Educating the nation: A discussion of Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas

This paper analyzes the aspects of Gandhi’s notions of education for a modern and free India and traces the evolution of such ideas over time. A nation’s system of education plays a significant role in the ordering of society and in imparting a particular identity to it. In India, modern Western education had been introduced by the colonial government which, though liberal, nonetheless, could be utilized as an instrument of control and indoctrination over the colonized people. Demonstrating as it did the racial and cultural superiority of the British, the new colonial education also served to instill a sense of inferiority among the Indian ‘subjects’ vis-à-vis their white masters.