ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to study the position of Dalits and their access to education in colonial India and in the post-Independence period. Ambedkar pleaded in the Bombay legislative council in 1927 that we should at least spend the same amount on education that we take from the people in the form of excise revenue. He strongly opposed the commercialisation of education. “Education is something which ought to be brought within the reach of everyone.”
From 1854 onwards measures were taken to spread education to the country’s masses. The results of this policy were first examined by the Hunter Commission, which reported in 1882. Although the policy was mass education, the majority of the population were excluded from education, as had been the case before 1854, and the lower classes of Hindus remained lowest in order of education. The depressed classes, who were second in order of population, stand fourth, that is, last in order of collage education, last in order of secondary education, last in order of primary education in 1923.
