UNDERSTANDING COLONIAL EDUCATION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE AND POWER DYNAMICS

This paper delves into the relationship between knowledge and power using a historical lens of colonial times. It builds the argument that colonial powers employed specific epistemic frames and the institutionalization of education to build systems of unequal power relations between the colonizer and the colonized. Scholars have argued that British rulers consolidated and legitimized their rule in India through processes of 'epistemic privilege,' drawing strength from and continuity with Brahamanical hegemonies existing in Indian society (Rege 92). The knowledge-power nexus operated through the discourse on orientalism that European colonial domination conceptualized, researched, and shaped (Said 45). It is well known that the British introduced western education in India to consolidate and legitimize their power over ordinary people. This western education was accepted by urban elites who thought that it would liberate Indians from superstitions and backwardness (Kaviraj 21-22). Marked to serve the purposes of urban elites (Batra), colonial education was severed from the cultural and social realities of the rural masses (Kumar 45). Colonialism was a cultural project, a civilizing mission whose influence and impact are noticeable even in contemporary Indian society and its educational policies (Batra).