Manu, Macaulay and Manmohan

G. Haragopal
Member – Presidium, All India Forum for Right to Education


India is one society that has inherited one of the most iniquitous social structures that remained stubborn notwithstanding several socio-political movements including the freedom movement. Manu, the BrahmnicalHindu ideologue provided the framework and justification for not allowing all sections of the society, more sothe labouring classes and women of all communities not having access to written word. This dictum survives through thousands of years after the written word had been invented by the human species. The language of the powerful, Sanskrit, through which they wrote and communicated was their exclusive prerogative. Hinduism perhaps is the only religion that believes that human beings were born unequal and prevents equal access to God, supposedly the creator of man and woman. The denial of access to formal learning not only divided and hierarchised the society, but provided scope and space for manipulation by the propertied and the powerful. This social arrangement continued all through the medieval and colonial period.

It was during the colonial period the English language started replacing the Sanskrit and other local languages. After the first war of independence in 1857, Macaulay advocated the introduction of English language and held that it was the only way to create a support base for the colonial rule. He thought, rightly so, that the English educated Indians would be Indian in colour and English in belief and behaviour. It was again the upper castes who took advantage of their social position and linguistic skills monopolized the opportunities in civil service, legal profession, media, teaching and so on. The English language was as alien to the people as Sanskrit except that the Christian missionaries opened schools where the hitherto forbidden sections had an entry point. In fact they provided access to God though Church and formal learning though schools. This opening up made no qualitative difference to the basic structure of social relations, but created a class of people, as Macaulay believed, who were entrapped into colonial mind-set and continue to perpetuate it even after six decades of the so-called victory of anti-colonial freedom struggle.

It was Phule and SavitribaiPhule realising the importance of role of education started schools, particularly for girls. Education for all as an idea entered the freedom movement in the early part of the last century and picked up momentum and by 40s is came to be accepted by the Congress party who resolved to universalise right to education within a decade after independence. Given the aspirations and promise of the freedom movement it ought to have been incorporated in the fundamental rights chapter but on the grounds of resources and Nation’s preparedness it was pushed into non-justiciable directive principles of State policy.

The silver lining immediately after independence was that whatever or wherever schools existed or newly opened they were all publicly funded common schools resembling the ‘neighbourhood schools’ concept as all children living in the vicinity went to the same school and studied through their mother tongue as medium of instruction. The limitation was that there was no concerted effort to ensure that all children go to the school which resulted in an India that has the distinction of having the largest number of illiterates in the world. This policy, by and large, continued till 1985-86. There was a shift in the policy which instead of initiating measures to provide access and quality education to all children introduced the policy of multi-layered schools bringing in inequity and inequality that Manu and Macaulay did earlier.

The widespread mass unrest in India on various counts including the growing inequalities compelling the rulers to take some measures and Right to Education Act of 2009 is one such step which is supposed to have encoded the right to education as a fundamental right. While this step is important in letter, the spirit of the Act is not qualitatively different from Manu, Macaulay mindset. The Act should have straight away scraped all the private schools and has gone for common school through neighbourhood schools and raising the standardsof each school to that of central school. Instead the Act talks of private-public partnership which in principals concedes the continued presence of private schools at one level and accentuates the medium of instruction divide. It talks of 25% reservation of seats to poorer children in corporate schools. One starts wondering how a fundamental right could be so dividing and discriminatory. This has led to a country-wide debate whether the right in this form can ever be treated and accepted as a fundamental right. The public-private partnership is a device of the neo-liberal model to plunder public resources for private profiteering. The corporate schools used to amassing of wealth challenged the Act in the Courts opposing the admission of poor children into their schools. Assuming that the Court in principle concedes, which is very unlikely, what happens to the other 75% of the poor children condemned to study in government schools which are poorly funded and qualitatively inferior. Is it not the time that the nation in one voice demands that all children of this country in the age group of 0-18 have equal access to quality education though common schools though neighbourhood schools?

The scenario in higher education is equally pitiable. There are six to eight bills waiting for parliamentary ratification. Of all the bills the most Macaulian is the Foreign Universities Bill. KapilSibal addressing the last All India Vice Chancellors conference looked concerned about only two issues: the Foreign Universities Bill and introduction of semesterisation in Delhi university as if they are the only issues afflicting higher education. Of course, during the recent visit of Manmohan Singh to the USA, one of the items that came up in the discussion with Obama was opening up of higher education for foreign investment. The Prime Minister in his Independence day address to the nation from the Red Fort made a specific reference to the urgency of educational reforms. The saddest part of higher education is the pathetic conditions of State Universities. No state government, without exception, has any interest left in higher education as the sons and daughters of the ruling classes go for private medical, engineering, legal and other professional streams of education. The most prosperous are sending their children to foreign universities and are arguing that the ‘craze’ can be met only by inviting foreign universities to the Indian soil. It is precisely this cause that led to serious cuts in grants, stopping recruitment of new staff and all forms of support of the state. In the same breath they also want to privatise accreditation, distance education, tribunalization of educational litigation, abolition of UGC and manning the new council for higher education with corporate representatives. The teaching fraternity lured by the 6th pay commission evinced no interest in the neo-liberal assault on higher education.

It is the wake of these drastic changes in school and university education, the All India Forum for Right to Education held its national conference in Yusuf Meharelly centre near Bombay. The forum draws its membership from socialists, Lohiaites, Gandhians, leftists, radicals and democratise. They are drawn from 16 states of India and are engaged in building a nationwide movement against these undemocratic, uncalled for, anti people reforms in education. It is time that spirit of freedom struggle is retrieved and we build a movement for an equitable, humane, fair and just society. The cause of education is one of the powerful weapons to realize this goal. This would invariably be a fight against Manu-Macaulay-Manmohan mind-set. The posterity may not forgive this generation of academia. These sections are bound to carry their own battle against unjust society with or without the support of the academia.