicity with the state-nation, is in the latter’s component of an Adivasi studies approach towards the creation of an anti- oppression framework. This is noteworthy, given that Adivasis are the indigenous groups

119 of India. As with most nation-states, the GoI has neglected the sovereignty of its indigenous people and the value of their pedagogies as alternate forms of being and knowing. However, the GoI has recognized the value of an Adivasi studies approach towards decolonizing pedagogies of state and education, in theory if not practice. The GoI has affirmed its commitment for education to provide the location for multi-logical co- constructed knowledge, but in no way has the GoI come close to achieving this goal. Indian curriculum is still plagued with pre-colonial and hegemonic tendencies that emphasize rote learning and strict textbook pedagogy.

The state-nation does not seek to uproot or re-root identities, but to affirm self-designations which are nomadic and liminal or mutable and, transmutable. Membership is the key to communities, and communities are interdependent scalable sociopolitical expressions of consensus, from local to national to international. For this reason, the state-nation attempts to remove sociopolitical determinants of power based upon quantifications such as majority and minority. By de-coupling identity in this way, the goal of the post-colonial decolonization of culture and thought may be achieved. Reflecting upon this, it must be said the GoI has not provided the basis of this element of the state-nation which rests upon the notion of communalidad. GoI policies concerning education reform are nation-state oriented, meaning that they seek to affirm and replicate a particular type of hegemony. This is the idea of the Indian nation, which although as previously discussed, is composite and alternate in many laudable respects, is nonetheless being pursued and promoted by the GoI as hegemony.

Up until 2014 and the formation of a BJP led government, the GoI has been entirely committed to the idea of India, but with a diligence that has portrayed this framework as the only workable option for India to survive. What is implied, is that for the survival of the nation-state Republic of India, its secular platform must be maintained. However, this logic approaches that of Western secularism, which posits multiplicity as detrimental to the cohesion of the singular nation-state model. The GoI has come dangerously close at times to becoming a proponent of its own monolithic and immutable pedagogies of social transformation that border on a social-engineering of compliance. In the absence of that desired result on the part of the GoI, India has witnessed authoritarian tendencies such as

120 the Emergency or the violence associated with the centralization of power. The GoI has not been very effective, either in its policy frameworks or its actions, in the promotion of a communalidad that would transform nation-state multiculturalism into an interculturalidad pluri-nationalism.

Where the GoI finds most affinity with the state-nation is obviously in relation to the concept of cosmopolitan-secularism. The GoI was among the earliest instigators of the UN and its affiliated organizations such as UNESCO. The global internationalist ethos of the UN fits perfectly with the vision of identity that the Indian republic promoted for its citizens. One could say that this was the perfect meeting of aspirations, one international and one national. Indeed, an argument could be made that the GoI had a vested interest in the success of the UN. Both are experiments in multicultural democracy at various junctures along the same scale. It could be argued that the GoI seems to have hypothesized that integrating itself firmly within globalism, would produce dividends domestically in the form of promoting among its citizens, the reflection of India as a normative model to which the world aspired.

The final component of the state-nation, which is death democracy, is the most contentious category when it comes to assessing GoI policies and actions with regard to pedagogical reform. This is because spirituality exists in phantom form within the ethos, pronouncements, and actions of GoI education sector activities. I use the term phantom because although faith based epistemologies and ontological frame works clearly contributed to pedagogical assumptions in India’s pre-colonial past, the prominence of spirituality as a way of interpreting and knowing declined after India’s encounter with the British. One explanation for this was that India’s anticolonial movement sought to legitimize itself in the modernist progression-of-history paradigm employed by imperial hegemony. The Congress for instance, attempted to correct the negative impressions of South Asia cast by the Western gaze.

It was only with Gandhi’s leadership of the Congress movement, briefly after 1921, that spirituality began to be employed as a counter-narrative by the Nationalist Movement. It must be remembered however, that most Congressmen were uneasy about this strategy.

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Gandhi resigned from politics. He found its pursuit in accordance with Congress aims to inaugurate the nation, repugnant163. Gandhi’s quest was social re-invention by way of recovery of the multiple spiritual identities of South Asia, in order to create a de-centralized federated polity whose pedagogy was community based. His success in expanding the Congress so that it became a mass movement, was due to his employment of Hindu motifs to appeal to the cultural sentiments of the majority. In a very meaningful sense, Gandhi’s use of spirituality as an alternate pedagogy to the nation-state, fractured his relations with the Indian National Movement.

Nevertheless, the Congress embraced Gandhi’s Nai Talim within their Wardha declaration and Zakir Hussain Report. Ironically, it was Gandhi’s Basic Education that informed all elements of the Congress view of the nation-state. The affirmative action and social justice directives of the Indian Constitution, and its affirmation of the composite nature of Indian identity based upon multiple spiritual traditions, is what Gandhi believed in. The decision to undertake EFA with attention given to providing vocational training and supporting environmental stewardship, was part of Gandhi’s desire to root curriculum with relevance to local communities. The notion that there should be a three-language policy and that curriculum should be interdisciplinary with a bent towards the humanities and social sciences, reminds us of Gandhi’s notion that spirituality is as much about understanding multiple philosophies of knowing, as it is about practice. The decentralization and reform of local governance that occurred via the Panchayati Raj and DPEP, is the implementation of Gandhi’s desire that participatory democracy begin with sovereignty and self- organization at the village level. And RTE, whose existence has been recently called into question, is nevertheless an affirmation of Gandhi’s argument that education is citizenship- welfare as much as it is citizenhip-pedagogy. Hence, it is the responsibility of the government to enact EFA.

Therefore, I argue that spirituality as an alternate pedagogy for knowing and being, is a phantom in the post-colonial GoI. I believe that this reflects the inappropriateness of the nation-state model for India. The phantom nature of spirituality, reflects the uneasy fit or

163 It will be remembered that swaraj to Gandhi, meant sovereignty over self, and not the capturing of political power.

122 manipulation of a Western concept of identity and belonging upon a multi-logical South Asian sociocultural heritage. I must clarify, it is not the foreign origins of the nation-state idea that is being highlighted, but that the ethos of this idea is foreign to India. As has been argued, South Asian history is characterized by syncretism and endogeneity. The fact that Indian secularism must be discussed as alternate secularism, and that India’s nation-state must be considered unusually multiple in its foundations, is proof that endogeneity has also taken shape with the nation-state as developed by the GoI. Nevertheless, the nation-state’s pedagogies remain hegemonic, which is why there is a disconnect between GoI education policies and their implementation by the GoI nation-state.

As much as it is a single component of my conceptual framework, death democracy can also be considered as an interface between the nation-state and the state-nation. Perhaps more than the other three aspects of the state-nation, death-democracy is the most radical and transformative, because it is the most authentic and therefore the most genuine of pedagogical reforms. Death democracy is also the most individualistic of the components of the state-nation. Communalidad, cosmopolitan-secularism, and an Adivasi approach to anti-oppression, all stress collectivity and community. However, death democracy is private and introspective, in much the same way as South Asian pedagogical traditions understood enlightenment. The pedagogy of death democracy encourages one to meet others while they are at their most vulnerable, with compassion. Doing so, requires oneself to also be honest regarding who they are and how they are. This is why EOL can be the location for the most authentic, inter-cultural, and inter-personal fellowships of humanity. This is why it is also the most painful, because irrelevance and falsehood are shed.

This chapter has analyzed the strategic underpinnings for policy reform and its implementation by the GoI within the sector of education reform and massification. Passing this data through the lens of the state-nation conceptual framework, I have found that the GoI approaches the ideal-type most closely, along the framework of cosmopolitan- secularism. However, this is because the GoI has utilized cosmopolitan-secularism to justify the nation-state, rather than to affirm the state-nation.

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Chapter 5

Indian Civil Society: Non-Government Actors

Avenues for Activism and Democracy This chapter analyzes the potential for non-government organizations/actors (NGOs/NGAs) to enact education reform in line with the state-nation. The choice of which Indian civil society organizations (CSO) to showcase, was made with the awareness that three criteria were particularly important: geographic representation regarding activities across India’s socioeconomically diverse 29 states and within their demographically diverse districts (operating range); size and commitment of operating budget over an extended and scaled period of activity (operating history); and history and willingness to collaborate and synchronize efforts with the GoI as well as allied Indian CSOs or international partners (operating collaborations).

Although there are many NGAs which contribute to education reform in India, this dissertation is concerned with critiquing the ability of CSAs to actively participate in the co-construction of the state-nation. The rationale for accepting the primacy of operating range reflects an awareness of the magnitude of the effort which is required to reform and massify education in India. CSAs must have a physical grass-roots presence, but also a multi-logical policy approach towards India’s multiple and diverse stakeholders.

Education reform and massification in India is the largest EFA challenge in the world. Therefore, sustained and scaled efforts are required to implement the state-nation. It requires decennial financial commitments and long-term strategies. This is why operating history was considered when choosing which CSAs to investigate.

The state-nation is based upon intercultural anti-oppression pedagogies. Hence, the adaptability of the CSO to accept alternate voices in the collaborative quest to evoke the state-nation, becomes as important a factor as the previous two.

Utilizing these three preconditions for choice, Pratham has been showcased in this chapter because it has existed since 1995. This means that the formative period of Pratham

124 coincided with the fractures in Indian education and society caused by liberal economic reforms. Steadily scaling its efforts to the present, Pratham is the longest serving and largest CSO concerned with Indian education. Pratham is active in nearly every district164 throughout India. As with the other two CSOs highlighted within this chapter, Pratham has considered it a necessary pre-requisite, from the beginning of its operations, to support the GoI’s efforts at sustaining a state funded, organized, and administered education system.

This does not mean however, that Pratham or the other two CSOs of this chapter, are uncritical subordinates or out-source managers for the GoI. Pratham has actually given us much evidence throughout the history of its initiatives, that education reform in partnership with the nation-state architecture is both necessary and worthwhile. Hence, seeking inauguration of the state-nation need not exclusively be construed within a conflict-model of immutable opposition, direct confrontation, or violence toward the institutions of the nation-state.

The Azim Premji Foundation, although the youngest (2001) of the three CSOs showcased in this chapter, operates with the largest of USD $2 billion. This has allowed it the liberty of implementing its efforts relatively unhindered by budgetary constraints or delays. This is interesting to highlight in order to emphasize the point that education reform in India is increasingly less about money than it is about vision, participation and collaborative strategies for implementation, assessment and operation. Moreover, the Azim Premji Foundation is the only CSO which has created a dedicated university to serve as a knowledge creation and learning centre for the national endeavour of massification and reform of Indian education. The Azim Premji Foundation is thus likely to continue to scale its efforts at an accelerated pace and with a geographic commitment that will match Pratham.

Furthermore, as a CSO founded by a billionaire, the Azim Premji Foundation is by no means averse to forming collaborations or seeking public-private partnerships (PPP). More than Pratham, which has established many more domestic and transnational linkages, the Azim Premji Foundation has the advantage of a massive national and international

164 Level of administration below state level.

125 corporate network, without being indebted to their financial backing, something Premji neither requires nor seeks. In this way, the Azim Premji Foundation may actually represent the most autonomous or ‘sovereign’ NGA within this chapter. It may thus be capable of effectively contributing to a more genuinely alternate and endogenous education system, if not a paradigm for the state-nation.

Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) is both the oldest CSO (1982) as well as the NGA with the most NGO collaborative linkages (over 3000). PRIA’s participatory and networking philosophy, evidenced within its name, has allowed this relatively small CSO to magnify its presence and multiply its impact which has been to investigate many inter- related sociopolitical issues via locally rooted action-research. PRIA is studied in this chapter for its ability to demonstrate the ability of NGAs to contribute to macro-level discourse concerning policy design and analysis in spite of a relatively micro stature. PRIA’s success should make us reinterpret the notions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘democracy’, just as it should afford us the ability to revise assumptions concerning the mechanics and instrumentation of social involvement that pervade the current discourse.

Within this chapter I will use the conceptual framework of the state-nation as the lens through which I shall critically examine the policy formation and actions of the three showcased CSOs with regard to education reform.

Pratham: Massification of Quality Pratham has emerged as the single, most successful, and largest advocate of education reform across India. This is because “its emphasis, throughout, has been on strengthening the capacities of government schools” and its “realization early on that a uniform strategy would not suit all children in scattered slums” (“Pratham, About”, n.d.). Beginning its efforts in the Dharavi165 slums of Mumbai in 1995, Pratham is now a collaborative partner in both education reform and massification throughout India. It conducts an Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) across India which is utilized by the Ministry of Education:

Pratham has chosen to be a supporter rather than a critic of the government. It

165 Largest slum in Asia and known as a self sustaining eco-colony with several child-labour intensive industries.

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believes that education is primarily the responsibility of the state, and intervention ought to be directed at reform and improvement through consultation and participation of all involved parties, rather than on designing alternative or parallel systems. Since revitalization of the government system requires both financial and human resources, Pratham has sought to forge a triangular relationship between community, government and corporate donors (“Pratham, About”, n.d.).

The logic of Pratham’s approach is rooted in two assumptions. The first, is that education is the responsibility of the state, which should be held accountable. The second, is that a multi-pronged strategy is required for the reform and expansion of education, and that this requires the maximum cooperation of all stake holders for country wide success (Ramachandran, 2003, p.173). NGOs which criticize the government often become stuck in an oppositional and confrontational relationship, where their political struggle overshadows their educational goals. Moreover, “they have not managed reform on a large scale; the outcome is that the government either remains disinterested or asserts its superiority in the hierarchy” (Ramachandran, 2003, p.173). By contrast, Pratham is integrated within India’s education system as an assistant to the government rather than an outsourced branch of schooling.

In the case that Pratham develops its own schools or structures, these are linked to the national system by being placed under the jurisdiction of existing school boards. Most importantly, rather than disassociate itself from existing government schools, Pratham works towards their rehabilitation. This work can be in the area of curriculum reform, teacher training, or administrative reform. Pratham also focuses on replicable interventions and scalable solutions toward the aim of an all-India education reform and massification. This ensures that newer schools, whether created by Pratham or private schools which are assumed to have higher standards166, do not contribute to a two-tiered system that disadvantages the majority of the population which is served by state run educational facilities.

Pratham is unlike other NGOs which focus on short term goals, due to their human capital and financial constraints, and then depart. In contrast:

166 I have reiterated the phrase ‘assumed to have higher standards’ throughout this thesis. The assumption is on the part of stakeholders, however, recent studies have indicated that this is not the case by 50% (Tandon, 2011).

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Pratham was not visualized as a project; rather, it was seen as a citizens’ movement. The citizens’ role is to contribute in a positive way to what the government is already doing. The government has the capability to work on scale, manage and provide resources; those outside government have the capacity to involve, innovate, experiment, contextualize and respond to specific demands…People joined in with a purpose and vision of their own, they were given time and space to prove themselves, and became pratham167 in their own capacity (Ramachandran, 2003, p.175).

As of 2003, there were twelve core partners of Pratham, ten long term partners including eight Indian academic institutions, four international academic linkages, and many associated NGOs (Ramachandran, 2003, pp.175-176).168 Yet, Pratham does not maintain multiple regional headquarters or offices because it works through municipal schools or community spaces. This symbolically illustrates Pratham’s core principles that it identifies in solidarity with the GoI and Indian citizens. It also allows Pratham not to be tied to its own location, so that it can expand freely and sustainably as required (Ramachandran, 2003, pp.177-178). Pratham creates strong linkages with volunteers from affiliated organizations, allowing partners to control their program to create joint ownership of projects. Pratham also varies its logistic and leadership models, ensuring executive agility to meet the demands of its growing and regionally diverse activities within Indian education reform. All of this has contributed to a pedagogy of collaborative strategies, where government and citizens act in a participatory framework (Ramachandra, 2003, p.207).

Pratham’s motto is “every child in school and learning well”. Pratham subscribes to the belief that the eradication of cycles of is directly proportional to a reduction of illiteracy. Pratham’s interventions attempt to address low-learning levels, reasons for drop out, child rights, unemployment due to a lack of skills, and digital literacy. Pratham sees itself as an “innovation and outcomes-driven organization”. Its objectives are “to create strong demonstration models to show that children can learn basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills”. Pratham attempts to “persuade the governments to adopt

167 Italics of the author. Pratham means ‘single’ or ‘first’ in Sanskrit. 168 More on this, and updated information at (“Pratham, Our Supporters”, n.d.).

128 policies more oriented towards learning outcomes and to focus on these learning outcomes in practice” (“Pratham, About”, n.d.). In order to achieve these aims and provide accountability for its interventions, Pratham developed the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) in 2005. ASER has become the largest non-government survey measuring enrolment status for children between 3 and 16 years of age.

ASER also implements standardized tests which seek to measure the true reading and arithmetic levels of children between 5 and 16 years of age. ASER has become significant “in defining a qualitative agenda in education and is widely acknowledged in government and policy circles both inside and outside of India” (“Pratham, About”, n.d.). ASER has become a common nation-wide metric, consisting of a single sheet of paper with four levels of text: letters; simple, common words; a short paragraph consisting of four easy sentences; and a longer text containing slightly more complex vocabulary (“ASER 1996-2006 Foundations”, n.d.). ASER is the largest annual household survey of children conducted in India by citizens’ groups, involving more than 25 000 volunteers and covering over 700 000 children in 15 000 villages. It is also the only annual source of information regarding learning levels of children which is available in India today (“ASER 1996-2006 Foundations”, n.d.).

Pratham utilizes ASER to continuously track and expand its flagship program Read India. This program tracks the progress of literacy and numeracy within the age group 6 to 14. Read India is a nation-wide initiative whose first phase was launched in 2007, with the directive that all grade 1 students should recognize the alphabet and numbers, while grade 2 students should be able to recognize simple words and answer simple arithmetic. Between grades 3 to 5, the program attempts to increase the levels of both literacy and numeracy. By 2009, Read India was active in 19 Indian states (of 29 total states, and 7 territories), covering 33 million children in 300 000 villages (of an estimated 600 000 total). What is notable about Pratham as an organization and Read India as a campaign, is that its successes are made possible with the aid of an extensive network of volunteers. In the case of the first phase of Read India, 450 000 volunteers were mobilized (“Pratham, Read India”, n.d.). In its second phase, launched in 2010, Pratham’s goal was to create a

129 sustained presence for Read India in Indian villages. To accomplish this, the Block169 Excellence Program was established so that Pratham staff could mobilize local communities, volunteers and government employees (teachers and school administrators) within a specific and manageable area. The third phase of Read India began in 2013, and has sought to illustrate the “demonstration of impact, model building and, working on a large scale in states where there are government partnerships” (“Pratham, Read India”, n.d.).

Pratham created a dedicated ASER Centre in 2008, in response to ASER’s growing prominence as an evaluation methodology for Indian education. ASER is referred to by both, Indian officials and international agencies such as the World Bank and UNICEF. The ASER Centre is meant to institutionalize and strengthen the design of ASER as an annual metric. In the period from 2005 to 2008, Pratham’s surveys of stakeholder opinions regarding education revealed that there was an overwhelming perception that government services could not be improved. This correlated to a low public demand for increased and better government services. Pratham’s importance has not simply been as a pedagogical reformer, but also as a civil society organizer which allows communities to advocate and demand better services and service-quality.

Pratham’s mandate for a dedicated ASER Centre accordingly grew from its awareness, during the formative period of annual ASER implementation from 2005 to 2008, that measurement was the first step toward action especially since there was an India-wide need: for basic capacity building with respect to the nuts and bolts of measurement, evidence and analysis. At the district and even at state level, ordinary people – students, citizens’ groups, non-government organizations and even mid- levels of government—have limited access to basic technical knowledge and skills of sampling, survey methodology or statistics. Moreover, people with both technical knowledge and field experience are hard to find (“ASER 1996-2006 Foundations”, n.d.).

Pratham works to democratize the process of education reform by involving local

169 A Block is a unit comprising 100 villages.

130 communities. It has sought to allow individual stakeholders an avenue for participation by demystifying knowledge, its possession, and its comprehension as an epistemological exercise: When ordinary people are empowered with knowledge, they can bring about extraordinary change. Measurement, which is critical to generating knowledge, has been an exclusive domain of experts. We believe that measurement needs to be rigorous, but easy to understand and to act upon. When ordinary people learn to measure what affects their lives, they can communicate with each other across villages, states, nations, and continents, to identify and understand their problems, take steps to resolve them, and change the world for the better (“ASER 1996-2006 Foundations”, n.d.).

As such, the ASER Centre mission statement is “measure to understand, understand to communicate, communicate to change” (“ASER 1996-2006 Foundations”, n.d.). It is important to note that regarding the last criterion, Pratham views knowledge as an open- source commodity which requires the widest possible dissemination via multiple forms (digital, print, visual, oral) in order to reach the widest possible audience.

Pratham has also attempted to transfer its education advocacy model of, participant involvement via knowledge empowerment, to other social spheres concerned with people’s welfare. In 2006, a test case of 11 districts, the poorest within their respective states, were chosen to assess whether the rapid assessment and participatory approach of ASER, which has been implemented in 570 of 683 Indian districts since 2005, could be utilized as a mechanism for social sectors other than education. This resulted in the launch of PAHELI (People’s Assessment of Health, Education and Livelihoods) in 2011, to discern whether “simple tools and methods could be developed that help ordinary people to understand their current status and core outcomes”. The social sectors which PAHELI was qualitatively assessing were: life and livelihood, water and sanitation, child and maternal health, education and literacy (ASER, 2011a).

In the words of the preliminary report, “for decentralized planning to be effective, it is important that the common man to be able to link the status of key indicators across domains” (ASER, 2011b). As with ASER, the Pratham team acknowledged that the aspect of data compilation was not simply a logistical task, but one of democratic participation

131 which formed a valuable basis for experiential learning: our past experiences with ASER and other participatory assessment taught us that such efforts are not only about data collection--it is also important to engender community engagement and participation so that during and after the assessment activity they continue to discuss important issues, search for solutions and demand better services (ASER, 2011b).

A basic survey of households was developed to gauge the provision of government schemes at the village level, such as SSA, ICDS (Integrated Child and Development Services), PDS (Public Distribution System—food security), MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), and public health services. Chosen in consultation with the UN Millennium Development Goals and supported by the UN Planning Commission Convergence Program, PAHELI was launched in 8 districts across 7 states as an assessment tool kit to gauge human development (ASER, 2011b). The rationale for such an innovative approach of developing an interdisciplinary matrix for a participatory development agenda, is rooted in the following mission statement: For decentralized planning to be effective it is important that people have a strong capacity for assessing the status of key indicators on human development in their locality. The generation of a status report requires a set of indicators and processes (a tool kit) that are simple enough to enable the participation and decision-making by all sections of the community, including women and the marginalized. The process should be easy to conduct, analyze and to understand. Such tools and processes help citizens to understand and address human development. Indicators need to be conducive to simple measurement and linked to observable MDGs at the local and district level. These reports can help stakeholders and service providers identify gaps in service delivery and prioritize needs. The availability of a tool kit (which includes indicators and processes) for the assessing of key indicators can be a very useful input for strengthening the bottom-up process of planning by demonstrating inclusive and participatory methods (ASER, 2011b). Pratham, and its ASER Centre in particular, are unique in that they utilize collaborative strategies and are open to inter-organizational and international initiatives. The ASER Centre Advisory Group consists of: Prof (Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank), Dr. Sharada Jain (Society for Study of Education and Development—SANDHAN in Rajasthan), Dr. M. R. Madhavan (PRS Legislative Research in ), Dr. Raj Gautam Mitra (UNICEF), and Professor Lant Pritchett (Kennedy School of Government, International Development, ) (“ASER 1996-

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2005 Foundations”, n.d.).

Similarly, Pratham reports such as PAHELI cite the cooperation in funding, planning, consultation, and implementation or data collection of, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, the Accountability Initiative170, and other CSOs involved in water-security such as Arghyam171, or skill and capacity development such as Sahyog Sansthan172. In this very meaningful way, Pratham acts as a linking and coordinating body which networks with local and regional Indian CSOs. Pratham bridges the gaps of distance and financing to create solidarity between activists and activities which are community oriented, but national in scope.

Pratham is working to decentralize and democratize the discourse of development. This process began in 2004, and by 2014, Pratham had aided 21 of 29 states to produce Human Development Reports (HDR). From 2010, HDRs also began to drafted at the district level. Pratham’s stature (size, experience and repute) as a logistician of data management, program coordinator, and strategic planner, have allowed it to mediate the entry of smaller CSOs into GoI partnerships.173

Pratham is a successful example of a dedicated education CSO, which has evolved in stature and scope by linking education development with the advancement of people’s welfare in all fields. Further to this trend, in 2013, Pratham created a Measuring, Monitoring and Evaluating unit (MME) which was set up as a 40 member team across 16 states. The MME began to gauge development progress across the thematic fields aforementioned as part of PAHELI (“Pratham, Measuring, Monitoring and Evaluation”, n.d.).

Pratham realized earlier than most other CSOs, that enrollment ratios were not the key to educational success. Rukmini Banerji, a Director of the ASER centre, has written in a 2015 report, that Pratham’s interventions alongside the GoI’s nation-wide campaign to achieve

170Research and Initiative for Government Accountability (“Accountability Initiative, Homepage”, n.d.). 171 Safe sustainable water for all (“Arghyam, Homepage”, n.d.). 172 Grassroots Rural Rajasthan organization (“Sahyog Sansthan, Homepage”, n.d.) 173 GoI-UNJPC agreement across 7 states (comprising 35 districts)

133 universality of primary enrollment, were rapidly achieving its objectives by the year 2000. However, GoI and UNDP figures indicated that only 6 of every 10 students who entered Grade 1, would complete their primary education (age 14) (Banerji, 2011, p.11). Moreover, Pratham, due to its early and widespread intervention across India, beginning from 1995, was able to confirm that poor academic achievement was a far more serious issue towards the achievement of massification of education.

Banerji emphasizes that Pratham was a pioneer in the advocacy effort to revise GoI and international donor policy formulation from the goal of attendance, to actual student comprehension (Banerji, 2011, p.11). Furthermore, Pratham began to make the connection between school success and student domesticity (socioeconomic conditions of the child’s home): On the home front, many children, especially from poor communities, were the first in their families to go to school. Adults in the household were mostly uneducated. There was not enough support, space, opportunity, time, interest or inputs at home for the child’s learning to be supported and strengthened (Banerji, 2011, p.11).

Pratham’s experience from 1995 to 2004, across socioeconomic and geographically diverse areas within India, gave substantive shape to the organizational approach of focusing on reading as a foundational skill. This decision was made in context of the understanding that drop-outs in higher grades could be eliminated, and more children across the socioeconomic and geographic spectrum of India could be served, if basic literacy at the initial entry-stage of schooling became Pratham’s focus.

As Banerji writes: Another question – which children to focus on? All children in the school system needed help. Our logic was that for students in Grades I and II, there was time. Two whole years could be used to build their foundational skills. But for those who were already in Grades III and above, time was running out. If they did not get help soon, they really would not be able to gain any “value” from simply remaining enrolled in school. Content and curriculum gets increasingly harder as children move into higher grades. Hence for the last almost 15 years, Pratham has focused efforts and innovations on the Std III, IV, V group (Banerji, 2011, pp.11-12).

Pratham created a standardized test to gauge student abilities, their identification of alphabet symbols, numeracy abilities, and reading. This tool has become the cornerstone of

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ASER (Banerji, 2011, p.9).

Utilizing ASER, Pratham formulated its Learning to Read intervention in 2004, and launched its nation-wide Read India campaign in 2007. As a phased program, in its preliminary stage the target of Read India was for grade 1 students to recognize alphabet letters and numbers. The goal for grade 2 students was for them to recognize simple words and solve simple addition and subtraction calculations. Children between grades 3 and 5 would work to read simple passages of text and accomplish rudimentary arithmetic. By 2009, Read India covered 33 million children in 19 states of India, meaning that it had a presence in half of India’s 600 000 villages, utilizing the services of 450 000 volunteers (“Pratham, Read India, n.d.). In its second phase (2009 to 2010) Pratham attempted to create a longer lasting presence for Read India within the areas covered in phase one. This was in order to ensure an aspect of sustainability and replicability, as well as to enable local communities to have ownership of the imparting of basic literacy.

Simultaneously, Pratham began to focus on higher grade level competencies. The Block Excellence Program (BEP)174 was created so that Pratham could transfer its skill set of assessment practises and literacy/numeracy interventions to government run schools. Currently in phase three of its campaign since 2013, Read India has begun to scale its efforts across geographic and socioeconomic parameters. Pratham has also instituted Learning Camps in this phase. These act as ad hoc centres where officials, administrators and teachers can interact with Pratham organizers to receive specific information or guidance based on their own queries (“Pratham, Read India”, n.d.).

Pratham has steadily worked since 2004, to transform its foundation assessment tool which is the basis of ASER (launched in 2007), from a bureaucratic exercise of census reporting, into an action-learning tool for Indian citizens. Banerji reflects that Pratham began to acknowledge that learning needed to be visible and identifiable to stakeholders as a process: At the core of our “learning to read” approach was the simple assessment. Although it was originally designed to assist in instruction, we found that it had other uses

174 A block is an below district level, which comprises approximately 100 villages.

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too. The tool was very helpful in explaining to parents and community people what we meant by “reading”. Visually, the tool helped parents understand what children should be able to do within a few years of being in school. The potential of this tool for raising awareness and for mobilizing people became clearer as we used it more and more in schools and in communities (Banerji, 2011, p.29). .

It would not be an exaggeration to make the claim that due to its presence and partnerships across India, Pratham has done more than any other CSO to contribute to the “claiming of India from below”.175 Its efforts have effectively broadened Indian democracy while involving citizens in policy discussion, implementation, and revision.

Pratham’s executive directors such as Banerji have also isolated an important feature of the policy debate which surrounds education reform around the globe. Determination of what constitutes learning and how success in education should be gauged, is generally formulated depending upon the outlook of the policy maker with regard to their viewpoint concerning ‘theories of change’. As Banerji indicates: a theory of change basically states a problem and traces pathways to the solution – that is, the links between what is the problem, what will be the main driver for the solution, what will lead to what and what will be the outcome…Each theory of change leads to its own prioritizing of what is important to do first, where to begin, where scarce resources (money, people and time) should go and who will push whom to do what. Each theory of change therefore has very strong implications for implementation. (Interestingly, not all of the theories of change are backed by evidence but that does not seem to matter when people take decisions for millions of children in India.) (Banerji, 2011, p.30).

Banerji has outlined several theories of change which affect the policy debate regarding education and human development in India. The first of these suggest that poverty reduction, understood as a reduction of malnutrition, an increase of income, and skill acquisition, are necessary predicates for educational success. A second view is that inputs, understood as more teachers, more learning materials, and more expenditure, will lead to educational success. A third view isolates monitoring, or the lack of vigilance in the surveillance of teachers and administration, as the root of educational failure. The fourth view is that better incentives such as pay, recognition, and the involvement of teachers in curriculum development, would lead to a better system of education. The fifth view

175 The title of a study which showcases such efforts, including Pratham’s (Mudgal, 2016).

136 highlights the need for an overall reform of the teacher training process to revitalize student success in the classroom.

In Pratham’s view, change will manifest once pedagogical instruction is liberated from grade level constraints within the formal classroom which exclusively employ grade appropriate materials for instruction. Pratham promotes an assessment for abilities framework, where children are taught at knowledge-appropriate, rather than age- appropriate level. Pratham’s theory of change identifies “misaligned pedagogy” as the core issue for education reform. This is to be corrected by “disruptive pedagogic intervention” (Banerji, 2011, pp.30-31). Banerji asserts that: The effectiveness of the approach is largely due to the fact that it upturns standard practices that operate in the system. Two major pillars of how schools are organized are quietly cast aside. First is the usual age--‐grade system of teaching. Instead of clubbing children by age and grade, this approach groups children by their level of learning, irrespective of grade. Second, here teaching is not anchored by grade level goals and expectations, class‐wise curriculum, content or textbooks. Instead the entire focus is on building basic skills of reading, understanding, expression and arithmetic. A series of rigorous impact evaluations in different settings has proven the effectiveness of this approach to teaching-learning at least in the Indian context (Banerji, 2011, pp.30-31).

For education reform in India to be meaningful, a rebirth of schooling (Pritchard, 2013) in which pedagogy undergoes a process of de-colonialization, is required. As Lant Pritchard suggests, this involves Indian disposal of the isomorphic mimicry of Western models, towards the creation of circumstance specific and locally rooted curriculum (Prichard, 2013). Pratham has a track record of coordination with the GoI and other NGAs, that demonstrate its commitment and expertise in operating as a partner for the promotion of the state-nation. Pratham’s transformative pedagogy has expanded the visibility of India’s marginalized citizens, by gaining them democratic entry into education. Pratham’s endeavour is to massify the quality of Indian EFA.

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The Azim Premji Foundation: Transformative Pedagogy Anurag Behar, the Chief Operating Officer of the Azim Premji Foundation (APF), has noted that intersection of the school, its teacher, and the classroom, is the site where hegemonies such as class, caste, and gender, must be ruptured: A school’s purpose is educational, but it is fundamentally a social institution. So, any school has to overcome multiple internal and external social challenges to function. This is another reason why the role of teacher is so complex, which we non-teachers often fail to recognize (Behar, 2014).

The APF has been working for more than a decade on education reform in India. It has also participated in social welfare education in the fields of health, nutrition, ecology conservation, and accessible governance. The APF views these development areas as being allied to the goal of, and for, education reform. This means that the APF considers pedagogical reform in broad terms, to include the re-conceptualizing and deepening of participation and citizenship.

With regard to education, the APF works in collaboration with the GoI in 8 states within 350 000 schools, and with teacher educators and teachers at the block and cluster176 level (“Azim Premji Foundation, Operating Principles”, n.d.). In the capitals of the states where the APF is active, it has created State and District Institutes. These Institutes work at the grass roots level, closely engaging with the GoI in the activities of capacity building of teachers, curriculum reform, assessment, educational leadership and management. At many of the District Institutes, the APF has established demonstration schools to model the practical implications of APF pedagogies. The demonstration schools provide education to local communities at the same operating cost and conditions as are faced by rural GoI schools. The APF also supports educational research to support evidence based policy initiatives regarding EFA (“Azim Premji Foundation, About”, n.d.).

The APF believes that although economic growth has resulted in the improvement of India’s material conditions,

176 Below the Block as an administrative unit.

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rapid economic growth has also led to increasing disparities and often diminished quality of life in urban and rural areas. This is potentially a source of future conflicts and a matter of concern in the face of rapid environmental degradation that affects all but especially threatens the poor (“Azim Premji Foundation, Vision”, n.d.).

Confident that “India demonstrates the strength of its political institutions”, the APF theorizes that reinforcing the institutional strength of democracy via governance, welfare and civic involvement, represents the best strategies to promote the asymmetric deepening of democracy. Hence:

education and institutions of learning are crucial both to creation of individual capabilities and also strong social responses that might help us meet these challenges. Education and learning contribute not just to livelihood and marketable skill but also nurture the sensibilities needed for human well-being and flourishing. Equally importantly, education helps build the capabilities that promote just and equitable social and political arrangements (“Azim Premji Foundation, Vision, n.d.).

The APF believes in the viability of the Indian Constitution as a living document, to continue to create an India that is “just, equitable, humane and sustainable” (Azim Premji Foundation, About”, n.d.). Indeed, the APF was not set up as a CSO focused on either education or its reform. Rather, the APF came to view education as a tactical instrument for achieving its mission of creating an India that is “just and equitable” (“Azim Premji Foundation, About, n.d.). In this way, the strategic orientation of the APF is in line with the state-nation, that education reform can re-conceptualize democracy on the basis of an intercultural anti-oppression pedagogy.

Citing NPE 1968, the APF defines justice in the social, economic and political realms, as the concretizing of “liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship” (“Azim Premji Foundation, Vision, n.d.). Justice translates as the “equality of status and of opportunity” within a “fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation” (“Azim Premji Foundation, Vision”, n.d.). This final point finds common cause with the state-nation whose cosmopolitan secularism provides the backdrop upon which communalidad governs intercultural relations. Moreover, the APF envisages pedagogical reform as “fundamental to our complete development—material and spiritual”,

139 with the ability to “refine sensitivities and perceptions that contribute to national cohesion” (“Azim Premji Foundation, Vision, n.d.). This is very similar to how death democracy utilizes spirituality as the framework for the enlightenment of authentic identity. To accomplish the aforementioned aims, the APF has been endowed by its founder177 with USD $2 billion (Abraham and Agrawal, 2010; Thoppil, 2013).

The APF views its project as comprehensively national, and requiring a sustained effort of knowledge generation, sharing, project and policy planning, and human resource development. It is for this reason that the APF, unique among other CSOs within India or elsewhere, has actually created its own university. The Azim Premji University (APU) is not organized upon the Western model of discipline specific departments (Azim Premji Delegation, 2010). In this way, the APF promotes a discourse of the interconnectedness between social, economic and political problems (Azim Premji University Lecture Series, 2013). The APU mission statement indicates that:

Azim Premji University is unusual in the way it is conceived and organized. We profess liberal and ‘humanistic’ values but at the same time define our intent unambiguously in the context of India’s social and political development. We consider independence and excellence in research to be critical, but do not see the possibility of sharply separating knowledge from its purposes and consequences. We are not narrowly utilitarian in our orientation, but at the same time are deeply mindful of the consequences of our work (“Azim Premji Foundation, Origins and Purpose”, n.d.).

The APU is alternate to the established model of the university in another important aspect. It embraces an action-research philosophy which seeks de-colonialize education by re- imagining the principles of pre-colonial South Asian pedagogical traditions. These were based on education as service, and the acquiring of wisdom regarding human and ecosystem interdependence. As part of its educational philosophy, the APU states that:

The University will strive to develop a deep understanding of the role of education in creating awareness of moral and ethical issues in debates on development and social policy. This awareness will be reflected in the design of the University’s curriculum and research priorities. The University will explore and locate its learning and research programmes squarely in a deep and nuanced understanding of

177 Azim Premji of Wipro corporation

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India’s political and cultural contexts and tremendous diversity (“Azim Premji Foundation, Educational Philosophy”, n.d.).

The APU is thus an actor in terms of the sovereignty association of co-constructed intellectual and spiritual development in much the same traditions as Tagore’s Shantiniketan and Bharati, or Gandhi’s Nai Talim philosophy.

The APU positions itself as a site for multi-logical discourse, rather than as an instigator of change with a preconceived or inflexible mode of operation. Students enrol in programs which are interdisciplinary by design such as undergraduate degrees in humanities and economics, or postgraduate degrees in education, development, public policy and governance, or law and development (“Azim Premji University, Program Overview”, n.d.). The APU requires that after graduation, students return to their communities for a two year period to implement practical change based upon their theoretical learning. This is generally a continuation of their culminating projects for degree programs. Clearly, one of the initiatives which the APF has launched via the establishment of the APU, is to create a multiplier effect toward sustainability of efforts so that the transformation of society has a multi-generational scope:

Strong networking, advocacy and communications act as a force multiplier to facilitate change. We engage at multiple levels – with the state and central governments, with the community, NGOs and industry to build positive social pressure for change. We recognize that it is not possible to do everything ourselves and therefore we work closely with partners whose vision is aligned with ours and who complement our work (“Azim Premji Foundation, Our Principles”, n.d.). Like Pratham, the APF is a strong advocate of the GoI. The APF believes that GoI efforts at education reform and massification should be supported and aided, rather than replaced.

It is noteworthy that Azim Premji, who is in the same financial league as Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, does not believe that the privatization of education will cure India of either its pedagogical or quality related issues or its accessibility or its equality related issues. Anurag Behar178 has continuously spoken about the misconception, that the ills of the Indian education system can be cured by money (Azim Premji Delegation, 2010). The

178 Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Azim Premji Foundation (APF).

141 exorbitant amount of money required on an annual basis, is beyond the means of any organization or individual, with the exception of the GoI. Moreover, the APF has concluded that the systemic problems of Indian education are in the areas of curriculum design, social support for education, and the lack of implementation of GoI schemes which are basically sound. “One dearly held myth” revolves around the superior quality of education provided in private schools. However, “if you control for socio-economic background, then the learning outcomes are the same”, and “in fact government schools are better, they’re a much nicer place, the children are happier” (Behar, 2015).

Such thinking has contributed to the APF decision to support the GoI in the largest and most successful experiment of EFA in history. In doing so, it is also contributing to a historic trend of Indian civic activism in support of national endeavours. Often highlighted as the “world’s most progressive, highest achieving, and most successful example of education”, Finland began education reform when its education indicators were similar to those of India in the 1970s-80s. Finland implemented an EFA policy in 1960, that took nearly 50 years to achieve. This is for a nation of 5.5 million people and 5000 schools (Behar, 2015).179

The GoI provides 98% of the primary schools in rural areas, which make the GoI the largest provider of access for the majority of India’s most marginalized populations. Within India as a whole, the GoI provides schools for over 75% of the total population (Behar, 2015).180 The GoI also runs the largest welfare scheme in the world, the Mid-Day Meal (MDM), which is delivered in GoI schools. In addition, the GoI established “one of the most progressive curriculum frameworks in the world” by the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) of 2005 (NCERT, 2005). The GoI has also made dramatic improvements in the areas of education infrastructure via DPEP and SSA, so that there is now a primary school in each village, within 0.8km of each residency.

179 Anurag makes this point to juxtapose it with the successes of India in the same time period, and the sheer disparity of scale which is forgotten when assessing India’s lack of achievements (Behar, 2015). 180 Interestingly, India is the global leader of a nation with the highest percentage of its population in private schooling. Anurag makes the point that the OECD “a cozy club of market friendly countries” has issued numerous statements that market mechanisms and competition do not solve education ills or work (Behar, 2015).

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Behar constantly lists these figures in his seminars, not because he is a fan of the GoI, but to explain the APF’s rationale for supporting an education actor (GoI) with the greatest commitment, experience and proven record of success. The CSO of Azim Premji the entrepreneur billionaire, has made a very large investment based on the notion that it will receive the highest return, in a strategic partnership where it can leverage pedagogical reform in a direction that its partner seems to be working toward (Behar, 2015). Thus the two most financially committed stakeholders in Indian education, pooled their resources.

The APF subscribes to a theory of change that insists that a shift in the public ethos surrounding pedagogy as both a profession and vocation, and a reform of preservice curriculum, will improve education. Accordingly, one of the areas which receives the most support within both the APF and its APU, is teacher training. Previous to 2008, pre-KG and pre-Grade 6 teachers in India, were deemed qualified if they possessed a Grade 12 education and had attended a teaching diploma course of 9 months. Compounding this lack of teacher preparation, is the fact that the liberalization of the Indian economy, which took place after 1991, contributed to an explosion of private teacher-training colleges. Their number grew from 1300 to 15 000 within a decade. These “are even poorer in quality than the privately run schools for primary children” because there is no government control or regulation of who can organize teacher-training colleges or diploma requirements (Behar, 2015). The deregulation of the education sector created an explosion of unregulated schooling. This, coupled with the GoI initiative towards EFA, led to an unregulated massification of schools. It also created the need for teachers, and there are an estimated 8 million primary teachers in India.

The District Institutes are what the APF employs to support government teachers in acquiring resources, knowledge, and networking with other teachers or pedagogical specialists. Unlike other NGOs, the APF “does not run programs” (Behar, 2015). The APF sees itself, like the GoI, as building a system, and never collapsing any of its interventions after a prerequisite term has elapsed. Accordingly, “they are there forever. Why? Because we don’t think education changes in 5 years, it takes 15-25 years maybe…or as long as it takes we will be there…” (Behar, 2015). The first program created at the APU was the MA in Education, because India produces only about 200 MAs plus PhDs in education

143 annually, in comparison to 10 000 to 20 000 in Canada or the USA. The APU decided that it was imperative to create the human resources who could effectively lead in curriculum design, reform, and pedagogical innovations in general.

These points illustrate that the APF operates within a policy framework that is compatible with the aspirations of the state-nation. Neither are hindered by a paradigm mentality which restricts policy direction and partnerships. The state-nation approach to citizenship and participation is also not confined by the ego of a single paradigm or a vested interest. It is unattached to a single course of action or truth. This allows state-nation pedagogies to evolve because they do not allow re-negotiation or replacement if required by the shifting requirements of reform, or miscalculations of policy which are brought to their attention via field assessment.

Pratham actively partners with global and Indian corporate multinationals such as UNICEF, Save the Children, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Godrej, TATA, and USAid (“Pratham, Our Supporters”, n.d.). The APF has also created working partnerships. However this is to share in the development and implementation of Indian educational reform, and knowledge creation, rather than for the sake of acquiring funding. It cannot be over-emphasized that the choice of these APF partners reflects the commitment and vision of the APF as a sovereign CSA. The APF is a supporting and donor organization rather than a CSO that seeks the sponsorship of corporations, governments, or transnational organizations for their financial commitment. Therefore further insight into the APF may be gained by investigating its working relations with an organization such as Digantar, whose outlook is “education for equality and justice” (“Digantar, Our Philosophy”, n.d.).

The theory of change for Digantar, is that social justice education, through its empowerment of the individual learner, increases the ability of the individual to navigate their sociopolitical environment. Hence, Digantar equates education with inclusive citizenship and participatory democracy. The pedagogy of the latter is experiential practise to foster self-awareness and self-advocacy. Digantar creates this knowledge of citizenship rights and commitments, through an awareness of citizenship location in a sociological sense:

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Digantar feels that the aim of education should be to develop rational autonomy, sensitivity, democratic and egalitarian values, dignity of labour and skills. We believe that the purpose of primary education is to make the child a self-motivated and independent learner…When a society denies this basic assumption in equality, exploitation and oppression become acceptable in different ways. The sharing of benefits of social cooperation and control over the mechanisms of distribution of social goods becomes tilted in favour of a few (“Digantar, Our Philosophy”, n.d.).

Essential to Dignatar’s vision, is the rooting of the individual in their natural environment via eco-consciousness. This is not a secondary goal, but understood as integral to the purpose of education:

Sensitivity to all other forms of life that share this world with us is an integral part of rational autonomy…life itself is possible only in a complex web of mutually sustaining life forms. This leaves no choice for human beings other than to be sensitive and respectful to all forms of life. The richness and emotional depth that love and respect for all creatures and plants brings to human life is an added but equally important reason to include sensitivity as an important aim of education (“Digantar, Our Philosophy”, n.d.).

Dignatar began in 1978, as the initiative of teachers trained by British ex-patriot181 David Horsburgh. Horsburgh served with British forces in India during WWII. He returned to India, post-war, after completing an education with the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

After teaching at the Rishi Valley School of J. Krishnamurti182, Horsburgh set up his own school called Neel Bagh183 in Bangalore (“Where the Mind is Without Fear”, n.d.). The school’s curriculum was devised with activity based learning and rotational activity components in the general subject areas of pottery making and handicrafts, carpentry, music, art, gardening, science, Hindi, English, Kannada, Telegu, and Sanskrit. For each activity, students were organized in groups specific to their competencies. Funding for Neel Bagh was accomplished through Horsburgh’s writing and publishing of over 100

181 This term is used with much hesitation, as this individual, like many others who worked in India, committed much more than their labour (heart, soul, legacy) to their adopted land. Moreover, many were naturalized and gained citizenship, else awarded this recognition by the GoI while living or posthumously. Horsburgh was born 1923, and lived in India from 1950-1984 (his death). 182 With whom the Azim Premji Foundation also partners. 183 Horsburgh was also deeply influenced by the ideas of Rabindranath Tagore, and the name Neel Bagh is taken by Horsburgh from one of Tagore’s works. R.F. Dearden and , are equally important to the development of the rationalist strain in Horsburgh’s pedagogical approach.

145 textbooks for , India. Commenting about Horsburgh’s impact upon APF’s methodologies, COO Anurag Behar writes:

This eclectic, seemingly eccentric curriculum was just one facet of the deliberate design of Neel Bagh. The methodology, the culture, the physical environment and the community were all integrated to build a place where education happened as it should. The students would learn together in groups, but at their individual pace. The teacher would only facilitate the setting up of suitable learning situations. The focus would be on problem solving and concept formation. The students would engage in real-world activities, in reading, in discussion and in critical thinking. Almost all students were first generation school goers. In short, Neel Bagh was the kind of school that we can only imagine (“What One Man Can Do”, 2004).

Amukta Mahapatra, who learnt from and served as a teacher with Horsburgh, has written that Neel Bagh provides education reform in India with key insights in regard to multi-age and multi-grade settings: …suppose you had an identical number but children of different ages? Which would be better for you and them? Think about your experiences of the joint family and how children of various ages managed themselves without too much adult intervention. Think about social gatherings like marriages where it is difficult to pull a child away from the group of children who somehow find each other in the melee and organise their own activities. Think of our slums and villages where children of different age-groups play, work and socialise with one another meaningfully…Observe and reflect upon children in such situations and how they look out for one another, how they learn from each other. We have many examples staring us in the face of how it is natural for children to function and learn in a mixed age group, or a family group as it is sometimes called. But what do we do when it comes to school? As schools exist now, they are contrived, artificial institutions with no correlation to life and society...Schools have been created by men and women, only over the last few hundred years. For thousands of years, people have lived, learnt and helped mankind to reach this level of civilisation without such ghettos for children (“What One Man Can Do”, 2004).

Commenting upon the theme of what defines the ‘goal’ or ‘excellence’ in education, and what ‘learning’ means, Mahapatra writes:

(Neel Bagh) was a place where being a human being mattered, being a member of a community mattered and being an individual was also important. This was the basis for the rest that followed. A child may have learnt five languages — that was wonderful, but it was not the most important aspect of life. Another child may have designed an ingenious machine — it was celebrated, but again this was not the

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ultimate goal. The fundamental issue was whether you were evolving into a decent human being and whether the learning process was helping this evolution. Learning was crucial but development was the aim — the development of the individual, the group and the larger society (“What One Man Can Do”, 2004). Mahapatra is currently an education consultant with UNICEF in Odisha state, and is on the directory board for the NUEPA (National University for Education Planning and Administration), National Advisory Council for the Implementation of the RTE (Right to Education) Act, and the NCTC Committee (National Council for Teacher Education).

The APF also supports Eklavya, which was founded in 1982. The mission statement of Eklavya highlights the following points:

The inadequacy and irrelevance in the context of Social needs of the curriculum, examination system and teaching methods in school education have been voiced so often that one need not argue the issue afresh. In fact one can strongly argue that the educational methodology at the school and higher levels inhibits the development of qualities which the Constitution has listed (Eklavya, 2007).

Similar to the opinions of the APF and Digantar, Eklavya considers that pedagogies of education, citizenship, and social justice, are inseparable. It should be noted that Eklavya views improprieties with the curriculum to be crimes against the Constitution. Or at least, that the Indian curriculum is anti-constitutional in its present form. Eklayva therefore, focuses on creating curriculums “on the basis of the local environment”, exploring both “formal and informal” pedagogies relating to social change, and extending the “inquiry method to the study of all subjects” (Eklavya, 2007). For Eklavya, teacher quality improves in correlation to the replacement of “stagnation inherited through a methodology demanding routine lectures…(stifling teacher) creative and dynamic participation” (Eklavya, 2007). Eklavya also believes that the system institutionalization of alternate methodologies is necessary for change, and that it is therefore, necessary to work with the GoI so that educational reform will proliferate asymmetrically and be sustainable.

It is noted that:

…the failure of these (CSO/NGO) voluntary attempts to create a significant dent in the system illustrates the second aspect of the problem, i.e. the identification of structures and processes that can diffuse Micro-Level Innovations, while sustaining quality, into Macro -Level action programmes. In the absence of such structures, all

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high quality Micro-Level innovations remain scattered and unconnected. Voluntary agencies have often tried to duplicate existing structures only to discover the limits of this approach. Creating a few model schools and universities, is in the wider context quite meaningless as the beneficiary populace is not even a countable fraction. Hence, the utilization of wider existing structures and networks for the purpose of diffusion becomes critical (Eklavya, 2007).

Eklavya also notes that the post-liberalization period (post-1991) has witnessed the stratification of a once monolithic education sector run by the GoI. Particularly worrisome is the extent to which right-wing Hindutva organizations such as the Ekal Vidalaya, run by the and RSS, have been able to increase their presence in the ‘tribal belt’ among the most marginalized rural and Adivasi groups:

There has been a spawning of civil society initiatives in education, and unlike thirty years ago we have a very large number of actors in education from the 'voluntary sector'. While technically these are civil society initiatives, in actual fact they are driven by international agencies, the corporate houses and the govt. system which have gained a powerful leverage in this sector through large funding (Eklavya, 2007).

From the viewpoint of Eklavya, education reform has become an arena of contestation for competing views regarding national destiny, belonging and identity:

As the formal education system penetrates wider and deeper into the society there is ironically a growing sense of crises…While on the one hand the govt. system seems to be active as never before with far greater fund flows, greater professional integration of schools through the block-cluster structures, it also seems to be collapsing in effectiveness. There can be a number of reasons for this: over centralisation in a system not intrinsically committed to mass education; the conscious govt. policy of decimating the traditional teacher cadre and replacing it with an ill paid, insecure and fragmented cadre; the relentless pressure of the market which has replaced the composite student population in govt. schools with children of only the most deprived communities. The private schools catering to the masses too give a feeling of crises as they are better than the govt. schools only in terms of the greater accountability that the market imposes. The quality of education that they impart is very poor, with untrained teachers, curricula designed by people without qualification using text books turned out by pulp writers etc. etc. The pressure of market also forces a high degree of fraudulent practices. At this juncture it is useful to revisit the debates (like the Tagore-Gandhi debate) that shaped the educational agenda of the nationalist movement. Despite the differences on crucial questions there was an agreement to situate education firmly in the context of

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nationalism, internal social reform and integration into the modern world on our own terms (Eklavya, 2007). Eklavya has devoted equal attention to the development of vernacular, teacher and learning resources, including monthly science, math and social studies journals.

Publishing and proliferation of knowledge-sharing, is the focus of Teacher Plus, with which the APF has an affiliation as its “main collaborator and supporter”. Teacher Plus is a CSO closely allied to the concept and framework of the APU. Teachers Plus was created in 1989, as a bimonthly resource “not as a scholarly journal but for practising teachers”. Upon this platform was added a social media and digital dimension, so that Teacher Plus has become a forum for education reform discourse (“Teacher Plus, About Us”, n.d.). From 2006 to 2010, Wipro (Azim Premji’s company) via the Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (WATIS), funded and aided in the development of Teacher Plus in its present digital format (“Teacher Plus, Magazine”, n.d.).

As aforementioned, Rishi Valley which was established by the , is also linked with the APF. Much like Tagore’s vision for model schools, Krishnamurti could not conceive of pedagogical practise divorced from environment. Hence, Rishi Valley is located in rural, mountainous, lush surroundings, in the midst of a bird sanctuary. The school is residential, presently accommodating 360 students from across India and a faculty of 60. The school project had its initial phase of development between 1926 and 1931, as an endeavour by Theosophists lead by Annie Bessant. Bessant was an Irish nationalist who served as onetime president of the Congress. Theosophy drew many diverse people to it, all of whom were united in their quest to enact reform to the pedagogies of citizenship and participation. Theosophy can essentially be characterized as a cosmopolitan secular construct which attempted to liberate spirituality from the hegemony of religion, and an anti-oppression framework based on inter-culturalism.

The Theosophists planned to create a ‘world university’, and drew inspiration from the pedagogical ideas found in the philosophy of J. Krishnamurti. As mentioned earlier, Horsburgh was a teacher at Rishi Valley from 1951 to 1958. Krishnamurti wrote that

149 besides skills acquisition, a key aspect of education was to develop the individual’s sense of fellowship and communion within their human and natural environment:

A far more important purpose than this (of education) is to create the right climate and environment so that the child may develop fully as a complete human being. This means giving the child the opportunity to flower in goodness so that he or she is rightly related to people, things and ideas, to the whole of life. To live is to be related. There is no right relationship to anything if there is not the right feeling for beauty, a response to nature, to music and art - a highly developed aesthetic sense. I think it is fairly clear that competitive education and the development of the student in that process . . . are very, very destructive. We must be very clear in ourselves what we want - clear that a human being must be the total human being, not just a technological human being. If we concentrate very much on examinations, on technological information, on making the child clever, proficient in acquiring knowledge while we neglect the other side, then the child will grow up into a one- sided human being. When we talk about a total human being, we mean not only a human being with inward understanding, with a capacity to explore, to examine his or her inward state and the capacity of going beyond it, but also someone who is good in what he does outwardly. The two must go together. That is the real issue in education: to see that when the child leaves the school, he is well established in goodness, both outwardly and inwardly (“Aims of Education”, n.d.).

According to the current school executive, lead by their director Radika Herzberger (nee Jayakar) who received her PhD in History from the University of Toronto in 1982184, it is deemed that:

The intention of the school, in other words, is to awaken the intelligence and the generosity of spirit in students so that they are able to meet an increasingly complex world without losing their humanity. The cultivation of a global outlook, a love of nature and a concern for mankind are all part of our educational aims (“Aims of Education”, n.d.).

Krishnamurti’s pedagogy is not based on the hegemony of an alternate paradigm. It affirms multi-logical discourse while positing spirituality as a quest for truth. Within the ethos of this pedagogy of knowing and being, there is no contradiction between scientific enquiry and spiritual self-reflection.

Equally instructive in regard to assessing the APF's approach to pedagogy, is a perusal of its "people and ideas" page (“Azim Premji Foundation, People and Ideas”, n.d.). Those

184 She also received the Padma Shri (4th highest civilian award) in 2013 for contributions to education.

150 listed include David Horsburgh, Rabindranth Tagore, and Dr. Zakir Hussain. While the contributions of Horsburgh and Tagore have been related earlier, Dr. Zakir Hussain requires an introduction. Hussain was the chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia University (JMI, literally, University National Islamic), after it relocated to Delhi in 1925. JMI was originally established between 1920 and 1921, as a secular outgrowth of Aligarh University, representing an anti-colonial and nationalist trend within Muslim intellectual circles. Joining with Gandhi in a boycott of colonial education, some members of the Aligarh faculty resigned from their posts. They set up an alternate national vision of an Indian-Islamic centre of higher learning. This became, JMI, which Tagore termed “one of the most progressive educational institutions in all of India”. JMI formally split from Aligarh, moving to Delhi in 1925. Hussain began teaching at JMI at this time, and became JMI’s vice-chancellor in 1928 (“Jama Millia Islamia, History”, n.d.).

Hussain took part in organizing and chairing the National Education Conference, whose findings became known as the Zakir Hussain Report. The Report was adopted by the Congress, as its policy concerning the reform of education and citizenship pedagogy, at the Wardha Conference of 1937. Hussain went on to become Vice President of India, at the same time that his co-educationist was serving as President. This was a unique and perhaps the only occasion in history when the highest offices of state were held by pedagogists. One might go so far as to say that this illustrates that post- colonial India was founded upon, created by, and informed with reference to pedagogical reform. In 1963, Hussain also took on the role of Chancellor of JMI185.

Badal Sircar (aka Sarkar, born Sudhindra Sircar) also figures prominently in the APF’s people and ideas page. Sircar pioneered the Third Theatre approach of "direct communication with the audience" which emphasized expressionist acting along with realism (Bhise, 2013). This methodology was pioneered in 1967, during which time Sircar formed the Shatabdi theatre group. It was with this group that Sircar performed and directed Ebang Indrajit (Bengali, The Loner Indrajit). An integral part of the Third Theatre approach is to stage open-air plays in what is termed the angan manch, literally meaning

185 JMI became a deemed university by the UGC in 1962, and a Central University in 1988.

151 the courtyard stage, but more in the sense of an intimate-stage without separation between performers and audience. This approach is inspired by the direct communication techniques of jatra rural theatre (Bengali).

In jatra, audiences were considered active participants, or at the very least did not remain passively seated as consumers of a story that was unrelated to their circumstances. This means that audiences were vocal, and emotionally vested (Bhise, 2013). In many instances, Sircar improvised dialogues to allow for the theatre performance to be co-constructed with this audience. The script became a multi-logical discourse of the telling and re-telling based on inter-related yet individual perspectives. In a letter to his friend, Professor of Performance Studies at New York, Richard Schechner, Sircar elaborated upon his concept for Third Theatre in the following way:

The indigenous folk theatre of India, strong, live, immensely loved by the working people of the country, propagates themes that are at best irrelevant to the life of the toiling masses, and at worst back-dated and downright reactionary. [First theatre] ‘The proscenium theatre that the city-bred intelligentsia imported from the West constitutes the second theatre of our country...it is money-bound and city-bound… unable to reach the real people. ‘There appears to be a need for a third theatre in our country-a flexible, portable, free theatre as a theatre of change.’ Free Theatre or Third Theatre, could be performed in a cabbage patch, required no expensive sets, costumes and lights and depended on voluntary donations of 50 paise to one rupee from the audience. It was a theatre for social change that turned away from the lighted halls of Calcutta into villages, bus stations, parks, slums, office canteens, factories and gathered everyone into its fold – “the factory workers, the peasants, the landless labourers (“Theatre of Inclusiveness”, n.d.).

Sircar thought it an essential aspect of Third Theatre that the performance travel to the audience, rather than the people come to view the performance. The gram parikrama, travelling theatre to village locations, was an act of performer solidarity. Third Theatre is a solidarity of being ‘of’, rather than an exercise of being ‘with’, the people.186

Sircar did no less than provide an alternate and reformed curriculum and pedagogy. He liberated theatre as a conceptual framework, methodology and activity, as can be seen in the following quote:

186 An interesting analogy is the Populist movement in the 1880s in Russia, which translated from Russian (haditye k narode) means “going IN the people” rather than ‘going TO the people’.

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Third Theatre had turned into “free theatre” in three ways: First, there was free expression it promoted direct and therefore uninhibited communication; second, it was free from the paraphernalia of conventional theatre; and last, it was offered at no cost to the audience. …The radical departure from established realist stage traditions…“experimental” and “alternative” (Bhise, 2013).

If one analyzes the thought process behind this, it becomes obvious that Sircar was a pedagogist. He understood his craft as being a multi-logical discourse which must remain unconstrained in its forms of expression, interaction, and scope, in order to be authentic in its purpose:

According to him sets, props and costumes are used to create illusion of reality, but spectators have come to theatre ready to use their imagination and they are prepared to accept the stage as a stage. This condition of the proscenium theatre hits the direct communication between the performer and spectator…as a live person communicates directly to another live person; this is the fundamental characteristic of the theatre which makes theatre differ from other art forms. Secondly bright lighting that blanks out audiences where audience-actor interaction is impossible because it separates performers and audience. Thirdly the sitting arrangement… raised stages, stage-facing sitting arranged according to ticket prices these were other issues he had problems with (Bhise, 2013).

Sircar’s concept revolves around the principle of the safety of shared emotions in shared spaces187.

The Azim Premji Foundation does not compare to Pratham in its dimensions, its organizational size or its scale of effort. However, like Pratham, APF is building human resources to facilitate a quality reform of EFA across India. Pratham works to massify the quality of education by improving delivery methodologies, and social supports for education participation, in order to positively impact learning outcomes, while the APF believes that educational quality is determined by the goals of pedagogy. Hence, the APF has decided to pursue a transformative pedagogy approach to Indian education reform. This direction includes investing curriculum with local relevance, by local development, and with local human resources. The only uniformity to which the APF adheres, is their

187 Sircar acknowledges the endogeny of his concept, and lists the following Western influences: Jerzy Grotowski, Joan MacIntosh, Judith Malina, Julian Beck, and Richard Schechner.

153 national approach, and national scope, to the implementation of this pedagogy of transformation.

The APF has the capacity to rapidly invest financial resources, beyond that of any other organization except the GoI. However the APF has strategized that coordination with the GoI to reform Indian education with the most cost-effective use of resources, requiring the least amount of time. In this way, the APF does not attempt to create alternate structures or bureaucracies for education. Rather, it works to implement transformative change to strengthen the efficacy of an existing system which is already massified. The best way to massify reforms, ensuring that pedagogical changes serve the majority of the Indian population, is therefore to work alongside the GoI, in the view of APF.

Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA): Democratic Empowerment In 1982, Rajesh Tandon created Participatory Research In Asia (PRIA). His objective was to advocate a pedagogy that was based on action-research, in order to discern local issues and concerns requiring reform. Tandon’s ability to devise locally relevant co-constructed solutions, based upon community identification of their own issues and problems, was in stark contrast to GoI and academic-theoretical planning. While both Tandon and the GoI intended social transformation to occur, it is clear that Tandon provides a more democratic basis for understanding which reforms are necessary, the path of reform, and who should be involved in the reform process. PRIA’s slogan is “knowledge, voice, democracy”. Tandon believes that local community awareness, coupled with community capacity building, is what enables democracy in action.

The activities of PRIA are limited to 5 states, the least of the 3 showcased CSOs within this chapter. However, one could argue that PRIA’s imprint upon India and globally, is equally large or larger, than that of Pratham and the Azim Premji Foundation. PRIA’s strength of strategy is that it maximizes the reach and prominence of its vision by leveraging the strength of its network of likeminded-local CSOs.

Many of PRIA’s allies are specialists with the greatest experience in particular fields such as maternal health and girl-child education. PRIA’s allies are also local specialists within

154 their specific region such as rural Uttar Pradesh or tribal Rajasthan. In total, PRIA works together with 3000 NGOs “to deliver its programmes on the ground”. The commonality between PRIA and its allies is that they all employ a pedagogy of “participation as empowerment” (“PRIA’s Mission”, n.d.).

As with Pratham and the APF, PRIA’s strategy is achieve its goal of pedagogical transformation by working with the GoI so as to leverage their democracy initiatives. Tandon explains that this is necessary because:

Active citizenship is about both rights and obligations. Great policies and big schemes cannot automatically result in improvements in people's lives without collective awareness and actions of citizens for whose public good they are created. Also, merely pin-pointing the weakness of government institutions is not enough; we have to find ways to support them to improve their capacities and functioning (“PRIA’s Mission”, n.d.). PRIA’s theory of change is that “informed and mobilized marginalized-citizens” produce “sensitized and accountable government agencies and institutions” as a consequence of their self-advocacy and surveillance of policies and policy-delivery systems (“PRIA’s Mission”, n.d.).

PRIA views education as a broad area involving a convergence of pedagogies that inform belonging and identity. Therefore, PRIA’s education reform initiatives are manifested in the following fields:

 Participatory development methodologies  Institutional and human capacity building for social sector  Women’s leadership and political empowerment  Citizen monitoring and social accountability of services  Participatory governance in Panchayati Raj institutions and urban local bodies  Municipal reforms and participatory planning  Environmental and occupational health  Corporate social responsibility initiatives  Adult education and lifelong learning  Gender mainstreaming in organisations (including preventing sexual harassment at work) (“PRIA’s Mission”, n.d.). PRIA insists that education reform interventions for bureaucrats and administrators of the GoI, are as important as interventions on behalf of marginalized communities. This is

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because structures of power will remain unreformed, or the reform process will take much longer, if the functionaries of state are not included as part of the re-conceptualization of citizenship and governance education.

Hence, PRIA approaches democratic empowerment from much the same perspective as an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression. Both PRIA and the state-nation deem it necessary to identify and transform the mechanisms of hegemony, otherwise reform is meaningless and a de-colonialization of pedagogy will not be accomplished. Having nurtured relations with the GoI in this manner, PRIA is welcomed as an ally and un- hindered in its collaborative attempts to distribute improved or reformed services.

Moreover, the wealth of experience in a diversity of fields as listed above, has translated into an immense knowledge-creation initiative. PRIA has become an acknowledged global leader in participatory action-research:

PRIA has formed and maintained international (global and regional) relationships to build an engaged community of practitioners and to advocate at trans-national levels…PRIA is a member of the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE) and International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), both of which it has lead…Tandon has been the Founder-Chair of the International Forum on Capacity Building (IFCB), CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation which is the largest transnational network of civil society organisations, and FIM-Forum for Democratic Governance. PRIA was an active member in the Citizenship, Participation and Accountability Development Research Consortium organised by the IDS (Institute for Development Studies) which brought together researchers from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the UK to study citizenship in more than 20 countries over a ten-year span (“PRIA’s Mission”, n.d.).

Tandon has succeeded in his vision, like that of Radhakrishnan, of combining and advocating the transformation of citizenship democracy in India, with the re- conceptualization of globalism and international relations. PRIA is a founding member of the Forum of India Development, of the GoI. PRIA is also part a steering committee member of the Asian Democracy Research Network in Seoul ().

Besides international partnerships in Asia, South America and Africa, PRIA has also created an International Academy (2005) which offers 26 short-term courses based on its research findings. This extension by PRIA has much in common with the APU set up by

156 the APF. By 2015, PRIA listed 2000 alumni from 35 countries (“PRIA’s Mission”, n.d.). PRIA’s International Academy is successfully promoting case studies of Indian participation research as models for the pedagogical reform and transformation of the nation-state and global community.

The most often repeated description of India, is that it is the world’s largest democracy. However, India has yet to make a global impact on the basis of that stature. India has a definite stake in claiming such a voice globally, since it is a member of UNESCO, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Commonwealth, the G-20, IBSA (India- Brazil-South Africa), SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), and part of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). All of these organizations play a major part in shaping the concepts of global democracy and global citizenship, upon which international relations are conducted.

The nature of India’s relationship with global finance capital is also shifting. 2012 was the first year that Indian global investment was higher than foreign investment in India (“India’s Global Development Presence and Engagement with Indian Civil Society”, 2013). India has also shown its capability and desire to engage in development projects in Africa, Asia and South America, as part of its new educational diplomacy. This is illustrated by the creation within the Ministry of External Affairs, of a sub-organization known as the Development Partnership Administration (DPA). The DPA has approached several Indian CSOs with experience in overseas programmes, to take part in consultations regarding the development of a collaborative policy for Indian overseas education projects.

Such efforts have the potential for radically shifting the global development paradigm away from OECD donor-controlled success matrices. India could facilitate a South-South discourse regarding alternate visions of development and aid. However, much of that depends on the successful implementation of an Indian domestic reform of pedagogies in relation to citizenship. The concept of participation and belonging needs to shift from a multicultural nation-state framework, to an intercultural state-nation approach. In 2008, India was the first country to announce a quota-free trade policy toward the least developed countries across the globe (PRIA, 2013b).

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PRIA’s attempt to spearhead the re-conceptualization of identity and belonging is entirely in agreement with the ethos of cosmopolitan-secularism and communalidad expressed by the state-nation. PRIA is part a global campaign, allied with likeminded CSO partners across the world, to create a "Global Charter on Right to Participation in Local Democratic Governance" (PRIA, 2013a). The motivation behind this rests on the awareness that although democracy is presently the "most accepted form of governance", it remains a global objective for CSOs to "complement representative democracy with participatory democracy" (PRIA, 2013a). The Charter makes note that it is not just a quest for democracy, but the "quality" of the democracy that matters.

However, the Global Charter, while mandating that countries respect global human rights, does not attempt to impose a hegemonic model with a rigid and fixed reference for identity. Such frameworks are responsible for conflict, since they are made legally binding. Alternate visions of identity to those codified by law, therefore, pose challenges to conformity. This leads to conflict because rights need to be fought for in order to be recognized as legitimate and deserving of inclusion or protection measures. PRIA’s effort within the Global Charter movement is to advocate for a de-linking between citizenship, and the nation-state. PRIA’s model Charter would be one that legislates inter-culturalism as a directive principle, rather than legislate identity and belonging.

This Charter implies that all sociopolitical associations would respect the self-designation of the individual with regard to identification and claims for belonging. By such measures, identity is made plural, with its possibilities for multiple, co-existing , and overlapping locations. In this process of pedagogical reform, both the nation-state and globalization are re-conceptualized by the state-nation.

PRIA’s advocacy of reform also extends to pedagogies of participation with respect to sociopolitical organization. PRIA notes that democracy is jeopardized when institutional spaces are captured by hegemonic elites. PRIA has created a campaign to promote a shift in attitudes about democratic participation and the practice of governance. As education reform attempts to move beyond desks and the chalkboard, citizenship reform attempts to

158 move beyond the ballot box and parliamentary exercise. Both pedagogical reforms strive towards creating "multiple expressions of participation" which include "shared control of decision making" to effect "collective citizenship" (PRIA, 2013b).

PRIA founder Rajash Tandon is also the UNESCO Co-Chair in Community-based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education. The similarities emerging between Radhakrishnan and Tandon should be noted. Both were advocates of a syncretic and composite Indian identity rooted in cosmopolitan-secularism. Both saw education reform being inseparable from sociopolitical reform. And both considered themselves by nature and employment, to be simultaneously working for India’s transformation as well as global transformation. Indeed, regarding the latter point, the relationship was not mutually exclusive, but rather one of interdependence.

Tandon participated in the sub-committee on "Strengthening Community Engagement in Higher Education" which was set up by the Government of India's Planning Commission in September 2011, under the chairmanship of Harsh Mandar. Pawan Agarwal, the advisor on Higher Education to the Planning Commission, states that higher education is not only for the purpose of affording its students better paying jobs, but should also serve the purpose of inducting citizens into an understanding of their responsibilities to the nation: The products of such educational institutions should not only improve their livelihoods and advance their professional opportunities, but also become and act like good citizens of the country. It is in this context that ‘fostering social responsibility in higher education’ needs to be placed as an important pillar of the future directions. By improving engagements with the community, institutions of higher education can reinforce the values of social responsibility amongst the youth. Partnerships with communities and civil society need to be encouraged to realize this potential. (PRIA, 2014).

Tandon's report to the government begins by stating that although economic growth may have increased since the 1990s, correspondingly so too have new forms of social exclusion, urban poverty, environmental degradation, conflict and violence. The task of ensuring that development is inclusive and sustainable "requires new knowledge, enhanced human competencies and new institutional capabilities" (PRIA, 2014).

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In this regard there is a conflict between two ideals of the purpose of education. The first opinion is that education is for social transformation and the attainment of social justice for public good. The second opinion is that education is a means to attaining individual prosperity for personal and consumptive benefit. Tandon’s report notes that an opportunity exists with the massification of education in India, to enact a revolutionary change in the concepts of citizenship and participatory democracy. This is because it would be the first time in the history of the post-colonial state, that many disenfranchised groups will have access to higher education (PRIA, n.d.). Indeed a positive transformation toward the state- nation could begin with the inclusion of these subaltern groups since it would create: an opportunity for promoting learning of the students, who come from diverse communities, in a manner that they may take the benefits of higher education back to these communities and at the same time also draw upon the knowledge nurtured by such communities. (PRIA, 2014).

To a greater degree than in comparison with Pratham and the APF, PRIA that has made the most progress towards creating a pedagogy for Indian education diplomacy. This effort represents PRIA’s re-conceptualization of citizenship and identity from a state-nation perspective. It contributes to an alternate vision of modernity, a de-colonized curriculum founded upon communalidad, a post-colonial sovereignty for all within an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression, and the strengthening of South-South partnerships to resist neo-imperialism.

The progression of PRIA as a pedagogical reform initiative evolved in several stages. From 1982 to 1986, PRIA was “systematizing local knowledge for empowerment”. From 1986 to 1991, PRIA “built (local) competencies” to act “as change agents” (PRIA, n.d.). From 1991 to 1997, PRIA undertook the “institutional strengthening of civil society” (PRIA, n.d.). From 1997 to 2001, PRIA focused on “accountable local governance”. From 2002 to 2008, PRIA moved to ensure “governance from below” (PRIA, n.d.). From 2008 to 2013, PRIA was concerned with “multisector engagements for deepening democracy” (PRIA, n.d.). Currently, PRIA lists its initiatives as having “returned to roots” by which it is meant that PRIA has re-engaged in focused efforts regarding issues of women’s and SC and ST: empowerment, health and education (PRIA, n.d.).

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Although there is no clear reason why PRIA decided to “return to its roots”, I posit two hypotheses (PRIA, n.d.). The first reason is that economic liberalization has taken a heavy toll on the most marginalized communities, who are coincidentally in the area of PRIAs operations. These are women, the lower castes (SCs), and the Adivasis (STs) in the BIMARU zone188.

The second reason for PRIAs “return to roots” may have to do with the shift in the sociopolitical climate in India after Modi’s BJP victory (2014). This should also be a major cause of PRIA concern. While Pratham and the APF are also affected by Hindutva reactionaries, PRIA is a much smaller organization which works collaboratively with even smaller CSOs. In this critical way, it could be argued that Pratham and the APF have more cultural and socioeconomic capital, for resistance. Moreover, PRIA’s geographic area of work, coincides with the Hindutva zones of activity and revanchism.

I would wager that Tandon realized in 1982, that for his vision of democratic empowerment to be an India-wide success, major efforts were required in the most populous area of the Indian nation-state which is the BIMARU zone. The marginalized are the targets of political and economic hegemonies of majoritarianism. In the absence of GoI education and welfare supports, Hindutva has expanded into the BIMARU zone. Hindutva attempts to claim the marginalized as their popular support of Hindu majority. Hindutva appropriates poverty and oppression through a narrative to the marginalized that their plight is caused by the lack of a strong Hindu government. It re-victimizes the marginalized by involving them in their further oppression. This takes the form of seeking their complicity in the perpetuation of an upper-caste monolithic version of Hinduism189, and violence against Muslims, Christians, and Adivasis.

188 This acronym was created by Ashish Bose, to describe the zone in which is most deprived from an economic and social reform perspective. BIMARU means ill/sick in Hindi, and stands for: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. 189 I hesitate to write Brahmanism because although many upper-castes (plural) are (stratification), contemporary socioeconomic and political circumstance has created alternate hegemonies which are not specific to Brahmins. I mean that there is also a promotion of hegemony in the name of Brahmanism, which is not necessary Brahmanical by tradition in South Asia. This is therefore, false or constructed Brahmanism. This political project is better termed Sanskritization. This is a historical phenomenon that has taken place, whereby ascendant classes and communities, become economically or politically dominant. Their legitimacy

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I do not believe it to be a coincidence that PRIA chose to carry out its efforts in the BIMARU zone. An examination of the much larger geographic and financial commitments of Pratham and the APF, will also illustrate a disproportionate effort in the BIMARU zone. It can therefore, be concluded that Indian CSOs have assessed education to be an area of contestation between pedagogies of reform and Hindutva. For the Indian nation-state to continue, let alone the state-nation, CSOs have strategically allied themselves with the Congress led GoI. However, with the capture of the state apparatus by the BJP, it remains to be seen how CSOs will resist the possible undoing of all their efforts at pedagogical reform. Indeed the ‘idea of India’ as aspired to by the National Movement, the Indian Constitution, and NPE 1968, have all been called into question.

A Summary of Civil Society Involvement in Indian Education This chapter has investigated the potential for Civil Society Actors to engage in and make an impact in Indian education reform. An examination of CSO strategic concerns, their policies, and their implementation, was undertaken. These three CSOs were chosen for examination based on the longevity of their activities, the scope of their activities, and the geographic range of their activities within education reform across India. Rather than critique or deconstruct their programs, a literature review concerning their self-designated aims and the rationale behind them, was undertaken.

Lack of on the ground success, can be attributed to numerous factors or insufficient time to allow change. Additionally, what constitutes success, and how success is assessed, is different for each organization. Therefore, it was considered prudent for the purpose of this dissertation, and to establish at least one element of control in this process of comparison, to analyze the elements that contributed to strategic and tactical initiatives by each CSO.

This examination was undertaken in order to discern whether any of the three showcased Indian CSOs approached the conceptual framework of the state-nation. And it has been demostrated that Pratham, the Azim Premji Foundation, and PRIA, all have the potential to inaugurate the state-nation through a transformation of the discourse concerning

however, is earned by their becoming Brahmin, meaning that the performative aspect of their religion and social behaviour becomes conformist-hegemonic.

162 development and modernity. There are many similarities among the three CSOs themselves, and with the state-nation, which has been discussed through the chapter.

The differences among the three CSOs revolve around their specific theory of change frameworks. Pratham follows the notion that education reform should proceed along the goal of attaining quality-for-all. The APF has decidedly committed itself to a theory of change which follows the path of transformative pedagogy leading to education reform. And PRIA believes that education reform will be the byproduct of democratic empowerment because people change systems, rather than systems changing people.

It is noteworthy that all three of them have partnered with the GoI, and this has probably contributed to whatever successes they have had over the course of their reform operations in the Indian education sector. Additionally, as was previously mentioned, the three CSOs under investigation all seem to have assessed that their goals for pedagogical reform originated from the idea of India. It is clear from examining the mission statements of the three CSOs, that they all believe that the GoI also shares in their common aspiration. The three CSOs are critical of the GoI’s failure to succeed in implementing quality EFA, but do not criticize the GoI for its policy initiatives or their premise. It would seem that the CSOs, therefore, take the good intentions of the GoI at its word.

This may cynically be called into question as naïve, or pandering to a hidden current of patriotism that the CSOs share with the GoI. However, it cannot be disputed that the GoI has conducted the largest and longest experiment of EFA in history. Moreover, it is true that attempting to replace the entire education infrastructure of India, as part of reform of education, would be an insurmountable task requiring infinite resources and perhaps a few centuries. In any case, this would not be only a pedagogical reform, but also include infrastructure and bureaucratic reform. Although these are important criteria of education reform, they are not the limiting factors preventing curriculum or pedagogical change in India.

In the face of a menacing and chauvinist Hindutva, all three CSOs have decidedly pledged their continued support for the GoI. A lesson in realpolitik is thus evident, one that

163 influences the course of education reform. That is that, prior to realizing achieving the state-nation or in the course of attempting to realize it, one must not contribute to the weakening of the nation-state to an extent that allows its domination by reactionaries.

As previously mentioned, since the state-nation is an ideal-type rather than a paradigm, the process of realizing it being evoked should not be confused with a process of either domination or the vanquishing of its opponents. This very important distinction, one which makes the state-nation truly alternate in its re-conceptualization of citizenship and democracy, seems to find favour with the CSOs showcased in this chapter. It has allowed all three of them to broadly collaborate, to effortlessly shift course in response to action- research, and to undertake multiple trajectories as part of a holistic view of what pedagogical reform entails.

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Chapter 6

International Organizations: Global Liberalism

International Involvement in Indian Education This chapter analyzes the involvement of international organizations (IO) in Indian education reform. The underlying principles of their policy directives will be examined to discern whether the influence of IOs have any points of convergence with the state-nation. The choice of which IOs to showcase was made using the same rationale that supported the decision for choosing CSOs in the previous chapter. Education reform is the activity of context that links all the actors in this dissertation, and the location of their activities under investigation is India. It is therefore logical that the criteria supporting the choice of IOs, should reflect the same determinants used to qualify the importance of actions in my choice of CSOs.

Hence, the operating range, the commitment of resources, and a history of collaboration, were taken into account when deciding which three IOs would be showcased in this chapter. These parameters also allow an observation of interactions between the GoI, CSOs, and IOs. This provides the opportunity to gauge the effect on education reform, when there is either a convergence or clash of efforts. It is relevant for the dissertation to use the state-nation ideal-type as a way of identifying a possible collaborative strategy, which may provoke a re-conceptualization of identity and belonging.

In determining which efforts at education reform in India may facilitate the state-nation, it also made sense to develop my examination gradually outwards. This is why the prioritization of the chapters has followed the logic of examining nation-state efforts first, followed by national CSOs, and finally inter-national organizations.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, international organizations became more involved with Indian education reform after 1991. What follows is a discussion regarding this involvement by the World Bank, UNICEF and the Commonwealth. The organizational history of each IO, along with their respective conceptual and methodological frameworks,

165 will be analyzed to provide a context for how each IO determined its policies for Indian education reform. The intent is to determine whether organizations representing global capital (World Bank), humanitarian internationalism (UNICEF), and transnational democracy (Commonwealth), have differed in their approach to Indian education reform.

For the sake of comparison across IO activity in Indian education reform, the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) will form the major platform of the examination. As previously mentioned, these programs are two parts of a single GoI pedagogical reform affecting governance and education. Over a twenty year period from 1993, the creation of local governance and a decentralization of administration and planning via the Panchayati Raj, was coupled with a scaled EFA and curriculum reform across India190.

It is as part of this massive undertaking that GoI, Indian CSO, and IO involvement can be compared. 1993 to 2013 was a period of intense policy debate generated by competing ideologies. This is similar to what occurred during the periods of the National Movement and the National Education Movement, from the formation of the Constituent Assembly in 1946 to the inauguration of the Constitution in 1950, and during the debates within the Kothari Commission until the legislation of NPE 1968. Each of these eras involved a re- conceptualization of the pedagogies of Indian identity and belonging that were linked to the ethos of citizenship and democracy.

Within this chapter I will use the conceptual framework of the state-nation as the lens through which I shall critically examine the policy formation and actions of the three showcased IOs with regard to education reform.

The World Bank: Skills Development for Global Capital The World Bank was originally called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It was created at Bretton Woods (New Hampshire, USA) in July 1944. The

190 The Panchayati reforms began 1992-93. DPEP (phase one) was launched in 1994. Along with the GoI, it involved the World Bank, DfID, UNICEF, and others. The second phase of DPEP began in 1996, and a third phase in 1997. This amounted to expanding (scaling up) the program to involve more districts throughout India. SSA began in 2000-01, and continued in phases until it was merged with RTE (2009-10). SSA phase III is listed as operating concurrently with RTE, since 2013-2014 (“SSA, Guidelines”, n.d.).

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World Bank was conceived of as an American led organization that would oversee the integration of a post-war (WWII) integrated Western zone along a liberal capitalist framework. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was also created during the Bretton Woods meetings. The initial ideological direction of both institutions was guided by the economic paradigm of John Maynard Keynes.

Keynesian economic theory rose to prominence within the Roosevelt (F.D.R.191) administration during the late 1930s, when it was used to alleviate the financial crisis of the Great Depression. Keynes was a proponent of government regulation to prevent futures- speculation in the stock market, which he underscored to be a crucial means to preserving investor confidence and financial stability. He also advocated a limited social safety net in the form of government assistance programs to support the population. Such policies however, went against classical economic theory that regarded markets as perfectly self- regulating via the invisible hand.

Keynesian policy as the cornerstone of the integrated Western capitalist zone was overturned during the late 1970s, by a return to classical economic theory. This trend has been termed neo-liberalism, from the perspective that it represented a return to the 19th century unregulated free-market. Alternately, it has also been termed neo-conservativism, to denote the political underpinnings of realpolitik192 that accompanied an open-door193 globalism. These trends are represented by Margaret Thatcher’s leadership of the United Kingdom (Thatcherism, 1979-90) and Ronald Reagan’s leadership of the United States (Reaganomics, 1981-89). Through the decade of the 1980s, domestic government supports and regulations were dismantled. It was claimed that they interfered with capital flow and that their cost had caused the recession of the 1970s.

191 Franklin Delano Roosevelt 192 The premise of which is that states pursue their national-interest irrespective of the change of their leadership or affiliations with respect to culture. Power is therefore considered the basis upon which diplomacy must be conducted. This policy was promoted by Metternich in of Austria (1815-1853) and Bismarck as Chancellor of Prussia and then Imperial Germany (1870-1890). Kissinger is an admirer of both, and an adherent of realist perspective of international-relations. See his book Diplomacy (Kissenger, 1994). 193 As in the open-door economic policies, backed by political and military power, followed by Imperial Britain (eg. policies regarding China) and the United States (eg. policies regarding Japan).

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Correspondingly, the objectives of Western internationalism became infected with these ideas of reform. The dismantling of foreign nationally-controlled or subsidized industries became a Western prescription for economic growth. Western aid became tied to recipient nations undertaking neo-liberal reforms. It was posited that eliminating global tariff and other protectionist measures would result in the injection of private capital. This would eventually eliminate the need for future institutional aid.

Mundy and Menashy (2014) have described how the World Bank operates in the following way: at the interface of authority delegated by the international community of states and the sovereignty of the countries to which they provide services, the World Bank lays claim to legitimacy based on two main ideals: its focus on poverty alleviation, and the bureaucratic neutrality, scientific expertise, and rational decision making that it brings to this enterprise (Mundy and Menashy, 2014, p.401).

Presently the World Bank is actually a conglomerate of several institutions: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), The International Development Association (IDA), The International Finance Corporation (IFC), The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) (“Organization,” n.d.). Having issued its first loan to France in 1947 for reconstruction, the World Bank shifted its focus to poverty alleviation during the 1980s. In the beginning of that decade it sought to accomplish this via policies of debt rescheduling in lendee nations. Joseph Stiglitz, who served as chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000, noted the detrimental effects of this policy shift away from Keynesian economics in his book entitled Globalization and its Discontents (Stiglitz, 2003).

He recounts how foundations for a global institution for reconstruction and development were transformed into an instrument for Western neo-conservative hegemony. Through an analysis of IMF imposed economic restructuring via World Bank lending packages which he was a part of during the East Asia (1997) and Russian (1998) economic crises, Stiglitz concludes that:

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The IMF’s policies, in part based on the outworn presumption that markets, by themselves, lead to efficient outcomes, failed to allow for desirable government interventions in the market, measures which can guide economic growth and make everyone (sic) better off (Stiglitz, 2003, p. xii). By removing government supports to the economy and cutting social programs, a critical aspect of stability within development programs in nascent postcolonial industrializing nations was ignored. It was assumed that “markets by themselves solved every societal problem” despite the examples from Western history (U.S.A., Canada, U.K., Germany) indicating that “inequity, unemployment, pollution: those were all issues in which government had to take an important role” (Stiglitz, 2003, p. xiii).

The end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union (January 1, 1992) inaugurated proclamations of American exceptionalism.194 Development aid began to be inflected with this theory that presupposed the universality of Western values represented by the liberal capitalist nation-state. What replaced Keynesian economic theory was the implementation of policies that “were made on the basis of what seemed a curious blend of ideology and bad economics, dogma that sometimes seemed to be thinly veiling special interests” (Stiglitz, 2003, p. xiii). There was rarely any assessment of how deregulation policies affected poverty in the target nations. Where structural adjustment policy did manage to result in economic growth, the results were captured by oligarchs, or created oligarchs in lendee nations. The resultant inequalities or increased poverty were considered necessary for development (Stiglitz, 2003, p. xiv).

Stiglitz notes that neither capitalism nor globalization, require hegemony. The Asian Development Bank advocates “competitive pluralism” as part of its mandate by offering its aid recipients:

alternative views of development strategies, including the “Asian model”—in which governments, while relying on markets, have taken an active role in creating, shaping, and guiding markets…which the Asian Development Bank sees as a

194 This is the theory that the United States of America is qualitatively different from all other nations due to its revolutionary history which affirmed the basis of its statehood upon liberty, equality and lassiez-faire economics. This exceptionalism is sometimes expressed as Americanism, an idea that asserts the superiority of U.S. historic development as providing the best possible condition for citizens. By extension both exceptionalism and Americanism are sometimes encapsulated within the argument to extend the Western sociopolitical system globally.

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distinctly different from the American model pushed by the Washington-based institutions (Stiglitz, 2003, pp. 10-11). It is therefore, no surprise that the World Bank is viewed by the Global South as complicit in the Washington Consensus. This was a term coined by John Williamson in 1989.

It refers to the ten policy prescriptions which are prerequisites for the receipt of development aid packages (“Washington Consensus”, n.d.):

 Fiscal discipline.  A redirection of public expenditure priorities toward fields offering both high economic return and the potential to improve income distribution, such as primary health care, primary education, and infrastructure.  Tax reform to lower marginal rates and broaden the tax base.  Interest rate liberalization.  A competitive exchange rate.  Trade liberalization.  Liberalization of inflows of foreign direct investment.  Privatization of national industries.  Deregulation to abolish barriers.  Domestic legislation to strengthen property rights (“Washington Consensus”, n.d.)

In the beginning of the 1980s, a “purge” was conducted inside of the World Bank to remove development economists such as Hollis Chenery who had advised past-World Bank president Robert McNamara to focus on poverty elimination. The appointment of William Clausen as World Bank president in 1981, marked the increased subordination of the World Bank to Washington Consensus based IMF policy (Stiglitz, 2003, p. 13).

Ironically, the history of the industrialized West illustrates government nurturing of industries to protect them so that they would be able to compete globally without being subsumed. World Bank rhetoric regarding unfair protection is therefore considered duplicitous and hypocritical by developing nations whose agricultural sectors, for example, have routinely been undermined or destroyed in competition with their subsidized Western counterparts. Western European nations banned the free flow of capital until they achieved economic stability via the common institutions of the EC-EEC-EU195. So “some might say it’s not fair to insist that developing countries with a barely functioning bank system risk

195 European Community, European Economic Community, European Union

170 opening their markets. But putting aside such notions of fairness, it’s bad economics” (Stiglitz, 2003, p. 17).

Bank policies during the period from 1980 to 2000 did not consider the transformation of society as a goal. Bank motivation was development which was assessed solely in terms of economic growth. Yet several World Bank reports during this time suggest that EFA must be considered a component of economic development. This is because rapid economic growth places great stress upon society. This cannot be managed without human resource capacity building, which in any case is necessary to sustain economic growth. This awareness did indeed filter through World Bank polices from 2000 onwards, but the strategic emphasis was still on macroeconomic growth. Stiglitz cynically terms this “trickle-down-plus”, meaning that economic growth was still stipulated as the best course for achieving poverty reduction, ‘plus’ female education and health (Stiglitz, 2003, p. 80).

George Psacharopoulos oversaw the educational research branch and its policy formation at the World Bank between 1981 and 1988. He notes that the World Bank only began its education programming in 1963. Direct education lending programs began 1979 (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.329). From 1945 to 1963, there was no Bank policy regarding education. From 1963 to 1987, education began to emerge as “manpower stimulus” in accordance with human capital theory. However, “in spite of the investment in human capital revolution in economic thought that started in the late 1950s, education was considered as a soft sector, by the Bank and this as late as 1981” (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.330).

Psacharopoulos categorizes 1987 to 1990 as a period of World Bank “confusion” due to internal debates regarding the creation of a specific policy priority and lending scheme for education. From 1990 to 1997, the Bank reoriented education policy toward the goal of EFA. However, according to Psacharopoulos, from 1997 to 2006, there was once again a conflict in determining exact priorities with respect to education (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.330).

The Bank’s first “quasi policy paper” concerning education was published in 1994. However, this was a “lessons from experience” report rather than a goal oriented directive.

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This report was only commissioned due to an internal debate after 16 years (1979-1994) of project financing in the education sector, as to whether Bank directives “might not have been the most appropriate for a country’s development” (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.330). The main concerns centred around the determinants of ‘success’ for education policy. In this regard, the Bank’s near exclusive focus on vocational training was questioned (Jones, 1992; Heyneman, 2003; IJED, 1996; IJED, 2002). Psacharopoulos argues that the “difficulty in pinpointing a concrete and clear-cut World Bank policy on education” is that “attempting to reach consensus in a large organization” is near impossible especially since there are divergent goals regarding the process and motivation for lending problems in the paradigm of development (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.330).

One finds many “reports” that are “commissioned” or “prepared” for, or “funded” by the Bank, but a dearth of actual “World Bank policies on education”. The absence is even more striking if one attempts to isolate Bank policy on education regarding a specific nation (India). One derives World Bank policy from the actions (supports, initiatives, programs) which it has taken, rather than any explicit policy document. In fact, as Psacharopoulos details, Bank actions as a “source could be considered more reliable, as often Bank operations contradicted officially stated policies” (Psacharopoulous, 2006, p.300). Mundy and Menashy similarly note that “policy talk, policy decisions, and operational activities have diverged in ways that raise real questions about the functioning and efficacy of the Bank” (Mundy and Menashy, 2014, p.402).

A good example is the case of EFA which the World Bank endorsed in 1990. The Bank nevertheless, continued to direct a high proportion of its resources to higher education in countries with high rates of female illiteracy and low enrollment levels (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.330). This is because vocational education was still considered a means of contributing to the vibrancy of the manpower needs of the “harder sectors” of the economy (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.330). This was despite London School of Economics (LSE) research which indicated that “manpower forecasting was responsible for building red brick universities in Africa in the 1960s, instead of primary schools, thereby perpetuating illiteracy” (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.331).

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In 1972, the Bank president issued a directive that non-formal training, curriculum reform, education radio and television, and education management, would henceforth become priorities for financing within the education budget. Thereafter, the Bank published reports and reviews concern the rate of return on education financing (1985), an education for development book (1985), a book on the diversification of secondary education (1985), and a financing of primary education policy report (1986). Psacharopoulos claims that these and other reports including one of his own (1994) on the financing of higher education, were buried and “the reason for this was that the results contradicted what the Bank was doing at the time” (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.331). Mundy and Menashy use Brunsson (1993) to explain that this may reflect the World Bank’s intentional “organized hypocrisy” which is systematically created as a “functional response employed by organizations that attempt to produce coordinated, rationalized action in the face of competing political expectations” (Mundy and Menashy, 2014, p.403).

It was the Central Projects Department of the World Bank in the mid-1980s, which took the lead in drafting a coherent education policy. This was presented to Bank leadership under the auspices of a financing report concerning education in developing countries. Its authors concluded that ‘returns’ for primary education financing were greater than those for tertiary education financing. It was suggested that education policy required a sector-wide approach along multiple trajectories. However, “the paper met fierce opposition both internally in the education sector, and with senior management. So it ended up as a non- committing publication under the authors’ names, with the sub-title ‘An Exploration of Policy Options’” (Psacharopoulos, 2006, p.333).

What eventually forced the Bank to reorient its education policy was the globalization of the EFA initiative and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the UN through its agencies of UNESCO and UNICEF. In 1993, a Bank reorganization occurred which sought to prioritize a policy direction in funding of software inputs for primary education. A new Bank president in the mid-1990s guided the production of the World Bank Review of Education (1995) and the World Bank Education Sector Strategy (1999).

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The Operations Evaluation Department (OED) of the World Bank published a report in 2002, entitled India: Sector Development in the 1990s by Abadzi. It states that India resisted external funding to education until the late 1980s196, but that the World Bank has “worked in line with India’s principle for self-sufficiency and domestic development” (Abadzi, 2002, p.iii). As of 2002, 4 Vocational and Technical Education Training (VTET) projects, and 6 basic education projects had been initiated. All VTET projects were deemed “satisfactory or highly satisfactory” because the institutional capacity for training students was increased through the construction of 1100 new buildings. From 1989 to 1999, the World Bank committed $855 million to VTET (Abadzi, 2002, p.iii). Citing the GoI’s apprehension in accepting funding for education, the OED report mentions that “though the amount was minuscule compared to the needs of the country, the two parties developed a productive working relationship, and the Bank established itself as a credible interlocutor in education” (Abadzi, 2002, p.3).

World Bank funding of EFA increased as the GoI began to implement DPEP. Funding supported the building of toilets, school buildings, teacher training, and raising enrollment ratios. Providing insight into the herculean endeavour of both reforming and massifying Indian primary education, the OED report recommended that future funding of Indian education reform be conducted with “an integrated approach and study of the effects of one subsector upon another” (Abadzi, 2002, p.iv). Decentralization of GoI administration was encouraged through the Bank’s prerequisite for funding. Indeed, the Bank began to conduct negotiations with Indian states directly. The GoI was allowed to approve which Indian states would participate. Beginning in Uttar Pradesh in 1993:

These projects reflect a clear policy to move a significant share of educational decision making to the district and sub-district level and were expected to create the institutional framework to carry out long-term, cost-effective human resource development. The general objectives were to build institutional capacity; improve the quality and completion rates of the primary education system; and expand access to primary education-especially for girls, scheduled castes, and scheduled tribes (Abadzi, 2002, p.4).

196 In 1972 the World Bank provided funding for Agricultural university extension programs. From 1962- 1987, World Bank funding for Indian education, health and nutrition was less than 1% of commitment. 1990 began a new era of collaboration with Technical Education Project I. (Abadzi, 2002, p.26).

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The OED report mentions that the GoI was exceptional in its planning, monitoring, and reporting of DPEP. Also, that the mobilization efforts towards decentralization of education to the district and sub-district level were excellent and overwhelming (Abadzi, 2002, p.5). The OED report commented that GoI “commitment and activity far exceed the levels usually seen in other low-income countries and have very much impressed Bank staff” (Abadzi, 2002, p.5). In another section Abadi writes: Supervision of the District Primary Education Program in India…is quite astonishing. It shouldn’t be possible to supervise effectively a program in 150 districts involving a half-dozen donors and a $1 billion of Bank credits, but it is being done remarkably well under difficult and varied circumstances (Abadzi, 2002, p.28).

Abadi also admitted that the GoI’s funding and efforts far exceed that of the Bank’s: It is easy to both overestimate and underestimate the Bank’s input into basic education in India. Even though the Bank is the largest foreign donor, foreign funding to basic education in India constitutes only about 4 percent of the total public expenditure on basic education (Abadzi, 2002, p.28).

The World Bank credited itself with “making primary education a greater regional and local priority”, referencing its methodology of decentralization (Abadzi, 2002, p.28).

Since the year 2000, the World Bank has contributed $2 billion in loans to Indian education reform (“Education in India”, 2011). The World Bank’s India Country Partnership Plan 2013-2017, proclaims that its “overarching objective” is to “support poverty reduction and shared prosperity in India”. Furthermore, that this aim is “closely aligned” with India’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2013-2017) which outlines “faster, sustainable, and more inclusive growth” (World Bank, 2013). However, as the World Bank notes, the GoI also included “group equality, regional balance, empowerment, environmental management…elimination of gender and social gaps in schooling…” as tactical requirements for development (GoI, Planning Commission, 2011). In order to help facilitate this, the World Bank strategy is to provide India with “an integrated package of financing, advisory services, and knowledge”. A core feature of this will be a “significant shift in support toward low-income and special category states, where many of India’s poor and disadvantaged live” (“World Bank, Overivew”, n.d.). To achieve this end, Bank estimates were for $3 to $5 billion per year

175 over the period 2013-2017, to be spent, and that 60% of this total would be given directly to state government projects.

World Bank alignment with the UN Millennium Goals197created a scenario where India became a massive test case: This is also the World Bank Group’s first country strategy to integrate the institution’s new global goals for reducing poverty and increasing shared prosperity. It presents two scenarios that show India’s potential for growth, poverty reduction and prosperity over the next 17 years. In the “2030 ambitious scenario” India grows on average at 8.2%, and makes economic growth as inclusive as its better- performing states during the latter part of the last decade. The potential is huge; poverty would be reduced from 29.8% (2010) to 5.5% by 2030 and the share of people no longer vulnerable to falling back into poverty would increase from 19.1 to 41.3%. If India were to grow as it did from 2005 to 2010 without making that growth more inclusive, poverty would fall to only 12.3% by 2030 (“World Bank, Overview”, n.d.). The World Bank has decided that private infrastructure development, urban expansion, secondary and tertiary education support, will represent the core features of its 2030 strategy (“World Bank, Overview”, n.d.).

Hence, in essence it would seem as if the World Bank has “decoupled” (Mundy and Menashy, 2014). It continues to retain its original framework of liberalization as the means towards poverty reduction, while promoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). India provides the World Bank a way to legitimize its approach, because with the largest amount of the globe’s poor, India “is uniquely placed to help reduce global poverty and boost prosperity” (Work Bank, 2013). It seems that the Bank would agree with Mira Kamdar who, as noted in my introduction to this dissertation, has commented that “India’s problems are the world’s problems” and that if “India succeeds, then the world may have a chance” (Kamdar, 2007, introduction).

Within the biggest experiment of EFA and education reform in history, the World Bank has found a way to combine entrepreneurship with education. “The Bank operationalizes its focus on poverty alleviation in one of the most controversial arenas of educational change:

197 Now superseded by the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, formally adopted September 2015 (“Sustainable Development Goals, Homepage”, n.d.).

176 the expansion of privately provided schooling” (Mundy and Menashy, 2014, p.401). From the outset, the Bank has maintained its framework of skill development as equivalent to education reform. With its origins within the reconceptualization of the post-1945 global capitalist order, the World Bank has unsuccessfully tried to reform its pedagogical approach to education reform. This may prove a case in point with regard to the hypothesis of my dissertation, that education reform requires a corresponding reconceptualization of identity and belonging. On the other hand, it is indeed peculiar that an examination of World Bank policies illustrates that the majority of its policy directives aim beyond the nation-state.

In India, the Bank always attempted to negotiate with state governments, rather than the national government. Moreover, Bank policies favour decentralization from state to district and block level if possible. This is most likely a means towards stimulating entrepreneurship or inspiring devolution of power in order to facilitate foreign capital investment. Nevertheless, the point is that the World Bank does not approach the state- nation ideal-type with respect to re-conceptualizing citizenship and participation. The Bank does this by confounding the nation-state and, reaching beyond sovereignty to engage the local. In doing so, it seems to act locally and think globally. The Bank claims that this is an effective anti-oppression strategy, as it allows marginalized communities to challenge political hegemony. One cannot, however, help but be a bit cynical or at least cautious. Since the motives of the Bank for doing this, seem to be to further its modis operandi of expanding the hegemonic paradigm of neoliberalism.

The human capital theory, which informed World Bank policies until 1990, was devised by Schultz (1959), Becker (1964), Bowman and Anderson (1967), and Blaug (1970). However, the Bank’s lending to reconstruct post-WWII Europe was conducted in nation- states whose infrastructure simply required repair.198 Bank lending to the postcolonial global South was to create an infrastructure which did not exist. “The question was not what human capital was necessary for development—an argument , full of dilemmas and debates,--but how many engineers and technicians were required…”(Heyneman, 2003,

198 Marshall Plan aid from 1948 to 1952 was approximately $13 billion USD. Fourteen European countries received this aid, with the UK receiving the highest percentage (24%) (Heyneman, 2016, p.1).

177 p.317). Robert McNamara’s tenure as World Bank president from 1968 to 1981, brought about a four-fold increase in lending for health and education. “In this broader geo- political context, McNamara emerged as a successful policy entrepreneur, selling the Bank’s role in promoting poverty reduction and the delivery of basic needs as essential to the maintenance of stability in the world system” (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.11; Vetterlain, 2012). The notion that lending was analogous to start-up capital, however, still pervaded Bank philosophy.

The problem is that education is labour intensive, and recurrent costs were not being calculated by the Bank. This awareness began to alter the Bank’s perception of education sector lending, and eventually created a rate-of-return basis for the assessment of Bank policies. The economic crisis in Latin America also caused a shift in Bank policies. American Secretary of the Treasury, James Baker, criticized the Bank for not being able to effectively respond to the crisis because of the Bank’s inflexible five-year implementation cycles (Heyneman, 2003, p.324). This caused the Bank to create Adjustment Loans, which would hereafter be ad hoc lending in exchange for nation-state fiscal austerity measures. This decade from 1980 to 1990 was marked by a sharp reversal of what McNamera had achieved:

The Reagan administrations actively promoted a harsh version of neoliberal orthodoxy within the Bank and the IMF, and under the US appointed President, Tom Clausen and the Bank’s American chief economist, Anne Krueger, the focus on poverty in the Bank’s corporate level discourse declined (Vetterlain, 2012). Structural adjustment policies targeted the downsizing of public expenditure, the liberalization of markets, and the privatization of public utilities as key measures towards achieving macro- economic stabilization. The Bank emerged at the centre of a neo-classical resurgence in development economics, more responsible than perhaps any other organization for elaborating what has come to be called the “Washington consensus” agenda for low and middle income countries (cf. Miller-Adams, 1999; Williamson, 1993) (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.11).

By the early 1990s, UNICEF, UNESCO, and CSOs throughout the globe, began to oppose the World Bank monopoly on education reform directives. Mundy and Verger analyze the Bank’s agreement to converge with the former organizations in a global campaign for EFA,

178 as evidence that the Bank was responsive to pressure from below. This resulted in the joint hosting, between UNICEF, UNESCO and the World Bank, of the Education for All Conference in Jomtien in 1990. The Delors Report entitled Learning: The Treasure Within (1996) was produced during the UNESCO International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century. The Delors Report defined education by the principles of lifelong learning and the four pillars of learning: learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to live together.

The World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990, held as a joint initiative with other IOs, and particularly the World Bank and UNICEF, also had the objective of making primary education universal...(Abdeljalil and Lauwerier, 2014, p.141).

At Jomtien in 1990, access, quality, and relevant learning, had been enshrined as the goals for EFA. "By 2000, they had gradually been reduced to two dimensions: equitable access and the quality of basic education" (Abdeljalil and Lauwerier, 2014, p.143).

The Bank presented “structural adjustment with a human face” (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.12, quoting Cornia et al., 1988). And yet, there were many intra-Bank dissenters who had been advocating a shift in the 1980s policy, who took this opportunity of external coordinated opposition to the Bank, as leverage. “An opportunistic technical cadre within the Bank found a way of framing a Bank mandate in education that could be legitimated in the terms of the economic orthodoxy of the period, but also in terms of pro-poor sentiments…” (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.12). This was during the time of World Bank president, James Wolfensohn (1995-2005).

In 2011 the World Bank began to stipulate that measuring learning outcomes was its strategy to determine the quality of education. The Bank came to this conclusion as a result of internal reports which cited that EFA efforts as massification had resulted in a drop of education standards. This had resulted from employing contract and para-teachers to fill the need of increasing student enrollment. The Bank suggested raising school fees, or implementing a cost-sharing arrangement between schools and parents, to generate revenue for proper teacher training (Abdeljalil and Lauwerier, 2014, p.145; World Bank, 2006). By 2011, the World Bank seems to have revised its enthusiasm for EFA altogether, in favour

179 of Learning for All (2011). It was stated that "growth, development, and poverty reduction depend on the knowledge and skills that people acquire, not the number of years that they sit in a classroom" (World Bank, 2011). Klees (2002) regards this as merely a repackaging the Bank's commitment to neoliberal policies.

Former World Bank education sociologist, Stephen Heyneman (Heyneman, 2009, p.570), has criticized the convergence of IOs to focus on EFA. He says it has “made a fetish out of primary education” and “generated donor monopoly over client interests and exaggerated the role of the state in education provision” (Heyneman, 2010, p.518). Heyneman states that the publicity surrounding the ineffectiveness of education aid, embezzlement of funds, and the failure of aid to raise education quality, has also caused private donors, agencies, and research facilities to concentrate on other aspects of development rather than schooling.

There is certainly a need for basic education, and education aid should not neglect it. But what began as common sense has turned into an ideology in which other education subsectors were treated as heresy (Heyneman, 2016, p.7).

Heyneman also notes that “like the health sector, education cannot be sub-divided without creating coutner-productive distortions” (Heyneman, 2010, p.519). A holistic policy of both, reform and massification, is necessary. However, his most evocative statement in regard to summarizing World Bank mistakes regarding policies of education reform, concerns the spirit in which these actions were undertaken:

Somehow, the purpose of education commonly discussed within the development community has been confined to cognitive achievement and marginal changes in productivity. Models have concentrated on the link between access and learning and between learning and economic growth (Hanushek and Woessman, 2007). The problem with this is that it does not incorporate the reason public schooling was invented, which was to help preserve social cohesion. Nor is the traditional human capital model sufficiently flexible to incorporate the future requirements for social and political development. These demands largely concern security and the role of the state in guaranteeing ‘national resilience’ to external shock (Omand, 2010). The development community should justify universal access and quality in public schooling because of the need for community social cohesion and for national security and not

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solely on the basis of human capital (Heyneman, 2002/3; Heyneman, 2005; Silova et. al., 2007) (Heyneman, 2010, p.519).

Mundy and Verger (2015) propose a more nuanced approach to World Bank policies regarding education. They argue that a “rationalist-constructivist” lens should be used to deconstruct the Bank decision making process. Mundy and Verger conclude that the Bank’s organizational culture, the geopolitical landscape, and evolving Bank-client relationships, explain the progression of thought concerning World Bank supported education reform from the 1960s to present (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.9). Importantly, the authors also highlight that together with the emergence of new regional powers and rising economies, that a “second level of political responsiveness evolves when civil society pressures powerful governments to mandate new norms” (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.9). This is in line with Abdeljalil and Lauwerier (2014) who state:

We believe that the orientations of these organizations are not set in stone and that they evolve over time, in accordance with geographical contexts and through contract with a variety of national and international actors (Abdeljalil and Lauwerier, 2014, p.142).

In periods of global recession, or when Western nations dispute unilateral measures of economic and political action, the Bank has “enjoyed considerable autonomy and room for manoeuvre…has been used at two levels…reshaping both the Bank’s mandate as well as the wider global policy agenda for international development” (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.9). This seems to be the case since the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, where “leaderless globalization” has allowed the Bank’s new president Jim Yong Kim, to undertake reforms to transform the Bank into a best practises “knowledge bank” and “solutions bank” endowed with 14 new global regional groups (Mundy and Verger, 2015, p.15).

From 1987 until 2008, India was the number one World Bank borrower for education projects. From 2008 to 2012, India moved to third place. Many studies, including the present dissertation, have indicated that although substantial in terms of borrowing, external funding to Indian education reform was minimal as overall contribution towards GoI

181 expenditure. As India and China increasingly become global lenders, rather than borrowers, Kim’s new strategy proposes to revitalize the World Bank in order to keep that institution relevant. Mundy and Verger (2015) assess this as evidence of the Bank’s receptiveness to its clients, while Heyneman (2003, 2010, 2016) states that the Bank is aware that it depends on client borrowing to justify its existence.

UNICEF: Child-Centred Development for Humanitarian Internationalism The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was created on December 11, 1946, by mandate of the United Nation’s General Assembly. In the immediate context after the Second World War (1939-1945) UNICEF served as a global humanitarian IO that provided emergency food and health care to the children of war torn countries (“UNICEF, Our History”, n.d.). Conceived as a temporary relief measure to aid Western European social rehabilitation, UNICEF became a permanent sub-organization of the United Nations in 1953. In that year UNICEF began its first global campaign to prevent yaws199 by spreading awareness regarding its transmission and effects, and distributing penicillin.

UNICEF receives two-thirds of its funding from UN members states while the remaining one-third are remittances from private donor institutions and individuals. The annual assets of UNICEF in 2008 amounted to $3.4 billion USD (“UNICEF Annual Report 2008”, n.d.). Third-party estimates of UNICEF revenue state that nearly 92% of UNICEF’s income is channeled into its aid programs. Non-government individual stake holders were estimated to number six million in 2011 (“Charity Navigator”, n.d.).

UNICEF has field offices in 191 nations. Structurally above these are 8 regional offices which serve to coordinate efforts and supply expertise to and among the national offices. UNICEF also possesses logistics operations offices in Brussels, Copenhagen and Tokyo. This organizational latitude allows UNICEF to provide focused national campaigns according to state and regional needs, while also endearing national citizens to an international organization via its face as a citizens-coalition in the national interest. As part

199 Yaws is a disease which causes disfigurement in children.

182 of its conceptual framework, UNICEF’s actions and solutions to global problems are locally rooted.

UNICEF is indeed the sum of its parts, and this recognition awarded it the Nobel Peace Prize “for the promotion of brotherhood among nations” in 1965 (UNICEF, Our History”, n.d.). UNICEF has positioned itself as a bipartisan global institution in the interests of child welfare. This has been facilitated by its parent institution the UN. In 1959, the UN provided UNICEF an ideological and legal internationalist raison d’etre through the creation of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Member states of the UN General Assembly are accountable for child protection and welfare under international law and by their adherence to the UN Charter. The Declaration defines the rights of a child as being those of “protection, education, health care, shelter and good nutrition” (“UNICEF, Our History”, n.d.).

This allowed UNICEF’s national organizational structure whose focus had been health and welfare from 1946 to1960, to broaden its activities to the realm of education after 1961. This is noteworthy because UNICEF is one of the oldest sub-organs of the United Nations. Therefore, it is evident that the creation of UNICEF was considered to promote a core feature of the ethos of UN humanitarian internationalism. It can be concluded that, by design, the UN is UNICEF, as much as UNICEF is part of the UN.

The pedagogy of education reflects the pedagogy of the state, and both begin to replicate their ethos with the nurturing from infancy of the most vulnerable and invisible members of society, children. Echoing the state-nation, UNICEF deems it critical that anti-oppression and intercultural education, are the foundation of citizenship democracy. UNICEF believes that the rights of a child are universal and that the character of education must be global, and is therefore, a global concern. This is a shared perspective of cosmopolitan-secularism, one of the core components of the state-nation ideal-type.

In this framework of logic, UNICEF serves as an international body for the protection of whose who may not possess the rights of national citizens. Paradoxically, this makes UNICEF an inter-national guardian of nation-state children. Hence, UNICEF attempts to provide global citizenship guarantees to those who are disenfranchised nationally because

183 they are legally under the age of majority. By doing so, UNICEF actually contravenes two of the most enshrined principles upon which the Western nation-state was founded. These are the commitment of the nation-state to preserve sovereignty and property rights.

The framework of nation-state constitutional legality has been broadened to include women and minorities, but only under pressure from strong advocacy. Women and slaves were removed from being chattels, but for the most part children have remained the property of their parents or guardians. Lacking the ability to self-organize and advocate, children remain at the mercy of benevolent care, which is assumed to be provided. UNICEF transcends the fabric of the nation-state by refuting the legitimacy of ageism and materialism to prohibit the extension of citizenship and democracy. Correspondingly, the UNICEF’s most persuasive argument to justify itself has always been that it is an inter- national lobby for the most vulnerable and marginalized of humanity, which include unseen and unheard children.

UNICEF was a pioneer in its use of social messaging to promote its global vision. It has attempted to reach past the nation-state and communicate with individual citizens through media advocacy. UNICEF employs public notables who have popular appeal rather than political status. In this way UNICEF attempts to reinforce that it is a global cultural, rather national political organization. UNICEF has always thought it important that it is perceived to have a very recognizable human face. In 1954, Danny Kaye became UNICEF’s first “ambassador”. The popular actor starred and narrated in the film Assignment Children which documented UNICEF’s work in Asia. It is estimated that over one hundred million people saw this production. The film’s drawing power was less due to its activist message than the appeal of its global messenger (“UNICEF, Our History”, n.d.).

The expansion of UNICEF’s activities from health and welfare to include education, coincided with post-WWII decolonization. UNICEF was, therefore, in a unique position to enter into direct collaboration with new emerging post-colonial governments as national partners, rather than being viewed as an obstructionist organization which would seek to

184 subvert sovereignty.200 The uncertainty of their sociopolitical commitment to consolidating the nation-state, created the conditions where newly independent countries were eager to accept aid from UNICEF. The latter contributed to teacher training and classroom infrastructure to facilitate the creation of national education.

From the outset UNESCO placed a priority on the core functions of education: decolonization, development; promoting human rights, access to education and literacy; and safeguarding each country's cultural heritage (Abdeljalil and Lauwerier, 2014, p.142). This was a point of convergence between UNICEF and all post-colonial nations which viewed education reforms as being essential for the promotion of their national identity.

While promoting globalism and global citizenship, UNICEF supports the edifice of the nation-state when the latter seeks to provide EFA. This example has parallels with that of the Indian CSOs examined in the previous chapter. Those CSOs, although desiring a re- conceptualization of identity and belonging, remain partners with the GoI in implementing education reform and massification. The rationale for the decision of Indian CSOs has been discussed as being one of strategic convenience in the promotion of their goals. Also, that Indian CSOs seem to have assessed the GoI as more benevolent than not, regarding the promotion of what I have identified as state-nation values.

Both UNICEF and UNESCO are part of the UN. However, UNESCO is a technical agency, while UNICEF is a fund. This means that UNICEF can theoretically pursue any course of action as long as it can secure the funding. Its annual publication State of the World's Children has reaffirmed UNICEF's goal of focusing on the most vulnerable children based on their gender and socioeconomic status (UNICEF, 2006; UNICEF, 2007; UNICEF, 2012). UNICEF and UNESCO have collaborated in creating the Education First (2012) initiative whose goals are to expand access, improved quality, and promote global citizenship. This program evolved from their previous collaboration in creating A Human Rights based Approach to Education for All (UNICEF and UNESCO, 2007). The rights based approach to education which UNICEF and UNESCO adhere to promotes social

200 It is therefore not a coincidence that developing nations such as India, right from the time of their independence, wholly supported and contributed to the budgets of organizations of UNICEF and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: 1945).

185 cohesion, integration and stability. It fosters non-violent conflict resolution and positive social transformation which is sustainable. And it builds capacity which leads to better outcomes for economic development (UNICEF/UNESCO, 2007).

The UN was founded immediately after WWII to reorganize the global balance of power and diplomacy in a realist paradigm. This international order is based upon the of member nation-states. All nation-states, not simply the Great Powers, participate in the UN on the assumption that their edifice of nation-statehood remains unquestioned. As a component of the UN, it is inevitable that UNICEF is a supporter of the nation-state. UNICEF’s theory of change seeks to reform pedagogies of the nation-state, rather than transform the nation-state.

As part of this strategy, UNICEF has attempted to leverage the power of nation-states like the United States of America, to forward global agendas. Often this has come in the context of using Western democracy as a vehicle for child welfare in post-conflict zones or against authoritarian regimes. This seems an implicit admission by UNICEF that there are better and worse categories of nation-states and that reform should be directed by better nation-states towards improvement of the worse. UNICEF thinks of itself as the humanitarian internationalism which sometimes follows or accompanies military internationalism. UNICEF’s duty has been to reconstruct the nation-state with a more humane, cosmopolitan, and secular face. While not complicit in regime change, UNICEF welcomes and benefits from the opportunity it receives to re-brand nonconformist nation- states.

In 1979, UNICEF launched a 365 day global awareness campaign called the International Year of the Child. In 1988, UNICEF founded its Innocenti Research Centre in Firenze (Florence, Italy) which possesses an entire research division to broaden the global discourse around what constitutes child welfare and education. Developing holistic and coordinated policies has been the result. UNICEF links maternal care (education of the mother), to child welfare (health and labour regulations), and both as part of education (EFA with a focus on the girl child). In 1981, UNICEF successfully lobbied the World Health Assembly to regulate infant formulae so as to encourage breast feeding and therefore decrease infant

186 mortality. The next year (1982) UNICEF declared a Development Revolution which was based on four principles: breastfeeding, immunization, rehydration therapy, and growth monitoring (“UNICEF, Our History”, n.d.).

However, these activities have often positioned UNICEF at cross purposes with the World Bank, which championed skills development as the main agenda for education reform. It is this fact that probably allows UNICEF great liberty within the developing world. UNICEF through its own promotion, is perceived as being committed to an internationalism of humanitarianism rather than one of neo-liberal capital. Indeed, UNICEF produced a comprehensive criticism of neo-liberal strategies entitled Adjustment with a Human Face (AHF). The AHF report listed a series of proposals giving voice to developing nations regarding alternate policies leading to their development. The AHF specifically underscored the dangerous consequences of fiscal adjustments and austerity measures upon women and children (“UNICEF, Our History”, n.d.).

Akkari and Lauwerier (2014) conclude that IO policies within global education reform since 1990, have revolved around a series of dominant concepts such as quality, good governance, accountability, privatization, benchmarking, and the measurement of learning outcomes (p.148). In the estimation of UNICEF, quality revolves around providing human rights to the learner by making her/him central to the education process (UNICEF, 2007; Akkari and Lauwerier, 2014, p.149). By conceptualizing education in terms of product worth in relation to gaining employment or learning skill, quantitative methodolgies for assessment have become central to IO policy frameworks. "And yet, the social, economic and cultural relevance of the knowledge that students acquire is also key to assessing education quality" (Akkari and Lauwerier, 2014, p.149).

UNICEF highlighted good governance as a prerequisite for education reform, and sees this as very much a necessity for securing the rights of the child (UNICEF, 2006). UNICEF partnered with UNESCO to create a program known as Monitoring Learning Achievement, which measures basic learning and life skills (UNESCO, 2000). On the other hand, the World Bank highlights accountability as the determinant for effective education reform. It

187 created a Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) metric, to serve as an assessment tool to gauge policy effectiveness (World Bank, 2011).

By having the UN adopt the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, UNICEF has been responsible for creating the single most internationally accepted document of global citizenship. UNICEF followed this success in 1990, by organizing a World Summit for Children in which the UN set targets for children’s health, nutrition and education by the year 2000. As mentioned above, UNICEF was able to piggyback upon American triumphalism which proclaimed the universality of Western values after the disintegration of the USSR. UNICEF took the opportunity to push its agenda of universal rights for the child, as part of the de facto victory of the United States, in this period (1989-1992).

In 2002, UNICEF organized the first ever UN General Assembly convened as a Special Session on the rights of children. An examination of the 1990 targets, for the year 2000, was conducted by nation-state representatives as well as child delegates (“About UNICEF”, N.D.). UNICEF was intentionally creating a contrast between citizens of nation-states, and disenfranchised children marginalized from inclusion and participation. Of course, the World Bank was also leveraging American exceptionalism, but for its own purposes and in a different direction than UNICEF. UNICEF’s advocacy, parallel to the march of post- Cold War neo-liberalism, gives credence to Edward Snowden’s accusation in December 2013, that British and American intelligence agencies (MI6, CIA) targeted UNICEF as a subversive organization (“Leaks”, December 2013).

With regard to its India activities, UNICEF advocated a disabilities framework as one of its modalities. Within Examples of Inclusive Education, India published in 2003, a disabilities framework for inclusion was listed as a means by which South Asia could effectively create the basis for EFA (UNICEF, 2003a). This 2003 report highlighted how the DPEP and SSA were informed by GoI legislation201 which ensured differently-abled inclusion, as a greater check against social marginalization. The rationale for this view was outlined thus:

UNICEF believes that the goal should be to enable all children to have full participation in the development of their community. Meeting this goal of inclusion

201 Equal Opportunities and Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995.

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requires all structures and community-based services to be accessible to all members of the community without discrimination (UNICEF, 2003a, p.2).

EFA was conceptualized as a continuous process of societal justice which is very much part of the guiding principle of UNICEF.202 In this way, UNICEF conceptualizes anti- oppression as an exercise of multi-logical discourse similar to the state-nation: The right to live with dignity and self-respect as a human being leads to a continuous analysis of policies and services aimed at marginalized sections. UNICEF’s Medium-Term Strategic Plan for 2002–05, in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, demands that ‘all children have access to and complete an education of good quality’ (UNICEF, 2003a, p.2).

Within its Innocenti Centre publication Promoting Children’s Participation in Democratic Decision Making (2001), UNICEF alludes to utilizing children as the basis for an inter- cultural knowledge framework. This is very much in line with the Adivasi studies approach of the state-nation which considers that the most marginalized perspective (Adivasi) regarding the operation of hegemonies, is what should be used as the lens for deconstruction. UNICEF’s framework similarly shares the understanding of death democracy that inclusivity requires the acceptance of multiple ways of knowing, without condescendingly describing them as invalid or naïve. UNICEF’s report states that “listening to children and considering seriously what they have to say can hardly be said to have been a frequent hallmark of inter-personal relationships or societal organization” (Lansdown, 2001, p.v).

Importantly, one of the key clauses of this rights based approach (the Convention on the Rights of the Child), is Article 29 which states that children not only have the right to education, but that this means active participation in an environment of multiple knowledges that “promotes respect for human rights and democracy” (“About the Convention of the Rights of the Child”, n.d.). Article 12 states that the right for children to be listened to and taken seriously “involves a profound and radical reconsideration” since this requires that “we value their experience” (Lansdown, 2001, p.1). Once again, this conceptual framework finds common cause with death democracy’s view that spirituality is

202 Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) (“About the Convention on the Rights of the Child”, n.d.).

189 a core human identity and therefore an inalienable right for human dignity. UNICEF adheres to the principle that “children have a body of experience and knowledge that is unique to their situation” (Lansdown, 2001, p.3).

This framework with regard to knowledge and being, logically extends into a judicial understanding as can be seen in the following: Article 12 is a substantive right, saying that children are entitled to be actors in their own lives and to participate in the decisions that affect them. But, as with adults, democratic participation is not an end in itself. It is the means through which to achieve justice, influence outcomes and expose abuses of power. In other words, it is also a procedural right enabling children to challenge abuses or neglect of their rights and take action to promote and protect those rights. It enables children to contribute to respect for their best interests (Lansdown, 2001, p.2).

By extrapolation one can perceive the implications of this framework as applicable toward the formation of state-nation communalidad, enshrined in a charter or constitution, and promoted within an education system. The eradication of patriarchy in the assumption that adults know best and can speak for children, and paternalism expressed in legal and education frameworks that conclude marginalized peoples are to be protected and spoken for, are prerequisites for interculturalidad.203

UNICEF believes in the pedagogy of experiential learning. It considers that democracy is an education via participation. This is why UNICEF promotes programs which allow children to advocate for themselves, such as their voicing of concerns with regard to child- labour. In addition to the experiential learning component of democracy by children, UNICEF believes that advocacy on behalf of children or any marginalized group, often unwittingly worsens their position due to misrepresentation (Lansdown, 2001). Hence, UNICEF supports co-constructed solutions and curriculum, such as the Butterflies Programme of Street and Working Children in New Delhi (“Butterflies, Homepage”, n.d.) and the Young Peoples Voices on HIV/AIDS (1998).

In 2006, the UN began devising a strategy of how humanitarian internationalism could be better coordinated across all UN agencies to provide better service in the Global Service.

203 One UNICEF publication (1992) is titled Children Participation: From Tokenism to Citizenship.

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This process was denoted as the High Level Panel on System Wide Coherence (“High Level Panel on System Wide Coherence, n.d.). This initiative was announced by Secretary General Kofi Annan at the World Summit in New York in 2005 (“The 2005 World Summit”, n.d.). The Panel was part of an overall reform effort by the UN to re-envision how aid, development and environmental issues can be addressed globally. At the World Summit, this was part of the Outcome Document which expressed the desire to conduct major operational and structural reforms of the UN.

The Panel was composed of a combination of former and national leaders, and executive level functionaries from the World Bank and specific national aid agencies such as Robert Greenhill of the Canadian International Development Agency (“High Level Panel on System Wide Coherence, Panel Composition, n.d.). Curiously, for an initiative that sought to rationalize efforts to and with the Global South, the Panel’s composition reflects its top- down and nation-state approach to development issues. Global South representation was in the former of current or former politicians, and only one member of the 15 member Panel, was a former member of a humanitarian effort. And he had been employed in Egypt as the CEO of the UN Global Environment Facility (GEF) (“Delivering As One”, n.d.).

The focus of the Panel was to effect stronger donor coherence and “much more tightly controlled entities in the field” which a congruence of goals that supported the MDGs (“Terms of Reference”, n.d.). Regarding the scope of development and its re- conceptualization, the Panel was decidedly in favour of strengthening the edifice of the nation-state and to allow the World Bank to decide the main pattern of strategies. With reference to the background considerations which drove discussions of the Panel, the Outcome Document mentions that:

the study will need to analyze how the UN system as a whole can be better re- oriented to provide more efficient, coherent demand-driven support to national partners by building on its core normative, technical assistance and capacity building strengths to partner with the longer-term financing and other support brought by the World Bank and other international partners. In this regard, it will be particularly important to consider how to strengthen linkages between the normative work and the operational activities of the system…As such, the study will need to explore ways of fully exploiting synergies between the normative and analytical institutions and departments of the UN, such as DESA and UNCTAD, and

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operational agencies. It will also need to address how the UN system works and can best exercise its comparative advantages with international partners, including the Bretton Woods Institutions, the European Commission and other regional actors, donors, civil society and the private sector (“Terms of Reference”, n.d.).

The findings of the Panel, who met from May to November 2006, were published in a report entitled Delivering as One (UN, 2006). The report confirms that UN reform concerning humanitarian internationalism, should be considered market rationalization, with the emphasis moving from relief to development (UN, 2006a). A succinct press version of this report entitled Ten Ways for the UN to ‘Deliver As One’, was also released (UN, 2006b). It’s first point is that rationalization of aid efforts require the ceding of directive control of the multiple agencies, to a single Resident Coordinator (RC) who would be in charge of the specific One UN Program in each specific country (UN, 2006b). Since 2007, the Report has been officially designated as the policy of UN Coherence, and UNICEF published its statement Making Coherence Work for Children in 2011 (UN, 2011).

Although not explicitly written into any of the policy statements, it seems clear from the Outcome Document, that the qualifications of the RC shall include their suitability as a candidate with whom the World Bank would themselves find policy convergence. The stress on reforming UN structures to build stake-holder confidence, risks of transforming UNICEF into an instrument of neoliberal development. Multiple views from multiple actors in the field, are now seen as competing and inefficient interests. The designation of an expert in the field who will mandate a single effort within which all other actors will be subsumed, seems to equate to the handing over of aid efforts to the World Bank development model of capacity building and entrepreneurship.

UNICEF however, states that it remains committed to implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which is “the most rapidly and widely ratified international human rights treaty in history” (“Convention on the Rights of the Child”, n.d.). It could be argued that UNICEF is the most opportunistic of the case study organizations within this dissertation. UNICEF started as an advocate of international globalism, positioning itself as a promoter of supra-national citizenship rights. After adding education to its health and

192 welfare activities, UNICEF began to support the edifice of the nation-state in order to work through its bureaucracy and administration. With mounting pressure from the Global South, the USA, and transnational corporations, to reform the UN, UNICEF seems to once again be transitioning regarding its tactical positioning. Now, as neither an outright advocate for aid-driven humanitarianism, nor a supporter of nation-state development, UNICEF seems to be considering public-private partnerships (PPP) as the next stage in its evolution. UNICEF has assessed that the power to motivate change is shifting away from the nation-state, and towards transnational capital and CSOs.

UNICEF states that “we work closely with multi-national corporations, national companies and small-to medium-sized businesses to identify, design and implement alliances that leverage the strengths of the corporate sector on behalf of the world’s children” (“UNICEF and Corporate Engagements”, n.d.). UNICEF has moved from motivating nation-states by supporting their structural integrity, to motivating corporations by supporting their public- relations rebranding with the strategy of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I would argue that UNICEF has, through the lens of a realpolitik assessment, re-conceptualized its relationship to power. UNICEF justifies corporate connections in the following way

For UNICEF, a focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has entailed a reflection on how business affects the lives of children and the fulfilment of their rights. Firstly, business has a significant impact on children’s rights – both positive and negative. Companies interact with children on a daily basis – children are workers in factories and fields, consumers of products, family members of employees and community members in the where business operates. Secondly, this impact is wide ranging. In addition to important issues of child labour and young workers, companies also affect children through products and services, marketing methods, relationships with local and national governments, and investments in local communities (“UNICEF and Corporate Engagements”, n.d.).

Regarding its efforts to collaborate with CSOs, UNICEF states that: The CSOs that work with UNICEF are infinitely diverse, offering a broad range of specialized knowledge and experience in areas pertaining to children. It is this diversity that produces some of the most innovative and effective achievements for children. The common thread linking UNICEF partnerships with CSOs is the shared objective of realizing children's rights (“Civil Society and UNICEF”, n.d.).

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It is also noteworthy that UNICEF considers CSOs to be any non-government organizations that possess expertise which UNICEF can leverage: It is difficult to define civil society in a few words, because it involves diverse actors within and across countries. For the purpose of partnerships, UNICEF understands civil society as the sphere of autonomous associations that are independent of the public and for-profit sectors and designed to advance collective interests and ideas. CSOs may be formal or informal, and they work with a broad range of political, legal, economic, social and cultural contexts. They do not represent a unified social force or a coherent set of values; they are as diverse as the people and issues around which they organize (“Civil Society and UNICEF”, n.d.).

From these policy statements, it seems clear that UNICEF understands that while nation- state geography exists, nation-state power can be circumvented or persuaded by corporations and CSOs.

From 2000, UNICEF entered into partnership with IKEA Social Initiative (“IKEA Social Initiative”, n.d.) and the GoI to “address the root causes of child labour in the carpet belt of India, including debt, poverty, the lack of access to education, disability and ill health” (“UNICEF and Corporate Engagements”, n.d.). The program served 500 villages and was able to educate 80 000 out of school children and immunize nearly 300 000 women and children. By 2012, this steadily scaled up program reached 78 million children, 4 million adolescents, and 10 million women (“UNICEF and Corporate Engagements”, n.d.). UNICEF has also partnered with Barclay’s in 2008, to set up the Building Young Future’s program. This initiative allows disadvantaged and marginalized youth aged 15 to 25 years of age to gain an education and learn skills consummate to entrepreneurship (“Building Young Futures”, n.d.).

Another partnership which has helped expand UNICEF’s efforts in India is that with Unilever. Unilever is able not only to contribute to UNICEF directly, but leverage in favour of UNICEF, since it has a partnership with Hindustan Industries. Hindustan- Unilever is one of the largest companies in the world “with nine out of ten Indian households using our brand…touches the lives of two out of every three Indians” (“Hindustan-Unilever, Homepage”, n.d.). Unilever supports UNICEF with its Learning for Tomorrow campaign that contributes to the education of 10 million children in India, Brazil and Vietnam (“UNICEF and Corporate Engagements”, n.d.). Unilever also supports

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UNICEF’s teacher training and literacy awareness campaigns in these nations (“Unilever Foundation Ambassador for UNICEF”, n.d.). Unilever’s brand OSO which is a detergent and soap product, is also Unilever’s corporate face in support of UNICEF’s Sanitation for All campaign (“Learning for Tomorrow in Partnership with UNICEF”, n.d.; “UNICEF Sanitation for All”, n.d.).

Unique in UNICEF’s approach, is that it considers faith-based communities an active part of civil society which have a great network potential for proliferating the goals of child welfare and education. In a 2012 document entitled Partnering with Religious Communities for Children, UNICEF stated that the CRC, which is the most globally recognized human rights treaty, acknowledges spirituality, and faith-based communities, as crucial for human dignity and holistic child care (UNICEF, 2012). The document goes on to note that “before UNICEF there were religious communities” and that there is definite convergence with the holistic goals of most religious communities and UNICEF, with respect to ensuring the dignity of the child, that the family is the best place to raise children, and that physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being represent child centred care (UNICEF, 2012). Specific to India, UNICEF believes that:

In a country like India, faith plays a big part in constructing cultural, sociological and personal behaviour. Around 99 percent of Indians choose to label themselves as belonging to a particular religion according to Census reports. Faith has a critical role to play in the advancement of basic human rights for children…With their extraordinary moral authority and power, faith-based organizations (FBO) are able to influence thinking, foster dialogue, and set priorities for members of their communities. FBOs provide UNICEF with the ‘reach’ to inaccessible areas; help make inroads into all sections of society across classes (“UNICEF-India”, n.d.).

This insight has allowed UNICEF to pair with the Art of Living in 2012. The Art of Living is an organization founded by Sri Sri Shankar in 1981. The Art of Living began its support of UNICEF’s girl-child education campaigns as part of the Volunteer for a Better India Initiative launched on World Volunteer Day on December 5, 2012 (“Volunteer for a Better India”, n.d.). Over the next year, over one million people across India took pledges and committed individual actions to encourage an improvement for the rights of the girl- child. Continuing in 2014, UNICEF and the Art of Living began to utilize social media to

195 continue individual volunteerism, whose efforts resulted in 40 000 (“UNICEF-India”, n.d.). UNICEF also has an association with the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance (GIWA), which it helped create:

Since the dawn of history, faith has provided a foundation from which social norms develop. It is to faith leaders that billions are drawn to in times of joy and sorrow, as well as in the search for inner meaning. As teachers to the masses, the words of faith leaders motivate, persuade and enable. Through their speech and actions, they can bring about change in ways that others, quite simply, cannot…The Global Interfaith WASH Alliance (GIWA) is world’s first initiative that is engaging the planet’s many faiths as allies in efforts to create a world where every human being has access to safe drinking water, improved sanitation and proper hygiene. Launched by UNICEF at UNICEF World Headquarters under sponsorship of the Government of the Netherlands and USAID, GIWA envisions a water-secure world in which safe and sustainable drinking water and improved sanitation will be accessible for all (“Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, About”, n.d.). GIWA’s campaigns are directed at interfaith mobilization surrounding issues of safe and clean water, adequate sanitation and eradicating open defecation, and hygiene (WASH). UNICEF-GIWA has supported much in the area of knowledge creation. Its several publications include reports and strategies for cleaning India’s polluted rivers including the Ganga and Yamuna, alternate development based on spiritually informed sustainability practises, and their annual reports (“Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, Publications”, n.d.).

In contrast to the World Bank’s realist political and economic approach to education reform, UNICEF promotes its humanitarian internationalism with a degree of soft-power. Nevertheless, UNICEF also aligns itself with hegemonic Great Power policies such as regime-change, supporting the rhetoric of democracy building so long as it has the opportunity to re-cast hegemonic nation-state rhetoric or replace it with an element of humanitarian internationalism. One could argue that UNICEF believes that the end justifies the means, and that it is not committed to a particular method, so long as a cosmopolitan-secularism ethos of education reform is fostered. Seen in this light, UNICEF seems more aligned with the Indian CSOs which were examined in the previous chapter. All of them could be said to have determined that an alliance with a benevolent nation- state, is preferable if it can further state-nation type policies.

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Facilitating Decentralization via Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) As previously discussed, the Indian National Movement connected the sociopolitical reconceptualization of citizenship and participation, with the development of an endogenous intercultural education system which was locally rooted. The aspiration toward this idea of India was written into the Indian Constitution’s several Directive Principles which urged the GoI to work towards the legislation of both education and sociopolitical reforms. The key guideline provided by the Directive Principles as a transformative mechanism towards achieving both these reforms, was decentralization. The Directive Principle regarding education reform has been examined. However, the examination of state-nation potentiality would be incomplete without mentioning the complementary Directive Principle (Constitution, Article 40), urging the GoI to implement sociopolitical reform along the Gandhian notion of gram swaraj (village autonomy).

The aspiration toward the idea of India, as conceived by the National Movement, is evident in the parallel between the Constitutional Directive Principles to the GoI to produce a decolonized and intercultural EFA, and its corresponding sociopolitical guarantor by way of decentralized local administration. The autonomous and sovereign community was intertwined with the concept of a National Education. And the ethos of India required both. We witness the latent potential of the state-nation in this endeavour by the GoI to affect decentralized local administration by placing more control of education in local hands. This is also the location where convergence of initiatives between the GoI, the World Bank, and UNICEF, may be witnessed.

Indigeneity of curriculum and active voice by communities re-negotiating their identity and belonging, as citizens toward the notions of the state-nation, has been perpetuated by the successful scaling and sustainability of massive programs of experimental sociopolitical and educational restructuring such as DPEP and SSA. DPEP and SSA represent the aspect of pedagogical reform affecting education. The important complement to this has been pedagogical reform affecting the sociopolitical practise and deepening of democracy by way of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI).

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The Panchayati Raj Act and its Extension to Scheduled Tribes PRI arose in stages, in the form of two pieces of GoI legislation. The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution (1993)204 mandated the creation of local government, and decentralization of sociopolitical administration, to rural village localities. The 73rd Amendment is known as the Panchayati Raj Act. The 74th Amendment of the Constitution (1996) furthered decentralization efforts by extending PRI to Adivasi areas. The 74th Amendment is known as PESA, the Panchayat’s Extension to Scheduled (Tribes) Areas. What is extremely important about the latter, is that this is the largest effort by a nation-state to afford sociopolitical and eco-resource sovereignty to indigenous peoples. With a population of 84 million Adivasis representing over 700 tribal communities, and 8.2% of the Indian population (“Indian Census”, 2001; Prasad, 2011, pp.385-386), the GoI’s effort supersedes that of Bolivia205 by a factor of nearly 17.

The World Bank’s and UNICEF’s support to the GoI, in regard to knowledge creation and funding of Panchayati Raj Insitutions (PRI) (1993 and 1996), promoted the re-locating of identity and belonging. This was accomplished through the devolution of power from the federal and state levels to local villages. Decentralization of administration was thus effected with a corresponding increase in the transparency and accountability of local governance. PRI is therefore an example of collaborative national (GoI) and inter-national (World Bank, UNICEF) alliances which foster a broadening of civil society participation via co-constructed sociopolitical and education curricula.

Gandhi had advocated that his idea of Basic Education (Nai Talim) required its investiture as part of village sovereignty and self-sufficiency (gram swaraj). Ambedkar’s and Nehru’s opposition to both these ideas, of education and sociopolitical decentralization, produced Gandhi’s resentment toward the nation-state of the Indian Republic which was inaugurated in 1947. Nonetheless, Gandhi’s aspirations regarding the idea of India resonated with the

204 Proposed as a Bill in 1989, proposed anew in 1990, revised and proposed again in 1991, bill passed as legislation in 1992, but enacted as law in 1993 (Singh, 1994, p.823). 205 I refer to the discussion of communalidad and Constitutional reforms undertaken in South American countries, discussed in Chapter 3. Bolivia’s entire population is 10.56 million (2014), 5 million of which self- identify as indigenous peoples. Bolivia has 36 indigenous groups of whom the Aymara and Quechua are numerically the largest, and 50% of the population self-identify as Mestizo (mixed Spanish and Indigenous origins) (“Bolivia Cultures, Diversity in Bolivia”, n.d.).

198 ethos of the National Movement and the movement for National Education. There was consensus that decentralization, the exercise of re-locating sociopolitical destiny within the participatory autonomy of local communities, was the means to restore the cosmopolitan- secular pedagogical spirit of India. That both aspects of decentralization, sociopolitical and educational, languished as Directive Principles within the Indian Constitution, is evidence that the GoI attempted to prioritize the nation state while negotiating the state-nation.

It is no coincidence that nearly 50 years after independence (1947), the massification and reform of Indian education (DPEP, SSA, RTE) required the simultaneous decentralization of governance and administration (Panchayati Raj Act 1993, PESA 1996). I claim that this also substantiates my argument that the potential of education reform within the nation state is limited by the constraints of nation-state pedagogy itself; and that the sociopolitical reconceptualization of identity and belonging is required to facilitate a transformation from multiculturalism to interculturality.

It is written in Article 40 of the Constitution’s Directive Principles of State Policy, that “the State shall take steps to organize village Panchayats206 and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government” (Constitution, 1950; Singh, 1994, p.818). The GoI appointed the Balwantrai Mehta Committee in 1957 to examine how Panchayati Raj207 might be enacted. The Committee’s recommendation was that a three tiered system be created comprised of village bodies (gram), block level committees (samiti), and district level councils (zilla) (Singh, 1994, p.818). Indeed, the GoI and several of its component state governments implemented this idea.

However, by the 1990s, it was clear that what had been created were extensions of the long arm of New Delhi or various provincial capitals in the villages (Singh, 1994, pp.819, 820, 821). Even so, in most cases throughout India, there was an absence of local administration and governance bureaucracy. It was generally impossible to find, or to track down, someone who might be held accountable for rural needs. This is a very odd contrast to the

206 The term Panchayat has a historic pre-colonial connotation. A Panchayat was a village governing body of 5 (panch) people. 207 Literally, the rule by or of (raj) Panchayats (in this sense, village self-governance).

199 over-bureaucratized urban centres. In the case of the villages, it was almost impossible to find a single state functionary. It should be remembered that India prior to the 1990s was a country in which almost 90% of the population resided in villages. This situation was reported by the Ashok Mehta Committee of 1977-1978, which the GoI had formed to discern the situation regarding the administration of rural localities. The Committee stated that local communities should be supported in the creation of their own village administration structures. The Committee further stated that village administration should be vested with the control of local development issues, forests and agriculture issues, welfare and education infrastructure (Singh, 1994, p.819).

It would take two Constitutional Amendments (the 73rd in 1993, and the 74th in 1996) to force state authorities to relinquish power from the provincial level. Correspondingly, the GoI created a new schedule (11th Schedule) for financing, by which Panchayats are allowed to levy, collect and appropriate taxes, duties, tolls, and fees for services (Singh, 1994, p.824). The new schedule also apportions revenue dispensation to Panchayats directly, and covers agriculture, water, housing, cottage industries, electrification, nonconventional energy projects, poverty alleviation strategies, primary and secondary education, vocational education, health and welfare, and public distribution systems (ie. food rationing) (Singh, 1994, p.825).

The discussion regarding the decentralization of education to localities has been extensive. As during the period of the National Movement, where National Education was nearly indistinguishable as a separate aim from sociopolitical sovereignty, all post-independence committees organized by the GoI to report on the state of education have stressed decentralization of curriculum and education administration. This began with the Khare Committee in 1953, which noted that primary education should be the responsibility of PRI (Prasadh, 2011, p.314). As mentioned, the basis of every Indian NPE (1968, 1986, 1992) and the RTE (2009) has been the Kothari Commission (1964-66) Report. The Report noted that Indian education reform should be enacted in stages, to produce universal enrolment, which would be followed by reforms toward universal retention, and finally education reforms to improve quality (Prasadh, 2011, p.314).

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The Report also stated that “the school should be the centre for community activities and school and community should work in tandem for quality improvement” (Prasadh, 2011, p.315). Clearly, education reform was linked to the co-development of local administrative sovereignty. NPE 1986 notes that village panchayats should “be partners in the enterprises of education” and the Panchayati Raj Act of 1993, mandates every village to create an education committee (Prasadh, 2011, p.315).

PESA, the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled (Tribes) Areas Act (1996), is an illustrative example which supports the ideal type potential of the state-nation. PESA is proof that a reconceptualization of identity and belonging can be undertaken, which promotes interculturalidad in the spirit of India’s cosmopolitan-secularism. Moreover, PESA is an example of how an Adivasi studies approach can create a platform for anti-oppression pedagogies. PESA is a case study of sociopolitical pedagogical reform affecting indigenous communities, which simultaneously supports indigenous ownership of education.

It suggests the truth in Gandhi’s notion that societies are only as democratic and free as evidenced by the sociopolitical and educational autonomy of their most marginalized citizens. Within India, and globally, indigenous peoples remain the most disenfranchised and invisiblised peoples. It is therefore no surprise that India’s education reform has only begun to succeed in its efforts to evoke sociopolitical pedagogies toward the idea of India, from the time that decentralization of education and governance was legislated. Further research in the focus area of how PESA contributes to the state-nation ideal type would definitely expand our basis of knowledge regarding alternate legislative practises, education reform in indigenous communities, and the broadening of democracy via the expansion of the citizenship concept.

Prasad (2011) articulates this sentiment, writing that:

PESA is based on the cardinal principle of governance that human communities are the best agency to handle most of their survival challenges, manage their affairs and progress towards growing emancipation through the instrumentality of participatory deliberative democracy. Hence, the first substantive section of PESA begins with the legal presumption that the ‘gram sabha’ is ‘competant’ and calls upon the state

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governments to ensure legal, procedural and administrative empowerment as a means of deepening democracy. The cardinal principal that underlies PESA has two corollaries in relation to development namely a) any community can best decipher advancement and modernity when it is grounded in the strength of its own culture and way of life and b) can negotiate both advancement and modernity only when it is founded on the bedrock of its own culture and way of life (Prasad, 2011, pp.392-393). Prasad emphasizes that PESA is a return to the intercultural history of cosmopolitan- secularism South Asia. PESA is an effort to realize the idea of India by reconceptualising identity and belonging in the spirit of precolonial pedagogies. Prasad notes that it was the nation state that temporarily marginalized the latter, which were “bypassed through the Westminster pattern of democracy” (Prasad, 2011, p.394). In his scathing assessment, Prasad concludes that by means of PESA:

Two non-negotiable requirements were being made by a futuristic law which reinterpreted the ‘democratic process’ as ‘democratization’, put the assembly of the common people before the august Legislative housed, called for a harmonization of the traditional and modern, predicated the integration of the formal structure with age old wisdom, gave equal weightage to traditional wisdom and modern legal pedigree and above all had no parallels in the legal history of the nation. The legislatures of all the states had no answer to the challenges posed by PESA as it called for turning the hitherto democratic structure on its head…(Prasad, 2011, p.394).

PESA fractured normative hegemony by creating new foci of autonomy (power), and revising the state legislative system so that decision makers were faced with the prospect of having to implement the decisions of gram sabha (communities). In addition, for the nation state model, it effected “disempowerment from a powerful past to an uncertain future” (Prasad, 2011, p.395). Once again the latent potentiality of the state-nation is exhibited since:

As a radical transition from the praxis of ‘representative democracy’ to the political realm of ‘participatory democracy’ PESA placed two challenges before the development bureaucracy. The first was to ensure that de jure competence as recognized by PESA was converted into de facto empowerment by a) recognizing the competence of the gram sabha and b) recognizing the subordination of all other functionaries to the will of the gram sabha. The other face of the challenge lay in recognizing, supporting and enabling the necessary skills, capacities and aptitudes of tribal communities to decipher, deliberate and decide in a participatory

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democratic frame and to monitor the implementation of their decisions (Prasad, 2011, p.395). The stumbling of PESA has been in regard to the final point. However, Indian CSOs, the World Bank and UNICEF have played an important role in facilitating the abilities of communities to organize and preventing hegemony from subverting decentralized education and sociopolitical reform.

Dreze and Sen (1995) have discussed the challenges of direct participation by marginalized groups in the context of the mechanisms of the development-rational-legal nation state. The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments (Panchayati Raj, and PESA) are therefore a “natural experiment of sorts: a single treatment of basic institutional reform (empowering local governments), to be carried out by varied political units with different political configurations (states) across an extremely heterogeneous social landscape” (Heller et. al., 2007, p.627). This effort to reform pedagogies within the confines of the nation state, that directly threaten the socio-political existence, in terms of identity and participation, and replicative existence, in terms of education existence of the nation state, is unprecedented. In many states there has been stalling and hesitation to fully implement the Panchayati Raj Act (1993) and PESA (1996).

However, the case of the state of Kerala provides further evidence of the ability of the state-nation type policies to arise within the nation state apparatus when government functionaries, international organizations and CSOs are all committed to the process of decentralization. Kerala is a stunning example where the state government has transferred 40% of its developmental expenditure to PRI. Kerala has also been the Indian state most consistently associated with the best results in curriculum reform, preservice teacher training reform, quality of education, and student outcomes. Once again, the connection between sociopolitical and education pedagogical reforms, is evident. Heller et. al., writes that:

In addition to devolving resources, state officials (in Kerala) sought to directly promote participatory democracy by mandating structures and processes designed to maximize the direct involvement of citizens in planning and budgeting. In both its scope and design, the campaign represents the most ambitious and concentrated

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state-led effort to build local institutions of participatory democratic governance ever undertaken in the subcontinent (Heller et. al., 2007, p. 627).

The only precautionary note that must be sounded in connection with decentralization as witnessed post-liberalization (1991) in India, are the intentions of the GoI. The GoI’s policy documents such as the 10th (2002-2007) and 11th (2007-2012) Five Year Plans, indicate the language of World Bank decentralization such as Private-Public Partnerships (PPP) may be flaunted to mask the GoI’s intentions to abrogate its responsibility towards its citizens in regard to providing infrastructure, welfare and education (Srivastava, 2010). To date, “strategies strongly link PPPs in education with privatisation rather than mechanisms of genuine partnership between public and other non-state actors” (Srivastava, 2010, p.541). GoI documents indicate that it increasingly views citizens as customers. Hence, it would seem that PPP has generally become a way to shift accountability away from the GoI (Srivastava, 2010. p.542).

Nevertheless, the 10th and 11th Plans do stress that aspects of education accountability should be vested in PRI, community based organizations, citizens monitoring committees and village education committees (Srivastava, 2010, p.547). The 11th Plan Approach Paper indicates that:

Empowering panchayats and citizens’ education committees to oversee teacher performance will help increase accountability. The management of schools should move away from the highly centralized system of today to a more decentralized one based on local school management committees (Srivastava, 2010, p.547). Srivastava finds that:

the notion of partnership with private actors has been uncritically absorbed in the Indian policy landscape, with little attention to the implications for education delivery…Therefore, the challenge at the heart of the institutional context for education delivery lies in deconstructing the conception of ‘partnership’ as a justifying principle that is seemingly neutral, normatively correct, and a viable solution for severely resource constrained countries to achieve EFA goals quickly…India, by its own admission and economic analysis, is no longer a country under serious economic-resource constraint…one must seriously question the impetus behind the acceptance of privatised strategies disguised as PPPs for education expansion as a monolith resting on the logic of scarce public resources for basic services, particularly when India simultaneously projects itself as one of the

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fastest growing and largest economies in the world…should translate into a firm commitment to meet the basic needs of its citizens. Thus, India’s economic climate should favour higher levels of financing for education and other essential services, not stagnating levels or minimal increases (Srivastava, 2010, p.551).

Ironically, it is in this respect that international organization such as the World Bank and UNICEF, provide a certain assurance that decentralization of Indian education and sociopolitical administration might actually translate into the empowerment of local communities. This goes against logic of contemporary academic attitudes which constantly refer to the World Bank’s mandate of facilitating a fiscal global neoliberalism. Yet, even the by-product of small state decentralization, is a rendering of increased citizens’ voice and power vis-à-vis their demand for, and expectation of, services. Reconstructing citizens as clients is intimately associated with neoliberalism.

However, the state-nation may unintentionally be afforded a degree of latitude, as previously marginalized individuals become valued as consumers and purchasers of services from a competing vast array of market providers. The upward pressure that consumers create may provide incentive to education entrepreneurs to facilitate preferences from below in a way that the government rarely does responsively. Additionally, intra- national education providers and CSOs are more effectively able to shape education deliverables. This is because the economies of scale work in their favour. In contrast, the power and fiscal dynamics are much more unequal in the relationship between government and CSOs. So either as part of design or inadvertently, post-1991 World Bank policies in India have contributed to the strengthening of individual Indian stakeholder and CSO leverage vis-à-vis the GoI.

GoI fiscal commitment to DPEP and SSA dwarfed any amount of aid (grants) or loans which India received from external sources. What the World Bank and UNICEF did contribute to within these mammoth tasks was the facilitation of decentralization efforts by helping to strengthen PRI. Devolution of power and responsibility by the GoI through PRI via education reform was carefully monitored by the World Bank and UNICEF for the greater part of 20 years (1993-2013). In particular, it was in the aspect of monitoring and helping to facilitate the mechanisms of monitoring, to which the World Bank contributed.

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The World Bank: Reforming the State, By Facilitating the Nation For example, the World Bank had a three phase policy with regard to aiding rural decentralization. The first phase involved the conducting of a study entitled An Overview of Rural Decentralization in India (2000). The report examined decentralization in 7 states. The elements studied were the design of decentralization, its implementation, and "the realities of participation" ("India-Overview of Decentralization", n.d.). In addition, the Overview also contained several background papers on topics such as fiscal decentralization and monitoring systems. The conclusions of the Overview were that political decentralization has been successful to the extent that India ranks among the global leaders in such endeavours. However in the realm of administrative decentralization, which is the key to a substantive broadening of democratic involvement beyond the representative stage, the Overview found that India ranked close to last place on a global scale ("Decentralization in India", n.d.).

Leveraging its global experience in similar endeavours, the World Bank's second phase to assist the Indian decentralization process was predictably to help design and monitor rural fiscal devolution. In this phase, the Bank supported a supplementary project entitled the Karnataka Panchayats Strengthening Project which began in its planning stage in 2006 and was implemented from 2009 to 2013 (World Bank, 2012). This Project helped support the flow of revenue transfer from the state government to village panchayats and its accountability by setting up a double-entry accrual accounting system. This Project was approved for extension in 2012, in order to help organize a district resource centre and prepare an impact study report (World Bank, 2012). The Karnataka state government officials praised the outcomes of this project in GoI circles, as a model for strengthening PRI legitimacy and efficacy. As a result of this lobbying, the state government of approached the World Bank to conduct a similar project on its behalf ("Decentralization in India", n.d.).

The third phase of the World Bank effort to aid Indian decentralization is ongoing. It is an evaluation and recommendations phase which seeks to assess the service delivery of education and other "meritorious goods" such as health, water and sanitation ("Decentralization in India", n.d.). Methods of improving the assignment of expenditure

206 responsibilities will be suggested. A main focus of this phase of the Bank’s effort to aid Indian decentralization, will be to propose a conceptual framework from the PRI experience which can then be applied to the health, education, drinking water and sanitation, and employment, sectors (“Decentralization in India”, n.d.).

In another endeavour, the World Bank conducted a study of participation levels by demographic distribution within the PRI of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states ("Inclusion and Local Elected Governments: The Panchayat Raj System in India", 2000). The main question of investigation was whether an individual’s socioeconomic status determined their level of participation within PRI. The study also sought to determine the various forms of participation and to gauge whether hegemonic groups captured PRI power thus undermining the deepening of the PRI democratization effort. The Bank was also interested in assessing the accessibility and distribution of goods and services at the village level. A key point was to determine the relationship between vulnerability and access to or use of benefits.

The Bank’s report indicated that males, well-informed citizens and educated people are well represented in PRI, while the landless, Adivasis, and women are more likely to be excluded. The study also found that the majority of rural people do not regard PRI to be relevant to their lives. Correspondingly, rural inhabitants were found to have low levels of interest in PRI, and did not consider PRI as mechanisms for broadening democracy and the development discourse. The report’s authors also emphasized that their original assumptions relating to caste and wealth as determinants of exclusion were found not to be true. The Bank recommended GoI and state policy interventions to improve inclusion and spread benefits more equitably among village populations ("Inclusion and Local Elected Governments: The Panchayat Raj System in India", 2000).

In the 15 years since the commissioning of the report, several bipartisan PRI assessments have indicated a vast improvement with regard to female participation. This has been due to the enforcement by the GoI of the 50% reservation of seats (allotment of power) to women within PRI, which was legislated as part of the Panchayati Raj Act 1992 (enacted 1993). The expansion of PESA (1996), PRI extension to Adivasi areas, has similarly begun

207 to create devoted spaces of participation for marginalized tribal and land-threatened (landless, nomadic, migrant labourers) peoples. Education and citizens’ awareness campaigns organized by the World Bank, UNICEF, the GoI, and Indian CSOs, have also greatly contributed to the investing of importance by rural people to PRI.

It is noteworthy that World Bank and UNICEF advocacy and support in the form of reports, loans and shared knowledge creation, has aided the GoI in overcoming barriers to the expansion and success of PRI. Since neoliberal reforms began in India (1991), the World Bank in particular, has begun to bypass the federal Indian government, in efforts to pattern decentralization by dealing primarily with individual Indian state governments. While this may be considered a subverting of nation state authority, perhaps inadvertently, the World Bank has actually aided the GoI in overcoming the resistance of several state governments which have consistently attempted to minimize the devolution process of power to PRI since their passage into all-India legislation in 1993. As a foreign, international, and respected financial lender, the World Bank has been able to provide support for the GoI’s decentralization efforts by encouraging Indian states who seek expanded capital investment, business agreements, and loans, to quickly move the PRI process forward.

Indeed, it was the World Bank which put pressure on many states with which it was engaged with in other financial relationships, to contribute to the strengthening of PRI by facilitating citizen awareness of new PRI, their role, and disseminating education regarding citizens’ rights. A direct result of this was the creation of Village Immersion Programs which contributed to the capacity building and acted as an education outreach to villages (“Panchayati Raj Systems in India—A Scoping Study for the World Bank”, 2000). Another valuable contribution of the World Bank at this time, was to conduct an appraisal of the multitude of CSOs working with village to organize, facilitate and expand PRIs. This study provided the GoI with an accounting of CSO decentralization activities, many of which may have gone unnoticed by the GoI due to lack of monitoring and surveillance systems (“Panchayati Raj Systems in India—A Scoping Study for the World Bank”, 2000).

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Similarly, the World Bank’s report India, Fiscal Decentralization to Rural Governments (2004), was utilized by the GoI to pressure intransigent states like Karnataka to proceed with the devolution of meaningful sociopolitical authority to PRI by vesting the latter with financial security. The report (2004) concluded that:

There is a hierarchical arrangement of center-state-local governance. The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution made India one of the most politically decentralized countries in the developing world. By the Constitution and in practice, local government has an urban and a rural stream. Rural local governments are divided into three levels: district (zilla), block (taluk), and village (gram) panchayats. The design and implementation of the decentralization program are a state government responsibility. However implementation of key aspects of the program is lagging. Districts and blocks have no taxing powers and little expenditure autonomy. Both in Karnataka and Kerala, they more or less function as spending agents of higher-level governments (“India, Fiscal Decentralization to Rural Governments”, 2004).

In the year in which the World Bank published this report, it was increasing its business relationship and mediating the entry of foreign investors into Karnataka’s urban centres such as Bengaluru (Bangalore). The Bank’s report suggested that fiscal responsibility and devolution were the keys to both, strong democratic institutions, and the ease of conducting business with the likelihood for sustainable projects:

Perhaps the main weakness in Karnataka’s experience has been its limited devolution of meaningful authority and capacity to local decision makers, while Kerala’s disappointments are traceable to the strain on state finances in the years after the implementation of its decentralization program. The consequences of these weaknesses have been similar despite their different origins. Local governments have had relatively few resources and relatively little discretion with which to make a significant impact on service delivery. Perhaps as a result, local communities have not engaged fully with the processes of planning and accountability to the extent hoped for by policy makers. An important lesson learned in these case studies is that one necessary condition for a well-functioning system of fiscal decentralization is a healthy state financial position (“India, Fiscal Decentralization to Rural Governments”, 2004).

UNICEF: Beyond the State, to the Nation UNICEF’s work in the area of governance builds capacities at national, state and district levels for planning, implementation and budgeting (“Planning and Monitoring of Child Rights and Equity through Decentralized Governance”, n.d.). As aforementioned, UNICEF focuses on the socio-political group which it believes is most marginalized within nation

209 states, children. UNICEF is concerned with the development agenda of the Indian nation state, and considers it worrisome that while resources for national flagship programs such as EFA have increased, intra-related intervention schemes related to children and women have remain underfunded. UNICEF provides support for India’s decentralization process, to facilitate PRI, with a view that influencing the decision making agenda at grassroots levels will effectively return children to the development discourse.

UNICEF aids in the building of capacities which will facilitate the expansion of, and deepen the participation within PRI. UNICEF achieves this by “building on the work of the past in the area of decentralized planning and implementation, there is considerable on- going work to support improved district planning and implementation through district planning and monitoring units (DPMUs) to enable improved implementation” (“Planning and Monitoring of Child Rights and Equity through Decentralized Governance”, n.d.). UNICEF also supports education outreach and awareness programs, by developing training modules for elected representatives of PRI (“Planning and Monitoring of Child Rights and Equity through Decentralized Governance”, n.d.).

Effectively, UNICEF has also bypassed the GoI and in many cases the state governments, in favour of communicating directly with village stakeholders. UNICEF, unlike the World Bank, is unable to leverage state governments with promises of increased financial commitments in return for government support regarding PRI. Instead, UNICEF believes that education outreach to village stakeholders will create spaces where UNICEF may be able to successfully advocate for child welfare and protection programs. The strategy makes sense if one considers that PRI members would be more immediately concerned with welfare, health, and education within their villages. These categories, at a base level, are the structural supports for development, and UNICEF seeks to reinforce this argument in PRI.

A good example of how UNICEF has effected village organization to promote its aims of welfare, is the 2008 campaign to organize PRI in Bihar state to provide vaccination and screening for polio (“Panchayat Raj Institutions take up Battle Against Polio in Bihar”, n.d.). UNICEF notes that the 50% reservation of seats for women within PRI, afford the

210 opportunity to prioritize maternal, post-partum, and child health. It is an effective reconceptualization of majority politics influencing development, whereby UNICEF can promote child welfare, female emancipation, and education, as being majoritarian and development demands. The UNICEF polio unit in Patna (Bihar) rendered statistics which indicated that:

With 50 percent reservation for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) becoming a reality in Bihar, it has opened up a number of development and administrative spaces for women PRI representatives, who are making the most of this opportunity. Today, they can be seen planning for the developmental agenda of their villages, be it in the area of health, education, water supply or livelihoods (“Panchayat Raj Institutions take up Battle Against Polio in Bihar”, n.d.). The UNICEF report goes on to mention that as awareness efforts to promote the value and abilities of PRI increase, women become more vocal and invested in the participatory process. This translates into a complete reconceptualization of the development discourse and agenda:

PRI members not only participate actively in promoting the polio campaign, but wherever possible also talk of public initiatives, awareness campaigns and community partnership in addressing the issue. This is reflected in the fact that 1080 community meetings have been attended by PRI representatives in September- October, 2008 alone. Women PRI members like Dr. Ranju Gita are now well-aware of constitutionally approved roles and responsibilities of women in Panchayati Raj systems, as well as government schemes, rules and regulations (“Panchayat Raj Institutions take up Battle Against Polio in Bihar”, n.d.).

After such joint ventures, UNICEF found that PRI members “are now more keen than ever to work with organizations like UNICEF to take ownership of the programme” (“Panchayat Raj Institutions take up Battle Against Polio in Bihar”, n.d.). Facilitating decentralization in this way, UNICEF effectively contributes to democracy education and the reconceptualization of identity and belonging along the lines of the state-nation. The byproduct of such interventions within PRI, is that the Gandhian notion of each-one-teach- one is also promoted. “In fact, many (villagers) even go the extra mile to help convince families who are apprehensive about the efficacy of the polio vaccine, assuring them repeatedly that it is completely safe for their child (“Panchayat Raj Institutions take up Battle Against Polio in Bihar”, n.d.). In a similar fashion and with the same degree of

211 success, UNICEF collaborated with PRI in Rajasthan and with PRI in Uttar Pradesh to implement a rural sanitation program (Sinha and Menon, 2000). This has created a model for community based approaches to rural development.

The most recent endeavour of UNICEF to coordinate efforts and work through PRI has been the campaign to end child marriage. UNICEF has fought an uphill battle since the 1980s, attempting to bring the issue of girl-child prepubescent and adolescent marriage to the forefront of global discussions. It has only been as of this year (2016) that UNICEF has produced a revised strategy to tackle this social evil. This has taken the form of a report entitled Reducing Child Marriage in India: A Model to Scale-Up Results (UNICEF, 2016). It has only been within the Sustainable Development Goals, that child marriage has become a global priority. Nevertheless, while collaborative international-GoI-CSO efforts succeeded in organizing 200 000 girls within adolescent (no-marry) groups in 2014, UNICEF notes that:

in a country (India) where an estimated 3 million girls are married every year, these numbers were simply too small to have a significant impact on the prevalence of child marriage. Moreover, UNICEF’s community and district-level programming approach relied heavily on implementation through NGOs. While these projects were often of good quality and effectiveness, they were too complicated and expensive and could not be replicated with the existing social infrastructure and government schemes. It became clear that any effort to achieve truly large-scale results in reducing child marriage and reaching tens of millions of girls had to start with and focus on existing government services and schemes for adolescent girls and boys (UNICEF, 2016).

UNICEF collaborated with the International Center for Research on Women. Both investigated the issue of child marriage at the district and village level. The result was a report that:

breaks new conceptual ground and applies a broad social policy and governance framework to the reduction of child marriage. The report highlights the need for context-specific strategies that take into consideration the pattern and prevalence rate of child marriage in a given location, as well as the social, cultural, economic and political forces and dynamics that determine the age at which girls get married (UNICEF, 2016).

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In their findings, UNICEF has corroborated the ethos of the state-nation which presupposes that curriculum cannot be separated from a cultural context. And that social transformation requires community involvement, especially if it involves a sociopolitical and cultural change. Thus, reconceptualization of identity and belonging are less likely to occur while hegemonies of culture, politics, or society, remain unchallenged.

In India, 30 per cent of all women currently between the ages of 20 and 24, were married before reaching the age of 18. The rate of child marriage has only declined by 1 per cent per year between 1990 and 2005 (UNICEF, 2016). If econometric calculations are applied with reference to these statistics, it becomes evident that gross child marriages have actually increased or remained the same in post-liberalization era. One may posit with a high degree of certainty that this is not necessarily due to the prevalence of social customs; but that the increase of poverty levels, particularly in rural communities, has caused a welfare crisis whereby early marriage is seen as a relief measure. One may support this claim with corresponding figures which show a rapid decline in female feticide, an increase in girl-child school enrollment and retention figures, and a steady rate of farmer suicides, in the same period. While Rajasthan is often cited as an example of one of the BIMARU (‘sick’, ie. socioeconomic and HDI poorer states), it and Gujarat which is cited as the example of ‘India Shining’, both have child marriage rates of more than 50% (UNICEF, 2016).

Of the drivers of change to counteract the effects of unequal development in order to curb child marriage, the UNICEF report (2016) notes that access to safe, affordable and good quality secondary education is required. The empowerment of women and girls, and their engagement with men and boys, is also necessary. Change must be incentivized through social protection. However, the report also underscores that PRI are a vital part in the proliferation of any and all schemes aimed at reducing child marriage (UNICEF, 2016). UNICEF has thus recognized the centrality of a decentralization of the solution process through direct local participation in co-constructed pedagogies.

Indeed, recent successes, and their sustained impact on the social landscape, have come from leadership taken within PRI which have declared that they are child-marriage-free

213 communities (UNICEF, 2016). This has contributed to an intercultural dialogue among ethnically and caste diverse PRI, intra-state, and inter-state within India. A near absence of academic or non-village interventions, has actually contributed to an inter-community legitimacy and ownership of process. Whereas previous ‘outside’ (the village) interventions target culture as prohibiting change; UNICEF has decided that PRI can best reform their own cultural practices and in fact use culture to reinforce solutions. As previously discussed, this builds upon UNICEF’s attempts to engage spiritual communities in campaigns such as WASH.

UNICEF views decentralization as part of, not against, the GoI. Once again, this seems to be a case for, on the surface of things, the possibility of unlikely alliances to affect the ethos of the state-nation. This is important, as the ideal type notion of the state-nation does not seek to impose itself at the expense of the nation-state. The UNICEF report (2016) notes that:

The Government of India is supporting a wide range of schemes and programmes related to the five drivers of change (education, empowerment, incentives, campaigning and mobilization, and law enforcement). However, the effectiveness, coverage and impact of these investments are variable. By systematically strengthening existing government schemes, especially those most appropriate for particular contexts, it is possible to accelerate the reduction of child marriage and to achieve greater scale (UNICEF, 2016).

Equally important in this assessment, is the implicit understanding that the variability of the GoI’s effectiveness is due to the intransigence or resistance from particular states within the Indian Republic.

It shifts the discourse of post-modernity which is usually preoccupied with the erosion of national borders and national governments, to the hypothetical erosion of intra-state sociopolitical delineation. This opines a decentralization of provincial statehood. And it presents another possibility for future investigations of the process of nation state decentralization and alternate notions of globalization. Can the state-nation be theorized as an association within geopolitical borders, between a ‘smaller’ federal government, in collaboration with an intercultural confederation of local polities. It is as part of this examination that the potential arises to further consider indigenous communalidad, an

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Adivasi studies approach towards considering an anti-oppression framework, and Gandhi (or Tolstoy’s208) vision of gram swaraj.

This most recent examination by UNICEF (2016) is an illustration of pedagogical reform. It indicates the potential for the ideal type of the state-nation to make an impact beyond its value as a tool of critical analysis. UNICEF’s report reveals an awareness that education reform is linked with a sociopolitical pedagogical reform. Processes of power need to be re-evaluated and not just paradigms of approach. The major contribution of the UNICEF report (2016) is that it puts forward a new theory of change:

The theory of change was developed based on the analysis of the drivers of high relevance, taking note of the specific contexts in India in general and in the four focus states (Karnataka, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat) in particular. The analysis of drivers of change takes note of examples from across states and regions. An important departure from other theories is that by emphasizing local planning and action, this theory tries to build in the contextual variations in how the drivers of high prevalence operate in different locations and contexts, and in the choice of subsequent strategies that could lead to change. For instance, although poverty can be traced as a driver of high prevalence, that knowledge alone does not help much in strategizing unless it is known how poverty influences a particular context. While in one context it could mean marrying a girl for a price to someone who wants a young bride for labour, in another, it could convert itself into postponing marriage to retain unmarried girls for the same reason: the need for labour. It would be difficult to identify the most appropriate strategy without unravelling this contextual process (UNICEF, 2016).

PRI as Democratic and Collaborative Spaces for the State-Nation In conclusion, it has been illustrated that the Panchayati Raj Act (1993) and PESA (1996) are essential components of the GoI’s history of education reform. In fact, it can be argued that Indian education reform was incomplete and ineffective in terms of both scale and depth, until the legislation of PRI (1993, 1996). The discussion has examined the intimacy of decentralization as a process, between educational autonomy and sociopolitical sovereignty. As witnessed in the aspirations of the National Movement and the movement for National Education, the aims of education and sociopolitical decentralization are

208 Tolstoy’s vision of village sovereignty and Russia as an association of autonomous communes, is remarkably similar to Orthodox autocephalous ecclesiastic spiritual districts. Early theorizations of a post- imperial-national Russia, not necessarily Bolshevik but including Left Social Revolutionaries (agrarian socialists), also posited a union of soviets (local councils).

215 indistinguishable. Perhaps it is more appropriate to understand that intersection occurs, so that at the vortex, emerges a sustainable pedagogical reform.

PRI as an exercise, represents the largest experiment of decentralization, coincident with the single largest massification of education. The involvement of the World Bank and UNICEF with these GoI’s endeavours (DPEP, SSA, Panchayati Raj Act, PESA), indicate numerous possibilities by which the ethos of the state-nation may be inaugurated. However, the most valuable element of this comparison has been to justify the several components of my ideal type conceptual framework. Witnessed in this twenty year period from 1993 to 2013 were a series of interventions by a variety of actors (national, inter- national, intra-national CSOs) that plot the route of development for the conceptual framework of the state-nation.

The experience of PESA justifies the inclusion of an Adivasi studies approach to anti- oppression within the ideal type state-nation. Education reform, its intercultural basis and goal of providing access and equity, required legislative action by the GoI (1996) to force state governments to begin a process of devolution of assets and control of education administration to indigenous communities. International collaboration was required to provide the facilitation of this process and overcome hegemonic resistance by state governments. Between 1993 and 2013, both the World Bank and UNICEF recognized that decentralization was an exercise in pedagogical reform. Identity and belonging were decentralized as hegemonic concepts, and their re-rooting in local communities took place concurrent with the participation of these local communities in education ownership.

PESA layered education reform prerogatives with an understanding that both, curriculum, and development, need to be locally determined. Rather than eliminate culture and spirituality from pedagogical practice, UNICEF has clearly shown from its studies and interactions with PRI, that both are the only means towards sustainable democratic reform. Interculturalism can only be achieved when spirituality is recognized and affirmed as an individual’s or community, core identity. This is an Adivasi studies approach.

From it, communalidad flows as a mechanism that transforms the relationship between communities from hierarchical to vertical. Intra-state sociopolitical pedagogical reform is

216 the result, as decentralization facilitates a process after which citizenship and participation need to be re-imagined. The experiences of the World Bank and UNICEF, aiding the GoI with PRI expansion, indicate that democracy itself is re-conceptualized as it is deepened.

Uniquely, the sociopolitical and education decentralization experiment represented by the Panchayati Raj Act (1993) and PESA (1996), provide evidence that the demise of the nation-state may be highly exaggerated within post-modernist narratives and critiques of transnational neoliberalism. Further investigation into the case of Indian decentralization may, in fact, yield the basis of a new understanding in which the intra-state level of governance and administration is minimized.

As aforementioned, South Asian history has explicitly illustrated this de facto sociopolitical organization, if not extended de jure recognition of its basis within a legal or constitutional framework. One might convincingly argue that the period of the Indian nation state is a historical abrogation, rather than a maturity of sociopolitical intellectualism. This has seemingly gone un-noticed as an observation, which indicates how entrenched and normative the notion of the nation state has become even within critical frameworks such as postcolonial theory.

However, it cannot be overlooked that a mere 50 years after its creation (1947 to PESA 1996), decentralization has begun to undo the Indian nation-state. Or perhaps, ironically, it is decentralization of the nation-state, returning the idea of India to its cosmopolitan- secular pedagogical roots, and toward the basis of the state-nation, that will save the nation state.

The Commonwealth: Development Democracy Recent revelations (Snobelden, December 2013, ‘Euro-maidan’ November 2013 – March 2014) indicate that many NGOs have been used to promote hegemonic Western interests. It is no surprise, therefore, that Western international development programs have had a spotlight held against them. Newly independent nations such as India in the 1950s, required technical assistance and funding for the expansion of their national infrastructure, but were skeptical regarding why the West would assist its former colonies.

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Decolonization occurred under the geopolitical umbrella of bipolarity during the Cold War. Newly independent nations were made to pick a respective side or risk their neutrality resulting in mistrust and disdain from both Superpowers. India’s attempt to organize a Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was not appreciated by the United States, which regarded India’s equidistant approach as implicit support of the Soviet Union. This led to a cooling of Indo-American relations, and US aid to India decreased. Most troubling for India, however, was the corresponding transfer of American favouritism to Pakistan and China.209

Great Britain however, assessed its position respective to India from a different set of considerations. Unlike the United States which sought to secure regional bases and political allies in Asia (, , Pakistan, Iran and after coups), the UK was aware of both the deterioration of its global positionality and the loss of its leadership as the torchbearer for Western civilization. During his speaking tour of the United States in 1946, Churchill candidly told Truman that the British could no longer maintain the security of their colonies, either domestically or from foreign influences210. It can be argued that this unpalatable awareness in the Foreign Office, translated into the pragmatic British policy of appearing conciliatory in foreign affairs, with the objective of retaining whatever was salvageable from British colonial relationships.

Having once controlled one quarter of global geography and one third of global population, Britain transformed itself from imperial overlord, to benevolent guardian of its former realm in the developing world. This was accomplished through the organization of the Commonwealth which was founded by the London Declaration of 1949. The Commonwealth is currently composed of 53 members, and symbolically led by HRM Queen Elizabeth II. As such, the UK retains its legacy of leadership. The Commonwealth can therefore be seen as the smaller, British version of a League of Nations. However, most importantly, the Commonwealth only includes those nation-states which adhere to British liberal political traditions and commit to democracy development.

209 After the US-China détente in 1972, inspired by the American National Security Advisor (1969-1975), and Secretary of State (1973-1977), Henry Kissinger. 210 By which he meant either outright Soviet invasion, or Soviet supported communist intrigue.

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India decided to join the Commonwealth based on its strategic interests. The aforementioned qualifications for Commonwealth membership quickly denied (expelled) Pakistan. Nehru was a cosmopolitan globalist. The Commonwealth afforded him the participation of India in an international organization which he believed might increasingly become an exclusive venue where developing nations could exert influence. Nehru seems to have wagered that the continued irrelevance of the British would make them more amenable to a power-sharing arrangement within an organization that outwardly proclaimed solidarity with British traditions. Nehru’s gamble was that British isolation in the US-USSR ‘new world order’ might create the basis for mutual interests between Britain and India.

As the most geo-strategically and economically valuable British colony, India was also the first to attain independence on August 15, 1947211. By agreeing to join the Commonwealth, India set a precedent for the ease of transition by which other colonies could come into association. India achieved this by negotiating with the UK, that Commonwealth membership was not contingent on former colonies retaining the British monarch as their constitutional head of state.212 This would go on to help both India and Great Britain, as nations like Pakistan and Australia would have no argument that their withdrawal from the Commonwealth was based on sovereign republicanism213.

India has worked to advance its role as both a sovereign developing nation and an emerging regional power. India has done this via global institutions such as UNESCO and the Commonwealth. Regarding UNESCO, India was one of the original signatories for its creation in 1945. India valued UNESCO because it fostered a cosmopolitan-secularism that was intercultural in ethos and based on the “mobilization of education” and the “building of intercultural understanding through the protection of heritage and support for cultural diversity” (“Introducing UNESCO”, n.d.). Of particular importance to India was that UNESCO “created the idea of World Heritage to protect sites of outstanding universal

211 Technically Pakistan was first, since being carved out of India, it was made independent a day earlier on Aug 14, 1947. 212 London Declaration 1949 (“Our history: The Commonwealth”, n.d.) 213 Noteworthy is the Canadian case where the repatriation of Canada’s constitution only occurred in 1982 (Constitution Act of Canada, Canada Act of UK) and caused immense angst in both Canada and the UK regarding the meaning which was implied, despite Canada continuing to be a Constitutional Monarchy.

219 value” (“Introducing UNESCO”, n.d.). Hence UNESCO represented a globalized world of interdependent societies rather than a globalization of either American or Soviet projected- political power.

By participating in such initiatives, India represented itself as the inheritor of a non- Western pedagogical model that had produced a civilizational experience that was composite and syncretic. Nehru realized that organizations such as UNESCO advanced India’s goal of a globalization based on moral authority and cooperation rather than industrial and economic power. This was important since inclusion in the United Nations meant acceptance of a Great-Power Security Council which could exercise a veto on the majority of the world. Theoretically a global forum based on the principle of national equality, the UN operated as an arena of realpolitik disguised under the veneer of participation. India seems to have considered that organizations within the UN such as UNICEF and UNESCO, afforded a check to hegemony, and perhaps an avenue for agency.

India has endeavoured to transform the Commonwealth from a symbolic association of former British colonies, into an organization which is increasingly becoming more like UNESCO. Britain’s steady departure from the globalism of political power, coincided with India’s desire to transform internationalism with a broader spectrum of indices. This transnational cosmopolitan-secularism was to be based upon communalidad, the pluralism of cultures and an acknowledgement of different but equal knowledges.

Declassified records of the Commonwealth Secretariat indicate that member states during the 1960s, began to discuss the potential of the Commonwealth to be transformed into an organization of humanitarian assistance. The establishment of the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1965 is “an event commonly viewed as reflecting the modernisation of the organization (Wilhelm, 2015, p.442). The Commonwealth’s original interpretation of humanitarian assistance was influenced by the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence which precipitated a crisis between the UK and the majority of the Commonwealth from 1965 to 1980. It was during this period of apartheid in southern Africa, that Commonwealth members led by India began to transform the Commonwealth into an organization of anti-imperial solidarity.

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Indeed, “by the early 1960s, the disillusionment of British foreign policy-makers with the Commonwealth” was barely hidden (Wilhelm, 2015, p.445). It has been suggested that the UK’s decision to join the European Community (EC) in 1973, reflects its disdain for the Commonwealth’s humanitarian efforts (Wilhelm, 2015, p.450). In its Declaration of 1971, the Commonwealth committed itself to democracy promotion as a development strategy (Commonwealth, 2004). Until the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa shortly thereafter, Commonwealth policies reflect “the affirmation of humanitarianism as an apolitical cause on the one hand, and the duty of humanitarianism to denounce oppressive regimes…”(Wilhelm, 2015, p.448).

The British have grudgingly accommodated themselves to India’s rise in global affairs. Being overshadowed by their former colony has been made more palatable by India’s insistence that the Commonwealth continue. Indeed the main force for the expansion of the Commonwealth and its transformation into a body with global relevance beyond imperial heritage, has been India. British incentive may be its historic rivalry with France. No matter how far the British have fallen from their former days of glory, the fact remains that France has been humiliated far more. The Commonwealth still exists because it has evolved and transformed itself. It can be contrasted to La Francophonie, which has not evolved very far from an organization of former French colonies.

Highlighting India’s economic growth rates however, overshadows the equally if not more important aspect of India’s international impact. This has been India’s soft-power capacity to promote transnational democracy through alternate pedagogies of knowing and being which are rooted in South Asian cultural heritage. India has utilized the Commonwealth as one medium for the proliferation of this re-conceptualization of both the nation-state and globalization. India’s strategy has been to appropriate the language of British or one might say imperial claims that democracy needs to be experienced as action-research. Applauding the Commonwealth for its longevity as an organization of the oldest democracies on the planet, allows India to use the soft-power potential of the Commonwealth. India locates itself within the Commonwealth as the largest democracy and oldest democracy of the Global South, with the closest affinity to Great Britain’s Western secular democratic traditions.

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India is therefore depicted as a composite and syncretic model of global best practices, of both non-West and West. India is admired for its Gandhian traditions, respected for its post-colonial endogenous development, and acknowledged for its attempt to foster an anti- imperial Afro-Asian solidarity via the Non-Aligned Movement. Therefore, India does not appear hegemonic when promoting transnational democracy via the Commonwealth. In this manner, India is able to leverage Britain’s imperial and liberal-democratic heritage, as well as the global network of the Commonwealth. More importantly, democracy is removed from its confinement as an exclusively Western model.

India promotes democracy as a pedagogy of inter-culturalism and as an anti-oppression framework. This allows both India and the West to reduce their footprint and ownership of a transformative pedagogy for citizenship and participation. Notable in this symbiotic Indo-British relationship, is that the current Commonwealth Security General is an Indian, Kamalesh Sharma, who was nominated in 2008214.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact military organization215 the Commonwealth began to rejuvenate itself. The Edinburgh Declaration of 1997, outlined “new criteria for Commonwealth membership”. One of these was that applicant countries pledge themselves to the Harare Declaration of October 20, 1991, and have an association with an existing Commonwealth member state.216 A critical juncture was reached on “Commonwealth Day” 2013217 when HRM Queen Elizabeth II signed the Charter of the Commonwealth. The future of this organization in the new realities of the 21st Century required a revision of the Commonwealth’s original mission statement. Called into question were the motives for continuing the Commonwealth, and its relationship to other Western organizations of the Cold War era such as NATO.

214 Arnold Smith of Canada (1965-75), Shridath Ramphal of Guyana (1975-90), Emeka Anyaoku of Nigeria (1990-2000), Don McKinnon of New Zealand (2000-2008) (“Commonwealth Security General”, n.d.) 215 Soviet organized military alliance in Eastern European communist nations. 216 Prior to the Harare Declaration had been the Singapore Declaration of 1971 (Declaration of Commonwealth Principals). Both these along with the Commonwealth Charter sought to outline and update the mission statement of the organization. Mozambique joined the Commonwealth as an extraordinary circumstance. 217 This event is marked annually on the second Monday in March. In 2013, Commonwealth Day occurred March 11th. Prior to 1958, it was called Empire Day in Canada and other white colonies. In 1976, the current form of Commonwealth Day was established.

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The Charter (2013) outlines sixteen core beliefs that represent this fifty-three nation group in the 21st Century, while clearly paralleling the objective of the idea of India. These are democracy, human rights, international peace and security, tolerance, respect and understanding, freedom of expression, separation of powers, rule of law, good governance, sustainable development, eco-conservation, the right of citizens to proper access for health care, the right to education, food security, the right to shelter, gender equality, the importance of young people in the Commonwealth, recognition of the needs of small states218, recognition of the needs of vulnerable states, and the role of civil society (“Charter of the Commonwealth”, December 14, 2012).

This re-branding of the Commonwealth219 into a global association pledged to common- goals, allows for its appeal and potential expansion beyond countries with a British imperial past. The most recent nations to join the Commonwealth are Mozambique (1995) and Rwanda (2009).

With regard to education reforms precipitated through the Commonwealth, the establishing of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) centre in Vancouver (1987) is important. Its mandate is “to provide better and internationally recognized education to all member states” and to share open learning, distance education knowledge, teacher training methods, and education technology (“Commonwealth of Learning, Setup”, n.d.). India has been instrumental in expanding this pedagogical initiative. This is viewed as a means to promote transnational democracy through experiential learning. Indeed parallels between this strategy and that of PRIA are evident. Moreover, India’s support is indicative of its belief that re-conceptualizing democracy and citizenship through it sociopolitical broadening, is a mechanism for peace. This global stability is predicated upon cosmopolitan-secularism and the mindfulness of interdependence from the death democracy component of the state- nation ideal-type.

In 1994, the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) was created as a sub-organ of the COL to focus specifically on the eight countries of Commonwealth Asia.

218 31 of the 53 Commonwealth countries are “small states” whose population is 1.5 million or smaller. 219 An Indian diplomat remarked at one of the earliest Commonwealth meeting, that the organization was one where the wealth was uncommon.

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These are the nation-states of Bangladesh, Brunei, Darussalan, India, , Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, and . Initially creating educational programming for television transmission, CEMCA now promotes life-long learning through formal as well as non-traditional education (“Programmes and Services, COL”, n.d.). CEMCA’s headquarters has been based in New Delhi since 1998.220 Its strategic objective is “to promote co-operation and collaboration in the use of electronic media resources for distance education” (“Objective and Strategies CEMCA”, n.d.).

As with the previous example, this is illustrative of India’s belief in experiential democracy to promote stability. As India re-emerges within its historic and geopolitical capacity as a regional power in South and South-East Asia, it has developed a vested interest in promoting pedagogical reform throughout this area. The range of CEMCA target countries, 3 (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) are part of India’s immediate in South Asia and others are countries with whom there has been war. Singapore and Malaysia are major trading partners of India. Their stability is required for India’s prosperity and this has been called into question with the rise of radical political or religious fundamentalist violence. It reflects India’s awareness of interdependence, that my development requires your development. The solution in terms of a particular, development model cannot be imposed, however, it must be a process of experiential learning.

South Asia and South East Asia are zones of cultural convergence historically. India believes that its advocacy of cosmopolitan secularism is not a country-specific pedagogy or a hegemonic paradigm, but a methodology towards an inter-culturalism which eliminates sociopolitical conflict based on disputes concerning authenticity and legitimacy. This is very much a shared concept with the state-nation.

The director of CEMCA from July 2012, is Dr. Mishra. Mishra’s expertise is to Open Educational Resources (OER). He developed an OER based Post-Graduate Diploma in e-Learning while serving at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Prior to

220 Noteworthy is that CEMCA’s website, under the section “about us” lists a quote by Jonathan Swift as its logo: “vision is the art of seeing the invisible” (“CEMCA About us”, n.d.).

224 becoming director, Mishra was a program specialist in education at UNESCO (“Staff, COL”, n.d.). According to COL’s Three-Year-Plan from 2012 to 2015, CEMCA will seek to promote low cost technology options. These will promote and develop OER, deploy multimedia materials, create models for sustainable community media initiatives, empower women in media literacy, health, democracy and leadership, and support research for emerging technology on mobile devises (“Three-Year-Plan, COL”, n.d.). Presently CEMCA is helping to develop a new pedagogical model for the National Institute of Open Schooling in India (NIOSI). This strategy is similar to that of the APF and PRIA which rely on technology to bridge physical and socioeconomic obstacles to learning.

As part of India’s attempt to utilize the Commonwealth to promote alternate strategies for globalization, Nobel laureate delivered a report entitled Civil Paths to Peace. This was included as part of the Commonwealth Commission on Respect and Understanding which was organized in November 2007, in London. Sen had been tasked to examine the causes of conflict, violence and extremism in Commonwealth nations. He was directed to pay particular attention to the reasons for, and consequence of, group based inter-communal violence (“Civil Paths to Peace, the Commonwealth”, n.d.).

Reflecting on his Indian background and the latest Hindu-Muslim riots of 1992-93 and 2002, Sen underscored the destructive nature of singularity. He noted that the imposition of neo-liberal hegemonic globalization, and the manufacturing of artificially constructed national identity based on singularity as a basis for inclusion and belonging, were the major source of sociopolitical conflict. Sen advocated that solutions to conflict, violence and extremism are “based on (the recognition of) individuals’ multiple identities”. He recommended “new forms of political participation, an emphasis on non-sectarian, non- parochial education that expands rather than reduces the reach of understanding” for the following reasons:

Group violence through systematic instigation is not only – perhaps primarily – a military challenge. It is fostered in our divisive world through capturing people’s minds and loyalties, and through exploiting the allegiance of those who are wholly or partly persuaded (“Civil Paths to Peace, the Commonwealth”, 2007).

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What is clear at the end of this section, is that the Commonwealth is often incorrectly assumed to perform a function similar to that of other post-1945 IOs. Upon closer examination however, the Commonwealth displays a capacity for change while retaining its integrity. Further research into it, and other IOs might provide insight regarding the potential of IOs to assist in inaugurating state-nation globalism in advance of nation-state reform. Despite its British imperial origins, the Commonwealth’s flexibility is due to a non-rigid paradigm for democracy that allows its deepening. Additionally, the Commonwealth derives integrity from adhering to a doctrine of interdependence which stipulates that the stability of one contributes to the stability of all.

A Summary of the Policies of International Organizations in Indian Education Reform

This chapter investigated the proximity of the policies of three IOs to the ideal-type of the state-nation. It achieved this by locating the institutional positionality of each IO in the context of Indian education reform. An examination of IO strategic concerns, their policies, and their implementation, was undertaken. The choice of which IOs to showcase was made according to the same criteria which was used in the previous chapter in respect to CSOs. This was the longevity of their activities, the scope of their activities, and the geographic range of their activities across India.

I deemed it important for the sake of controlling the parameters for examination, to utilize the same criteria of choice for both CSOs and IOs. In addition, there is much similarity between these two case studies, in comparison with that of the GoI. CSOs and IOs are engaged in a secondary and a far lesser influential financial and structural capacity than the GoI. Moreover, CSOs and IOs are required to negotiate their positionality vis-à-vis the GoI, in order to accommodate themselves and engage with the Indian education sector. As with the previous examination of Indian CSOs, rather than critique or deconstruct IO programs, a literature review concerning their self-designated aims and the rationale behind them, was undertaken.

It has been illustrated that there are notable differences between the three IOs showcased in this chapter. The World Bank perceives itself through their primary stakeholder interests

226 and directives, as promoting development via global liberal economics. UNICEF advocates development from the peace and resolution framework of humanitarian internationalism. The Commonwealth is an organization rooted in an imperial past that seek to transform power relationships through transnational democracy.

What is common among these three IOs is that all of them were created immediately after the WWII, and that all of them developed an interest in education 20 to 30 years into their operative histories. Furthermore, it can be said that each IOs tactical plan for education policy shifted according to its strategic impressions regarding how best to achieve its ‘main’ goals. Hence, this chapter demonstrates that IOs approach education reform as an extension of their internationalism. That is to say, that for IOs, education reform is either a compartmentalized or entirely separate sector of activity. By contrast the GoI and Indian CSOs do not distinguish between education and state reform, which in fact are inseparably inter-related.

IOs have generally had a problem in defining the goals and parameters of humanitarian assistance. This is partially due to the nation-state framework of the international system which is predicated upon non-interference within the affairs of nation-states. Generally IOs have emphasized that their endeavours have been to either save lives or reduce suffering, and that this is an impartial and neutral act. Most of these endeavours have occurred during or after conflict or natural disasters221. By definition therefore, cosmopolitanism has been equated with humanitarianism, and conceptualized as politically neutral.

In the 1990s, everything changed. The Cold War was history, replaced by ‘new wars’ that were creating ‘complex humanitarian emergencies’. In fact, these were were not so new, and humanitarian emergencies had always been complex, but the international community acted as if they had never seen anything like them (Barnett, 2011, p.2).

As a result, more humanitarian agencies were created within IOs after 1990. This led to the “institutionalization of the humanitarian aid system” (Wilhelm, 2015, p.445).

Since its development, the World Bank has operated as a global financing institution. Its evaluation of which projects to fund, and where, revolves around a series of complexities.

221 Examples would be the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded (1864), and the Convention (1949), or the founding of the Red Cross (1863).

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These include the strategic directions of the Bank president and executive staff at the time of assessment, intra-Bank policy disputes among various branches of operations, and the Bank’s relations with other IOs.

Regardless of shifting policies, one can argue that the World Bank has maintained its adherence to a paradigm of skills development for poverty reduction. This agenda is forwarded through Bank promotion of the deregulation of government and its public sector, decentralization of administration, and entrepreneurship. Having only begun to consider a dedicated education framework since 1963, the World Bank did not begin to seriously fund education until the 1990s. With regard to Indian education reform, the major contributions of the World Bank have been to DPEP and SSA. It has been discussed how these GoI education reforms resulted in decentralization, thus aligning with World Bank goals.

UNICEF is an instrument of the collectivist paradigm of the United Nations. As such, UNICEF advocates humanitarian internationalism. UNICEF works in coordination with other sub-organizations of the UN such as UNESCO and UNDP. For UNICEF, education developed as an extension of its health and welfare focus. UNICEF began to consider education as a location of convergence for issues surrounding health and welfare. Therefore, education reform became part of a strategy to coordinate efforts at promoting the internationalization of social welfare reform. Unlike the World Bank which leverages its relationships with global capital, UNICEF utilizes its cultural capital as part of the UN.

UNESCO and UNICEF centre their philosophy on a humanistic and child-centred vision of education, while the World Bank and the OECD give priority to education policy based on assessing skills and learning outcomes. Over the past decade, however, among the major international organizations involved in education, there has been a gradual convergence in the vision of education, towards learning outcomes (Abdeljalil and Lauwerier, 2014, p.141; Abadzi, 2012; Cerqua and Gauthier, 2013; Wiseman, 2010). UNICEF is also perceived benevolently in the Global South, which is in marked contrast to the World Bank.

UNICEF was responsible for pressuring the World Bank to amend, or at least appear to amend, the amount and direction of the latter’s funding with regard to the education sector.

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Global EFA (MDGs) represents the intersection where the policy goals of the GoI, Indian CSOs, the World Bank and UNICEF, can be compared and contrasted. Amendments to certain World Bank policies have accompanied the gradual pro-liberalization stance of the GoI since 2004. This has since allowed better relations between the GoI and the World Bank.

By contrast, UNICEF has been perceived by the GoI as an ally from the beginning. Indeed, through India’s early support of UNICEF and UNESCO, both the latter were able to gain legitimacy in the Global South. Correspondingly, because UNICEF is part of the architecture of the reconstructed post-1945 global order, UNICEF supports the integrity and strengthening of the nation-state. The Indian National Movement and Nehruvian legacy created the convergence of the GoI and UNICEF around the principle of cosmopolitan-secularism as the basis for India and globalism. After PM Modi’s 2014 victory, the situation has radically shifted so that the World Bank is considered an ally of the GoI, while many Indian CSOs and IOs such as UNICEF are viewed with suspicion or outright hostility.222

As with UNICEF, the GoI has had a relationship with the Commonwealth, since the latter’s coming into existence. This case is unique in that an organization rooted in the experience of British imperialism, has slowly evolved into a global collective of nation-states committed to transnational democracy which employ English as its medium of discourse. It could be argued that the Commonwealth is an illustration of how IOs possess the potential to facilitate intercultural dialogue, and more importantly subaltern dialogue with hegemony.

More remarkable is how the GoI has utilized the Commonwealth to promote aspirations along the lines of the state-nation. A cynical observer might even remark that India, rather than Great Britain, presently has the greatest vested interest in the expansion and development of the Commonwealth. Foreign aid from the British government is the

222 Since coming to power, PM Modi’s government has banned or stopped funding thousands of organizations. Among them, the activities of Greenpeace and UNICEF have been declared anti-Indian (“India’s Government Bans Greenpeace from Receiving Foreign Funds”, 2015; “Those Seeking Change are not Anti-Government, 2016).

229 responsibility of the Department for International Development (DfID). DfID’s projects are generally coordinated with the efforts of other international agencies through the World Bank. In contrast, India is actually a donor of aid, via the Commonwealth. India exercises soft-power through the network of UNESCO and the Commonwealth to support its initiatives of re-conceptualizing identity and belonging via pedagogical reforms. In so doing, the GoI seeks to employ those IOs as allies toward the project of a reformed globalism. The similarities of these goals, with the components that comprise the state- nation, have been discussed throughout the chapter.

Each of the three IOs discussed in this chapter, and their types of internationalism, have the potential for generating policies that are state-nation oriented. These policies correspond to education reform which is broadly considered as the reform of citizenship (belonging), participation (democracy), and intercultural knowledge production. Despite the fact that all three IOs have their origins in the reconstituted hegemony of the post-1945 order, each has transformed itself to the conditions post-1992 (post-Cold War). The Commonwealth and UNICEF have evolved as per their objectives of global sociopolitical transformation, to accommodate multi-polarity amidst the continuing hegemony of a unipolar USA. However, the World Bank remains more entrenched in its paradigm of skills development to provoke economic transformation to combat global poverty. Perhaps it is fair to say that all three IOs have remained loyal to their origins.

As with the CSOs discussed in the previous chapter, all three IOs work in partnership with the GoI. This however, is not a comment upon the alignment of goals. Rather, it is a fact of the nation-state organization of international relations. State sovereignty is enshrined as an international law and operating principle. Therefore any change promoted by international organizations must, de facto, be approved by nation-states. Paradoxically, this means that education reform towards the state-nation, a pedagogical re-conceptualization of citizenship and participation, can only succeed so long as it does not challenge the edifice of the nations-state. Thus, as with the previous chapter, a lesson of realpolitik has, again, been illustrated.

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From 1990 to 2015, a "progressive rapproachement" has occurred between the policies of UNICEF and the World Bank (Mundy, 2006). This convergence is due, in part, to the process of education reform being a triple process of humanization, socialization, and singularization (Charlot, 2002). It is therefore, inevitable, that all IOs participating in Indian education reform will need to address all three components. The difference in overall policy direction is determined by the ethos of education to which each IO subscribes. In his 1999 book Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen noted that in his estimation, the value of schooling was in its capacity to afford membership within community (Sen, 1999).

The National Movement and the Constituent Assembly of India, had similar aspirations. If these aspirations are to be fulfilled, it requires the continued participation of the GoI with IOs and CSOs. If education is considered a public good, it cannot be exclusively be the responsibility of private enterprise or civil society. Akkari and Lauwerier (2014) conclude their own examination of IO participation in global EFA, with the following remark:

If education is considered to be a public good, then the state has a particular and primary responsibility in this field. Even through families and NGOs can participate in managing education, the principal responsibility lies mainly with the state and its public services. Simply diversifying the supply will not remove the obstacles to children accessing good quality basic education. And states play an imperative and unavoidable role in unstable regions in the global South, where the failure of the state may lead certain IOs or NGOs to try to replace it (Akkari and Lauwerier, 2014, p.154).

It is for this reason that Akkari and Lauwerier conclude that the quality of education matrix must be replaced with a relevance of education concept. This approaches the state-nation ethos of education reform for improved membership in society, a deepening of participation, to promote the service of humanity, and the affording of a life of dignity (Akkari and Lauwerier, 2014, p.154).

One could easily dismiss IOs as not having the capacity to reform themselves or the nation- state, let alone to effectively represent the state-nation. But this would be reductionist and neglect the very principle of the state-nation which is multi-logical discourse. Furthermore, it must be reiterated that the state-nation is not a paradigm. The state-nation does not seek change to promote itself as the new hegemony, or as a paradigm that is

231 infallible. Indeed, the state-nation employs the component of an Adivasi studies approach as an anti-oppression framework, specifically to endow itself with its own secession mechanism. Communalidad is accepted as involving the potential replacement of the state- nation by a conceptual framework that is more democratic by virtue of its inter-culturality.

This is non-threatening to the state-nation because change is not viewed in oppositional or conflict terms, as being against someone or something. Change is seen as a pedagogical process of mindfulness and acquiring wisdom. Part of that wisdom is becoming enlightened to multiplicity and interdependence. And herein is the rationale for including the component of death democracy which the state-nation employs to inform itself with a framework for providing dignity to spirituality rather than to paradigms.

The state-nation is an ideal-type that posits a preferred future, but prior to achieving the state-nation, one must not lose a sense of reality. The state-nation is not a utopian construct of either religious messianism or Marxism predetermination. It would constitute hubris to believe in either the complete validity of the state-nation or the complete failure of the nation-state. To provide further insight, a parallel may be drawn to Churchill’s statement regarding democracy; that the nation-state is the worst organizational packaging for democracy, except for all other attempted organizations.

This examination was undertaken in order to discern whether any of the three showcased IOs approached the conceptual framework of the state-nation. And it has been concluded that the World Bank, UNICEF, and the Commonwealth, all have the potential to inaugurate the state-nation through a broadening of participation. The World Bank contributes by encouraging a devolution of autonomy and decision making to the level of local communities. UNICEF encourages a holistic approach in which education reform becoming the vehicle for the pedagogical reform of both schooling and sociopolitical organization. The Commonwealth presents a unique example of how cosmopolitan- secularism can be worked outward from nation-state reform to global reform.

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With regard to the last point, this subject will be explored further in the next chapter which will judge the potential of the state-nation to be employed as a pedagogy for a re- conceptualization of globalism.

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Chapter 7

Indian Education Diplomacy: Re-conceptualizing Globalization via State-Nation Intercultural Citizenship

Scaling of Vision: From Intra-National to Inter-National Reform I have completed an examination of the case studies. This was undertaken to assess the suitability of the strategic intent and proximity by way of policies, of the GoI (chapter four), Indian CSOs (chapter five), and IOs (chapter 6), to the state-nation. I utilized my conceptual framework, the state-nation, as a sieve through which the organizations within my case studies were filtered. This lens of analysis has informed my conclusions regarding the ability of the state-nation to enact reforms that could transform education and the sociopolitical organization of the nation-state. This transformation would be a by-product of the re-conceptualization of citizenship and democracy which would occur through the process of pedagogical reforms.

In the present chapter I will attempt to add an extra dimension with respect to the potential of my conceptual framework to envision change. I shall now scale my discussion regarding the possibilities of the state-nation re-conceptualization of identity and belonging, to inspire reform in the sphere of international relations by providing an outline for an alternate globalism. The state-nation is comprised of four components which affirm interdependence (cosmopolitan-secularism), reciprocity (Adivasi studies approach to anti- oppression), inter-culturalism (communalidad), and spirituality (death democracy). The state-nation is a holistic pedagogical approach to ways of being and knowing that is simultaneously an inter-national as well as a supra-national ethos.

The rationale for examining EFA within the context of India has been to discern which of the statist, intra-nation civil society, or inter-national tactical approaches to education reform, approach the ideal-type model. The ideal-type is a post-colonial, anti-hegemonic, alternate to the Western notion of modernity and its development. The ideal-type is informed by intercultural notions of participation. The state-nation is therefore, reciprocally produced. And the state-nation reflexively produces an education system

234 founded upon multiple ways of knowing. Its pedagogy continuously challenges the notion that hard boundaries of single criterion categories, represent authenticity. The state-nation continuously reinterprets democracy, from its perspective that there are multiple ways of belonging, and that identity is plural, co-constructed and interdependent. Hence, the basis of the state-nation is plural and liminal, as opposed to the nation-state which is closed and defined.

The current tensions between globalization and the nation-state arise due to the imposition of hegemonic . But there is also an incompatibility between the notion of nation-state sovereignty and global internationalism. The state-nation circumvents both problems, which are non-issues within its conceptual framework. The state-nation makes no distinction between local, national, and global, because it does not recognize the logic for such a partitioning of location and identity. State-nation pedagogies emphasize the extension of spirit from one individual through the entire globe. All individuals are connected through their actions, which have a butterfly effect throughout the globe. Wisdom is derived in state-nation pedagogies through the awareness that environmental stewardship, sustainability, and social development, are relevant to personhood and the goals of education.

India was chosen as the nation-state of focus for the examination of state-nation potential, due to its educational inheritance whose foundation is intercultural and multi-logical. This was discussed as part of the literature review and historical background within Chapter 2. India possesses a cultural history of South Asian unity in diversity manifested as part of its sociopolitical history and composite spiritual traditions. This cosmopolitan inheritance was the inspiration for the National Education and Congress led independence movement. Social justice and postcolonial education reform were reaffirmed as aspirations within the Indian Constitution (1950) and NPE 1968.

Prior to deliberating regarding the findings and conclusions of this dissertation, I believe that a discussion about the transformative potential of state-nation education reform should be undertaken. It is therefore, the purpose of this chapter to consider the ability of India to simultaneously evoke the state-nation, while also contributing to alternate globalization.

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This may be achieved by promoting multi-logical discourse as the basis of intercultural citizenship, within international relations. This does not require an innovative project or new policy by the GoI, as much as it calls for a re-affirmation of an Indian ethos through GoI foreign policy. As previously discussed, India has been in constant engagement with the world.

Prominent figures of the Indian independence and National Education movement such as Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore and Radhakrishnan, unequivocally sought to evict imperialism from India and also gain sovereignty for all nations within a new global reorganization. Sovereignty was understood as the liberation of spirit from the falsity of single and hegemonic definitions of identity and belonging. Therefore, globalism became a cosmopolitan ethos of intercultural equality admitting multiple ways of knowing and being, whose foundation was an awareness of the interdependence of knowledges. It is this global education project of re-rooting citizenship and participation, by re-investing it with a spiritual ethos, which will now be considered.

Indian Revolution as Global Revolution A nation’s foreign policy is influenced by its domestic policy. Newly independent India emerged under the umbrella of bipolarity, the division of the world into ideological camps where all nations served as proxies for the USA or the USSR. India was the first newly independent colony after WWII (1939-1945). In an effort to preserve its sovereignty over foreign policy, as well as champion cosmopolitan secularism as an alternate vision of international relations, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). NAM promoted the solidarity of former colonies in the Global South, to their right to pursue endogenous economic and sociopolitical development. NAM advocated that the Global South should use the UN and its sub-organizations such as UNESCO, to spearhead the formation of a global governance based on intercultural citizenship. To forward these aims, NAM suggested that its members conduct a multipolar approach to foreign policy and maintain equal diplomatic relations with both the USSR and the USA.

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This was ambitious to say the least. It was an attempt by a newly independent former subject nation to challenge not only Great Power hegemony but the framework of the international system itself! However, India would attempt to chart its own course, one that sought to re-conceptualize inter-state relations via intra-state reform. Although Nehru advertised this foreign policy as non-aligned, he could easily have described it as alternate globalization. NAM afforded India a successful public diplomacy which promoted the image of an exotic yet esoteric enigma of spirituality and democracy. Nehru challenged the soft-sell of the soft power image of the American Revolution and Soviet Revolution, which arose from a conflict reproduced militarism globally. Nehru offered the Indian Revolution of Gandhi and the Congress experience, as an alternate model of anti-imperial liberation. India was also promoting a global revolution, but one which aspired to reform the international system by eliminating hegemony, rather than replacing it.

Although the concept is certainly older, the term soft power was first developed by Joseph Nye in 2007 within Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Nye described soft power not as specific government action but rather “the power of attraction of societal culture and values” (Nye, 2007, p.5). One of the ways that soft power is exercised is presently known as public diplomacy. This could cynically be termed a benevolent re- branding of the term propaganda. However, the key difference between state propaganda and public diplomacy is that the latter, although it may include the participation of the government or government funded media organizations, is reproduced through interactions with and within civil society. Public diplomacy is conceived as a means to favourably shape the perceptions of a foreign audience. Public diplomacy may also be broadcast for domestic consumption.

Although an instrument of realpolitik, public diplomacy re-conceptualizes, both power and winning in a manner more Indian or Chinese than Western. “Power is the ability to make others do what you want…the distinction (hard/soft) rests not on their relative brutality, but rather on their relative materiality…soft power is the ability to make others do what you want on the basis of how they see you” (Hymans, 2009, p.235). Nye suggests that the success of public diplomacy rests upon adopting “an attitude of international openness,

237 respect for rules, and a preference for absolute gains, instead of national isolationism, hypocrisy, and a preference for relative gains” (Hymans 2009, p.235).

Public diplomacy is about changing minds over the long term rather than achieving short term foreign policy objectives. Edward Djerejian explains soft power public diplomacy as the building of a long lasting relationship of trust between the government and foreign audiences towards winning the peace (Djerejian, 2007). As education is now thought of in broad terms beyond classrooms and chalkboards, diplomacy too is being re-conceptualized as having distinct spheres of the public, cultural, and interpersonal. The process by which this awareness had been derived could be termed the diplomacy-education of education diplomacy. Education diplomacy is an outgrowth, or more accurately, a core feature, of state-nation pedagogies.

A uni-directional imparting of information for consumption, is being replaced by a multi- logical discourse of broadened democratic participation. The passive object ‘audience’ of traditional diplomacy, becomes the active participant ‘audience’ within education diplomacy. Education diplomacy is an action-research project that desires co-construction of its curriculum, as it seeks to re-conceptualize identity and belonging. In this sense, India has always utilized soft power education diplomacy. This has derived from India’s ability to transform cultural expositions and exchanges into long lasting sociopolitical interactions. One of the more famous examples would be the remarkable trip of to the World Parliament of Religions meeting in Chicago in 1893. Prior to Gandhi, Vivekananda was able to enamour the world with the alternate-ness represented by Indian pedagogical traditions (“Chicago Address”, 2013).

As aforementioned Gandhi believed that India’s road to independence should coincide with an overall global liberation. He believed that both journeys were inter-related, that Indian revolution was part of global revolution. One should not interpret this in Marxist terms, as Gandhi believing in the inevitability of global revolution. However, he did subscribe to the notion that the method of Indian swaraj, liberation, could influence the pattern by which international swaraj might be accomplished. Unlike Gandhi, Nehru was much less idealistic regarding his perceptions about the ability of India’s past to inform future national

238 or international reform. However, as Nehru was included towards socialism, he did believe that national reform was not an end goal in and of itself, but the first stage toward global reform.

As mentioned, Gandhi’s use of the term swaraj was understood as rule over self. Sharing correspondence and affinity to the intellectual ponderings of , Gandhi believed that true freedom could only be attained by a liberation of the individual from the constraints of materialism and dogma.223 In Gandhi’s estimation, imperial political oppression was the by-product and consequence of conquered colonial minds. He concluded that imperialism was enforced through subject cooperation as much as coercion. Therefore, subject peoples could release themselves from political oppression via the path of spiritual cleansing. This involved a rejection of Western secularism and liberal-capitalist economic development. Both of these contributed to the edifice of the nation-state, which supported pedagogies of individuality and fixed borders for the concepts of identity, belonging, and truth.

Gandhi utilized the Dharmic notion of moksha as the basis of an indigenous Indian response to global inequity and as a platform for global social justice reform. However his interpretation of this concept was through the lens of cosmopolitan-secularism and interculturalidad. Gandhi equated moksha with the concept of surrender in Islam and justification by faith in Christianity. Thus, he considered that the endogenous Indian model of composite culture, as pedagogy, could be scaled for global reform.

Gandhi eventually became disenchanted with the Indian National Congress whose following was more Nehruvian than Gandhian. Gandhi resigned from the Congress. He opposed the Congress acceptance of a partitioned sub-continent in order to achieve Indian independence. While Gandhi may be considered a spiritual-cosmopolitan, Nehru was most definitely a secular-cosmopolitan. Nehru expressed his faith, not in spirituality or religion, but in Fabianism and . Gandhi’s criticism of the latter concepts, was based on the irreconcilable fact that both were grounded in a philosophy of progressive modernist

223 It is interesting to parallel the Russia-India connection (influence), the difference lay in paths: Gandhi favoured spiritualty (Tolstoy), while Nehru favoured material transformation (Lenin).

239 materialism. Gandhi objected to the imposition of a nation-state framework, which he correctly assessed as, was predicated on fracturing an indigenous culture via political governance.

Although theoretically based upon the separation of church and state, Gandhi argued that the nation-state destroyed spirituality in order to prioritize economy in all aspects of life. The international system was predicated upon the nation-state. Therefore, participating globally meant conforming nationally. But it was anathema to Gandhi that one would be required to surrender individual or cultural autonomy of the spirit, in order to become or participate in the global. This is at the root of what caused Gandhi’s opposition to Nehru’s plan for the creation of an independent nation-state. Furthermore, it must be noted that Nehru believed that global citizenship could only be achieved by disposing of or ignoring certain aspects of national diversity. This was in line with Nehru’s inclination towards socialism, which of course is a Western materialist philosophy that preaches a reductionist form of universalism, a conflict model for eliminating dissent, and the implementation of hegemony by the proletariat for the greater good of the majority.

This is the manufacturing of consensus by subtraction. It amounts to the creation of an artificial or official nation-state multiculturalism which tolerates diversity while promoting conformity. Gandhi’s global citizenship concept has its foundation in a conversation of multiple ways of knowing and being. It approaches the state-nation model which believes that spirituality is at the core of identity, and does not support the construction of false equivalences such as we all believe the same things. Rather than disposing of identities and knowledges, the state-nation model for globalism posits the addition of externalities to oneself or one’s community. The state-nation model makes hegemony less likely to occur because one does not give up inclusion to participate in conformity.

The leaders of colonial national movements against imperialism were mostly the Western educated elites of their respective societies. They were definitely cosmopolitan, but in the subtraction model sense. Their cross-cultural commonality was that they all ignored certain aspects of their location in a sociological sense, in favour of their externally manufactured identity as intelligentsia. This fact made the imperial accusation against them, as a Western

240 manufactured elite class with no basis of representation within their socio-cultural location, a stinging yet partly true indictment. This is why it was important under Gandhi’s leadership, that the Congress expanded its base and activities to become a mass and popular party. This was both a strategic (political) imperative as well as an ethical (democratic) criterion for Gandhi. Gandhi’s leadership “is perhaps the most spectacular historical example of the potential effectiveness of political strategies based on soft power” (Hyman, 2009, p.241). Characteristics that the British had typified as Indian weakness became strengths because Gandhi exploited the “non-linear dynamics of national identity relationships” (Hyman, 2009, p.241).

It may also be one of the reasons why many post-colonial nations in the period immediately after receiving independence, fell into a series of civil conflicts rooted in ethnic strife and political instability. Gandhi did state that independence achieved through violence would re-enact that violence upon citizens, both national and global. Post-colonial nations were fragile to begin with, due to their entry into a bipolar global arena dominated by capitalism and , the competing Western modernist eco-political models of development. Having resisted imperialism, post-colonial citizenry engaged in resisting non-indigenous structures of the post-colonial nation state, while post-colonial governments attempted to preserve their sovereignty from neo-imperialism.

Gandhi realized that this would likely be the outcome and a recipe for disaster. This is why he often remarked that without swaraj, it would be the lesser of two evils for the British to continue administering the sub-continent. Gandhi realized that political independence was meaningless if the colonialism of education continued. Sociopolitical fragility was perpetuated by the imposition of an inauthentic non-indigenous organization of society. Nehru soon encountered the hurdles associated with manufacturing and imposing the idea of a national identity.

Gandhi’s conceptual framework is in many ways closer to that of the state-nation than Nehru’s. Nevertheless, as has been discussed, the GoI’s foundation document, the Constitution (1950), and its most important and contemporarily relevant pedagogical framework NPE 1968, were informed by aspirations of Gandhi and the National

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Movement. Indian cosmopolitan-secularism promoted the possibility for all religious beliefs to participate in the framing of a collaborative public and political space. The GoI, while not subscribing to spirituality, in fact recognized it as an issue of core identity and saw that its respect amounted to human dignity. Moreover, the GoI understood that South Asian pedagogies of citizenship and participation were rooted in a spiritual basis. Therefore, it could be said that the GoI undertook the recognition of spirituality from an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression.

Cynically, one could go so far as to argue that Gandhi won, despite his consternation with the Congress. Both Nehru as Prime Minister, and Ambedkar as architect of the Constitution, were outspoken regarding their negative views of religion and positive views of socialism. Given the recognition that spirituality receives within the Constitution, it is likely that this was either a direct concession to the Gandhian faction within Congress, or a grudging awareness that the traditions and beliefs of the vast majority of Indians could not be swept into the dustbin of history.224

Not surprisingly, Nehru’s spearheading of a Non-Aligned Movement, drew inspiration from Gandhi’s vision of a globalism revolving around the principle of there being no single path for development, on the basis of multiple and equal knowledges. Nehru argued that the new globalism should be rooted in an acceptance which would then permeate as an intercultural pedagogy of equality and respect of all nations (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2009).

It is important to remember that Nehru was contemporary to the creation of the ‘new world order’ after WWII. One could say that Nehru was therefore, promoting his vision of globalism contemporaneously as superpower bipolarity was taking hold of the international system. Nehru sought to disengage from the ideological struggle, of West capitalism versus the communism of the alternate-West, for global hegemony. He believed that India had “a vocation not only to become a new, softer kind of great power, but also to make room for this new power by simultaneously softening up the entire culture of international

224 A historical parallel of this might be Martin Luther’s concession that although he personally felt that many rituals were unnecessary, that he could not eliminate the faith and practise of Germans through an edict.

242 relations—bringing to the fore questions of international equity and justice” (Hyman, 2009, p.245).

In 1949 for example, India joined the Commonwealth and “then proceeded to achieve nothing less than its political refoundation on the principles of national and racial equality…it served greatly to undermine Britain’s still-gigantic empire…hastened the demise of the British empire…”(Hyman, 2009, p.2469). In the wake of the OPEC energy crisis (1973), India was the main instigator of the Group of 77, an organization of the developing world that sought to “fundamentally alter the global economic order” (Ganguly and Pardesi, 2009, p.10).

However, after Nehru’s death, India plunged into a period of domestic instability that lasted from 1964 to 2004225. Over this time, Indian foreign policy transitioned away from the aspirations of the National Movement and state-nation, to become driven by hard realism and economic pragmatism226” (Mukherjee and Malone, 2011). Regarding how this shift affecting Indian national security, regional stability, and international stature, it has been noted that:

Instead of seeking soft power through conformity with the hegemonic ideology of the day, states can also seek it by embracing an alternate conception of the good…India pursued just such a revolutionary soft power strategy under Gandhi and Nehru, until turning away from it under Indira Gandhi, and then definitely abandoning it under Atal Behari Vajpayee. It remains to be seen whether or not this abandonment will prove to have been realistic, or short-sighted (Hymans, 2011, pp.236-237).

India entered a decade of relative stability during the governance of UPA I (2004-2008) and UPA II (2008-2014). As discussed, this was the decade when the GoI accomplished its

225 Death of Nehru, death of PM Shastri, power struggles of Indira Gandhi, regional conflicts, assassinations of PMs Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, World Bank reforms, collapse of USSR, Gulf War loss of remittances and recession, intercommunal riots and rise of Hindutva, nuclear sanctions after Pokhran II. 226 The 1991 fiscal crisis was brought on partly as a consequence of the First Gulf War. India purchased massive amounts of oil on the spot market in anticipation of the conflict which drained its treasury of foreign exchange. When the conflict began, India had to repatriate 100 000 workers from the Gulf region in a matter of two months. This caused the net loss of remittance payments from these workers. Moreover, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc meant that the loss to India of a market. India’s liberalization was IMF imposed in exchange for loans, and as condition India had to abandon import-substituting industrialization and to dismantle its public sector. Indian economic reforms however, had begun in a controlled fashion during Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi’s tenures.

243 most substantive and successful education reforms. Although a return to the aspirations of the Constitution and NPE 1968 occurred, this period did not witness the GoI’s revival of a corresponding extension of the state-nation ethos to the realm of foreign policy. Nevertheless, the potential exists for the implementation of an Indian education diplomacy based upon state-nation ideals. As India seeks to assert its global return in the 21st century, one hopes that state-nation pedagogies are not disposed of by Prime Minister Modi’s government, in pursuit of the realist paradigm.

A Multipolar Cosmopolitan Approach to Globalization The grand objective of India’s foreign policy has always been to ensure that newly independent countries can contribute to the shape of globalism (Abraham, 2007). Especially during Nehru’s tenure, Indian diplomats acted as cosmopolitan activists rather than mere national representatives. They routinely criticized the undemocratic and unequal distribution of international power, excessive military spending, and racial privilege. In this manner, “India has a long history of trying to use public diplomacy and other instruments of soft power to secure its foreign policy objectives” (Hall, 2012, p.1090). Unique for a newly independent and impoverished country, India spent considerable effort and money to support cultural and intellectual exchanges. It has already been noted that India was one of the first collaborators with UNESCO and the UN Peace Keeping operations. India “championed the global anti-colonial movement and the Non-Aligned Movement that succeeded it, India sought to leverage its democratic credentials, its extraordinary history and cultural heritage, and its contributions to anti-imperialism and non-violence” (Hall, 2012, pp.1098-99).

It often seemed that Nehru and Indian diplomats like V.K. Krishna Menon were sermonizing rather than stating the Indian position. “Indian foreign policy of the time seemed moralistic to outsiders, defining the national interest as congruent with world co- operation and world peace. Domestically, the GoI’s explanations for its international conduct, reflect alignment with state-nation concepts (Mukherjee and Malone, 2011, pp.87- 88). After Nehru’s death, Prime Minister L.B. Shastri reaffirmed that India had the moral duty to eradicate colonialism and imperialism (Mukherjee and Malone, 2011). Although

244 the Bandung Summit of Asian and African States in 1955, led to the formation of the NAM in 1961, “its explicit aim was to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism and neocolonialism” (Duclos, 2012, p.212). Jaffrelot (2003) has stated that Nehru’s Pan-Asianism is a unique form of anti-Western civilizationalism. The context of this was Nehru’s channeling of Gandhi and the National Movement’s anti- oppression framework whose communalidad approaches that of the state-nation.

Indian diplomats used the UN as a “forum to project India’s message to an international audience” (Hall, 2012, p.1099). In support of this externalisation of state-nation type pedagogies, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) was established in 1950, by Azad who was the GoI’s first education minister (“Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Founder”, n.d.). The ICCR has 14 regional offices within India, 24 centres abroad and is in the process of opening a further 14 centres in Africa, Europe and South-East Asia. The ICCR has taken the lead in organizing academic exchanges.

In 2012, it offered financial support for 2300 foreign students to study in India, of which 675 were from Afghanistan while 500 were from Africa. The ICCR annually offers 30 fellowships and supports 20 distinguished lecturers. It also supports 30 Indian scholars who undertake 2 year appointments in foreign universities. Many of these academics are engaged in language training, Indian area studies, and peace studies (Hall, p.1100, 2012). The Indian Council of World Relations (ICWR) is a counter-part for the ICCR (“History of the Council”, n.d.). The ICWR was established in 1943, as a think tank to research international relations. The ICWR produces the journal India Quarterly. Since 2001, the ICWR has been actively engaged with 16 foreign institutions in knowledge production and intellectual exchange. The ICWR is also a member of the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia-Pacific (CSCAP) (Hall, 2012, p.1100).

From 1950 to 2000, India’s foreign aid program was minimal and confined to Bhutan, and (Piccio, 2013; Picco, 2014). However with the expansion of the Indian economy, Indian aid has also correspondingly increased, doubling to Africa between 2007 and 2010 (“India”, n.d.; Piccio, 2014). Afghanistan has received USD $2 billion since 2001, in foreign aid from India (Hall, 2012, p.1105). In 2009, the African Union and

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India established the Pan-African e-Network Project (PAN) to build telecommunications infrastructure in support of tele-health, tele-education, and the linking of Indian universities and hospitals to their African counterparts. PAN has a USD $1 billion budget and is the largest ICT network (information-communications) in Africa. PAN is seen as “a shining example of South-South cooperation” (Duclos, 2012, p.209). The estimated cost to India has been USD $115 million. Currently in phase 2 since 2010, 47 countries are involved and linked in this endeavour which seeks to educate 10 000 African students over 5 years with Indian academic involvement (“Inauguration of Pan-African e-Network Project (Phase II)”, n.d.).

The Indian Technical and Economic Co-operation program (ITEC) which was created in September 1964, has granted $2.5 billion USD in education and technical training, with over $1 billion USD devoted to Africa (Duclos, 2012). In 2003, India cancelled debt owed to it by seven of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC). The GoI has gone from being the world’s largest recipient of aid to a net-donor with fiscal expenditure in education, health and infrastructure aid, totalling $500 million to $1 billion USD annually. “Cooperation means a commitment to help solidify transnational zones of knowledge227” (Duclos, 2012, pp.210-211). “Through projects of this kind, ICT, knowledge, and healthcare are interlacing to produce new cooperation spaces with high levels of density, synchronicity, and interdependence” (Duclos, 2012, p.211).

In 1992, India commenced its Look East policy. Many have commented that this was a geopolitical reorientation in reaction to the loss of India’s Soviet ally. However, a study of policy documents prior to 1992, illustrates that the GoI was aware that it had not significantly engaged with South-East Asia in an effort to expand economic and cultural ties. Security and stability promotion through state-nation type pedagogies of inter- culturality, are the core of this initiative. India currently assumes that the “Indian Ocean Region” (IOR) is a zone where its air force and navy undertake cooperative actions to ensure the “freedom to use the sea” (Das, 2013, p.168)228 . In fact, since 2008, the Indian

227 PAN is sometimes referred to as ICT4D (Information and Communications Technologies for Development) 228 Referencing Indian military maritime strategic conferences, papers, and initiatives 2004, 2007, 2008.

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Navy has been the main provider of escort for foreign ships in the IOR, to the total of 85% of activities229. India has increased its credit with nations in this area who view it as “a net provider of security”230 (Das, 2013, p.168).

India’s cultural and economic ties with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are also on the rise. Besides India, there is a corresponding desire by nations such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, to transform the ASEAN into a regional organization that might coordinate all its defence and development activities with India. Regular military exchanges, training programs, joint operations231, desires for interoperability between militaries, and anti-piracy232 measures have been undertaken by India at the request of ASEAN nations. In South-East Asia, the is regarded as a welcome force which regularly contributes to disaster relief (eg. peace keeping Kampuchea 1993, Tsunami 2004, Indonesia earthquake 2006, Cyclone Myanmar 2008), rapid deployment for rescue (SAR) and evacuation (HADR)233, peace keeping and “fostering multilateralism through the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS)” (Das, 2013, p.169). ASEAN is also a part of the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation program (ITEC). These examples illustrates that all successes of Indian foreign policy have been the result of India’s multipolar cosmopolitan approach to globalism.

From 2003 to 2009, India and ASEAN steadily worked toward the signing of a Free Trade Agreement on both goods and services (“India-ASEAN Agreement on Trade in Goods”, 2009; “Indian-ASEAN Agreements”, n.d.). In addition to bilateral agreements with individual member states, India has also forged several inter-regional associations such as the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway, the Kaladan Multimodal Transit Transport Project, the Mekong-India Economic Corridor, the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation Initiative (MGCI), and the Indian Ocean Rim-Association for Regional

229 ASR (ASEAN Regional Forum) (“Indian-ASEAN Naval Cooperation”, n.d.) 230 ASEAN-India Joint Declaration for Cooperation to Combat International Terrorism (2003). 231 MILAN (Hindi for ‘meeting’ and ‘friendship’, since 1995) and SIMBEX (Singapore-Indian Maritime Bilateral Exercise) are examples of these exercises since 1995. 232 Compulsory Pilotage 2006, to safeguard Straits of Malacca. ReCAAP (Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combatting Piracy and Armed Robbery). 233 Search and Rescue, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief.

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Cooperation (IOR-ARC). India and ASEAN also signed a Plan of Action 2010-2015 which includes the India-CLMV dialogue (, , Myanmar, Vietnam) for capacity and human resource education and development (Das, 2013, pp.170-171).

India’s foreign policy successes do not rest upon shrewd or well played policies of imposition, but on recognizing a convergence of interests. In fact, “India has sought to harmonize with ASEAN norms” (Das, 2013, p.171). India is part of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and the ASEAN-India Partnership for Peace, Progress and Shared Prosperity. Harking back to Nehru’s own attempts at India-China convergence, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation contains its own panchsheel234 “Five Principles of Peaceful Co- existence” (Das, 2013, p.171).

Alongside the Nalanda University collaboration with ASEAN members, India’s Vision Statement 2012 lists increasing the cultural cooperation and intensifying efforts to preserve and restore civilizational bonds between ASEAN and India (“Vision Statement ASEAN- India”, 2012). India is assisting Cambodia with the restoration of Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, and My Son, and helping Myanmar to restore the Ananda Temple. There are also several Chairs of Indian Studies in ASEAN states as well as an ASEAN-India Network of Think Tanks, a farmers exchange, and a media exchange program (“Third Round Table of ASEAN-India Think Tanks, 2014). The Election Commission of India has also signed a MoU with Indonesia to aid in electoral administration and management (“India-Indonesia MoU Partners”, 2011). A similar Indian agreement is soon to be completed with Thailand.

These are all examples of India’s attempt to create an education diplomacy that is based on state-nation pedagogies that promote a re-conceptualization of identity and belonging in South East Asia. In doing so, India promotes a state-nation reform of citizenship and democracy within ASEAN member states. But it also provides a basis for the scaled reform of regionalism (globalism) between ASEAN member states, and between ASEAN and India.

234 5 principles (Nehru’s pronouncement of India’s relationship with China prior to the 1962 war).

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India is recognized in the Global South and in post-conflict areas as a provider of democratic citizenship education. An example of this collaboration is between India and Libya (“India and Libya sign MoU”, 2012). India also trains foreign nationals through the Parliamentary Internship Programme, the International Training Programme in Legislative Drafting, and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) (Das, 2013, p.173). In fact, the GoI has employed PRIA for several of these activities, thus expressing support for state-nation frameworks of experiential learning to deepen participatory democracy.

Perhaps the best indication that the state-nation possesses the potential to re-conceptualize globalization, is that realpolitik frameworks struggle to compartmentalize India’s foreign policy. India’s approach has been multipolar and driven by a nascent education diplomacy. Hence, realpolitik notions of India as a status-quo security provider or revisionist power do not fit. Such explanations do reflect India’s goals, because India does not seek to play the game that is currently globalization. Rather, India has constantly attempted to change the game by re-conceptualizing international relations as communalidad within an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression.

India “is not committed to dominating” or “reducing neighbouring states to be its satellites”. India has a “relational control strategy” that seeks to “secure breathing space for ongoing processes of state-building, nation-building, and economic growth”. This can be described as “meta-power” which endeavours to “shape the structure or matrix within which social relationships are played out” (Yadav and Barwa, 2011, p.94). Essentially the development and expansion of a cosmopolitan-secular intercultural education diplomacy, would fulfil the aforementioned Indian objectives.

In addition, a continued multipolar approach to foreign affairs would be an experiential learning of state-nation global reform. Education diplomacy possesses the potential for action research in the area of a co-constructed Global South evolving pedagogy for citizenship and participation based on multiple ways of knowing and being. Hence, India has a chance to realize the aspirations of its National Movement, to develop alternate non- hegemonic patterns of modernity and development. Chadda (1997), and Yadav and Barwa (2011), have argued that India’s relational control and multipolar approach in foreign

249 policy has been “linked to India’s own process of nation-state formation…with a heterogeneous population…(a) supra-national identity has been a major challenge…” so that national-interest has always been equated with cosmopolitanism.

In the Indian case, the realist assumption that the national-interest is cartographically limited to nation-state territory, does not apply. In its current form, India in neither Gandhi’s, nor the National Movement’s ideal. Yet even as an imperfect nation-state, it has been illustrated how India is alternate to West. Indeed this is a predominant reason for India’s domestic and global problems, that it proclaims itself to be a nation-state but does not act like one. To paraphrase Churchill yet again, maybe he was right after all, India is just a geographic expression and not a single nation. India should therefore fulfill the desires of its aspirants and undertake pedagogical reforms to inaugurate the state-nation.

Internationalization as Interculturalidad In recent years India has rejuvenated its approach towards education diplomacy. During an India visit by French President Francois Hollande in February 2013, negotiations continued regarding the joint project first announced in 2008 to create an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) in Jodhpur (Rajasthan) (“Education diplomacy faces test”, February 12, 2013.). Unlike previous collaborations which resulted in the original IITs, in 2008, India was not motivated by a quest for external funding, but so that “India could rethink its use of collaborative education projects as a tool of diplomacy” (“Education diplomacy faces test”, February 12, 2013).

A consortium of French universities expressed a desire to participate in the development of coeducational criteria which would be beneficial to the expansion and delivery of courses within France. The GoI sought to create linkages on the basis of equal partnership, with a view to promote the ethos of cosmopolitan-secularism within a global state-nation framework of education that possessed international standards. In addition to the 15 IITs, in 2008 a further 8235 IITs were projected (DNAIndia.com, January 22, 2013). An Indian-

235 Mandi (Himachel Pradesh), Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Ropar (Harayana), Hyderabad (), (Madhya Pradesh), Bhuwaneshwar (Odhisa), Patna (Bihar). N.B. The state of Andhra Pradesh has been divided into two states as of February 2014: Telegana and Seemandhra. Territorially, this means that the composition of India is as follows 29 states and 7 union territories.

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Japanese agreement was signed to create an IIT near Hyderabad, with a Japanese pledge of 1509 crore236 rupees as a loan and 100 crore rupees as a grant (“Education diplomacy faces test”, February 12. 2013.)

A key component of India’s education diplomacy is an attempt to export the Indian education model as an alternate development stratagem for the Global South. “India’s attraction as a destination for students from many developing countries seeking quality higher education has helped it diplomatically build ties with many African and Asian countries” (“Education diplomacy faces test”, February 12, 2013). Ethiopia and Nigeria have had “generations of Indian teachers” which has fostered political linkages and good will (“Education diplomacy faces test”, February 12, 2013). Education diplomacy has become an active engagement policy of India. PM Modi’s government would do well to realize that while Hindutva may have sectional political appeal domestically, that India’s proximity to the ethos of state-nation pedagogy promoting interculturalidad is what has global marketability.

Education diplomacy continues India’s legacy of re-conceptualizing identity and belonging. In fact, the GoI is presently better situated globally, compared to Nehru’s era when India had just emerged as a post-colonial nation and was faced with domestic crisis and instability. Modi could easily leverage decades of post-independence goodwill towards India from the Global South, and the historic legacy of the South Asian pedagogical traditions. He could use this to return India to its NAM foreign policy, where in this case Indian would be non-aligned towards all hegemonies in its pursuit of global reform. Presently “as a fast-growing economy, India no longer needs funds or technical expertise from developed countries struggling economically themselves” (“Education diplomacy faces test”, February 12, 2013.)

The aspirations of the National Movement, Constitution, and NPE 1968 were to decolonize the Indian mind through a process of education reform. A crucial element of the GoI’s education policies has therefore, been to retain control of the education sector. It has been discussed that the GoI’s efforts at fulfilling decolonization have been less than optimal.

236 1 crore = 10 000 0000

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Yet, for the most part the GoI has maintained the basis and direction of education. One of the concerns as hegemonic globalization persists, is that Indian education will increasingly come under threat of being subsumed by a Bologna process of sorts.

It is for this reason that the GoI’s RTE Act contained provisions pertaining to the entry of foreign education providers, stating that they “will not be allowed to repatriate any profits … this will ensure that only those players who are interested in education and are serious about it will actually invest … about 15% of the profits can go to the corpus of the institution set up in India.” (“India’s education diplomacy”, April 20, 2010). The RTE Act can therefore clearly be thought of as a momentous development for reform and massification in Indian education domestically, within the context of India as a globalized economy. RTE was meant to begin the process of establishing India as a “hub of knowledge in the world”, with such projects involving countries like Singapore to develop “innovation universities” (“India’s education diplomacy”, April 20, 2010).

India’s pledging of billions of dollars as aid and ‘soft loans’ as well as its decision to commit to various trade pacts have served “the dual purpose of market access as well as strategic interest” (“Economic diplomacy Indian style”, March 28, 2013). The two main recipients of Indian aid have been Afghanistan and Bangladesh.237

In the case of Afghanistan, as of 2013 approximately $2 billion USD of Indian aid has been committed to the building of infrastructure projects in the areas of roads, power and telecommunications. India has built the 218 km road from Afghanistan to the Chabahar port in Iran. India also began construction on the $11 billion USD Hajigak rail link from Bandar Abbas (Iran) into Afghanistan (“Economic diplomacy Indian style”, March 28, 2013.). Along with this India has organized the Afghan food logistics process, set up training facilities for medical personnel, and reformed Afghan education. With respect to the medical and educational sectors, India provides annual scholarships for Afghan candidates to attend Indian universities, and allows thousands of Afghans to visit India to receive specialized medical treatments. Together with the burgeoning popularity of Hindi

237 For example in 2010 India extended a soft loan aid package of $800 million USD, and $200 million USD grant (“Economic diplomacy Indian style”, March 28, 2013).

252 cinema which has always been popular in Afghanistan, India has derived an incalculable dividend of cultural currency. It has re-established pre-partition ties and more importantly helped a land locked Afghanistan reduce its dependence on Pakistan and thus the likelihood of interference from Pakistan.238

India’s potential to internationalize interculturalidad is enormous, but untapped. When India has exercised education diplomacy, the dividends in good will and cultural capital have been immense. From 1948 to 1949, hundreds of Indonesian students were educated in Indian universities in policy and governance. Thousands of African students were trained in technical colleges and cottage industries between 1953 and 1954. After its separation from Pakistan, Bangla (formerly East Pakistan) students in India numbered in the thousands. In 1972, India began regular Commonwealth exchanges. India has also educated hundreds of Nepali and Sri Lankan students after civil conflict in those nations. The result has been that several of these students remembered their experiences in India fondly, when they became officials in their respective nations.

Presently there are only 50 000 foreign students studying in India (Sharma, 2012). This number could easily increase given that India’s institutions of education and higher learning are effectively already internationalized by delivering curriculum in an English medium. China’s Scholarship Council created a target of 500 000 foreign students by 2020, and is already expanding its grant in aid supplements, while South Korea established a South Korea project in 2004 so that it could attract 100 000 foreign students by 2012.

The recognition of Indian education as international and cost effective in the Global South, began to wane, ironically, with the growth of . It has been discussed how the massification of Indian education actually began a dilution of standards because the huge growth in demand was not met by ad hoc government reforms. Unregulated education expansion allowed private operators to create institutions for education delivery in medicine and engineering, while the GoI allowed humanities and the liberal arts to

238 Even prior to British imperial rule of the Sub-Continent, there had been cultural ties between what appears today on a map as Afghanistan and India. Indeed the British control Northwest Frontier Provinces (ethnic Pushtuns) who were left out of the independently created Afghanistan in 1919, voted to remain part of India rather than join Pakistan; of course geographically this was not possible.

253 decline. Diverse standards in Indian education facilities created apprehensions in the rest of the world, which gradually began to stop recognizing Indian degrees (Sharma, 2012, p.301).

Recent efforts to reinvent education diplomacy in India have led to the AYUSH scholarship in 2005, for the BIMSTEC nations239. One can clearly see a return to Indian cultural diplomacy as this scheme allows participants to pursue courses in traditional systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, Unani, Homoeopathy and Siddha (Sharma, 2012, p.301.). The Ministry of External Affairs has also expanded the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) program.

ITEC was established in 1964, to send Indian professionals to train, build, and reform education, in the Global South. Part of India’s attempt to rejuvenate its foreign policy with education diplomacy, has been to co-construct an Asian university. In 2005, India spearheaded the plan to inaugurate a South Asian University (SAU) by 2015. This is a South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation240 (SAARC) project which is expected to cost $309 million USD. India’s contribution is $230 million USD including the capital cost for the University. SAU will have 7000 students and 700 faculty members (Sharma, 2012, p.304). The SAU began operations during the 2010-2011 academic year operating from Chanakyapuri, while it awaits its 100 acre campus at Maidan Garhi in South Deli (South Asian University website, n.d.).

India also led the proposal (2007-2009) to re-establish Nalanda as a South and Southeast Asian international university. India began negotiations at the East Asia Summit amongst the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)241. The Nalanda Act was passed in India on November 25, 2010 (“The Nalanda University Act”, 2010). Nalanda is symbolic as this project and the rhetoric surrounding it are both Asian and Indian (“Nalanda

239 Bay of Bengal initiative for multi-sectorial technical and economic cooperation: India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Myanmar. 240 Members: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives; observers: China, Australia, Iran, EU, Japan, Myanmar, Mauritius, South Korea, USA. 241 The East Asia summit began in 2005, after ASEAN began to hold summits separately with China, Japan, South Korea, and India. ASEAN Members: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam. East Asia Summit has 18 nation participants: ASEAN, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, United States, South Korea.

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University, Overview”, n.d.). It “reveals important insights into the development of an alternative model of education that is both modern and ‘Asian’…can ‘Asian’ values meaningfully shape an Asian model of education?...Could the pursuit of these aims herald a new era of intra-Asian cooperation?” (Pinkney, 2015, p.122).

Pinkney (2015) notes that the transnational support of the Nalanda initiative affirms India as a centre of Asian spirituality and a locus of Asian values (p.122). This is the case even though the political discourse surrounding Nalanda and the common Asian Buddhism as its link, is theorized by both Indian and ASEAN commentators in generic and a-cultural terms which are usually removed from religious beliefs and practises (Pinkney, 2015, p.128). Indeed “this is a classically Orientalist characterization of Buddhism as an analytical system or ‘philosophy of life’ rather than a lived religious tradition” (Pinkney, 2015, p.128). However, this re-imagining has allowed Buddhism to be promoted as Asian cosmopolitanism and an alternate to that of the West. Dr. A.P.J. Kalam, the former Indian President who spoke of the Nalanda revival in 2006, mentioned that it should impart “enlightened citizenship” based upon “religion transforming into spirituality” and “value- based education” alongside “economic development for societal equity” (Pinkney, 2015, p.130).

India’s National Movement had ties, both spiritual and intellectual, with their African counterparts. Gandhi, himself, began his satyagraha in South Africa. And there were Indian communities in East Africa as a result of British colonialism. Both Nehru and Gandhi understood African liberation to be a goal of Indian swaraj. As aforementioned, NAM’s precursor was the Afro-India conferences. India sees Africa in its own image. One is a sub-continent, the other a continent, but both of them represent the most geographically diverse areas on earth. State-nation pedagogies that rest upon an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression, intercultural perspectives regarding multiple identities, communalidad, and spirituality as the basis for ways of knowing, seem harmonized as a common framework for education reform for India and Africa.

Recently, India has directed its foreign policy to renew and strengthen its ties to Africa. This has been the basis for the India-Africa Summits (India-15 nations representing the

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African Union: 2008, 2011). The focus of these summits has been the sharing of knowledges in agriculture, science and technology. IGNOU242 has been asked to set up 21 capacity building institutions in Africa (Sharma, 2012, p.305). This educational partnership has been supplemented by cultural diplomacy of the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs which has created a bureau called the IndiAfrica: A Shared Future. Started in 2011, its objectives of education diplomacy are vast. But IndiAfrica has already accomplished much to re-conceptualize curriculum, learning, citizenship and participation. IndiAfrica forwards these objectives of state-nation pedagogical reform such as building institutions243, building networks244, building capacity245, scaling foundations for the future246, generating employment247, creating profitable partnerships248, funding for the future249, building co-constructed goals, trust and mutual respect250, and building intercultural relationships251 (“Indiafrica, the project”, n.d.).

It has been illustrated by this discussion that the GoI possesses a latent ability to internationalize state-nation allied policies with respect to global reform. The GoI may do this by focusing its efforts upon the soft power dividends that it has garnered from the Global South. By re-engaging with South East Asia, India enhances global perspectives of it, as a cultural composite that easily interfaces based on the flexibility of its pedagogical approach to identity and belonging. India can thus appear both, cosmopolitan as well as culturally specific. As the Nalanda example illustrates, India is Asian, and all of Asia can be Indian.

As the Indian economy grows, if India resists the urge of industrial and military hegemony, it will be able to use the soft power of intercultural education diplomacy to stabilize South

242 Indira Gandhi National Open University. 243 3000 African civil servants and technocrats receive capacity training programs in India per year. 244 India helped create the pan-Africa e-network. 245 India has created 22000 scholarships over three years for African students. 246 India contributed $1 billion USD in 2011-2013 for training facilities in agriculture, food processing, science/technology. 247 Advocacy of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) using models from Indian cities. 248 Automobile, telecommunications, natural resources, horticulture, farmaceuticals. Since 2005 Indian companies have invested $50 billion USD. 249 Soft loans of $5 billion USD between 2011-2014. Since 2003, $10 billion USD in additional credit. 250 In line with the African Union’s integration process of developing multi-tiered systems of cooperation. 251 In all social and economic and political spheres, and by maintaining ties with the Indian diaspora within Africa.

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Asia. This will not only contribute to Indian ‘national’ security, but also promote India’s ability to enact an alternate version of conflict resolution based on local knowledges, community building, democratic education and participatory learning. Recent Afghan aid projects by India, clearly illustrate this point. It is also extremely important to note that South Asia is increasingly viewed as the key to global security. Mira Kamdar’s quote returns to haunt us, “if India solves its problems, then the world may have a chance” (Kamdar, 2007, introduction). Not coincidentally, India’s success in Afghanistan, a Muslim and tribal nation of warriors, is based upon the state-nation cultural pedagogies of cosmopolitan-secularism which emphasize the unity of South Asia. India has the chance to contribute to global peace, by reaffirming South Asian unity, and simultaneously re- conceptualizing citizenship and identity.

Africa is the area where India has accomplished the most, in a short amount of time, with education policy. This is evidence enough that India would have enormous success in inaugurating an alternate globalism, if it developed interculturalidad with the Global South.

Education Diplomacy as the Future of Indian Foreign Policy The arrival of India as a great power has been associated with a re-envisioning of foreign policy both by domestic and foreign commentators. More often than not, the prescription is for India to abandon its neutral or principled stance and become globally integrated in the neo-liberal paradigm. In recent years, India has seemingly followed this path. India has relinquished its resistance to global injustice and is adopting the framework of the hegemonic nation-state.

Prime Minister Modi’s government has worked hard to violently alter the perceptions that India is passive and accommodating. As previously discussed, Modi and the BJP have no love for India’s cosmopolitan-secularism. They prefer a muscular approach to globalism, both in economic development and foreign policy. Modi and his ministers reflect on the Gandhi-Nehruvian age with a disdain that is unmistakably misogynistic. This appropriation of imperial-speak is perhaps the best indication that India has recklessly abandoned its reputation in favour of a realpolitik approach to national and international affairs. It chastises the figures of Gandhi, the National Movement, and the Congress

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Marxists252 for trivializing the once proud Hindu majority. And such rhetoric condescendingly devalues the righteousness of the South Asian cultural pedagogies that are state-nation oriented, as being feminine, tribal, and pre-modern.253

While previous Indian governments may have been ashamed at the pervasive nature of poverty and inequality in their country, Modi is ashamed of India’s lack of confidence, action and will in Asia. Instead of a composite and common home, South East Asia and South Asia are classified as Akhand Bharat, meaning greater-India. This chauvinistic attitude is publically proclaimed, and has caused consternation and cautiousness throughout the region.

Even if one subscribes to the narrative that India was previously unassertive, one would have to be blind not to be aware that India has always been considered a regional power in Asia. In fact one can see successive Indian administrations ‘paying politically’ for their employment of the military option through the balancing game of India’s neighbours with Chinese diplomatic and economic support.

Under the previous UPA I/II governments (2004-14) India seemed to be evolving from “regional bully” to “benign hegemon” via a strategy which emphasised the “cultural unity” of South and South-East Asia (Hall, 2007). But Modi may congratulate himself, because there is now, indeed, a fear of India. The BJP have succeeded in promoting themselves as the caretakers of a militant nationalism that will take-on all-comers, and most likely it will have to, all at once.

The pendulum has swung completely in the opposite direction. Indian diplomats used to be criticized for being too cosmopolitan, and being more at home and able to handle global affairs than national issues. Currently, GoI politicians are so self-absorbed in their own promotion and that of Hindutva, that they believe that unilateral hegemony will achieve all desired results. It speaks volumes when a senior government minister such as Subramanian

252 Although some Congressmen were socialists, their flavour of socialism would hardly pass in SD parties to say nothing of Communist Parties. However, the BJP accuses the Congress of being Marxist and Socialist, in the same manner that the Republicans characterize some Democrats as socialists. 253 Hymans deconstructs 19th century imperial British notions of identity (theirs) as being tied to “manliness” so that they were in opposition to “woman, child, and beast”. Male= strong, courageous, responsible, knowledgeable, rational, moral (Hymans, p.237, 2009).

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Swami could not contain his troll-like delight in a nationally broadcast television debate about the employment of Indian forces in Myammar. He repeatedly grinned while emphatically reaffirming that “this is a template for future Indian actions, anywhere, even against Pakistan” (“Are Covert Operations the Way Forward?”, 2015). It is doubly shocking (or perhaps it should not be) since Swami similarly stated in previous television interviews that the BJP government’s core goal was the transformation of India into a Hindutva entity. In 2011 he wrote an inflammatory piece regarding Muslims (“Offended Minorities Panel to Decide”, 2011), which received support by being re-posted on Pamela Geller’s site (“How to Wipe Out Islamic Terror”, 2011).

This game of chasing great power status by playing catch-up, where the next great power mimics the actions of a former or current arch-type, is futile and leads to self-destruction. This is the nation-state and its corresponding globalization of hegemony model, at its worst. Moreover the seeds of its downfall are inherent because it is a confrontation model, where peace is the anomaly. Bismarck, who is renowned as one of the most brilliant statesmen of the Western tradition, never solved a crisis. He managed them, preventing conflict temporarily, by creating a web of alliances and conducting diplomacy as a zero-sum game. But since issues were never resolved, once the master diplomat departed, all the problems re-emerged and incapable statesmen began the First World War. One should be able to see from this summation, that in this account, statesmen is defined as someone who avoids solutions unless they are hegemonic. Diplomacy is the conduct of manipulation in pursuit of hegemonic interest, that would make Machiavelli proud.

Besides this, India must realize that the Great-Powers club is an old-gentlemen type organization which does not take kindly to upstart developing world non-European former colonials presuming to act like peacocks. India deceives itself if it believes that its arrival on the world stage will be greeted with a round of applause from the hegemonic West. Perhaps another, and more thorough reading of Kautilya’s (colloquially known as Chanakya254) Arthashastra is in order, along with ’s Art of War. “India’s once- distinctive diplomatic voice that reflected a vision of world order larger than itself through

254 Used in North Indian languages as a word to express ‘shrewdness’ and ‘cunning’.

259 its articulation of inclusive and progressive global futures, now sounds parochial and mundane by comparison as it seeks little more than the furtherance of its own, narrowly defined national interest” (Abraham, 2007, p.4210).

The Indian reputation for cosmopolitan-secularism, syncretic spirituality, and enlightened diplomacy can still be recovered. That it is not unsalvageable, is because it rests on the enormous laurels for which it has earned global credit. This is soft power diplomacy that many outside of India now recognize as having immense political return255. Gratitude for India’s reputation should also go to its vibrant and dynamic civil society, whose countless organizations have achieved phenomenal status internationally for work in sanitation, public health, poverty alleviation, mass education, low cost pharmaceutical production, knowledge production and extension programs, indigenous empowerment, seed sovereignty, decentralized local administration, etc.

“The declining status of India as a country that once offered a unique and ethically informed view of the world has been partly mitigated…This offers India a chance to create a forward-looking foreign policy that better reflects its own origins and cultural ethos” (Abraham, 2007, p.4210). These are the basis for the factoid that India is the world’s largest and most successful democracy. It illustrates the transformative participation of individuals and communities acting locally and having an impact globally. These actions model the state-nation through education diplomacy.

“One of the truisms of both business and international development models is that once a successful model becomes well known enough to copy, it is too late to benefit from it” (Abraham, 2007, p.4210). India has until recently been able to accomplish great feats of logistics in the areas of engineering, transport, administration, crowd control, elections, census, railway system, and short-term humanitarian relief under drastic and diverse physical conditions with very limited resources. Indeed “the very ubiquity of technology makes them invisible, which is why they are paid no attention” (Abraham, 2007, p.4210). India should “build on the strengths that India has developed autonomously, in response to

255 BBC global 2005-06 poll about the image of countries—India’s image ranked high in Russia, Britain, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and the ASEAN nations (“Global Poll”, n.d.).

260 its own conditions and needs, even if they appear to be out of line with contemporary meanings of success” (Abraham, 2007, p.4211). “After all, India’s soft power strategy as Nehru had conceived it aimed not to ingratiate India with the masters of the world, but rather—somewhat paralleling Gandhi’s strategy in the freedom struggle—to perplex, anger, shame, and ultimately transform them.” (Hyman, 2009, p.248)256.

It would take a re-conceptualization of priorities, but India has the ability to engage the Global South in the co-construction of a sustainable architecture of modernity. A revitalized Indian foreign policy must seek to facilitate communalidad with “countries which fall low on the totem pole of international importance, but the outcomes they would generate would create a pool of goodwill and tangible benefits for India and its people that would be fare greater…” (Abraham, 2007, p.4211). Some of the areas in which India has a demonstrated ability in promoting state-nation alternatives include low cost energy and green technologies from renewal sources, locally produced low-cost I.T. frameworks, and education platforms for distance education and training. These are all components that India must gather as part of its education diplomacy. Education diplomacy is a concrete policy which can evoke a state-nation based pedagogical reform of international relations.

Education diplomacy is an aspect of public diplomacy. It combines the realms of public affairs with public relations (Hanson, 2012). Education diplomacy is therefore, an effective medium, as well as an instrument of policy projection, for the state-nation. As the state- nation empowers a re-conceptualization of citizenship, education diplomacy empowers a re-conceptualization of citizenship participation in the co-construction of the state-nation’s policy orientation. In this manner, education diplomacy is one check to hegemony within the state-nation. Education diplomacy is an aspect of the deepening of democratization via citizen participatory learning.

It steadily moves the conceptual ideal-type of the state-nation from theory to practice by a process of transformative learning. In this way, citizen involvement in the conduct of

256 Martin Luther King Jr said during a speech on April 4, 1967 that: “Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated” (“Beyond Vietnam”, 1967).

261 public diplomacy, sharpens the four components of the state-nation by bringing each one into focus. Through the process of multi-logical discourse, citizens remain mindful of the Gandhi-Nehru concept that the liberation of India must result in the liberation of all. They never lose site of their interdependence to other and their environment. The logic of borders and boundaries begin to dissipate, as spiritual wisdom increases. An Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression is the result, as citizens are mindful of the mechanisms that reinforce hegemony.

By involving citizens in the development of foreign policy curriculum, education diplomacy reinforces the premise of the state-nation that each individual has a vested interest, not only in how they are governed, but in how nation represents them externally through its actions. Education diplomacy, ironically, also underscores the realist premise that foreign policy is domestic policy. Education diplomacy keeps diplomacy in the public realm, ensures that acting locally is part of thinking globally, and continues a process of decolonization of education through pedagogical reforms regarding identity and belonging.

Education and public diplomacy contributes to the democratization of information. It allows technology and knowledge, to remain democratic, by ensuring access. In this way, progress and development can never become enslaving. India has actually been a global innovator and leader in efforts to implement e-governance and e-health for administrative records and remote consultation. This policy has been implemented as a transparency and RTI (right to information) initiative to broaden democracy and participation. Many Indian ministries post regular correspondence of their work, while most government documents are open-access.

Aware of the importance of engaging the world’s largest youth population (10-24yrs.,15- 35yrs) (Shivakumar, 2013; “India has the World’s Largest Youth Population”, 2014), India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) created a Public Diplomacy Division in May 2006, and sent its first tweet (Twitter) on July 8, 2010 (Hall, 2012). Modi’s recent election victory is largely attributed to his campaigners’ use of public diplomacy. Since becoming PM, Modi has continued to be highly visible and linked-in via his personal sites and

262 through his many engagements of stadium capacity public diplomacy257. Possessing the youngest demographic in the globe, within a country that contributed to the IT revolution, India is extremely well positioned to revolutionize international relations through public diplomacy. One hopes that this potential will however, be channeled as education diplomacy to evoke the state-nation domestically as well as globally.

The object of an education and culture diplomacy is to generate a network of enduring positive feeling among institutions and people. Nye (2007) defined this as a soft power mechanism to “attract support” which is promoted through “appeal”. Indian politicians of the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) governments have understood this as the promoting of “Brand India”. In contrast to China’s peaceful rise (heping juequi) accompanied by massive public diplomacy campaigns of education and culture258, India has lagged behind and squandered its inherent historical lead in soft power.

The inauguration of the Public Diplomacy Division (PDD of the MEA) was accompanied by a series of conferences (2006-09) in which GoI officials dialogued with their own public and the people of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Mauritius, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa, Taiwan and Tajikistan. In 2007, a series of Look East conferences were held. The PDD also created 60 documentaries on India and a multitude of books, both in most South, Central and South-East Asian languages (Hall, 2012, p.1097). From 2009, the PDD utilized the research of the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy to utilize Web 2.0 in an effort to counter negative stereotypes and propaganda of India (Hall, 2012, p.1097).

In acknowledgement of the potential influence of non-resident Indians (NRIs, or PIOs being People of Indian Origin) the GoI created the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) in 2004. The MOIA is not simply meant to increase economic links but forge a cultural capital which might leverage foreign governments, institutions, and academics. “The successful Indian effort to persuade American legislators to support the controversial

257Modi ‘toured’ Toronto and New York, ‘selling out’ the Rogers Centre and Madison Square Gardens. 258 Estimated at $9 Billion USD for 2009-10 (Hall, 2012, p.1093).

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U.S.-India nuclear deal of 2005 is a case in point” (Hall, 2012, p.1109; “US-INPAC, Homepage”, n.d.)259.

The Delores report of the International Commission on Education for the 21st Century concluded that education was a crucial component of diplomacy to enable a dialogue between people and cultures, and to expose youth to liberal democratic values. “India, with its unique location and a long tradition of knowledge power” can leverage its political and cultural traditions as a pluralistic state-nation (Sharma, 2012, p.263). A lesson as to what constitutes power in the contemporary world and how it is exercised can be drawn from the United States whose universities have fostered influential alumni networks that are instrumental in promoting U.S. commercial and political interests. “Education diplomacy has been one of the bright spots in the United States’ somewhat dismal record of foreign policy” (Sharma, 2012, p.297). U.S. education drives the intellectual planning and policies of international institutions such as the World Bank and the UN.

It is estimated that by 2025, India will be required to provide higher education for 7.2 million students. The global market for international education is currently worth $2.2 trillion USD. In 2001, the Association of Indian Universities organized a conference on the internationalization of education at Mysore University. It produced the Mysore Statement, and followed up in 2002, with a meeting at Guru Nanak University. The key element of the Mysore Statement is a commitment to create a Committee for the Promotion of India Education Abroad. This is to enable Indian universities to project themselves globally with offshore campuses and distance education. The Statement also promotes the creation of an International Education Development Bank to provide soft-loans to students, and to multiple the number of MoU (memoranda of understand) with international education partners. The Statement also states that a “study India” program should be created, along with its administrative organ a Consortium for International Education (Sharma, 2012, pp.302-304).

259 The US-INPAC website lists them as “the voice of ”, US India Public Action Committee.

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By the sheer number of its youth population, India would be able to reform the model of what constitutes global education. It could achieve this by creating a ‘market demand’ for quality education understood in terms of its cosmopolitan-secular character, and endowed with multi-logical pedagogies of communalidad. For this process to be facilitated, also requires the continued reform of curriculum at the primary and secondary levels. This is because the state-nation begins with the experiential participation of the most marginalized and vulnerable. Additionally, India could utilize its cultural capital in the Global South to being a massive decolonization of education movement. This could being simultaneously with the massification and reform of Indian higher education. India would emerge as a knowledges-hub (plural) facilitating the re-conceptualization of global citizenship.

Making education diplomacy the focus of an Indian foreign policy would allow the GoI to become the “driver of interstate cooperation in South Asia” and to foster greater regional cooperation and democracy strengthening in South East and Central Asia. According to the Failed States Index, six of India’s neighbours rank within the top 25 dysfunctional states in the world (Mukherjee and Malone, 2011, p.93). It is therefore, in India’s security interest to promote sustainable regional260 development. The basis of this must be an education diplomacy whose foundations are intercultural citizenship. “Globally, India is being recognized as a rising economic power but not in the region where economic development has become hostage to security issues” (Mukherjee and Malone, 2011, p.93).

Education diplomacy could be the most concrete and enduring effort at peaceful coexistence and collective security since Gandhi and the NAM. It would also be an internal check to hegemony, in the same way as Germany has integrated itself within the EU. Antagonism between France and Germany, countries that have fought three wars261, was replaced by mutual cooperation with vested interests that are shared. In the same way, Indo-Pakistani tensions might gradually lessen if for example, SAARC were to become more prominent. The parallel between South Asia and Europe are apt for another important reason. It was in Europe, the birth place of the nation-state, that the nation-state was

260 By which I mean alternate to initiatives from external to the region efforts by NGOs, WB, IMF, foreign governments. 261 1870, 1914-18, 1939-45.

265 assessed to be a major cause for genocide and the obliteration of cultures, sociopolitical structures, and by more recent assessments, also spirituality.

One might cynically argue that Germany has emerged as the hegemon of the EU, but this is with the benefit of hindsight. This was not deemed probable when the ECSC262 was negotiated between France and an impoverished, destroyed, occupied and halved-Germany. In studying the EU, India should examine sociocultural reform of education diplomacy, rather than focus on economic reforms. The pedagogical re-conceptualizations of identity and belonging, from nation-state to European, would provide India lessons regarding its error of casting aside its cosmopolitan South Asian-ness in favour of attempting to fabricate hegemonic India through sociopolitical, economic, and epistemological violence.

An education diplomacy emanating from state-nation pedagogies would also ease tensions between India and China. China views the Indo-US rapprochement as a shift in US posture in the direction of creating democratic India as a counter-weight to China.263. South-East Asian regions who do not want to antagonize China, have their own non-aligned diplomacy. However, it has been proven that the ASEAN bloc encourages Indian education diplomacy because this is considered a by-partisan and pan-Asian endeavour.

Further to the aforementioned remark that India needs to reaffirm its own commitment to multipolar engagement and resist the impulse to conclude limiting alliances in pursuit of great-power status; analysts of the India-US-China dynamic noted “our strategic were whistling in the dark when they dreamt up India’s future as a “balancer” in the Asian power dynamic…it now seems a goof-up, unprecedented in its naivety…the Bush-Rice doctrine of containing China is being replaced by the Obama-Clinton doctrine of co-opting China to deal with economic crisis” (Mukherjee and Malone, 2011, p.101).

262 European Coal and Steel Community Agreement 1951, which was the precursor to the 1955 Treaty of Rome which inaugurated the EEC (European Economic Community), which became the EC (European Community), which became the EU (European Union). 263 “The George W. Bush presidency, saw New Delhi not as its equal, but rather as something more akin to a pupil or little brother…the implication…is that without America’s help, India would never get there. In short for all its India boosterism, the Bush administration was actually seeking to enlist India as America’s loyal lieutenant in a unipolar world” (Hyman quoting and analyzing US-India Bilateral Agreements 2005, Congress Reports, in Hyman, 2009, p.254).

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India should revert to a foreign policy posture similar to that of Nehru, which is perhaps even more suited to the present post-Cold War multi-polar globe, than it was during an era of bipolarity. India is presently more economically and politically stable then it was under Nehru, and this would ensure further success of its initiatives in the direction of an education diplomacy whose purpose would be to alter the conceptual framework of globalization. It is a mistake for India to make a radical departure from cosmopolitanism and global engagement, in favour of a ‘choice’ and singular objective of foreign policy towards the United States. Not only would the geopolitical ramifications of this result in a net loss of allies in Eurasia for India, but it would also alter the image of India in the immediate region of South and South-East Asia.

Gandhi decided not to play the British game of realpolitik nation-state and imperial politics, by altering the rules. The GoI, from Nehru’s time until quite recently, was afforded global repute and freedom of action because it advocated intercultural equality as the cornerstone of its own identity. This was then promoted as Indian national interest, inter-nationally. Even from a realpolitik assessment, these seem astoundingly like the unilateral actions of a great power. However, in this case, it is not the unilateralism of economic or political hubris, nor is it the hegemony of a single culture or epistemology. Rather, India was able to not play the game and confound realpolitik by offering an alternate state-nation oriented vision of identity and belonging. India promoted itself, not as singular, but in multiple dimensions, expressing the logic of communalidad and acknowledging spirituality as the basis for multiple and equal knowledges that represent core and authentic human dignity.

The GoI exercised this soft power of attraction, rather than a hard-power of threat and domination. India’s great power was based on the perception of its “beauty, benignity, and brilliance” (Das, 2013, p.166). In this equation, beauty entails resonance that draws other nations closer to India through shared values, visions and causes. Beauty is the perception of India as encouraging confidence, cooperation and friendship. Brilliance is an aspect of emulation by other nations who admire the conduct of India (Das, 2013, p.166). For India the nation-state to survive, education diplomacy must be the future of Indian foreign policy.

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India will not have arrived if it attempts to revolt against its nature as a cosmopolitan- secular syncretic South Asian civilization. History has illustrated numerous times that the apex of power simultaneously begins the process of unravelling and defeat264.

India cannot attain economic, military, or political hegemony, unless it embraces the singular hegemonic form of the nation-state. India has resisted this until recently, and is acknowledged as an alternate form of nation-state. Although fractures in its sociopolitical form have been evident since Independence, India has maintained its alternate form through the exercise of alternate foreign policy. 2014 marks a pivotal point in the history of the Indian nation-state. Education diplomacy provides India’s salvation. Education diplomacy represents a means by which India can resolve its national and its inter-national problems, through the process of state-nation pedagogical reform.

The Potential of State-Nation Education to Inform An Alternate Globalism In the three previous chapters, an examination of case studies was undertaken to assess the capacities of the GoI, Indian CSOs, and IOs to evoke the state-nation through their policies connected with education reform in India. This transformation is considered to be a by- product of the re-conceptualization of citizenship and democracy which would occur through the process of pedagogical reforms.

In this chapter I scaled my discussion regarding the possibilities of the state-nation to re- conceptualize identity and belonging in the sphere of international relations, to inform an alternate globalism.

I posited that tensions occur between the nation-state and globalization, because both constructs assert their right to be hegemonic. The nation-state exercises its sovereignty with respect to enforcing conformity within borders, while neoliberal globalization exercises its sovereignty not to be economically prohibited in pursuit of trade. A second source of tension arises between the nation-state and globalization, since the nation-state does not see its reflection in the global unless it is manifest as hegemony. For its part,

264 One cannot help but reflect on titles such as The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire or The Collapse of the American Empire.

268 globalization seeks to eliminate differences under the auspices that difference is the source of conflict which prohibits cooperation.

The rationale for choosing India as the nation-state which is the focus for the examination of state-nation potential, has already been discussed. This chapter has illustrated that India’s pedagogical inheritance of cosmopolitan-secularism which promotes communalidad is a secure foundation upon which an alternate, intercultural and multi-logical globalism could be created. India has been a historical exercise in unity in diversity. The nation-state of India that was created in 1947 has ever since, been balancing between urges which pull it to become like the hegemonic Western model, and the aspirations of the Constitution and NPE 1968 which urge India to mature in the direction of the state-nation.

Education diplomacy is both the medium and the instrument by which the state-nation can be evoked. Education diplomacy is transformative because it is experiential pedagogy. Education diplomacy shatters hegemony because it broadens discourse. It achieves this by promoting co-construction of foreign policy curricula as a right of citizenship. Through the participation of citizens in a multi-logical debate regarding the priorities of foreign policy, education diplomacy effectively makes identity and belonging a global concern. It links the there with the here in a way that keeps individuals aware of their impact as citizens. Education diplomacy results in the creation of an Adivasi studies approach to anti- oppression, because through experiential learning, it creates mindfulness regarding the multiple manifestations of hegemony. Education diplomacy also supports the concept of death democracy by promoting the wisdom of interdependence through spirituality. This awareness of connectivity leads to a re-conceptualization of identity as having multiple authentic locations. It also supports an alternate development, which ensures sustainability and eco-stewardship.

India is currently at a cross-roads. It is about to decide not only its own fate, but the fate of the globe, as Mira Kamdar suggested. After the election of PM Modi in 2014, the GoI has embarked on a path which can be said from a historical basis to be anti-Indian. This is ironic, because it is this charge that the BJP government tables so illegitimately against the opposition to Hindutva. By seeking to arrive upon the world stage, Modi’s government is

269 undoing the fabric of the ethos of the idea of India. Although a nation-state, India is not cut from the same fabric as its Western counterparts.

By pursuing a new realpolitik foreign policy, Modi will destroy not only the soft power image of India, but India itself. The nation-state of India will implode under the weight of its own contradictions. Perhaps this is what Modi’s BJP wants, to revise the Constitution by claiming that it is irrelevant and that India does not work. But the upheaval will be prolonged and bloody. Its consequences shall lead to chaos throughout South Asia and cause a tidal wave of repercussions throughout the world. Making education diplomacy the future of Indian foreign policy, will prevent this from happening. Education diplomacy will save India. It may even save the nation-state of India.

As previously mentioned, the state-nation is not a paradigm that seeks the obliteration of its competition in order to become hegemonic. Success, for the state-nation, is measured by achieving the goals of its component pedagogies with regard to the re-conceptualization of citizenship and democracy. Education diplomacy has the potential to evoke the state- nation as well as inaugurate an alternate globalism. But it also has the potential to provide support for the nation-state of India, for at least as long as the nation-state resists the urge to become hegemonic.

For education diplomacy to become the future of Indian foreign policy, does not require an innovative project or new policy by the GoI. What it requires is that the GoI affirm the aspirations of its inheritance. Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore and Radhakrishnan, sought unequivocally not simply to evict imperialism from India, but to gain sovereignty for all nations within a new global reorganization. Sovereignty was understood as the liberation of spirit from the falsity of single and hegemonic definitions of identity and belonging. Therefore, globalism became a cosmopolitan ethos of intercultural equality admitting multiple ways of knowing and being, whose foundation was an awareness of the interdependence of knowledges. It is this global education project of re-rooting citizenship and participation, by re-investing it with a spiritual ethos, which an Indian foreign policy of education diplomacy can achieve.

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A diplomacy for and of education, serves to alter the goal of international relations and global politics. Education diplomacy substitutes the pursuit of unilateralism and political and cultural conformity, with global aspiration to co-construct a consensus. Education diplomacy is an active learning process which incorporates all knowledges and recognizes that spirituality is part of citizenship and human dignity. Education diplomacy is a project of global reform that is nothing short of the revolutionary transformation of sociopolitical and economic human relations.

An Indian foreign policy focused on education diplomacy would accelerate global education reform. It would change the quotients of quality and its definition, which would become rooted in multi-logical ways of knowing and being. An Indian foreign policy focused on education diplomacy continues the critical schools of inquiry within the pedagogical traditions of the Upanishads, the holistic wisdom of the Buddha, the spirituality of love within Sufism, and the transnational philosophy of Sarevapalli Radhakrishnan. An Indian foreign policy focused on education diplomacy is thus an expression of India as an identity which is composite and syncretic, whose location is everywhere this ethos of India exists.

In this way, an India foreign policy focused on education diplomacy, is more education as diplomacy than it is Indian foreign policy. This is truly an alternate conceptualization of globalism which is premised in the state-nation model. Education diplomacy has the potent for enacting global revolution due to a modus operandi which is in reality a modus vivendi265.

265 Literally, way of living together, by way of agreement between different opinions.

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Chapter 8

Conclusion

Evoking the State-Nation Within Indian Education Reform India is an atypical nation-state. Why and how India remains stable, is to most observers a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Modernization theory dictates that it should be India, rather than the nations surrounding it, that descends into chaos. That India even attempted democracy with none of the required indicators for its success could be seen as an affront to nation-state sensibilities. The most important quality lacking in India was education.

Although illiteracy was between 80-90%, modernization theory highlighted that the lack of Western schooling was the main deficit of India. This is because modernization theory views the Western model of education as a prerequisite for the development of rational thinking, to produce a worldview that will facilitate the sociopolitical and economic project that is the nation-state. In this way, the pedagogies of education and sociopolitical organization are intertwined. It is indisputable that without ‘proper thinking’, ‘proper choosing’ cannot take place. Hence, the nation-state should not work in India.

And in fact, as this dissertation has illustrated, it doesn’t. And the reason it doesn’t is because, although India’s education system has not sufficiently undergone a process of decolonization, it has neither accepted or been transformed by the GoI into a sufficiently hegemonic platform for the replication of hegemonic Western nation-state pedagogies. By 2017, 70 years after its independence, India may finally decide to make a choice. Modi’s government (2014) has begun a process of reform, curtailing civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, revising curricula in the spirit of Hindutva, and preventing the implementation of RTE. The GoI has announced that by the end of 2016, a new NPE will be implemented. Initial indications provide substance for the hypothesis that it will represent a break with Indian history.

In a nutshell, this is why my dissertation is important. It contributes to the knowledge of why and how India has worked, through an examination of its education policies. It

272 develops a critical appreciation of how India has dealt with democratic challenges266 to its cosmopolitan-secular identity, its sociopolitical organization of communalidad, and its attempt to develop anti-oppression pedagogies rooted in indigenous ways of knowing and being. Insights drawn from this dissertation can be utilized to formulate new understandings of non-Western societies. Furthermore, a more accurate picture of alternate methodologies rooted in spirituality has been developed. This serves to clarify the conceptual framework of a hitherto illusive term (spirituality) and its use as a conceptual lens to deconstruct hegemony. As Mira Kamadar wrote, India may be able to provide Western multicultural democracies such as Canada, with an alternate view of nationhood towards inclusive and sustainable development for all.

To undertake this task, I constructed the state-nation as an ideal-type model which was then utilized as a critical lens of analysis to examine three thematic cases of how education reform in India was perceived. By passing the strategic goals and policies of the GoI, Indian CSOs, and IOs, through the sieve of the state-nation, I identified aspects of each which approached my ideal-type. The state-nation is a conceptual framework of a preferred future. Its development is the major achievement of this dissertation. The state- nation was constructed by evoking it at the intersection of four components which express its ability to represent an alternative to prevailing hegemonies of education and state. As there are multiple hegemonies acting in coordination to manifest oppression, so too does my conceptual framework become the convergence of multiple resistances.

The state-nation is a pedagogical approach that seeks to re-conceptualize identity and belonging. I argue that postcolonial education reform can only occur through a re- conceptualization of citizenship and democracy via the state-nation. Whether the nation- state and its education system can be reformed, through implementation of state-nation approaches, was the main research question of the dissertation. India was chosen as the focus nation-state for examination because of its contrasts with the Western nation-state. Thus, India represents an alternate nation-statehood in tension with Western hegemony, as much as India is in tension with itself due to its sociopolitical organization as a nation-state.

266 Meaning citizens dissent, expressed as individual or group activism, political parties organized to challenge the legitimacy of the Indian constitution.

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EFA has become a global concern since the late-1990s. Education has been acknowledged as the key for attaining stability for the nation-state. I argue that this stability is illusory and can never be anything except temporary, and in the form of submerging diversity. It is therefore inauthentic and counter-intuitive to human spirit and nature. In fact, EFA as a tool of the nation-state can easily support multiple hegemonies as an instrument of oppression. For India to either survive in its present atypical nation-state form, or develop toward the preferred future of the state-nation, required an examination of the goals of education reform by those with a vested interest in the future of India. I determined these stake-holders to be the Indian government, Indian civil society, and international organizations .

Education has been at the cornerstone of the idea of India. The National Education Movement and the Movement for National Independence were indistinguishable from the beginning of their journey towards the imaging of a postcolonial India. The Indian Constitution (1950) is a pedagogical product of multi-logical discourse that affirms the commitment to pursue Directive Principles that facilitate pedagogies rooted in the cultural heritage of South Asia. The National Education Policy (1968) concretizes the aspirations of the Constitution with a plan of action towards the implementation of a post-colonial endogenous education system that supports social justice. This dissertation developed its conceptual framework to provide a basis of comparison between the ideal-type state-nation and the actions of the case study actors in the area of Indian education reform.

The conceptual framework state-nation, reflects the idea of India, as composite and syncretic. The state-nation is evoked at the convergence of cosmopolitan secularism, Adivasi studies, communalidad, and death democracy. The state-nation was utilized as the critical lens to analyze the three case studies of Indian education reform, with the objective of identifying any elements which are common and could contribute to the advocacy of state-nation education. It was posited that the idea of India, as envisaged by the National Movement and the Constitution, is in concert with an aspiration toward state- nation and that this pedagogy is a means to further develop and secure its well- being. Furthermore, it was argued that state-nation pedagogies have the ability to inspire a

274 reform of international relations towards multi-logical globalization, and that this process can be inaugurated by an Indian education diplomacy.

The themes of reciprocity, affirmation and wisdom, are taken as the critical elements which form the ethos of the state-nation. These are prerequisite for any element of education reform irrespective of whether it be national or international. As curriculum is anything which achieves learning, state-nation education reform does not seek to attach itself to, or withdraw itself from, the nation-state or global institutions. The state- nation is not a Western conflict paradigm, such as Marxism, or a competition paradigm, such as capitalism. The state-nation is an intercultural alternate pedagogy, whose nature and goal is to create broad based alliances. It contains features that are multi-logical to locate itself as an ideal-type of experiential participatory learning.

Currents of Reciprocity: Co-Constructed and Multi-logical Knowledge The state-nation ideal-type does not seek to replace hegemonies by substituting alternate hegemonies. Rather, the state-nation desires the co-construction of a multi-logical pedagogy for the education of citizens toward their societal participation in a democracy. It is deemed necessary for the state-nation to utilize reciprocity as an anti-oppression methodology, by providing the location for multi-logical co-constructed knowledge. In this way the state-nation attempts to remove hegemonic conformity, as well as dialogic notions which often become confrontational models of discourse. Democratic participation can only be assured when it is predicated upon the equal valuing of multiple ways of being.

Currents of Affirmation: Nomadic and Liminal Identities The state-nation does not seek to uproot or re-root identities, but to affirm self-designations which are nomadic and liminal. Membership is the key to communities, and communities are interdependent scalable sociopolitical expressions of consensus, from local to national to international. For this reason, the state-nation attempts to remove sociopolitical determinants of power based upon quantifications such as majority or consensus that determines access to resources or belonging. By de-coupling identity in this way, the goal of the postcolonial decolonization of culture and thought may be achieved.

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Currents of Spirituality: Sustainable and Scalable Wisdom The state-nation considers spirituality as authentic identity. Spirituality is self-reflexive and constantly in a state of learning. Spirituality is therefore, evolving, changing, and acting multi-dimensionally. From the vantage point of the state-nation, it is the repression of knowledge and identity within the nation-state sociopolitical environment, which leads to disillusion.

This is the loss of self that is at the root of inter-personal and inter-group conflict. Spirituality is authentic identity, by virtue of it being composite and deeply personal. In the context of learning and knowledge in non-Western societies and pre- industrial Western societies, spirituality was the platform for sustainable and scalable wisdom. Providing a location for multi-logical exchange, state-nation education provides a forum for knowledge-sharing. This encourages the development of collective solutions because it invests worth into the most intangible yet most treasured meanings. These are fixtures of individual identity, personalized as ways of being that inform lives and therefore actions.

Cosmopolitan-Secularism: Transnational and Composite The state-nation is evoked at the juncture of criteria which allow it to be holistic and interdisciplinary as a conceptual framework. Cosmopolitan-secularism has been illustrated as being a feature of South Asian sociopolitical history. However, the state-nation is predicated upon the example of the South Asian past, rather than South Asian history per se. There is no attempt to preserve, retain, or return to South Asian traditions or exonerate them. The state-nation utilizes insights from the operation of cosmopolitan-secularism when and where it existed, to create a clear contrast with the development of the hegemonic nation-state.

Communalidad: Inter-culturalism for Multiple Knowledges One of the key features of the state-nation is that it is inclusive not by way of tolerance, but through the acceptance of multiple ways of being and knowing. Hence the state-nation is required to be intercultural, rather than multicultural, by design. The state-nation is offered a rich basis of inspiration for its pluri-national theory, from the examples of Latin and

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South American indigenous communalidad and interculturalidad. The aforementioned illustrate how theory is applied in practice, as reform pedagogy in terms of the education system and reform governance in terms of constitutions and, laws. Moreover, communalidad highlights the South-South alternative basis of societal organization, making common cause with the Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression, while reflecting a spirit of cosmopolitan secularism.

An Adivasi Studies Approach: Indigeneity Informing Anti-Oppression Realizing that an effective transformative pedagogy of social justice must be rooted within an anti-oppression framework, the state-nation utilizes an Adivasi studies approach. The issue of indigeneity in India has multiple venues and points of entry within its discourse.

This is due to the composite and syncretic sociopolitical history of South Asia, and the creation of bounded identities during the British imperial period. An Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression utilizes the concept of indigeneity as a means to deconstruct the multiple hegemonies that maintain and perpetrate nation-state marginalization. The state-nation conceptual framework utilizes an Adivasi studies approach to create its anti- oppression methodology, because it makes use of the alliances between groups which are marginalized due to their religion, language, caste, class, region, poverty, and lack of access to resources. This demonstrates that victimization is observed as working normatively and perpetrated by multiple and overlapping hegemonies.

Death Democracy: Spirituality and Authentic Identity The use of death democracy, the acknowledgement of human spirituality as dignity, confirms the ability of the state-nation to be liminal and nomadic. The recent adoption by the WHO of a principle that declares spirituality as a core feature of personhood and healthcare, reflect an important fracturing of normative hegemony with respect to medicine, science, mind-body-soul separation, and patient treatment. The state-nation is informed with the assertion that spirituality represents the authentic and multiple identities of the individual.

This acknowledgement is now the basis of global reform with regard to citizenship and rights-based inclusion frameworks. It allows self-designation by the individual and a

277 degree of autonomy with regard to group formation. The state-nation considers spirituality to be a core feature of education reform and a means to broaden participation and deepen citizenship and democracy.

Supporting the State-Nation With Allied Approaches It can be argued that the crises and demise that the political party of the Congress went through after the death of Nehru in 1964 until the first election victory of the BJP led NDA government in 1998, was accompanied by an ideological and sociopolitical crisis of nation- state in India. This is because Congress was the creator of the Indian nation-state, and positioned itself as its champion. But as has been discussed, neither was the Congress nation-state sufficiently hegemonic to create a single India, nor was it willing or able to inaugurate the state-nation through pedagogical reforms in education and administration.

Thus 1964 to 2004267, can be said to have been a period in India which witnessed the rebellion of the multiple identities which had been submerged within the normative narrative of Indian nation-state nationalism. Aditya Nigam (2006) explored this in his book, the Insurrection of Little Selves: the Crisis of Secular Nationalism in India. What many refer to as the launch of identity-politics in India during this 40 year period, is more appropriately the re-locating of politics in multiple locations, appropriated by multiple political identities. Partha Chatterjee (1993) has termed this as the emergence of the fragments of the nation-state. Hyphenated identities threaten the nation-state, whereas heterogeneity is part of how the state-nation re-conceptualizes citizenship and democracy.

In the following section I briefly explore the re-conceptualization of citizenship and democracy by five individuals who, through their work and activism, exemplify the state- nation conceptual framework. Since the state-nation is an ideal-type that welcomes collaborative efforts for its co-construction, I feel it necessary to acknowledge Shiv Visvanathan, Vandana Shiva, P. Sainath, Rajni Kothari, and Yogendra Yadev, as being representatives of the ideal-type. Through their efforts, the state-nation potential to re- conceptualize identity and belonging, can clearly be seen.

267 The NDA government, although formed in 1998, collapsed. The NDA formed another government from 1999 to 2004. The Congress led UPA I government won elections in 2004 on a campaign of re-envisioned secular nationalism.

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None of these pedagogical visionaries are exclusively involved in education reform. However their efforts are directly related to the state-nation goal of evoking the transformation of the sociopolitical organizational and administrative practices of the nation-state. Additionally, the five aforementioned individuals and their activism are interrelated. Hence, from an investigative purpose of conceptualizing the state-nation, we may observe the intellectual influences and converge of pedagogies with regard to the reform process. Each involves a re-conceptualization of ways of knowing and participation.

Visvanathan is concerned with how Western epistemology has created a hegemonic paradigm of science. He seeks to re-conceptualize truth and prevent technology from becoming a tool of oppression. Shiva is concerned with how Western epistemology has fractured humans from nature and education from spirituality. She seeks to re- conceptualize the human relationship to environment in order to promote sustainability and harmony. Sainath is concerned with how Western neoliberalism has appropriated journalism as a tool for manufacturing consent. He seeks to re-conceptualize the role of dissent, and to provide an alternative development to the urbanization and industrialization which marginalizes agrarian rural populations. Kothari was concerned with how Western political science and theory dominated intellectuals relationship with society. He sought to re-conceptualize the connection between politics and society to allow for the transformation of society and the broadening of democracy. Yadev is concerned with how Western materialism has dominated the intellectual and political discourse regarding sociopolitical organization. He seeks to provide an alternate politics and activism by re-conceptualizing equality.

Visvanathan, Shiva, Sainath, Kothari, and Yadev, involve themselves in educative efforts to communicate their ideals and involve civil society in multi-logical discourse. Therefore, by way of conclusion to this dissertation, I wish to present a concretization of the state- nation as an ideal-type in progress but also in reality, through the efforts of extension education. From these examples we may also observe the problems that arise within the conceptual framework of the state-nation and its implementation.

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Shiv Visvanathan: Cognitive Justice as Social Justice Indian Sociologist Shiv Visvanathan coined the term cognitive justice within his work A Carnival for Science: Essays on Science, Technology and Development (1997), while deconstructing how Western science had become a hegemonic tool for Western modernity and its development. Visvanathan advocated for the recognition of alternate sciences by initiating a dialogue between multiple knowledges. Since knowledge is a product of culture and environment, he states that there must be cognitive justice in order for peoples to democratically participate in their sovereign and endogenous development.

Visvanathan’s principle has been utilized by Indian and Global South advocates within the Information, Communication and Technology for Development (ICT4D) movement, to alter the normative paradigm of a digital divide (James, 2005) which separates modern- urban-development, from the archaic-rural-as yet to be developed (“From ICT4D to Cognitive Justice”, n.d.). The main finding of this dissertation is that education reform is as much about democratic reform as it is about the reform of pedagogy. Therefore cognitive justice becomes social justice. The two are actually inseparable, much as the ethos of education is indistinguishable from the ethos of sociopolitical organization. Hence it stands to reason that pedagogy is directly related to citizenship, participation and democracy, and that conceptualizing the state-nation via education reform is a process of transforming multicultural into intercultural citizenship.

Vandana Shiva: Earth Democracy and Eco-Feminism Shiva does not like being called an anti-globalization activist. She constantly reminds people that it is concern for the Earth and the promotion for diversity which is the focus of her pedagogies. Shiva is aligned with the Earth and abundance. In Earth Democracy which was published in 2005, Shiva states that the foundation of social justice is ecological justice. Shiva’s pedagogies are based in a spiritual notion of unity. This is something which she gathers from her own personal faith and cultural background, but expresses via communalidad, recognizing it as a common feature in all cultures.

Shiva terms her pedagogy Earth Democracy. It involves justice for the most vulnerable and marginalized, and is utilized as a lens by which Shiva re-conceptualizes citizenship and

280 participation. This approaches the Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression. To Shiva, the root of injustice is the artificial masculinizing of development as a paradigm of extraction without reciprocity. Much conflict and misery arise because of our removal of notions rooted in spiritual wisdom, that our prime identity is as Earth inhabitants. In general, Shiva notes that there are five grand delusions.

The first is that we are not part of nature, but that we are separate from it. This delusion is part of the self-aggrandizement of ourselves, which leads to the conclusion that we are above nature as masters and conquerors of the Earth. Shiva wrote Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India in 1988 (Shiva,1988). One of the acknowledgements in the book is to Rajni Kothari “who made such learning possible”, and is discussed in a later section. Shiva states that as a student of quantum physics herself268, she utilizes knowledge from two traditions, science and spirituality, to affirm the connectedness between all particles in nature. But the founders of what is considered modern Western science, created a pedagogy for man’s empire over the Earth. Francis Bacon wrote A Birth of Masculine Time in 1603, in which he noted that attempting to be rooted in nature was effeminate. “The will to control and the will to profit, was what was defined as progress…and has sadly been defined into being human” (“Earth Democracy”, 2014). Along with this was developed the philosophy of anthropocentricism, which saw humans as the centre of creation.

To establish these opinions did not just require a hegemonic control of political mechanisms but a hegemony of the mind. Shiva notes that we were slowly moved from a cultivation of the land to a cultivation of the mind. Having historically been left out of the conquest project, women, especially in the Global South, retained the pedagogies of Earth stewardship. Shiva has developed these ideas into a re-claiming pedagogy that aims at re- establishing spiritual connections between humanity and the Earth. This is sometimes termed eco-feminism to express it as alternate. Shiva does not imply that females are innately more compassionate, but that their marginalization has created an alternate to masculine hegemony.

268 She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario.

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The origins of industrial agriculture are in conflict with nature. The and fertilizers upon which agro business flourished, were derived from the same chemicals that were used to manufacture poison gas. Biological weapons are outlawed, but biological warfare in agriculture has not been banned. The second phenomenon of agro business that is anti-democratic is the creation of monocrops that eliminate diversity. Most distressing is the creation of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) super-crops. The exporting of this Western model of agriculture to maximize productivity in the Global South, contributed to ecological disaster and the social marginalization of millions. In India, the Green Revolution began a process by which indigenous agricultural knowledges were eliminated. Additionally, Indian farmers were pressured to purchase super seeds which promised resistance to pests and bountiful yields. Monsanto, the biggest GMO producer, created a dependency by developing seeds that could not be saved and replanted during the next growing season.

Farmers are therefore obliged to always buy seed. In addition, the GMO seeds require much more water and fertilizer. This places farmers in debt while the planting of monocrops depletes the soil. It has led to mass farmer suicides in India since 1993, and also the increasing dependency on a foreign corporation for India’s food security. Another extremely troubling phenomenon has been the successful patenting of nature. With slight modification to the seed, GMO companies are able to internationally create monopoly rights of many staple food sources via the World Trade Organization (WTO). It becomes illegal to grow or consume non-purchased seed. To Shiva, this is a continuation of the fencing in of the commons, which began with the rise of development capitalism.

Moreover, transnational agro corporations have successfully appropriated many of the globe’s indigenous medicinal plants and knowledges. They claim that they possess the license to control and sell these resources. In India, Shiva was involved with court cases to prevent the patenting of Basmati rice, neem, jowar, and tulsi. Shiva’s Navdanya (“Navdanya, Homepage”, n.d.) is an organization which advocates the seed as commons, with the right to save and share seed. Navdanya is involved in re-educating Indian and global agricultural workers according to sustainable ecological practices. Shiva’s pedagogies attempt to re-establish the connections between humanity and nature along

282 indigenous frameworks. To this end, Shiva has also set up a knowledge creation, research, and teaching centre called Bija Vidyapeeth (“Navdanya, Homepage”, n.d.). Aptly translated to mean Earth University, Shiva contributes to the decolonizing of education, its re-indigenization, and the development of alternate methodologies.

40% of our greenhouse gasses come from the practices of industrial-agriculture. However, agriculture is not part of the discourse surrounding climate change. This formed the basis of Shiva’s book (2007) Soil not Oil. Shiva notes that this is a clear illustration of how we have disassociated ourselves from the problem, by disassociating ourselves from nature. Citing the UN study (1995) on the erosion of biodiversity in agriculture, Shiva notes that 75% of land erosion was due to agricultural practices and 75% of our water resources are destroyed to sustain the industrial agriculture model. Equally shocking is that this system only accounts for 30% of the total human food supply. Speaking at Naropa University, a Buddhist university in Colorado, in a lecture entitled “Earth Democracy: Living as Earth Community” on October 17, 2014, Shiva noted that “70% of the food comes from what is termed inefficient small farms” (“Earth Democracy”, 2014).

It is as part of this concept of progress and development, that nature has been classified as not life so that its preservation is not required. On the contrary, corporations have been given extensive rights because they have legally been declared people (Totenberg, 2014). Shiva notes that if we do realize that we live in a web of life, then other life forms are our family members. Sustainability and nurturing is the natural product of such wisdom. Regarding an education reform that would re-root spirituality as the basis of pedagogies of identity and knowing, Shiva said:

Radical compassion is both becoming aware and alive to these threats, and becoming aware of the delusion behind those threats. To me that is the ultimate spiritual awakening. But there is more to spirituality. To me growing good food is a spiritual action (“Earth Democracy”, 2014). In 1993, Shiva won the Alternate Nobel Prize awarded since 1980, the Right To Livelihood Award (“The Right to Livelihood Award, Homepage”, n.d.). It has also been won by the Chipko Movement in 1987, of which Shiva was a part. Lokayan and Rajni Kothari who are discussed below, also won the Right to Livelihood award in 1985. While the Narmada

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Bachao Andolan movement which Shiva and Kothari were both a part of, was awarded this alternate Nobel Prize in 1991.

Shiva’s Earth Democracy and Eco-Feminism are pedagogies of the state-nation. They facilitate the solidarity of the most vulnerable and oppressed globally, and are linked by epistemologies that are rooted in the spiritual awareness of interdependence. The Earth is the basis for re-conceptualizing belonging as communalidad, for whose existence a fellowship of stewardship is required.

P.(Palagummi) Sainath: People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) and Bearing Witness to Genocide

P. Sainath269 is a that formerly worked as the editor for rural-affairs at The Hindu. For his coverage of the plight of rural people and Indian agriculture post-1991, Sainath won the Global Human Rights Journalism Prize in 2000. Sainath has also been awarded the so-called Asian Nobel Prize or the Ramon Magsaysay Award, in 2007 (“P. Sainath, About”, n.d.). In addition, Sainath was presented with an honorary doctorate at the University of Alberta in 2011, and the Coady Chair for Social Justice at St. Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia) in 2015. Since June 2015, Sainath has been the Thoughts Works Chair Professor in Rural India and Digital Knowledge at the Asian College of Journalism (“Asian College of Journalism, Homepage”, n.d.) in , Tamil Nadu (“Maharashtra Crosses 60, 000 Suicides”, 2014).

Sainath is appalled by the corporate control of the Indian media which he says has transformed the acting of reporting into stenography or public relations on behalf of financial interests (Global University for Sustainability, 2015). In a predominantly rural and agrarian India, Sainath decries the fact that there are no dedicated rural- in any newspaper. He attributes this to the detachment of urban from rural India, and the artificially constructed belief of the middle and upper classes that they represent the nation. Sainath’s disgust is evident in the many interviews and lectures he gives. His book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought (1996), represents Sainath’s coverage of rural India.

269 As part of the Telugu ethno-lingual group, Palagummi is the name of the place of origin. For Telugus this may act as a which they place first before their father’s name and or caste-name and given name. Sainath prefers to refer to himself as P. Sainath.

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This consisted of a 100 000 km journey to document rural concerns and the devastation which the post-1991era brought to their lives (Sainath, 1996).

He also undertook a 150 000 km journey to document the lives of Dalits. This evidence was used by the National Public Hearings to adjudicate on matters of atrocities committed against Dalits. Both of these activities of archiving have been a conscious effort by Sainath to preserve the legacy of India’s vast demographic, lingual, and spiritual diversity that is quickly disappearing. Since 1993, Sainath has spent an average of 270 days per year, in the villages of India. He endeavors to educate urban India and the world through extensive documentation, and in the process, to bear witness to an unfolding genocide. The Peoples Archive of Rural India (PARI) (“PARI, Homepage”, n.d.), launched December 20, 2014, is the latest manifestation of Sainath’s attempt to be the voice of the marginalized, and let spirit speak.

Through his work, Sainath shatters the hegemonies of normative discourse concerning Indian economic growth and its poverty reduction features. He also destroys the façade of India, as an urban Hindi speaking Westernized society. Sainath has been the conscience of India, while documenting the longest sustained period of mass suicide in history. Since 1993, 300 000 farmers have taken their lives due to their inability to repay debt. This debt has been incurred do to their reliance on buying seed, pesticides, fertilizer, and water for irrigation270.

All this has occurred since the GoI began to liberalize the Indian economy and began a policy of rapidly developing cities. Sainath says that a good analogy of what has happened to a once vibrant and critical Indian journalism, can be summarized by an incident which he saw during his early years in the offices of a major newspaper. “The business editor was beating up the labour editor…and it has been going on ever since”, says Sainath, who notes that now it is the reporting on corporations, power and control which has eclipsed reporting on people and their plight or concerns.

270 These are official figures, collected only because suicide was classified criminal under law. However, as of 2016, suicide is no longer a crime. This means, that effective reporting may cease.

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Journalism has gone from human reporting to finance reporting (Global University for Sustainability, 2015). In fact, Sainath terms this the great betrayal of Indian journalism, since it was a child of the freedom struggle:

If you look at all the Third World countries where there were freedom struggles, you’ll find that all the nationalist leaders were journalists including Gandhi, Ambedkar, Cabral271,they were all journalists, they were all writers. Journalism was a tool of social change. It was a means of connecting and communicating, not just communicating, but connecting and learning from the masses, your own people. Connecting to your society…Gandhi started three papers…Ambedkar started three papers…you associated the press with the freedom struggle…you didn’t have to think about it…it was so ingrained in you…(Global University for Sustainability, 2015). Emphasizing the fellowship aspect of this vocation, journalism, Sainath says that: I keep telling my students, and I’ve been teaching for 27 years…if you’re going to think that you are the only individual standing in between the world and disaster, you are an insufferably boring person, Ok? If you see yourself working with others , as connecting to people, as connecting to society, to movements, what is happening to other human beings around you, you will never be bored, you will never be that badly depressed that you can’t function …journalism is about the everyday lives of everyday people.(Global University for Sustainability, 2015).

According to the National Sample Survey Organization data for 2014 (The Hindu, 2015), average household income in rural India is less than INR 6500 per month272, and 50% of these households are in debt (The Hindu, 2015). The 2011 census highlights a 15 million drop in population of full time farmers by occupation. This means that has been depleted at the rate of 2000 fewer farmers per day (The Hindu, 2015). However the category of agricultural labourers is dramatically rising. This means that as land is being bought from individual farmers or lost due to debt, that these individual farmers are becoming enserfed as bonded labourers on the land that they once owned. The Census also illustrates that for the first time in Indian history, the urban population has grown faster than the rural population. The cause of this is the mass depletion of village resources and deprivation of rural society, causing the largest mass exodus and refugee crisis in history. The growth of cities is therefore, distress-driven rather than a matter of economic success.

271 Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau. 272 It should be noted, that this is not individual income. The average household is 5 people in rural India.

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In fact, the majority of the Indian population has multiple sources of income, because they are neither officially employed on salaries nor retain steady employment, but are rather seasonal labourers doing piece work. Estimates are that 70% of the Indian population earns their meagre existence within the un-organized sector of the economy. The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector, produced 11 reports concerning these details. However, their website which listed their findings, was taken down by the GoI “because it angered them so much that in the first paragraph…it says 836 million Indians exist on a daily expenditure of 20 rupees a day or less and that’s 2007” (The Hindu, 2015)273.

Inequality has grown faster in the past 20 years in India, than at any other point since 1947. During a lecture at the Nalsar University’s faculty of law, in Hyderabad on January 7, 2016, Sainath stated that inequality “has never been so consciously constructed, ruthlessly engineered, by design” (Nalsar University of Law, 2016). Sainath also noted that one should not decouple neoliberal growth and destitution in India. “Never try understanding poverty in India without understanding wealth in India”. These are not separate issues, “the incredible affluence of the few is closely connect with the unbelievable misery of the many…you can’t delink the wealth and the poverty…do not try compartmentalizing them...any other way is dishonest, and if not dishonest, naive” (Nalsar University of Law, 2016).

Credit Suisse did a 14 year gathering of wealth across the world. It found that although South Africa and Brazil also had inequality, that there was no other country where inequity grew faster than India. 1% of Indians own 49% of all household wealth. By comparison, in the USA which is the paradigm of capitalism, the top 1% controls 34% of all household wealth, at a time when inequality is at its greatest in US history and at a time when the current generation of Americans is the first generation since 1776 to be poorer than their parents. In 2000, the top 1% in India controlled 26%, while in the USA the top 1% controlled 28% (Credit Suisse, 2015).

273 Sainath has included the screenshots of the report, the main factoids and a way of citing it, on the PARI website (“PARI, Resources”, n.d.).

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In the present or lower house of parliament, out of 543 MPs, 82% are self- declared crorepatis274, which means they sign an affidavit to say that they have no reason to attach a tax return. In 2009 it was 52% and in 2004 it was 32%. India is 5th in the world on the Forbes billionaires list but 135th on the Human Development Index of the UN. This is the bottom 50 of the world. Between 2000 and 2015, India’s rank has dropped from 121 to 135. 34% of India’s 543 MPs have criminal charges against them, indicating they have been convicted or are pending trial. 112 are accused of capital crimes, assault, kidnapping and violence against women. 26 of them are accused of murder or its attempt (Ghosh, 2014).

Sainath believes that “rural India is by far, the most complex part of planet Earth…a gigantic continent within a subcontinent”. In terms of the linguistic and ethno-cultural diversity, the Census lists 833 million people who speak 780 languages. Sainath notes that Dr. Ganesh Devy who was in charge of conducting the lingual survey for the Census, admitted that “there may be 880” languages, because with only 3000 researchers tasked to document languages across India “we may have missed some” (The Hindu, 2015). Of the 780 listed in the Census, 6 of those languages are spoken by more than 50 million people, 3 of those languages have 80 million speakers, and 1 of them is spoken by more than 500 million people. In addition, there are many Indian languages spoken by less than 200 000 people, unique, and disappearing, which represent speech not associated with the general categories of language families (The Hindu, 2015).

The Census also lists a stunning occupational diversity, and creative diversity, which includes artisanship, pottery making, weaving, and art, that does not exist anywhere else on the planet. “However rural India is also home to much that is barbaric, brutal, regressive, backward, much that should die! Alas, the process of transformation of the past 20 years, has tended to undermine the beautiful, that which we should cherish…and it tends to bolster the ugly and the barbaric” (The Hindu, 2015).

PARI is Sainath’s bearing witness to genocide. PARI is an attempt to capture “many worlds in one website” (The Hindu, 2015). It is action-research conducted by Sainath and

274 1 crore = 10 000 000 rupees. Crorepati is meant to equate to the phrase of millionaire.

288 volunteers from civil society who are allied in the cause of the preservation of human dignity and documenting injustice. PARI photographs the facial diversity of the multiple faces of India. PARI records the lingual diversity of the multiple voices of India. PARI documents and films the extraordinary skills and knowledges of alternate medical, spiritual, and sociopolitical life. PARI contains examples of rural schools involving children in the cultivation of rice and having debates regarding the merits of organic farming. PARI’s protocols are that the first credit and rights to any piece of representation on their website, is given to the artist or person depicted. The second credit is to the location and environment. The third credit is given to the person who served as videographer, photographer, or compiler.

PARI does this to prevent the erasure of India’s multiplicity from history, so that it is neither dismissed nor forgotten. It is also an exercise in participatory democracy for civil society, in order to re-claim journalism for its original purpose, and re-root politics in an age of neoliberalism. PARI has an online research library which makes all this information accessible. PARI also allows anyone to upload contributions, providing that they meet the criteria of PARI content and the ethos of bearing testimony to genocide. Every text, photo, or video, on PARI includes a 2 page summary of the material. “It is very heavily directed at students and teachers, at learning and teaching” (The Hindu, 2015). Sainath notes that the desire among some journalists and the public is there, but that rural reporting does not interest editorial boards of mainstream media.

He states that PARI has 800 volunteers, about half of whom are full-time employed journalists, some of whom have 30 years of experience. PARI seeks to “capture the everyday lives of everyday people”. Indeed, Sainath notes that so many people have uploaded content, that his editorial team can’t keep up with adding material. He hopes however, that there will be multiple representations from each of India’s 630 districts (“The Districts of India”, n.d.).275

275 Note that this number increases, as decentralization of governance occurs to the local level. This may be sub-state expansion of panchayats, inter-state reorganization, or new state creation and redistribution such as recently occurred after the state of Telangana was created from Andhra Pradesh.

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“We are trying to record in every Indian language, one proverb…so you are collecting both languages and wisdom” (The Hindu, 2015). PARI seeks to return reporting to a spirit of criticism, polemic, and consciousness. Sainath’s attempt with PARI is to allow civil society to re-conceptualize identity and belonging in an effort to re-affirm the idea of India whose ethos is cosmopolitan-secularism based on communalidad. PARI is a pedagogy that shares a very close affinity with the state-nation component an Adivasi studies approach. This is because PARI seeks to measure and define the success of a society through its conviviality and its humanity, which are based on a spiritual informed world-view.

Rajni Kothari: Lokayan and De-colonizing the Academy In 1963, at the age of 35, Rajni Kothari established the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) (“Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Homepage”, n.d.). Dhirubhai Sheth, who co-founded CSDS with Kothari, states that “it would be a mistake to view Rajni as an empiricist...his distinctive and lasting work has been to the theory of democratic theory..and not just Indian democracy” (CSDS, 2015). Kothari challenged the normative and elitist thinking about democracy. He formulated a new dynamic theory of democracy. He was interested in deconstructing political processes. Kothari founded a new kind of political sociology. He saw politics not as a subsystem of society but as an engine for social and cultural change. But more than this, Kothari connected action to research.

In a tribute to his memory, the National Alliance of People's Movements (India), commented that Kothari was responsible for developing an understanding of the organic role of the marginalized in people's movements and civil society activity. Kothari’s critique of the normative development paradigm and politics, accelerated his quest for alternatives. It is this restlessness that developed his fellowship with peoples’ movements (CSDS, 2015). Kothari was involved in organizing civil society, journalist, and intellectual resistance, to the Emergency. Kothari became part of ’s276 People’s Union for Civil Liberties when it was founded in 1976. He served as its general secretary

276 Given the title Lok Nayak (people’s hero) in admiration. His agitation against the Emergency, with the forming of a coalition to deepen democracy was called the JP Movement. Narayan was a Gandhian. After hearing Gandhi and Azad speak regarding the boycotting of Western education, Narayan left Patna College to join Bihar Vidyapeeth which was been organized and run (curriculum) by the Congress.

290 from 1982 to 1984. Kothari was also the first signatory on the declaration against the Narmada dam project which was one of the first actions toward neoliberal reforms by the government of PM Rajiv Gandhi.

Kothari established Lokayan-a Dialogue of the People, in 1980. Lokayan was a pedagogy of joining intellectuals to people by linking critical ideas to political debates. Kothari’s idea was to produce knowledge that went beyond the explaining of the world to changing it. He wanted to re-root education and knowledge in the service of the people towards achieving the social justice aspirations of the National Movement and the Constitution. In this way, Lokayan was an extension of the CSDS, its natural complement from the pedagogical perspective of action-research.

Kothari was277 directly responsible for the present vibrancy and intellectual depth of Indian CSOs. He fostered many of their student activists and leaders with a grounding of the non- party political process and social mobilization. Vandana Shiva and Yogendra Yadev for example, were mentored by Kothari. Shiva mentions that Lokayan was a site for convergence of everyone who wanted to work for change. Kothari changed the way activists understood their activities, by creating the concept of a collaborative civil society. Shiva notes that:

previously we were isolated and worked alone, but in Lokayan we worked together, because we had to interact with people from different disciplines and different regions. He encouraged us to create the non-institution institution. He contributed to the intellectual framing of many grassroots local activisms so they could articulate their concerns with links to other civil orgs. And the reason we have such a vibrant civil society now, could not have been done without this (CSDS, 2015).

Kothari contributed to the organizational success in what became the movement. He involved the CSDS in these endeavours, such as researching and writing reports for the UN Peace and Global Transformation higher education program. Kothari and CSDS began to pioneer global understandings of how Western science and development contributed to intellectual violence and sociopolitical conflict in the Global

277 He died in 2015.

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South. Shiv Visvanathan owes much of his theory and practise to Kothari’s activism and action research.

Dr. Nira Chandok, a CSDS colleague of Kothari’s, notes that political science had only been created in India from a bifurcation from its parent discipline, history, in 1930. There were only 5 colleges in India teaching this field by 1938. Until 1970, political science in India was still concerned with replicating British such as that of D. H. Green, and Bernard Bosanquet. Political science was taught and approached as a set of theoretical presuppositions, overtly formulistic and legalistic. It had no connection with social conditions and ordinary lives. It was a colonized academia detached from the people.

When Kothari published Politics in India in 1970, it was ground breaking. Kothari questioned extant notions of political science, in order to deal with political reality as it was in India. He promoted the understanding that there was no unmediated reality, and that we all approach reality from the theoretical prism of our own mind. Kothari was a proponent of behaviourialism, at a time when American political science had turned its back against this philosophy.

Kothari began to document politics not from executive levels, but to explain social movements and civil society. He termed this the non-party political process. Kothari developed a history of the Indian state through the eyes of its social movements, which makes him a pioneer prior to Gayatri Spivak and Partha Chatterjee who sought to create postcolonial theory in the context of subaltern studies.

In 1993, in Alternatives, a journal that critiques global policies that facilitate dominance- dependence relationships, Kothari explained that the failure of social movements in India was due to their becoming disconnected from the politics of mobilization. He also stated that unlike the period of the National Movement, CSOs were failing because they had become detached from one another. Kothari also held CSOs under a microscope of analysis, stating that a politics that claims to speak for the marginalized, must be critiqued because they cannot be their own advocate, judge and jury. Kothari believed that political science should not be an exercise of replacing paradigms but an evolution of understandings in collaboration to further the transformation of democracy.

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Prof Gopal Guru noted that Professor Kothari “disturbed” the underlying construct of both Marxist and Imperial based categories. Before Caste in Indian Politics (1973), caste was either not studied, considered eroded by class supremacy, or studied as a political sociology formulation. This is also primarily because sociology in India had been dominated by Western anthropological ideas of caste as organic rather than political. Kothari re-rooted caste within Indian realities. He rejected prioritization of categories and between spheres such as what is political and what is social. Instead Kothari subscribed to interplay. There are so many overlapping tendencies that contribute to understanding the complexities of caste.

Kothari inserted a new phrase into Indian political science and the study of Indian politics, around the idea that Congress was a system rather than a party. He was the first to realize that the nature of politics in India since its inception, had been collaborative and associative rather than revolving around particular hegemonies of thought. In fact, it was the attempt by Congress to create a hegemonic interpretation of both the nation-state around itself as Party, that led to its demise as a system. Such conclusions however, came after much pondering and a resistance to entrench thought with the finality of conclusions. Kothari wrote in his memoir, Uneasy is the Life of the Mind, that:

A restlessness is what marks a citizen who intellectualizes multiple ideas which are then tested in many environments , which then reflexively work to transform the opinions of intellectual aspirations, seeming like a betrayal of one’s former constituency. Politics and activism periodically require a ‘moratorium’ in order to prevent either from becoming hegemonic (CSDS, 2015).

Ashis Nandy remarks that one cannot say that Kothari was exclusive in giving preferential treatment to a single idea or current of investigation. The non-paradigm abiding approach allowed Kothari to borrow conceptual frameworks as tools of analysis while not feeling obliged to identify exclusively with them. Spirituality and communalidad were true components of Kothari’s conceptual framework. Ashis Nandy states that Kothari’s “concept of a good society is heavily influenced by this idea of conviviality” (CSDS, 2015). Nandy, who has done extensive work regarding human creativity within CSDS,

293 reflects that major innovations in most disciplines were pioneered by outsiders who bring with them novel ideas (CSDS, 2015).

They were unconstrained by paradigm, which allowed their creativity. Using this example, creativity can be defined as the freedom to think, to feel, to act, and to join together. The creativity of outsiders is a byproduct of their under-socialization. Nandy furthers his argument by citing a study of Nobel laureates which illustrates that “their bibliographies are incomplete, their knowledge is lower than that of their colleagues, and due to this, they are less burdened” (CSDS, 2015).

The work of Rajni Kothari in academia and Lokayan promoted the pedagogies of the state- nation. Kothari was instrumental in the development of civil society vibrancy in India. He encouraged CSOs to adopt a co-constructed and flexible approach to pedagogical reform. This was based upon his notion of politics as a system of alliances to enact social justice. This is in line with an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression.

Yogendra Yadav: Swaraj Abhiyan and the Re-Imagining of Equality I feel it important to end where I began, with the conceptual framework of the state-nation, which was an idea that I was inspired to develop further, after reading about how this term was defined by (Stepan et. al., 2010) and his co-authors.

Yadav has been a member of the faculty at CSDS, where he was part of Lokniti, a program to study comparative democracy (“Lokniti, About Us”, n.d.). He was appointed as part of the National Advisory Council to draft the RTE Bill. Yadav combined his academic experience with his grassroots activism, leading to an attempt to develop an alternate politics. What makes these initiatives note worthy, is that Yadav conceived of his endeavor as something in line with the state-nation, as he conceived of it within his work Crafting State-Nations (Stepan, et. al., 2010).

Yadav advocated Kothari’s notions of social mobilization to spearhead a campaign for anti-corruption and the public’s right to information as part of transparency of process. Yadav had joined notable Gandhian, in 2011, to agitate for the Jan Lokpal , a Citizen’s Omsbudperson’s Bill. The coalition of people and interests that coalesced around

294 the Jan Lokpal, directly led in 2012, to the forming of the Aam Admi Party (AAP), the Common Person’s Party (“, Homepage”, n.d.). Yadav was able to translate Kothari’s theory of politicization in this way.

The inauguration of an alternate politics via the creation of the AAP, was heralded with great promise. It seemed an exercise in the attempt to evoke the state-nation by reforming the politics of the nation-state. AAP promised a re-conceptualization of citizenship and democracy. AAP continued its legacy of mass mobilization during the Jan Lokpal agitation, but using rallies to outline new pedagogies of sociopolitical organization in line with broader prospects for active participation. The immediate issue however, was how AAP would be able to contest elections on a national level across India. AAP was a movement that expressed the concerns of the nation, but whose constituents and supporters were mainly Delhi-ites.

The election results of 2014 illustrated that AAP’s percentage at the polls was marginal, and in the first-past-the-post system, AAP was unable to contest the political space occupied by the BJP whose social mobilization was far greater. A more thorough examination of the 2014 elections would be an effort worth undertaking to properly discern the relationship between political capital and CSO social mobilization. It brings up the issue, again, of whether the state-nation is limited in its reform potential so long as the nation-state is in existence. More troubling for Yadav, was the internal fractures within the AAP leadership. Soon after AAP gained political control in Delhi, its one election (legislative assembly, ) success, Yadav broke relations with other party officials.

This breakdown was very public, and maligned the image of both AAP and Yadav. Leaders accused one another of anti-party activities and the destabilization of leadership. Perhaps the most damning charge however, with regard to their alternate-image, was that of acting hegemonic and outlawing dissent. This also brings up another subject for further research and thought, which is whether engaging in nation-state politics inevitably leads to acting in the image of the nation-state.

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After being expelled from AAP, Yadav established his own CSO in April 2015, Swaraj Abhiyan (“Swaraj Abhiyan, Homepage”, n.d.). Swaraj Abhiyan’s first major campaign, has been to launch a mobilization in support of rural farmers who are threatened by the Modi government’s attempt to pass the Land Acquisition Act. This Act will reverse Constitutional and other legislation that requires ecological studies and community consultations prior to allowing land to be transferred out of agricultural use or from individuals to corporations.

I would argue that Yadav’s concept of state-nation pedagogies were articulated in a deeper sense than within Crafting State-Nations (2010), during a lecture at the APU in November 2014. Yadav’s topic was “The Idea of Equality in 20th Century India” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). From his comments, it is able to interpret how Yadav conceptualizes belonging from a cosmopolitan-secular and intercultural basis. It is also possible to understand that Yadav’s framework of equality encompasses an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression which is rooted in the spiritual pedagogies of South Asia that have in fact informed Indian anti-hegemonic political ideologies.

Yadav begins with an illuminating statement. He says that his lecture will trace the currents of thought regarding the evolution of the concept of equality, and “how it can be re-cast” for the conditions of 21st century India (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). Yadav states that colonial Indian interactions with the British during the second half of the 19th century, set the terms for how the Indians would conceive of equality during the 20th century. Yadav notes that this encounter eclipsed the “multiple ways of reflecting upon equality” as represented in the spiritual pedagogies of the South Asian past. Two aspects of this were equality before God and the unity of mankind, and equality within the self or equanimity (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). However the imperial encountered shifted the discourse, which became hegemonic. Western egalitarians were solely concerned with equality in material terms, distributive equality. Therefore the concept of equality moves from a quest within oneself, to becoming a condition created by the state.

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By the beginning of the 20th century, Yadav notes that Indian thinkers began to produce endogenous concepts of equality based on “free translations” of works by Western egalitarians and materialist such as Marx (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). Indeed, as an era within the history of culture and ideas, this period is one of liminality and great creativity. However it also illustrates that South Asian cosmopolitan- secularism remained the core feature of the Indian spirit. “We have a broad idea of what socialism might mean, and then we do a lot of value-addition of our own, and then present it to the people and say ‘this is socialism, this is communism, this is Marxism’” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). For example, there was a work published by Lala Har Dayal (1912) entitled , A Modern Rishi. It is a work more concerned with the development of Marx’s spirit, transformed through his thoughts and journeys. It is not a comprehensive description of Marxist theory or its economic underpinnings.

Dayal’s conclusions are that Marx’s ideas are in fact, “one sided” and that the value of Marxism is its “character transformation” capacity. This is what is then assimilated into the Indian National Movement as one of the prime understandings of Marx (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). This is an exercise of “incorporating Karl Marx in native register, with native sensibilities, in the Indian nationalist movement” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). Yadav comments that “lack of information gives you a lot of room to be creative” and that from 1917 to 1945, Indian Marxism was at its best because it had little information about what was going on in the USSR, but felt the urgency to communicate these events to the people. Within this period of Indian Marxism, one can discern the aspirations of the National Movement for the idea of India, encased in the dreams of how Marxism might be a tool to achieve this, from the perspective of indigenizing Marxism. This was the same creative process of endogeny which had culturally taken place via cosmopolitan secularism throughout South Asian history. “Indians were writing their dreams into what they thought was Russia” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014).

M.N. Roy was quite possible the most astute and intellectual figure of Indian Marxism. However, his book India, Its Past, Present, and Future (1918) “places India in a European

297 trajectory…it enables you to plot India” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). Roy establishes the “framework for understanding India” for both the Indian Left, and the Nationalist Movement as a whole. Since Marxism is an alternate Western paradigm, but still rooted in the economic theories of rational capitalism and materialism, Roy unwittingly also engages in strengthening British critiques of India’s lack of modernity, progress, development and national character. The byproduct of this is that Roy also facilitates the love-hate relationship of the Western educated elite with the South Asian past. While these pedagogies are the basis of their appreciation of Marxism, there is a desire and admiration of European modernity, and a guilt that evoking the Indian past would be reactionary or hubris.

Yadav highlights that the heterodox tradition of interpreting socialism arises due to its encounter with Gandhi. It became “an act of soul searching, an act of creative thinking…especially the Congress socialists, had serious existentialist anxieties about how to engage with the old man” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). This encounter leads Jayprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, Achariya Javdekar, and Vinove Bhave, to reinterpreting Marxism away from what would become the orthodox reading by Roy. It is an exercise of reconciling spirituality and its pedagogies with Western egalitarianism.

Lohia wrote The Doctrinal Foundations of Asian Socialism in which he questions the normative assumption that socialism, as an advocacy of equality, has Western origins. Lohia writes that “the idea of equality has been colonized by Eurocentric imagination” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). Lohia writes that socialism must be re-imagined in the Indian social context. “No greater disaster can befall socialism, than if the historical peculiarities of its career in Europe were sought to be universalized and reproduced in the other two-thirds of the world” (Yadav quoting Lohia). Yadev says that the quest for theorizing an alternate modernity, begins with Lohia. Lohia shatters the thinking of exclusive categories such as caste and class, and stipulates that India is diverse and that there are multiple intersections of oppression due to multiple hegemonies (Yadav, 2010). More importantly, in an article entitled The Concept of Equality, Lohia re-integrates

298 spirituality as a dimension where equality should be sought and conceived (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014).

Yadav is encouraged that the demise of the USSR has caused a spiritual re-awakening of Indian creativity with regard to re-imagining the concept of equality.

It is being re-invented by those who do not official affiliate with the egalitarian tradition. It is being re-invented in the farmers movement, women’s movement, Dalit movement. Victims of development and displacement are rewriting the rules of what equality should mean and what kind of struggles we need for the next century (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014).

Moreover, this project of re-imagination is a co-constructed curriculum. It includes a coalition of ecologists, Gandhians, reconstituted socialists, Adivasi, Dalit, and feminist theorists. Yadav highlights that this began in the 1980s with people like Kishen Pattanayek (Pattniak, d.2004) who began to re-conceptualize identity and belonging, recovering them from within South Asian pedagogies as deshen vichar (indigenous thoughts) (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). By re-engaging with Gandhi’s critique of modernity, Pattanayek begins to re-conceptualize development. He begins to democratize the discourse on equality by suggesting that new forms of resistance should be sought within movements of communities who are the victims of development.

Yadav concludes that the politics of social movements in the 21st century is very much about re-conceptualizing what it means to be ‘left’. However, regardless of category, Yadav also states that “the more I think about it, equality need not be the core feature or organizing principle of politics or society….this is the assumption that modern egalitarians had…it has to be an important function, but not necessarily its centre” (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014). Yadav also notes that the state should not be seen as the principle actor for social transformation, but that there should be “multiple agencies” for social transformation. But the most important issue which Yadav notes is contingent for re-conceptualizing citizenship and democracy is:

How do we ground politics of equality in partial truths, contingencies, and particularities? Much of the egalitarian tradition has participated in that strong form of universalism. Must we do that? Ram Manohar Lohia opens his book Marx, Gandhi and Socialism by writing about partial truth…that idea opens the possibilitiy

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of a new epistemology of egalitarianism. The attempt to ground egalitarianism in strong positivist universalism is something that needs to be questioned (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014).

The organization of any society must be more than just the mere equal distribution of goods and services. It requires an ethos, a spiritual connect. This is why socialism, as egalitarianism, is shallow as a concept. It lacks the ability to answer existential questions, and to address anything besides materialism. Socialism, therefore, requires a transformation of thought and spirit, rather than meeting spirit and merging with culture. This is why socialist, not simply radical Marxists, have always talked about creating a new and culture. They need to replace the old one, but realize that this void does require filling.

An equally stinging but valid critique that Yadav asks us to consider is that “so much of what is passed off as radical thinking in this country is nothing but cultural self-hatred”. It has indeed been responsible for the unchecked rise of Hindutva as reaction, and equally the disillusion and detachment of the left from society. Yadav states that abstract concepts also need to be filled with Indian realities, so that pedagogies can act as experiential learning. He echoes Kothari’s admission that the failure of CSOs and public intellectualism has been that it is guilty of becoming deracinated and disconnected from its own spiritual traditions. Yadav analyzes that three anxieties brought Modi to power. They are economic anxiety, governance anxiety, and cultural anxiety. The first two are angst regarding the state of the nation, corruption, and transition. Cultural anxiety however, is the lynchpin which acts as an interpreter for the former two anxieties. It is cultural anxiety, the angst of feeling disconnected from the Western educated, English speaking, tradition avoiding, political class, that Modi and Hindutva address. The BJP’s answer is xenophobic religio- nationalism, using the formula Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan, to transform India into a Hindu nation-state.

Of course, much of this angst is directed at a mythic monolithic detached class, but the key here is that this expression of popular disassociation has not been taken seriously and addressed by public intellectuals. Moreover, there has been an arrogance in their reaction, that such angst is an expression of the uncultured and ill-educated. They fail to see the

300 bitter irony that this commentary of being un-cultured and ill-educated, seems more applicable to them, and has caused the rise of Hindutva as the sole interpreter of India’s cultural past.

That they (BJP and RSS) become the most legitimate heir of our cultural traditions, is nothing but a commentary on our political bankruptcy. Our inability to relate to our traditions in any serious sense. If the egalitarians of this country…has established meaningful relations with our cultural traditions…what we have done is handed on a platter, nationalism, Hinduism, culture, traditions, language, everything, to Modi’s of the world (Azim Premji University Public Lecture Series, 2014).

Yadav addressed the 6th Bharatiya Chhatra Sansad (BSC), Indian Students Union, on February 14, 2016. Yadev reflected on the Modi government’s actions of curtailing dissent and academic freedom, which one journalist noted was part of the Hindutva effort at “turning citizens into devotees” (Rao, 2016). The GoI had just arrested Kanhaiya Kumar, the doctoral candidate and student union president of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Kumar was charged with “sedition” for supporting the Occupy-UGC Movement and expressing that Indians “required freedom in India” (Aiyar, 2016). Yadav said that the GoI’s claim, that strong government was necessary to defend the nation from internal dissent, proved that a decolonization of the mind and education needs to occur:

We learn about Bismarck in schools and the unification process of Germany, and it remains in the back of our minds that this is what needs to be done to create a strong India too…but Germany was created by destroying its internal diversity…army- people (sic)278 told me that there will be one day that people will say I am Indian and nothing else. That’s a very European response (sic)279. This kind of thing may be in France or Germany, but not in India.280 In the national anthem of India there is a line “Punjab, Sind, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, Banga”.281…those who agree with the idea of our nation, acknowledge282 this…accept multiple identities…people

278 I am translating his words from Hindi, and term he uses is Army-wala, which literally means army people, but can be understood, as those serving in the army. 279 As above. The word used is javab, but can better he understood in this context as thought. 280 He uses the word Bharat in this case, rather than Hindustan. This may be to reference that Bharat was the self-designated term which South Asians for their identity, which is a geographic and cultural expression. Hindustan is a loan word, used to designate South Asians, and translated as India, with connotations of nation-state. 281 (“Indian National Anthem”, n.d.). 282 He uses the phrases Salam keta hai. The sentence can therefore be understood as “those who believe in India, respect, wish peace unto, and see, all of India’s components”.

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say that regional parties, they are so bad, they did this wrong, they do that wrong283. If these regional parties did not exist, than the unity of our country would not have survived. Regional parties have actually saved the unity of India…Regional politics has actually retained, has given a space for democratic contestation284 (Chhatra Sansad, 2016).

Yadav previously spoke of these themes during a lecture entitled The Idea of India, Revisited, at the Regional Resource Centre for Elementary Education (RRCEE) of the University of Delhi, on December 11, 2015 (RRCEE, 2016). He noted that Hindutva politics questions citizen loyalty by measuring patriotism and nationalism. Yadav noted that resistance to Hindutva revolves around re-conceptualizing Indian identity and belonging. He suggests:

we are not automatically Indian, but we have to become Indian…My suggestion is that we should identify India with an idea. India is an idea…ideas don’t have a passport…but you have to subscribe to that idea, you have to live up to that idea...then you can be proud of being an Indian, but then not everyone who is sitting in this room would be Indian. Not everyone who happens to have an Indian passport will be an Indian (RRCEE, 2016).

Yadav notes that democracy, development, and diversity, are concepts of global origin which underwent a crucial transformation in India. He notes that it should not be forgotten that democracy was judged a dangerous idea in Europe which developed gradually. Moreover, democratic theorists proclaimed that people needed to be developed prior to be given democracy. This is because they thought that democracy could not be practised in conditions of poverty, disadvantage, and lack of formal education. Hence, when India adopted universal suffrage immediately upon independence:

in that sense, India democratized the idea of democracy…India was the first place in the world that made it possible for people to think that democracy could be truly universalized…India took democracy in the direction of swaraj…village, local self- governance, self-determination…in the direction of participatory communitarian democracy (RRCEE, 2016).

283 He is using the word bura, by which he means that people think of regional parties as being bad and incorrect in the following ways: corrupt, ‘dirty’, divisive, responsible for things that go wrong. 284 He said this in English.

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Findings and Limitations This dissertation has been a philosophical rather than empirical work. Its strength lies in the production of a novel framework for the analysis of pedagogy and education reform. The production of an ideal-type model was painstakingly but patiently created by harmonizing multiple methodologies, all of which possess validity as frameworks for analysis and deconstruction, but which have never been utilized in connection with one another. I have attempted to create this harmony of alliances so as to present a more holistic and inclusive critical framework in an effort to eliminate the contests of competing marginalizations that inevitably arises from the sponsorship of a singular and preferred discourse analysis.

I believe that compartmentalization of disciplines and thought processes within the academy have been its weakness, limiting intellectual ability to discern and resolve the nature of sociopolitical tensions at the basic level. Much of this has to do with the lack of a postcolonial liberation of intellectualism itself, a failure to appreciative of ground-realities outside its walls, and a seeming unwillingness or inability to divest itself of outmoded Western paradigms such as classical Marxism or development theory. For example, while Marxism or neo-Marxism informs our understanding of many associated issues arising from class, there has been an attempt to problematize all relationships universally using this overarching category of definition. One must also take note that seemingly alternate frameworks such as feminism285 or post-modernism are much indebted to Marxism, sharing many of the same investigative techniques.

While this illustrates the strength of Marxism, it also underscores two tendencies, over- reliance and exclusion, that approach dogmatic rigidity. More importantly, it must be noted that Marxism and all of its off-spring are Western academic creations that seeks to interpret and judge the world based on the materialist philosophy of a particular historical, cultural and geographic experience.

285 Although feminism focuses on gender, it is the class origins of engendering or class-power associations that often receive strong attention.

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My ideal type conceptual framework of the state-nation has been built upon the available literature on Indian history, the history of Indian education, and how South Asian cultures have informed South Asian pedagogies surrounding ways of knowing and being. Using the ideal type which I created, I have woven together several overlooked and crucial areas of identity construction which contribute to an alternate approach to education, rooted in South Asian space. I have shown how one can perceive a strong spiritual, cultural and historical aspiration with regard to education philosophy and societal organization, one that is oriented towards the state-nation. I have also demonstrated that education reform has the ability to evoke the state-nation, and that Indian education diplomacy further possesses the capacity to reshape international relations on a platform of South-South cooperation leading in the direction of a truly alternate globalism.

From the end of the twentieth century, the globalization of education changed the notion of learning:

the traditional conception of higher education as standing for intrinsically worthwhile ends and for promoting liberal education is losing its importance. This is because the idea of liberal education has generally meant that education will have an emancipator content and a freeing of the mind. These ideas seem self-indulgent at this point in time (Chanana, 2004, pp.14-15). Globalization has forced education goals such as equality, social justice and mobility, and the democratization of education to take a back seat.

Using my ideal-type conceptual framework of the state-nation as a critical lens to investigate the three case studies, I have come to the following conclusions. Regarding proximity to the state-nation, I have found elements in the GoI and each of the three showcased CSOs, that approach the ideal-type model.

I believe this to be the case because the GoI had a vested interest in upholding the Constitution (1950) which is not only the foundational document not only of the sovereign Republic of India but also represents the aspirations of the National Movement for independence. Divesting itself of the Constitution, would be akin to disowning ‘the idea of India’. That idea was created and promoted by great pedagogists, who did not distinguish between national governance, national government, national citizenship and national

304 education. It has been the Constitution, a product of a decade long process debating the nature of national education, which has informed every Indian National Policy on Education (NPE) thus far286. Regardless of how insincere their intentions, or how lacking their implementation of policy documents produced in the spirit of the Constitution, it is nevertheless true that the GoI has successfully administered and reformed the largest experiment of EFA in global history.

Regarding Indian CSOs, I might be criticized for picking three NGOs which are ‘models’ in their efforts and thus stand in close proximity to the state-nation ideal-type. In response, I plead that the many Indian CSOs exercising efforts in the fields of education and development exonerate me. I provided substantial reasons for my choice of the three CSAs, in the context of the aims of my research project. I have chosen the three largest exemplars of Indian CSOs with strong aspirations toward the state-nation but in fact many of the CSOs have the same tendency. CSO proximity to the state-nation is easily explained. A case could be made that most CSOs in most countries work to change the system.

In most cases this change is towards a decentralization of government, transparency of procedures, and deepening of democracy. It therefore stands to reason, that CSOs in India, aspire to the state-nation. It would, however, be a mistake to view Indian CSOs simply as apologists for the GoI or merely the latter’s service-providers. The strategy of most globally successful CSOs is non-confrontational, with respect to nation-state governments.

In a way, the most unexpected of the findings relate to the international organizations showcased within this dissertation. Contrary to popular opinion, which may be heavily inflected with a Marxist bias against corporates, I found that the World Bank was surprisingly supportive of education policies in line with the state-nation ideal-type. This can be explained in two ways. The World Bank has undergone several executive changes in the last 20 years which have promoted internal competition that has at times produced competing policies with regard to nation-state recipients.

286 The current BJP government will produce a new one this year, 2016.

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At times, national opposition to the World Bank arises from the resistance of nation-states to comply with decentralization of governance initiatives or social sector reforms whose aims are increased transparency, public accountability and increased social participation in policy implementation and surveillance. Leaving aside criticism, much of it emanating from nation-state hegemons themselves, the purpose of this dissertation was not to ascertain motives, but to analyze policy frameworks. In that light, the World Bank’s India involvement has actually been more state-nation oriented than UNICEF.

UNICEF, as an extension of the United Nations, an organization whose foundation was the consolidation of the inter-nationalization of diplomacy between nation-states, is a peculiar organization in that its objectives are directed at broadening democracy while its parent body upholds the legitimacy an inviolability of national sovereignty and in viability. UNICEF does support some policies in line with the state-nation yet it has also been the earliest international supporter of the GoI and the latter’s preferences regarding nation-state policy imperatives and implementation schedules. An argument could be made, such as with Indian CSOs, that the strategy of UNICEF is to appear as an ally to the GoI rather than be in confrontation with it. One thing however, is for certain, which is that UNICEF, UNESCO and UNDP and in fact all UN agencies have also received their earliest support from the GoI. This relationship could therefore be classified as one of reciprocity.

In line with the findings for the other two international organizations, the Commonwealth is as uncharacteristic the other two. A historic outgrowth of British imperialism and its collapse, the British organized and led Commonwealth should be a means by which Great Britain has attempted to assert its great-power status globally while maintaining a relationship of neo-imperialism with its former colonies. In fact, this was not the case. For although the Commonwealth may very well have been intended for such purposes, the Commonwealth very early into its existence, actually became a front for the GoI’s global ambitions.

These ambitions, as aforementioned, were aspirations of a newly postcolonial nation-state which was attempting to preserve its sovereignty by manipulating the international system of superpower bipolarity. The actions of the GoI, a nation-state, in this regard, were in line

306 with state-nation ambitions of what a reformed globalism might be. Hence the Commonwealth has actually been utilized by the GoI to strengthen its potential as a member of the global community. The GoI, in so doing, has also been afforded much credibility in the Global South for efforts to promote an alternate agenda to that of the perceived hegemons.

Further Research Possibilities I believe that further research into the possibility of education reform, in India and elsewhere, to support a move toward the state-nation or at least a multi-logical conversation regarding inclusion and participation in the sociopolitical sphere, remains an exciting and important challenge. While there are many narratives surrounding India-China comparisons, and while both are undoubtedly civilizational states with burgeoning economies, it remains a mystery for me why there has been minimal attention devoted to the capacity of Indian civil society, a product of Indian history and culture287, to promote alternate pedagogies for education or governance to those of the West. Besides the interlude of Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi, this uninvestigated, unpublicized, prolific Indian trend, has huge potential for future researchers of political science, education, and development. By contrast, China has far fewer civil society organizations with a parallel potential.

With much concern in the West regarding regime-change and democratic-development throughout the world, it seems a kind of hubris that the history and potential of India as the world’s biggest democracy is largely disregarded. Nor is there much interest in understanding the mechanics of inter-culturalism and pedagogies for corresponding citizenship. India affords the researcher a long history and a rich plethora of successful civil society engagements with various forms of foreign and national governments. Those desiring to evaluate the potential of CSOs to enact meaningful change, counter hegemony, or deepen democracy, would be well served to give attention to the history of pedagogies in India in both the education and sociopolitical contexts.

287 Recall Amartya Sen’s title for his work (2005), reflecting on the strong history of Indian civil society, The Argumentative Indian.

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At the end of this dissertation, I must admit that there are some unresolved or over-looked issues within my ideal-type conceptualization of the state-nation and its ability to inform Indian educational reform and influence global international relations. My admiration for Indian education traditions and sociopolitical movements notwithstanding, I may be too optimistic in my belief that the state-nation take shape anytime soon in India. This is especially true given the 2014 electoral success of Narendra Modi’s BJP, whose Hindutva fanaticism contrasts sharply with the previous UPA government’s nation-state model.

Likewise, the ability of Indian education diplomacy to enact alternate globalism and create South-South alliances depends on positive action on the part of the Indian government. And of course, an international transformation of that nature, even if it were to be attempted, would likely face concerted opposition from those invested in the current status- quo hegemony. Faced with these realities, I can only be mindful of Gandhi’s view and example in overcoming obstacles, and Nehru’s creation of a ‘country that does not exist’288.

The state-nation is based on a re-conceptualization of identity and belonging which is based on alternate pedagogies that inspire an ethos of cosmopolitan-secularism, an Adivasi studies approach to anti-oppression, communalidad, and a death democracy understanding of spirituality as authentic identity and human dignity. Perhaps the re-conceptualization of the origins and place of humans, as part of a re-conceptualized Western science, can contribute to the inauguration of the state-nation.

288 Churchill had said that “India is a geographic term no more a united nation than the Equator”. Shashi Tharoor quoting Churchill (Tharoor, 1997).

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