India has a rich history of adult education. In ways both formal and informal, communities in India have always been committed to learning, with a deep interest in acquiring new knowledge and skills, discussing issues that affect them directly or indirectly, and seeking solutions to the problems they invariably face. The various religious traditions in India have highlighted the importance of education in acquiring insights into the nature of humanity and the relationship between human beings and their creators. The Vedic and Buddhist traditions, for example, prescribed the ways in which a good life should be lived through constant search for new understanding.
In India, adult education has, over centuries, taken place in sites as diverse as ashrams, temples, and mosques, as well in informal local settings of the Panchayats and other community organizations. Traditionally, it has also taken place in various guilds where professional skills were developed on an ongoing basis, enabling people to develop and perfect their skills in the building of everyday objects such as houses and boats, but also working in different handicrafts, creating the objects of aesthetic beauty. Throughout the ages, residential colleges existed in India to which artisans returned repeatedly to learn new techniques and improve the quality of their work.
The purposes of adult education have thus varied. Traditions of adult education in India were however not only concerned with the acquisition of new knowledge and upgrading of skills, but also were also established to govern and control populations. Through adult education, attempts were made to reaffirm people’s identities, their moral and religious outlooks on life, and their sense of belonging. In this way, adult education served the purpose of giving people their normative point of reference, against which to make judgments about social relations and hierarchies.
During the colonial period in India, for example, the main purpose of adult education was the formation of the colonial subject, loyal to colonial ideas, institutions, and interests. In the 19th century, the British East India Company and later the Crown needed a sufficiently literate population to carry out the tasks associated with governance, and to meet the requirements of industrial production and commerce. To develop such a workforce and to create a local administrative class, the British thus supported night schools in each of India’s provinces to develop formal literacy.
Alongside this formal structure for adult education, informal arrangements continued to thrive under the British rule, while new organizations emerged, created specifically to resist the attempts by the British to remake India in its own image. Inspired by the ideas of such intellectuals as Vivekananda, Tagore, Gandhi
An Independent India inherited a very weak system of education, incapable of realizing its ambitious goals of economic and social development. It thus had to forge a new system but had limited resources. Not surprisingly therefore it focused on elementary education designed to raise formal literary rate. It was not until the 1960s that India’s Five-Year Plans paid much attention to adult literary and community development programs. The Fifth Plan, for example, encouraged educational institutions, such as village schools, to develop outreach and extension programs in adult literacy, in collaboration with Panchayats, co-operative and voluntary organizations.
In more recent decades, as India’s economy has grown, and as the forces of industrialization, urbanization and globalization have become stronger in reshaping institutions, new ways of thinking about adult education have emerged. The idea of lifelong learning is now aligned to the requirements of the global knowledge economy. The focus on bare literacy is no longer considered sufficient, but only the first step towards preparing citizens to participate in the global market, to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable them to become enterprising and entrepreneur. The logic of the market has become dominant.
At the same time, many Indians are beginning to recognize the contradictions of the market, its predisposition to increase social inequalities, damage the environment and undermine many of India’s greatly cherished cultural traditions. For them, adult education has a more virtuous purpose of promoting social cohesion and public good – an inclusive society in which a large proportion of Indians are not left behind. Inspired by critical theorists such as Freire and Spivak, they view adult education as a political practice that helps the marginalized and subaltern people to recognize the sources of economic insecurity and exploitation, recover their political voice and struggle for social justice.
Adult education in India has clearly been viewed from a range of different perspectives, underpinned by different and often conflicting interests and purposes. It has been supported by both formal and informal structures. This splendidly compiled book of essays provides a most helpful account of the complex story of adult education in India, analysing its various historical forms, as well as its political possibilities. In this way, this book is not only informative but also provides a roadmap for reimagining the aims and methods of adult education.
Fazal Rizvi