Is It Helpage India or Helpin India Age

Historical background

India has a long tradition of organized education. As a historian has put it, “There is no other country where the love of learning had so early an origin or has exercised so lasting and powerful an influence.” However, educational effort in the country has come a long way from this traditional position in its definition, coverage as well as impact.The current educational system in the country operates in an altogether different context from the classical past. The country’s commitment to the provision of education for all and its endeavor to achieve this goal in a speedy fashion has to be seen in this complex milieu within which the educational system is currently functioning.

As the veteran educationist Shri J.P.Naik put it: “The Indian Society, especially the Hindu Society has been extremely inegalitarian, and this (provision of equality of educational opportunity) is the one value on the basis of which the society can be humanized and strengthened. In fact, the issue is so crucial that the Indian society cannot even hope to survive except on the basis of an egalitarian reorganization”. Between 1813 and 1921, the British administrators laid the foundations of the modern educational system. The principal positive contribution of the British administrators to equality was to give all citizens open access to educational institutions maintained from or supported by public funds. For instance, the worst difficulties were perhaps encountered when the problem of educating the “untouchable” castes came up.

The first test case arose in 1856 when a boy from an untouchable caste applied for admission to the government school at Dharwar. He was refused admission on the ground that it would result in the withdrawal of all the caste Hindu children from the school and thus in the closure of the school itself. But the decision was sharply criticized by the Governor General of India as well as by the Court of Directors in the East India Company and...