There is diverse statistical information about the expansion of Basic Education/Nai Talim after 1938.512 However, a thorough, detailed examination of the implementation processes after 1938 is beyond the scope of this dissertation.
In the following, I can therefore only roughly sketch some of the developments following the recognition of Basic Education as an official experiment by CABE.
To begin with, an interesting term used in primary sources after 1937 was Basic Education Movement, pointing to the understanding of those taking part in the implementation work that they were part of a movement.513 While the scheme was first worked out by Gandhi and experimented with in Sevagram Ashram, it was, after 1938, taken over by Congress education ministers of different provinces, who introduced the scheme on an experimental level in certain areas of their provinces. On the role of Gandhi in this ‘movement’, it is also important to note that, as already clear from the aftermath of the Wardha Conference and the preparation of the report by the Zakir Husain Committee, Gandhi presented his ideas and therewith gave the impulse for the development of an education scheme.
510 See also: National Institute of Basic Education. Exhibitions in Basic Education. (New Delhi:
Government of India, 1957).
511 Unfortunately, I was unable to access a copy of the journal during my archival research.
512 All the annual reports and conference reports published by HTS contain such information. A good source for more detailed statistics is J.C. Aggarwal, Progress of Education in Free India (Current Problems of Indian Education) (New Delhi: Arya Book Depot, 1966).
513 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, One Step Forward, p. 189.
He was not, however, deeply personally involved in the developments following the Wardha Conference, and more had the role of an observer or consultant in any further developments.
Taking a closer look of the developments following the Wardha Conference and the publication of the Zakir Husain Report, there are various references to a wave of enthusiasm, and the numbers of newly established Basic Education institutions certainly expanded quite rapidly. By the end of 1939 there were, in total, 247 schools that had adopted the Basic Education curriculum (so-called ‘basic schools’) and 14 teacher training institutions (called ‘training schools’) spread over Kashmir, United Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, Central Provinces, Bombay Presidency, Madras Presidency and the State of Mysore.514 Also, institutions of national education such as Jamia Millia Islamia, Andhra Jatiya Kalasala, Gujarat Vidyapith and Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapith began to implement the new scheme.515 Central Provinces, the province where Sevagram was located, started its programme for the spread of the Vidya Mandir Scheme (see also 6.1), and, by April 1939, ninety-eight such Vidya Mandirs were in operation, with a hundred newly trained teachers. Further, United Provinces adopted BE as its official education policy and, by 1939, the scheme had been introduced in 1,750 district board and municipal schools.516 In the same year, the Bombay government introduced Basic Education in fifty-nine District Board Schools.517 Bihar introduced it on an experimental basis and in Champaran District, thirty-five new
‘basic schools’ were opened in 1939, staffed by sixty newly trained teachers.
Orissa, Madras and Kashmir, meanwhile, undertook the first steps towards the introduction of the scheme.518
After 1940, however, the enthusiasm for further experimentation with Basic Education dipped due to political developments. In 1939, Congress governments in the provinces resigned from their offices in order to protest against India’s involvement in the Second World War. The Cripps Mission of March 1942 had
514 Aryanayakam, The Story of Twelve Years, p. 3.
515 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Sixth Annual Report 1938-1944, p. 1.
516 These were not included in the 247 schools, probably because they followed only a weak interpretation of the scheme.
517 Thomson, Gandhi and His Ashrams, p. 246.
518 See overview in the speech by E.W. Aryanayakam on “Progress of Basic Education” in:
Hindustani Talimi Sangh, One Step Forward, p. viii ff.
aimed negotiating a deal with leaders of the nationalist movement, offering them a greater degree of self-government in return for India’s total support of the Second World War. This led to a new outbreak of protests against British rule. The Individual Civil Disobedience and Quit India Campaigns, led by Gandhi, resulted in the imprisonment of Gandhi himself and masses of his supporters, and, consequently, to the closure of institutions inspired by his ideas.519 The colonial government became suspicious of the education experiments and feared the new institutions were, in actuality, centres of anti-colonial thought. The Hindustani Talimi Sangh particularly was under suspicion, and by 1942 fifteen of its twenty-six members had been imprisoned.520 The experiments were interrupted in most places, with teachers arrested and schools closed down. As a consequence, the Government of Orissa decided to close down their fifteen ‘basic schools’ and the teacher training institution only half a year after they had been set up. Apparently, the government also argued that the danger existed that the schools would become mere spinning schools.521 But even though government structures eroded, there were networks of dedicated individuals that continued to run the schools on a private basis during this time of political upheaval, such as happened, for example, in Orissa.522
After this phase of political upheaval and setback in the enthusiasm for the spread of Basic Education, in 1944, after his release from imprisonment, Gandhi presented a new vision of an expansion of the educational activities: ‘we must not rest content with our present achievements. We must penetrate the homes of the children. We must educate their parents. Basic Education must become literally the education for life.’523 The idea behind this was to start with the education of parents and to provide education for young children, adolescents and adults:
519 See also chapter 6 in Metcalf & Metcalf, A Concise History of India.
520 Sykes, The Story of Nai Talim, p. 40.
521 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Two Years of Work, p. 261.
522 See the autobiographical descriptions in: Ramadevi Choudhuri, Into the Sun. An Autobiography (New Delhi: National Gandhi Museum, 1998).
523 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Eighth Annual Report 1938-46, p. 24.
The usually accepted educational procedure is that the educational process begins with the earliest years of childhood and in the case of the majority of children, ends with the primary stage. (…) In Nai Talim, however, the educational process is approached from a different angle. It seems clear that if this New Education is to be effective, its foundation must go deeper;
it must begin not with the children but with the parents and the community.524
At the Seventh All-India Basic Education Conference, the ideal of Nai Talim, as this extended vision of Gandhi’s education ideas was consequently termed, was presented as ‘making education co-extensive with life itself and causing the spirit of intellectual inquiry and experiment to permeate every stage of living from babyhood to old age and death’. Thereby, the argument was that it was important that children were exposed to the ideas of the new social order, not only during the six hours per day they were in school, but all the time.525 Following Gandhi’s ideas, a set of educational stages was worked out by HTS, consisting of five stages: Social Education (adults), Pre-Basic Education (under age 7), Basic Education (ages 7–14), Post-Basic Education (ages 15–18) and Rural Universities.526
Stage Age
Social Education adult Pre-Basic Education 3–6 years Basic Education 7–14 years Post-Basic Education 15–18 years Rural University
The stages of Nai Talim
The goal of Basic Education was that, after completion, the children would have:
524 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Basic National Education. Syllabus for a Complete Basic School Grades I to VIII (Sevagram, Wardha: Hindustani Talimi Sangh, 1950), p. 11.
525 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Seventh All India Basic Education Conference (Sevagram, Wardha:
Hindustani Talimi Sangh, 1951), pp. 10-11.
526 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Basic National Education. Syllabus for a Complete Basic School Grades I to VIII, pp. 11-13.
achieved a reasonable competence and self-reliance in their management of their individual lives, including their health, their daily food, their clothing, and the maintenance in good order and repair of the equipment, furniture and tools in daily use. They should also have been trained in habits of co-operation, and have gained some understanding of their physical, social and economic environment, and of their own place and duty as citizens in local and national society.527
Therefore, after finishing the seven-year course of Basic Education, ‘a boy ought to possess the skill and knowledge to support himself; at the post-basic stage he has to use that skill and knowledge to earn his own keep and so continue his education without being any burden on his parents or on society’.528 The ideas behind Post-Basic Education were discussed at the All-India Basic Education Conference in 1945.529 It was envisioned that 80 per cent of the students ended their education after Basic Education and 20 per cent would go on to the next step.530 Also, according to the memorandum of 1945 on Post-Basic Education, fourteen types of work in which the adolescents could specialize were envisioned.531 I will also further examine the implementation of Post-Basic Education in 6.1.1.