ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the teaching in India of a range of subjects associated with the social sciences history, geography, political science, sociology, and economics. It focuses on their teaching in schools and at the first degree level, in universities, or colleges affiliated to universities, locating developments against an international background beginning with India's late colonial experiences. The chapter traces the limited sense of the social sciences as an integrated domain of study at the time of India's Independence and its slow evolution towards the 1960s. Social science education receives a more 'holistic' and practical inflection in special institutes that are concerned with specific goals, giving these a special role in the Indian educational system; but in these institutions, the larger aspects of the subjects are not considered worthy of attention. Whether the line of policy has been effectively gauged and adequately evaluated, in order for this to happen, however, remains a moot point.
