Mechanics of modern learning
M. Rajivlochan

Higher Education in India (1781-2003): Policies, Planning and Implementation
by Dr Kuldip Kaur. UGC and CRRID, 2003. Pages 388. Price not stated.

This book promises to be an important resource for those studying the system of higher education in India. With this book, read in conjunction with her previous book on higher education, Kuldip Kaur gets established as one of the leading scholars of India’s system of higher education. Her present book is extremely detailed and provides a lot of statistical information about our universities, their establishment, enrolment patterns etc. It also contains information about many government documents that are available only in the archives along with details about the repository in which they are available.

In India, ancient universities began to function almost 2000 years ago under the patronage of the Buddhist Sangha. With the onslaught on Buddhism a 1000 years ago, those centres of learning vanished. During the subsequent centuries, the task of formal learning became somewhat scattered. Now the focus came to be more on an indigenous kind of hermeneutic rather than the acquisition of practical skills. The system of modern learning, a learning that went beyond merely interpreting already existing texts and created something new, was subsequently introduced only in the 19th century under the aegis of the British. It was this system that came to form the basis of what we currently know as higher education.

Actually it was Thomas Babington Macaulay who pushed the country towards modern learning. Macaulay had been originally appointed secretary to the Board of Control of the East India Company in July 1833. A year later, desirous of earning some more money, he accepted appointment as the law member of the Viceroy’s council in India. In that capacity he did many things, one of which was writing a critique of the existing system of education in India. The Re 1 lakh per year that the Government had budgeted for education, Macaulay said, was best spent on promoting modern education. This was the famous Minute on Education of 1835 which has been criticised for the past 150 years for having created a clan of parasitical English-spouting babus in our country. But it became the basis for the creation of modern universities some two decades later.

Macaulay never had any doubts as to what constituted good education for Indians. Indians, however, have yet to determine what is good for them. Even the Government of India has never been satisfied with the results of higher education. Every now and then the entire system is reviewed, all its lacunae pointed out and solutions suggested. A decade or two later another review is carried out which laments the continuance of all the previous lacunae and suggests much of the same solutions with renewed vigour. But it also suggests new ideas on how to facilitate the access to higher education to those who did not have access to it till then. In 1882, it was said for the first time that special effort was needed to reach out to the lower castes. In 1929, the first concrete steps were taken to ensure that the Dalits had access to higher education. Simultaneously special provisions were made to make education accessible to women. All this and much more is very well documented in this book.

HOME