Role of education in social reform movements in India

Abstract

Education has given a profound shaping impact on an evolving Indian society and it is one of the strongest tools of social reform in modern India. Education also became an important tool for the Indian reformers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to challenge socio-economic evils like caste discrimination, untouchability, child marriage, sati, illiteracy, gender inequality, and religious orthodoxy. Western education brought liberal and rational ideas, which were adjusted by indigenous reformers, to the Indian social world. The reforms of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Jyotirao Phule, Savitribai Phule, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Syed Ahmad Khan, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar all saw education as an instrument for empowerment and social justice. Schools in the colonial period played a role of intellectual and the nationalist transformation of society. As well, women's education, Dalit education and mass literacy movements not only significantly advanced democratization but also brought about substantial changes in India modernizing. This paper examines the history of reforms in education, their connection with social reform movements and how education contributed to establishing an Indian society that was moving forward. The paper similarly studies how colonial education, and the situation of educational inequality in India, is still to be improved in all respects as well as the limitations of this sort of education.