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Home Identity Construction Political Economy Orientalism Language Borders Religion Annotated Bibliography	back to language Legacies of Colonial Education: Fraternity: Indian history attracts a range of scholars all with interests in how to tell the story. Indian nationalists claim that the British colonizers divided India along religious lines to promote British legitimacy as a neutral power; Orientalist scholars working in the 19th Century told a history that supported that claim of warring religions and caste hierarchy that separated people by religious definitions according to varna; Hindu scholars object that caste is a corruption of true Hinduism, beginning just as occupation and handed down by generation. Primary school textbooks offer a combination of Orientalist and Independent scholarship. Indian history begins with pre-colonial India’s historical religious divisions that British powers exploited, and finally offers an image of an India united in the independence movement. British scholarship demonstrated Indian glory in abstract spirituality and divisions in practicality. British authorities explained their role in India pointing to Islam’s attack on Hinduism under Moghul rule lasting from the 8th century until the 18th as well as Hinduism’s caste system that divided the Indian population into an inescapable generational dichotomy between the rich and poor. The Story of Freedom textbook describes the feeling of Indian thinkers during the Indian Renaissance who believed: India had lost her freedom because of the tradition-bound nature of the society and the unjust customs and practices. These thinkers brought a new awareness that the country will progress only if the society was reformed (Standard 5, 23). An economics student with an eye for International Relations at Pune University held tight to Hindu tradition, though he felt greater allegiance to these Western ideals that sometimes contradict his tradition. Raised in a ‘small town’ (population 100,000), Ketan pointed out the impact of modernization on women in urban India. Leaving a movie theater located near Pune University and Fergusson College where hordes of young people hang out, he pointed to girls dressed in kurtas covering their shoulders and reaching mid-thigh to knees with baggy pants underneath and asked me “do these girls look suppressed?” He described the real obstacles to women in the rural areas where they have no rights versus the women in Pune who attend school and work outside of the house. fragments map previous next
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Legacies of Colonial Education:

Fraternity:

Indian history attracts a range of scholars all with interests in how to tell the story. Indian nationalists claim that the British colonizers divided India along religious lines to promote British legitimacy as a neutral power; Orientalist scholars working in the 19th Century told a history that supported that claim of warring religions and caste hierarchy that separated people by religious definitions according to varna; Hindu scholars object that caste is a corruption of true Hinduism, beginning just as occupation and handed down by generation. Primary school textbooks offer a combination of Orientalist and Independent scholarship. Indian history begins with pre-colonial India’s historical religious divisions that British powers exploited, and finally offers an image of an India united in the independence movement.

British scholarship demonstrated Indian glory in abstract spirituality and divisions in practicality. British authorities explained their role in India pointing to Islam’s attack on Hinduism under Moghul rule lasting from the 8th century until the 18th as well as Hinduism’s caste system that divided the Indian population into an inescapable generational dichotomy between the rich and poor. The Story of Freedom textbook describes the feeling of Indian thinkers during the Indian Renaissance who believed:

India had lost her freedom because of the tradition-bound nature of the society and the unjust customs and practices. These thinkers brought a new awareness that the country will progress only if the society was reformed (Standard 5, 23).

An economics student with an eye for International Relations at Pune University held tight to Hindu tradition, though he felt greater allegiance to these Western ideals that sometimes contradict his tradition. Raised in a ‘small town’ (population 100,000), Ketan pointed out the impact of modernization on women in urban India. Leaving a movie theater located near Pune University and Fergusson College where hordes of young people hang out, he pointed to girls dressed in kurtas covering their shoulders and reaching mid-thigh to knees with baggy pants underneath and asked me “do these girls look suppressed?” He described the real obstacles to women in the rural areas where they have no rights versus the women in Pune who attend school and work outside of the house.

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