Decay of Village Community and the Decline of Vernacular Education in Bihar and Bengal in the Colonial Era

Abstract

Indigenous elementary schools were in a flourishing state in thousands of villages of Bihar and Bengal until the early decades of the nineteenth century. They were village institutions, maintained by village people, where their children (belonging to all caste clusters and communities) used to receive education and training relevant to the pursuit of their future occupations. Village community and identity quite effectively operated in many contexts of everyday life. However, the colonial policies in respect of education and land control adversely affected both the village structure and the village institutions of secular (elementary) education. The British legal system and the rise of caste consciousness since the second half of the nineteenth century added fuel to the fire. Gradually, village as the base of secular identity and solidarity became too weak to create and maintain its own institution by the end of the nineteenth century. Simultaneously, the British policy skewed in favour of the filtration theory of education since 1835, it seems, worked to block to a significant extent the entry into the middle classes from below.