The historiography of Indian education: 1920-2020: the socio-political influences on the growth of the discipline

ABSTRACT In India, the history of education has traversed a unique path in the last hundred years. The political influences guided the discipline, but at the same time, they were also contested and critiqued in equal measures. History of education as a discipline went through four distinct phases. The first phase coincided with the last stage of the freedom movement (1920–1947), which saw a new interpretation of what constituted education from the perspectives of Indian tradition and its contestations. The second phase (1947–1980) began with the collection and publication of official documents with strong introductions analysing the complexity of the history of education in the colonial period. The third phase (1980–1998) revived the arguments that took centre stage during the freedom movement based on literary texts and political speeches. The fourth phase (1998–2020) has witnessed a critical questioning of the historiography of the previous decades on the basis of archival sources and saw the publication of books and journal articles on various themes. This paper looks at these distinct phases and analyses the underlying socio-political currents that moulded the history of education.