Critical Mind and Labouring Body: Caste and Education Reforms in Kerala

Part  1

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Introduction

Analyzing the debate on educational reform processes in Keralam in the 1990s and 2000s, this paper attempts to understand the role of the dichotomous conceptualizations of mind and body and mental and manual labour in reproducing the colonial – Brahmanical notions of knowledge. This unsettled debate regarding the educational practices in Keralam brings out the various aspects of the contemporary crisis of the colonial- Brahmanical model of knowledge production. I argue that though the problem of this model is recognized at various points of the debate, the fundamental of this model is kept intact or even reinforced by various stakeholders of the educational reform processes.

The 1990s witnessed large scale structural reform programs in primary education initiated by global funding agencies and national governments in Africa, Latin America and south Asia. This was part of what is generally termed as ‘new economic policies.’ Scholars have studied the various historical reasons that created new initiatives for universal education. The major reason pointed out was the political agenda of globalization in which education became the new domain of economical and political domination. The critics of this new agenda have pointed out that reform programs in primary education such as the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) initiated by the World Bank and / or national governments were aimed at the gradual withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities of primary education and the reduction of investment in formal educational institutions. These programs while projecting social equality as their main objective, refused to address the basic factors behind the production of inequalities.

Critical scholarship has already mapped the failure of reform initiatives in challenging the continuing domination of patriarchal and casteist forces that operate in the domain of education. Most of these studies conceptualize the question of domination as problem of exclusion of the marginalized groups. This is expressed as the lack of representation of women and Dalits in the decision making bodies, lack of resources for these groups, their low enrolment and

high drop-out rate in schools and in general as a problem of socio- economic exclusion. Naturally the suggestions were focused on educational programs which can become more inclusive and incorporative of marginal groups. While these explanations are valid and important, I argue that this criticism should be extended to basic concept of “school” itself, and as an extension, to the basic assumptions behind the present educational methodologies. My attempt in this paper is to shift the debate on exclusions and dominations in education from the domain of institutional to the epistemological. I attempt to locate the Brahmanical and patriarchal domination not just in the institutional structures but in the very conception of education based on the division between mental and physical labour. The major objective of this paper is to develop preliminary concepts that will help us understand education not only as a project of developing ‘critical thinking but also as a project of creating critical action.’

The concept of “School” as the place of learning is normalized based on a fundamental binary between mental and physical labour. Since the modern education is widely accepted as a process of developing intellectual capacity, the primary target of education processes is mind and mental labour. Sarada Balagopal has argued that the discourse of child labor, based on the Western notion of bourgeois childhood as the norm, was critical in the universal child education programs. She notes that “the child is viewed as the object of nurture and care, as innocent to the world and therefore as possibly working in order to learn, but not as someone who can be made to earn and contribute to the family in a substantial manner.” Balagopal’s criticism of the universal notion of childhood reminds us the importance of historicizing the very categories we use in our analysis of education and schooling. In Indian context, the superiority of “thought” over “practical work” in the colonial model is mapped into the hierarchy of castes and is institutionalized through the various dichotomous practices of schooling like formal education and vocational training, institutions of “technology” (IITs) and “technical” institutions (ITIs), centers of excellence and project for skill enhancement and so on.

In this article, I attempt to understand how the binary of mental and manual labor was deployed, appropriated, and challenged in the education reform process started from the 1990s, in relation to the contemporary caste practices in Keralam. This article analyses the documents produced by the State Council for Education and Training (SCERT) Kerala and the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP), a non-governmental organization that played a crucial role in the reform processes. In the remaining part of this article, I will first trace the genealogy of the concept of knowledge and then explore the reform processes in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Genealogy of the Colonial Brahmanical Model

The colonial educational practice in India from the beginning was part of the colonial governance. The project of governing the population in colonies was not possible by a clear demarcation between “us” and “them.” While this difference was still important, for all practical purposes of governing, it was necessary to create a series of objects that would connect the colonizer to the colonized. The colonial investigators defined, described, and ordered objects in different hierarchical series, the two endpoints of which were the earlier binaries or dichotomies. For example, humans became a hierarchical series with the European white man at the top and the Aboriginal tribal man at the bottom. Knowledge itself became a series with Knowledge and Ignorance serving at the top and bottom levels, and different kinds of knowledge were arranged in between according to their supposed universality and objectivity. The construction of series as part of creating an order of knowledge was not just a discursive activity. The material practices of governing followed the same process of creating a hierarchical series. A new order of institutions, actions, and people was formed by creating a time-space between the ‘government’ and ‘people’ and simultaneously connecting them through middle objects. Educational institutions, Public Exhibitions, and Museums were some of the important sites that were part of this process.

The British Orientalist scholarship, which was an integral part of colonial governing practices, incorporated the existing caste hierarchy in India into a series of knowledge.  On the one hand, colonial scholars launched strong criticisms of caste practices, describing them as the tyranny of Brahmins, Eastern despotism, and an archaic, uncivilized tradition. On the other hand, as more and more European scholars started studying the so-called “Hindu texts,” they found a new ally in their project of producing knowledge about the colony. This partnership – though it was never an equal partnership – constructed a relation between traditional knowledge and the Brahmin caste. The colonial concept of knowledge as text was crucial in inventing the traditional wisdom of the East. The colonizers considered writing as one of the most important measures of knowledge, and they arranged oral and other bodily practices of knowing at the lower level of the knowledge series. In India, in the process of creating the middle objects of the series, colonialists regarded Brahmins as the authority on traditional knowledge as they were considered the authors of written Sanskrit texts.

Within the colonialist imagination, caste was the essential stratification criterion of Indian society, and hence colonial activities in the domain of knowledge were reflected through the prism of caste. There was not much confusion regarding the nature of the institution that would be appropriate for the upper caste elites among the natives. According to the colonialists, the upper castes, especially the Brahmins, were the group who were capable of attaining higher learning in literature, natural philosophy, and mathematics. In all  three universities that were established in India in the middle of the century, there was no restriction, technically, for individuals from any caste group joining the institution. But the upper caste dominated these institutions and continues to do so even in the twenty-first century.

Colonial education policy, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, mapped the hierarchical caste system into a series of hierarchical educational institutions. The new universities were the place of upper caste, whereas the industrial training centers were the proper place of artisanal castes. In short, what we see as colonial knowledge by the end of the nineteenth century was already a colonial – Brahmanical knowledge in content and in its form.

Although in this period the upper castes in general dominated among the natives in the field of colonial knowledge practice, the majority of the community did not engage either in traditional or modern forms of production of knowledge. Different lower caste groups engaged in knowing practices in the field of agriculture, architecture and handicrafts, as a community. Historically, Brahmins as a community were never part of any field of knowledge, but individuals from their caste have been engaging in fields like medicine, astrology and literature. It was the colonial – Brahmanical discourse on traditional knowledge that authorized the community as the sole carriers of traditional knowledge.

Even the recent scholarship, inspired by the Dalit criticism of Brahmanism, incorporated the above notion of traditional knowledge, of course, in this case as an example of caste discrimination and oppression. In this narration, Brahmins, using their political and social power, deliberately excluded lower castes from attaining textual knowledge. But as we see above, it was only in the context of colonial construction of traditional knowledge in India as the Sanskrit tradition in the form of written knowledge, that the Brahmins started justifying their dominance based on possession of knowledge. In the pre-colonial period these Brahmanical texts were more part of upper-caste ritual practices over which Brahmins had the monopoly and in which they prevented the entry of any other castes.

From this genealogy we can map some of the general principles of the colonial-Brahmanical model of knowledge production. In this conceptualization, knowledge is a disembodied object which could exist without human presence and which could be exchanged like any other object. Written form is the most appropriate form of knowledge though other forms like spoken word can carry knowledge but less accurately. Knowledge is representation of outside reality but in practical purpose it can even substitute this reality. Since knowledge is an object that has to be produced knowledge production and knowledge transfer became two separate activities. The objective of teaching or education in general is to transfer of already produced knowledge and the production of knowledge is generally marked under the category of research.

The educational institutions and practices in postcolonial India were more or less a continuation of the colonial practices, especially in their concept of knowledge production and knowledge transfer. The plans and priorities in institution building in the education sector reflected the hierarchical series of knowledge constructed in the colonial period: a series with knowledge at the top and ignorance at the bottom. Paralleling this notion, the government established research institutions and universities as the highest level of knowledge, and at the bottom, adult education programs to open schools for the illiterate and uncivilized majority who were not yet qualified to be full citizens of the new nation.

(to be continued)

This paper was first published in Artha Journal of Social Science in 2016

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