Education and Inequality: Historical and Contemporary Trajectories

Contents: Preface. Part 1: Encounter with Modernity and Colonialism in the Domain of Education. 1. Some Perspectives on Education in Modern India/Vikas Gupta. 2. Poverty and Equality in Education: Transnational Survey of Historical Trajectories and the Neoliberal Challenge/Andreas Gestrich. 3. Colonial Vision of Education versus Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Caste Educational Discourse/Anil Sadgopal. 4. The School Teacher in India/Janaki Rajan. 5. Seeking Freedom from Slavery and Ignorance: Phule’s Theorisation of Knowledge and Education/Umesh Bagade. Part 2: Colonialisation -Decolonisation and the Domain of Knowledge. 6. Some Aspects of Education and Knowledge: Formation in Nineteenth-Century Delhi/Amar Farooqui. 7. Rethinking Inequality and Education: Crime, Labour, and the School Curriculum in Indian Reformatory Schools (1880s–1920s)/Arun Kumar. 8. Developing a ‘Physical Education Curriculum’: A View from Colonial Bombay/Namrata R. Ganneri. 9. Revisiting the Idea of the Gurukul: Challenges of Teaching Music in a New Setting/Lakshmi Subramanian. 10. Eurocentrism, Brahmanical Hegemony and Colonial Science Education: Conflict and Collaboration/Harjinder Singh (Laltu). Part 3: Challenge of Language Inequalities in Education. 11. ‘Apabhransha’/Kumar Shahani. 12. Multilinguality and Challenges to Education/Rama Kant Agnihotri. 13. Multilingualism, Multilinguality and Translanguaging: Southern Theories and Practices/Kathleen Heugh. 14. The State, Market and Multilingual Education/Minati Panda. 15. Examining the Linguistic Dimension of Draft National Education Policy, 2019/Rama Kant Agnihotri. Part 4: Social Exclusion. 16. Teaching about Inequality/C. N. Subramaniam. 17. Are We All Alike?: Questioning the Pathologies of the ‘Normate’/Tanmoy Bhattacharya. 18. Have We Moved Ahead? - Issues of Education of Children with Disabilities: An Indian Scenario/Anita Ghai. 19. Who Bears the Burden of Reforms?: A Study of Education and Gender in Delhi, 1947–75/Manjushree Singh. 20. Neoliberal Barriers in Education: Return of the Manu Era/Anand Teltumbde. Part 5: Impact of Neoliberalism on Educational Inequality. 21. Why it is Possible and Imperative to Teach Capital, Empire and Revolution, and How/Rich Gibson. 22. Destroying Public Education: Neoliberal Policy and Structural Shifts in State Provision in Mumbai/Padma Velaskar. 23. India’s Education Problematique and State Betrayal: NEP 2020 and Beyond/Poonam Batra. 24. Post-Independence Political Economy of Education: From Welfarism to Neoliberalism in Alliance with Fascism/Anil Sadgopal. 25. Common School in the Neoliberal Era: The Challenge of Equity, Quality and Justice/G. Haragopal. Index.

Education and Inequality: Historical and Contemporary Trajectories focuses on the ways in which despite different claims of expansion and improvement, education in India continues to be marked by overwhelming levels of inequalities and exclusions in access, participation, completion and outcomes. The essays in this volume use the perspectives of class, caste, gender and disability, and the lenses of culture and religion to understand the overall normative pattern of education in the way it tends to exclude the majority of our population, its concerns, languages, and knowledge. The contributors to the volume are experts with diverse interdisciplinary interests. Besides critically examining contemporary education, the volume also deals with the historical context of modernity and inequality and its reciprocal relationship with education. It expresses serious concern about the increasing withdrawal of the State from education and the growing disintegration of structures of public education in our own times.