Abstract
Tim Allender examines transnationalism as colonial as well as postcolonial phenomenon. He sees its theorization as unduly predicated on Western conceptions of modernity, and on artificially separate research mentalities that differently engage the pre- and the post-Independence eras. Taking the subcontinent and education as an example, and looking at transference relating to the West, Allender argues malignant transnationalism in the colonial era had a far stronger global engagement than the mere incorporation of Western-speak around Indian, post-Partition, education policy making. Across these eras, India’s cultural domains have long thrown up strong boundaries to some aspects of transference to and from “outside,” while other education trajectories post-1947 in global medical education, in particular, are strongly predicated on colonial transnationalism.
Keywords
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- 1.
Catherine Hall, At Home with the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
- 2.
Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia Grimshaw, and Stuart Macintyre, eds., Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007).
- 3.
This was even though Eurasians were recognized in the 1947 Indian constitution.
- 4.
André Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
- 5.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
- 6.
Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (London: Back Bay Books, 2002).
- 7.
Anata Kumar Giri, “Within and Beyond Lineages of History: Transpositional Border Crossing of Roots and Routes, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Challenges of Planetary Realizations” (keynote address, Conference India Looking East: Lineages of Interactions, Southeast Asia and East Asia, Calcutta University, January 19, 2017).
- 8.
Lakshmi Subramanian, “Tamils and Greater India: Some Issues of Connected Histories,” Cultural Dynamics 24, nos. 2–3 (2012): 159–174.
- 9.
Chakrabarty, Habitations of Modernity, 28.
- 10.
Raewyn Connell, Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2007).
- 11.
For a deeper reading of the upshot of the subaltern theoretical legacy see Jim Masselos, “The Dis/appearance of Subalterns: A Reading of a Decade of Subaltern Studies,” in Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia, ed. David Ludden (London: Anthem Press, 2002), 187–212.
- 12.
See “Statement made by Minister of Human Resource Development,” 1986/1992, National Council of Education Research and Training, accessed April 8, 2017, http://www.ncert.nic.in/oth_anoun/npe86.pdf.
- 13.
The Right to Education (RTE) Act, implemented in 2010 in India, makes compulsory elementary education the right of every Indian child between the ages of 6 and 14. Despite problems regarding its implementation, the Act mandates that private schools reserve 25% of their enrolments for children whose parents are unable to pay fees, the cost of which is reimbursed by government.
- 14.
Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978).
- 15.
Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
- 16.
Dipesh Chakrabarty, The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
- 17.
Krishna Kumar, The Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Coland Nationalist Ideas (New Delhi: Sage, 1991).
- 18.
Christopher A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- 19.
Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
- 20.
Hayden Bellenoit, Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860–1920 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007).
- 21.
K. S. Bharathi, The Thoughts of Gandhi and Vinoba: A Comparative Study (New Delhi: Ashok Kumar Mittal, 1995), 135–136.
- 22.
Robert A. Huttenback, Gandhi in South Africa (London: Cornell University Press, 1971), 281–282.
- 23.
Tiruppur Subrahmanya Avinashilingam, Gandhiji’s Experiments in Education (New Delhi: Government of India, 1960), 21. For Hindu beliefs regarding the “right hand” worship of God as “Mother,” favoring spirituality over material prosperity, see Sudhir Kakar, The Inner World: A Psycho-analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978).
- 24.
Bal Ram Nanda, Gokhale: The Indian Moderates and the British Raj (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1977).
- 25.
Gail Omvedt, Feminism and the Women’s Movement of India (Mumbai: SNDT Women’s University, 1987), 9–10.
- 26.
Partha Mukherji, “Sex and Social Structure,” in Socialisation Education and Women: Explorations in Gender Identity, ed. Karuna Chanana (New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1988), 35–36.
- 27.
Antoinette Burton, At the Heart of Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
- 28.
Padma Anagol, The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Suruchi Thapar-Björkert, Women in the Indian National Movement (London: Sage, 2006).
- 29.
Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 61, 78.
- 30.
William Adam, “Reports on the State of Education in Bengal 1835 and 1838…,” repr. in Reports on the State of Education in Bengal 1835 and 1838, ed. A. Basu (Calcutta: Govt. Printing, 1944).
- 31.
W. Arnold, “Abstract Statement of Female Schools Established in the Punjab in the Year 1857/8,” Education [Report], July 31, 1858, nos. 131–158, Punjab Secretariat Archives, Anarkali’s Tomb.
- 32.
Lancelot Wilkinson, A Brief Notice of the Late Mr. Lancelot Wilkinson of the Bombay Civil Service with His Opinions on the Education of Natives of India and on the State of Native Society (Cornhill: Smith, Elder and Co., 1853).
- 33.
Bellenoit, Missionary Education.
- 34.
For a translation of Vedic medical practice and diagnosis, see Mridula Saha, History of Indian Medicine Based on Vedic Literature (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1999).
- 35.
Muhammad Umair Mushtaq, “Public Health in British India: A Brief Account of the History of Medical Services and Disease Prevention in Colonial India,” Indian Journal of Community Medicine 34, no. 1 (2009): 6–14.
- 36.
CMS Annual Report, 1925–1926, page 129, Main Library, Birmingham University, XCMS/B/OMS/I1/G2/0.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London: T. Payne and Son, 1789).
- 39.
The East India Company was essentially a British trading company with a broader governance remit, that included the military, to secure increasing British territorial annexation on the subcontinent. It was replaced with direct colonial rule from Westminster via the India Office in 1858 in the wake of the Great Revolt a year earlier.
- 40.
“Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Constitution and Working of the Lawrence Military Asylums in India,” 1871, Appendix, vi, page 9, Oriental and India Office Collection, L/Mil/17/5/2295.
- 41.
Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
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Allender, T. (2019). Transnationalism and the Engagement of Empire: Precursors of the Postcolonial World. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (eds) The Transnational in the History of Education. Global Histories of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1_5
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