The uses of Gandhi in education in Bali: different responses to globalisation—implications for social justice

Abstract

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) is well‐remembered as a man of peace who entered into a life of renunciation to overcome India’s caste, class and religious differences for the purpose of independence as much as personal liberation. Less well‐ known is Gandhi’s critique of the education system established in India under the circumstances of globalising British capitalist industrial imperialism. Believing that the colonialist education system was fundamentally unjust in that it reproduced India’s social and economic inequalities, Gandhi argued for a return to Basic Education or Nai Talim. It is, then, in the light of Gandhi’s challenge to hegemonic socio‐economic structures through education that this paper presents findings from a research project undertaken at two Gandhian education sites in Bali. The paper shows that the larger site reproduced a globalisation from above discourse while the smaller site deployed a globalisation from below discourse. Acknowledging that debate about the closeness of the relationship between ‘religious’ schools and the economy is not new, it is argued that the difference in the approach to globalisation at the two sites, nonetheless, holds significant implications for the logics that underpin their curriculum and, ultimately, their approach to social justice.