The Exclusion of Bahujan Schoolchildren: An Anti-Caste Critique of the National Education Policy 2020, India

Abstract

This article explores the link between education policy and the social reproduction of caste, with a special focus on the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020). It traces the shape of exclusion that Bahujan schoolchildren experience in the Indian school system by attempting to analyse, and build a coherent understanding of, caste-based exclusion in the sphere of school education. The article is organised in two parts, both of which use the NEP 2020 as an anchor to study the nature of educational inequality. The first part maps the outer contours of educational inequality, engaging with the issue of unequal access to schooling. The inner contours of educational inequality, that is, the internal processes of schooling that engender exclusion, are examined subsequently. At the kernel of this study is the complex relationship between education and power. In essence, the present article delineates the myriad ways through which the NEP 2020 contributes to the processes of social reproduction, particularly the mechanisms through which it conduces to the hegemony of historically privileged caste groups in the society.