Inspectors of the Raj: A Pedagogy of Critical Conservatism in Odisha

Abstract

Abstract This essay investigates new articulations of belonging and community identity that emerged in Odisha, on the eastern coast of India, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through the works of an inspector of schools. Largely taken in the historiography to be mere bureaucrats, inspectors of schools, especially in colonial Odisha, were an important component in the administration of the province, and emerged as arbiters of taste, doyens of Odia literature, and public intellectuals. This essay proposes that their negotiation with the colonial apparatus and prevalent Odia linguistic nationalist spirit was carried out through a novel cultural ideology, ‘critical conservatism’. Deploying a comparative framework with the development of conservatism in Bengal, this essay examines the uniqueness of the conservative impulse in Odisha, thereby suggesting a rethinking of conservatism as a cultural enterprise. Moving away from the focus on the literary works of Fakir Mohan Senapati, this article throws light on the works and lives of other figures of modernity such as Radhanath Ray, Nanda Kishore Bala, Madhusudan Rao, and the Satyabadi School, a unique intervention in pedagogy taken up in Odisha in the early twentieth century.