Western University, Indian Nationalisms

Abstract

“Western University, Indian Nationalisms” is about contrasting nationalisms, their emergence in colonial India, and how nationalisms and universities were tied together in intimate relationships. The idea of India is a contested one. Conceptions of an ideal India inform India’s politics and society today, and it did so during British colonial rule. As India’s educational system and higher education institutions developed in the colonial period, especially after the 1850s, the idea of Indian nation took shape in minds of educated Indians. For 200 years since the early 1810s, higher education institutions have been centers of discourse on nationalism. Various groups of Indians with ideological motivations centered on secularism, Hindu identity, Islamic identity, and women’s emancipation have fashioned their versions of Indian nationalism on educational campuses. In some instances, the founding of educational institutions itself has been the result of the specific national vision that the founders had. In short, higher education and contrasting and conflicting versions of nationalism have been enmeshed in India for 200 years; the creation of the two nation-states of India and Pakistan in 1947 bears testimony to this. Indian university has been a site of visions of Indian nationalism. The idea of India that has projected itself most powerfully has done so in great measure in the universities, even before creating a similar impact on the wider public world. This chapter argues the dominant and dominating idea of Indian nationhood has skillfully elbowed out competing educational visions and of nationalism as was conceived in Vishwa Bharati and Jamia Millia Islamia. Different streams of visions continue to jostle for influence in contemporary India today and in its higher education space.