ABSTRACT
Many Dalits battled for the right to education, but it was Phule and later Ambedkar who forcefully articulated earlier demands, engineered educational technologies and sought state intervention. Ambedkar contended that justice between groups could not be achieved by educational means alone, advocating instead a multi-stranded strategy – social, political, economic and religious. In 1927, challenging some upper-caste, middle-class reformers, he argued that ‘only by being educated [sushikshit houn] one cannot end untouchability’ (Bahishkrut Bharat, 29 July 1927). Such an approach was missing in upper-caste, elite conceptions of social change, which considered untouchability to be an isolated phenomenon that ‘education [alone] will eradicate’ (Bahishkrut Bharat, 29 July 1927). For example, Gandhi suggested education and some cosmetic changes for Dalits, such as improving living conditions, rather than contesting the structures that constructed their social and educational exclusion in the first place. Although he posed a fundamental challenge to caste hierarchy and made efforts towards education, by adopting a reformist, moralistic and patronising attitude towards Dalits, Gandhi was also constrained from offering practical solutions to economic and social problems. He also rarely acknowledged Dalit radicals’ agenda of educational reform. By contrast, drawing upon the Enlightenment tradition, Ambedkar (and Phule) appropriated elements of a modern discourse of equal rights for Dalits and women and also looked upon them as agents. Unlike Gandhi, Ambedkar attacked caste technologies and argued that the question of Dalit education was part of a larger set of processes. It was embedded in power relations and was inextricably connected with social relations, the local economy, religious ideas, ideological battles and political movements. I investigate complicated caste articulations among different but entangled domains, rhetoric and discourses in a particular historical and educational conjuncture. In this chapter, I illustrate that by employing such ‘rhizomatic’1 methods, Ambedkar and Phule articulated an ‘affective pedagogy’ centred on possibilities, dignity and agency. Relatively few studies on these strategies for pedagogical and social action have been conducted to date. Although Phule and Ambedkar saw Dalits as victims and also blamed them for their oppressed situation, yet they wanted them to take control. This chapter
delineates the ideological, practical and contextual mechanisms through which Phule and Ambedkar sought to imagine Dalits as political subjects and create new Dalit citizens. For both men, the key dilemma at the heart of Dalit schooling and political life was how to make real the democratic promise of self-realisation within a caste apparatus that precluded self-determination for Dalits. The chapter explores their confrontations and negotiations with upper castes to understand how they constructed their demand for education in opposition to the constraints and controls of upper-caste and Gandhian nationalists. There was a rupture between Dalit language of rights and upper-caste sentiments for abolishing untouchability. In the repertoire of civic rights, education emerged as a significant force in the social revolt movements and political and ideological struggles at the end of the nineteenth century. Revolutionary anti-caste movements questioned upper-caste reformist approaches as well as the colonial state’s cautious measures, and in this context education was infused with a new meaning and a radical social and political purpose. From a Dalit perspective, both colonial and nationalist policies and practices, discursive and non-discursive, emphasised a hegemonic agenda by conceptualising their lives in particular ways in order to not only fit but also reinforce the stereotype (explored in the previous chapter) of ‘passive’, ‘docile’ or ‘indifferent’ Dalits. They argued that ‘sentiments’ would have to be sacrificed, because public education could not be the private purview of a handful. Thus, this chapter examines the competing models leaders articulated, debated and implemented with Dalits. It is devoted to explaining contested Dalit subjectivities produced out of the contradictions and convergences between nonBrahman/Dalit educational technologies2 and Gandhian reformist agendas of education for Dalits. Challenging the colonial state’s and Gandhi’s insistence on gradual reforms, Dalit radicals insisted on autonomy and independence, denounced any sort of domination, and sought to exercise power equal to that of upper castes. While Chapter 1 examined the interwoven social, political and educational struggles of the Dalit movement for freedom, this chapter dwells on its intellectual underpinnings. As such, it deepens our understanding of the particular (and heretofore neglected) educational conjuncture in early twentiethcentury Maharashtra: the historical and socio-political context of Dalits’ right to education and the ideologies in which it was embedded. Like the historian Philip Constable, I challenge earlier scholarship which gave primacy to Western agency – governmental and missionary – as the principal force behind Dalit educational change (Nurullah and Naik 1951; Forrester 1979; Oddie 1979; Kawashima 1998; Bayly 1989), and emphasise the role of Dalit radicals and their efforts for education. I go further to uncover the muchneglected wealth of Dalit educational ideas and activism, which provided one of the radical impulses for social, political and educational change. Scholars have mined Phule’s and Ambedkar’s contributions towards the social and political revolution in twentieth-century Maharashtra (O’Hanlon 1985; Zelliot 1992; Omvedt 1994; Gokhale 1993; Rao 2009; Jaffrelot 2004),3 yet there is scant literature on Dalit leaders’ educational ideologies and actions. Surprisingly, only one
historian, Eleanor Zelliot, has focused on the much-neglected contributions of Marathi Dalit activists and spokespersons in the field of education,4 and her article is yet to be published. Some sociologists have commented on Ambedkar’s ideology of liberation and agenda of education,5 but have made limited use of archival sources. I centre on the theory of socio-educational reform advocated by non-Brahman and Dalit radicals: their philosophies, practices and initiatives in education as they sought to gain rights, as well as to refashion the Dalit self. This chapter weaves together the rationalising discourse of Phule’s and Ambedkar’s modern, radical educational technologies as they came into conflict with those of uppercaste, elite reformers. Their ‘affective pedagogies’,6 which mapped possibilities and agency for Dalit students, were in fact ‘technologies of the self ’. Moreover, Dalit radicals in early twentieth-century Maharashtra interpreted Dalit exclusion from common schools as a barrier to both individual freedom and advancement, and to their collective ability to secure equal maanavi hakka (human rights) and naagarikatva (citizenship). Most significantly, Ambedkar declared that shaalaa ha uttam naagarik tayaar karnyacha kaarkhaanaa aahe (schools are workshops for manufacturing the best citizens) (Ambedkar 1927d). Benefiting from the social and political activism of earlier Dalits and some non-Dalits, he forcefully articulated the connection between their education and modern citizenship. This was essential for their deliverance from caste oppression. Most significantly, the struggle of Dalits to live as full human beings embodied a combined critique of caste and gender hierarchies in a way that opened up new spaces for women. The education of girls and women was an integral part of Phule’s and Ambedkar’s discourse on education as a right. Both leaders appreciated the role of education in Dalit women’s emancipation. Certainly, Ambedkar underlined its rationale for the women’s movement because women were to be the collective ‘civilising’ agents of the Dalit world. Most significantly, challenging the upper-caste, middle-class agenda of ‘feminised’ education for women, Phule and Ambedkar aimed to use education as a tool to build critical consciousness. To them Dalit women were historical subjects, agentive forces who could uplift their community. The ‘Dalit woman question’ became a strategic part of the fight for human rights and could not therefore be separated from it, despite contradictions. (I deal with the details of Dalits’ discourse on women’s education and gender reforms in Chapter 3.) To address these complex psycho-social, political and pedagogical technologies, the first section of the chapter historicises subaltern education in a transnational context to illuminate the international dialogue in which Phule and Ambedkar were involved. By critiquing the discourses and practices that led to their erasure, Dalit intellectuals developed transformative education reform theories and institutions. Their short-and long-term aims and struggles are dealt with in the second section. The final section outlines Dalits’ internal and external strategies to discipline the self and to transform Dalit personhood. I conclude by juxtaposing Dalit and upper-caste/middle-class agendas of education, which shaped the particular history of Dalits’ struggle for education in the twentieth century.
