Dalit Women's Education in Modern India

Double Discrimination

Shailaja Paik

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138216662
• eBook ISBN: 9781317673309
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Inspired by egalitarian doctrines, the Dalit communities in India have been fighting for basic human and civic rights since the middle of the nineteenth century. In this book, Shailaja Paik focuses on the struggle of Dalit women in one arena - the realm of formal education – and examines a range of interconnected social, cultural and political questions. What did education mean to women? How did changes in women's education affect their views of themselves and their domestic work, public employment, marriage, sexuality, and childbearing and rearing? What does the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of secular education tell us about the deeper historical entanglement with modernity as experienced by Dalit communities?

Dalit Women's Education in Modern India is a social and cultural history that challenges the triumphant narrative of modern secular education to analyse the constellation of social, economic, political and historical circumstances that both opened and closed opportunities to many Dalits. By focusing on marginalised Dalit women in modern Maharashtra, who have rarely been at the centre of systematic historical enquiry, Paik breathes life into their ideas, expectations, potentials, fears and frustrations. Addressing two major blind spots in the historiography of India and of the women's movement, she historicises Dalit women's experiences and constructs them as historical agents. The book combines archival research with historical fieldwork, and centres on themes including slum life, urban middle classes, social and sexual labour, and family, marriage and children to provide a penetrating portrait of the actions and lives of Dalit women.

Elegantly conceived and convincingly argued, Dalit Women's Education in Modern India will be invaluable to students of History, Caste Politics, Women and Gender Studies, Education Studies, Urban Studies and Asian studies.

Part I

Education

1 The right to education

In the early decades of the twentieth century the ostensible public right to education turned, in practice, into a right merely to a segregated education for Untouchable students in the Bombay Presidency. The rhetoric of civil liberties, mass education and individual freedom adorned modern British colonial policies, but in practice, social exclusion (of non-Brahmans and Dalits) and inequality were embedded in public education from its inception. Moreover, upper-caste Marathi nationalists participated in and supported the colonial discourse because state policy was intrinsically interlinked with dominant Brahmani pedagogical practices. Hence, both the modern state and upper-caste elites hesitated to resolve the Dalit educational question. Both were ambivalent about the Dalit question in general and converged, to a large extent, in their discourse of excluding Dalits from the right to education and of constructing differences between castes. Dalits had a tremendous hunger for education and continued to attain as much schooling as possible, despite the difficulties this entailed, because they believed passionately in its modern promise, its significance for their existential freedom, and its power as a vehicle to social, economic and political freedom: a way out and up from under. Theirs was a militant optimism.

In this chapter, I uncover the overlapping educational battles at a specific historical conjuncture in the context of decolonisation. Schools became more than a site of struggles between the touchables and Untouchables, who fought their social, cultural and political battles in the colony as well as between the colonised and colonisers. Rather, it was a political process. These ‘uncanny’ double forces constructed a typical educational conjuncture in the 1920s. This was the outcome of disparate interactions between colonial perceptions of Indian society; policies devised to combat educational ‘backwardness’ and their cautious implementation; Indian elites’ participation in the colonial discourse; and Dalits’ response and resistance to the state and upper castes. Within this political and educational context of constantly shifting relations among Dalits, upper-castes, nationalists and the state, Dalits shaped their movement and in turn were transformed by it. Unlike upper-caste elites who kept Dalits at a distance from civic politics, Dalit radicals developed a wide repertoire of constitutional tactics to challenge British education politics and claim resources and rewards, and successfully diffused Dalit demands for the ‘right to education’ and ‘freedoms’ into Dalit society. They wrested the modernising force of education from the Raj and Brahmans and shaped their own resistance.

Historians have neglected this story. To explain the educational conjuncture of early twentieth-century Maharashtra, Dalits’ educational aspirations, and their systematic denial by Indian society fully, a number of questions must be raised. If the children of the poor (Brahmans and other high castes) were admitted freely into government institutions, why were Dalits prevented from doing the same? How did private initiatives by both Dalit and non-Dalit social reformers, as well as missionaries, interact with British colonial state policy and practice in early twentieth-century Bombay Province? How and why did education become an important vehicle of Dalits’ modernisation, especially from the late nineteenth century? How did segregated education affect Dalits? To address these questions, I will examine how education and schools in the context of early twentieth-century Maharashtra became a central terrain for struggle over power and politics out of the lived experience of individuals and groups, touchables and Untouchables, situated in asymmetrical social and political positions.

Certainly, the British had a commitment to opening education up to more social groups. This was an important part of their claim to be ‘civilising’ India – yet their record was inevitably an uneven one. Similarly, although some high-caste reformers made efforts towards mass education, on the whole they failed to include Dalits and address their thirst for education. Theoretically speaking, the colonial state did subscribe to the ‘equal right’ to education, yet deeper investigations uncover how bureaucratic normalising technologies and the educational discourse of the modern state prevented Dalits from exercising this right. Victorian values were thus not confined to the metropole, but spilled out onto the colony; British and Brahman forces continuously colluded and conspired with each other out of strategic anxiety. Foreclosing on the promise of education led to Dalits’ exclusion from the body politic.

Inside the colony there were interconnections and important discordances between high and low castes that affected the discourse of education and social change. While some liberal upper castes did support Dalit education, in general Brahman supremacy prohibited this. Thus, both the state and upper castes worked in conjunction to macromanage the pedagogical structure and micro-manage Dalit individuals, revising the educational discourse for new political ends. Significantly, the presence of the colonial state also allows us an interpretive space to grasp the tensions between the upper and lower castes. Colonial power altered the terrain of struggles.

Although discrimination against Untouchables was formally prohibited, this ban was seldom executed. Students faced numerous obstacles while exercising their ordinary human rights, such as accessing common water-posts and lotis (pots) to drink water. Yet they were far from being ‘docile’ or ‘indifferent’, as the colonial state and upper-castes would have us believe, and they resisted on a number of occasions. The repetition of such disruptive events created fissures in the normal school routine and interrupted the upper-caste conception of education, as well as challenged the British policy of educating the masses. These disruptions also called into question the dominant modes of historical understanding of education; they provide us with counter-histories from a Dalit perspective.

This chapter investigates how and why education represented such a critical part of the broader struggle for Dalit civic rights from the early twentieth century. Formal educational legislation based on principles of equity offered a new direction for Dalits’ efforts to escape their ‘savage slot’: during the watershed year of 1920, they demanded not charity but compulsory and free education. In order to unravel these complicated processes, the first two sections of the chapter focus on the period leading up to the 1920s to demonstrate that, although the colonial government and some high-caste liberals made genuine efforts for mass education, many were also ambivalent about Dalit education.

The third section concentrates on the advent of dyarchy, an ingenious constitutional device which split the functions of government in two, especially after the 1920s. The government set the pace of reform, which was to be slow and measured, and announced its objective of gradually developing self-governing institutions. With this arrangement, however, the British controlled the central administration; ‘reserved’ functions such as law and order, finance, agriculture, and education were transferred to Indian ministers who were responsible to local legislatures. Upper-caste Indian education ministers failed to provide mass education because they were increasingly threatened by the potential of the rising lower castes. By contrast, some non-Brahman and many Dalit activists and spokespersons were actively involved in articulating the need for Dalit education as well as compulsory mass education. The early decades of the twentieth century, then, were a field of forces within which Dalits emerged as modern citizen-subjects.

Educational policies and practices of the ambivalent colonial state

The colonial government, Christian missionaries, non-Brahman and Dalit leaders, and high-caste liberals began making efforts toward mass education at the end of the nineteenth century. Their efforts were inconsistent, torn by contradictions. While some sympathised with Dalits’ quest for education and political rights and believed they would make ‘loyal’ subjects, others were cautious about Dalits gaining access to political privileges before they had reached a ‘high’ stage of consciousness. During both pre-British and early British rule, no attempt was made to educate the Dalits because, as with Brahmani policy, education was confined to the higher castes.

Although the British considered education a ‘civilising’ tool, they were silent for a long time on the question of promoting education among the native population. Nonetheless, with the Act of 1813, education became the responsibility of the colonial state and Brahmans lost their traditional monopoly over schooling. The British government did eventually take up the responsibility of ‘civilising’ the ‘barbaric’ Indians. Macaulay’s ‘Minute on Education’ (1835) sums up England’s superiority and its task of transforming brown Indians by using law, free trade and, most importantly, education.

The government did widen educational opportunities, yet there were some limitations. Actually, the colonial state, like its agents, was torn by contradictions about its perceptions of the figure of the Untouchable, as well as on the Dalit question. On the one hand, the colonial state and its agents described Untouchables as ‘weak’, ‘lazy’, ‘primitive’ and ‘backward’, yet at the same time appreciated their ‘intelligence’. For example, historically speaking, the Mahars were hereditary village servants and were significant among the baaraa balutedars.¹ The Khandesh Gazetteer in 1880 defined the traditional Mahar as a ‘lazy’, ‘unthrifty’ but ‘intelligent’ village servant, noting that ‘they have gained a monopoly of the unskilled railway market’ (Campbell et al. 1880, 116, 119, quoted in Zelliot 1994, 35). Another colonial authority spoke of the Mahars’ skills, predicting that they would excel in any field and would be a growing force (Craddock 1899, 28, quoted in Zelliot 1994, 35).

Thus the British had divided opinions on the Untouchables. Although significant in British eyes for their menial skills, they held lesser and lower attention as compared to the upper castes. As a result, the British favoured different communities in particular historical conjunctures. When they did intervene to promote education among the lower sections of society, they were cautious and conservative about interfering with the social order or initiating any educational or social reform among Dalits. The colonial state embarked on such efforts only later – and that too discretely, sometimes miserly, and with less enthusiasm, in contrast with the efforts of social reformers, Christian missionaries, and Untouchables themselves. The state recorded educational statistics; however, their efforts were quite weak and they had limited or no understanding of Dalit social life, the constitution of the Dalit programme of education or Dalit womanhood. As feminists have noted, the colonial state was also biased towards upper-caste and upper-class women. This work thus concentrates on Dalit social actors in a regional context to document discourses, initiatives and actual practice in the Dalit push towards education and, consequently, social and political awakening.

While some British officers (like Major Candy, the principal of Poona Sanskrit College) and missionaries made efforts to educate non-Brahmans and Dalits, on the whole the government was ambivalent and somewhat less eager to offer them an education. When in 1821 the government started a Hindu college at Pune known as Poona Sanskrit College, it was open only to Brahman students. A few years later the college was opened to all Hindus, but again the scholarships were restricted only to Brahmans (Keer 1964, 51).

The first governor of Bombay, Montstuart Elphinstone, was president of the Bombay Education Society and was often hailed as a liberal administrator. He observed in 1824 that the lower castes made good students, but went on to warn against encouraging them because ‘if our system of education first took root among them, it would never spread further’ (quoted in Ambedkar 1928, 415). He described himself as very cautious and an especially ‘firm advocate of … gradual evolution of human societies’ (Deshpande 2007, 73–74).

In 1854, Charles Woods set out the government’s active measures towards mass education and expressed a readiness to increase expenditure for these purposes. Yet, at the same time, Ellenborough, president of the Board of Control, warned that

education and civilisation [flow] from the higher to the inferior classes, and so communicated may impart new vigour to the community, but they will never ascend from the lower classes to those above them; they can only if imparted solely to the lower classes, lead to a general convulsion, of which foreigners would be the first victims.

(Ambedkar 1928, 10)

Thus the Court of Directors wanted social change to start at the top and filter downward: ‘if [they] were to diffuse education … they would give it to the higher classes first’ (Ambedkar 1928, 10).

Christian missionaries started schools for Dalits in Ahmednagar in 1855; the next year the question of admission of a Dalit boy into a government school in Dharwar was first raised. Working on their techniques of ‘fair play’, in a Despatch of 28 April 1858, the Court of Directors passed an order that ‘the educational institutions of Government [were] intended to be open to all classes’ (Ambedkar 1928, 10) – yet, simultaneously and deliberately, they also made education a preserve for the high castes. Although the Dalits, along with other communities, were granted the right to enter government schools in 1858, in actual practice the state made no effort to enforce this theoretical right for some years.

In a similar vein, after two and a half decades, the Hunter Education Commission Report of 1882 affirmed that all government-aided schools and educational institutions should be open to all castes and communities. It favoured admitting lower-caste children to government schools as a matter of right. Although the colonial state agreed that the que...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: education for the oppressed
• PART I Education
• PART II The paradox of education
• Conclusion
• List of interviews
• Index