Connected and entangled histories: writing histories of education in the Indian context

• Autores: Barnita Bagchi
• Localización: Paedagogica Historica: International journal of the history of education, ISSN 0030-9230, Vol. 50, Nº. Extra 6, 2014 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Shaping the history of education? The first 50 years of Paedagogica Historica / coord. por Jeroen J.H. Dekker, Frank Simon), págs. 813-821
• Idioma: inglés
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  • This article examines contestations and recent trend-setting approaches in the historiography of education in India in the post-1800 period. British colonialism created a huge rupture in South Asian society as regards the provision of education. Historians of education have asked what sorts of indigenous educational institutions and methods were present in pre-colonial India: in this context, the article discusses the work of historians who researched indigenous Indian village schools, key to educational transmission until the early nineteenth century. The educational work of the nationalist leader M.K. Gandhi inflected the work of such educational historians. The article devotes some attention to ways in which twentieth-century "new education" reinvented aspects of pre-colonial South Asian education. Marxist, feminist, Dalit and Subaltern historians of education have analysed the differential and hierarchised spread of "western" education in South Asia. Nonetheless, this article shows how the educational agency of Dalits, women, peasants and working people has been analysed by scholars. The article then examines recent scholarship which views the origins and growth of "western" education in South Asia in the framework of transcultural transactions. It ends from the vantage point of connected and entangled histories of education, looking beyond the unit of the nation state.