Indian Education In India

CHAPTER - I

INTRODUCTION

“History has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the commercial man, the man of limited purpose. This process aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion and power causing the upset of man’s moral balance, obscuring his human side under the shadow of soul-less organization.”- Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, 1917.

Aristotle felt that the purpose of education is to create a sound mind in a sound body. Great educators in the past have explained the term “Education” as the art of “leading out” which means education is to draw out rather than to put in the whole of education. It is an intellectual,

Ancient education was monopolistic in nature as it gave specific privileges to certain communities while depriving the others to have access to education. Ancient Indian education was in the hands of Brahmins who inculcated for thousands of years a sense of spirituality and religious values. The primary aim of education was to instill into the minds of pupils a spirit of being pious and religious for the glory of God. The pursuit of knowledge was a pursuit of religious values. Terms such as knowledge, awakening, humility, modesty, etc were often used to characterize education in Vedic period. Education was regarded as the source of light and the uneducated person as an ignorant beast. The other objectives of Vedic education in ancient India were worship of God, a feeling of religion, formation of character, fulfillment of public and civic duties, and the protection and propagation of national culture. Fire sacrifices, fasting and taking vows became part of

This period can be traced back to the efforts of the Christian missionaries who came to India in the wake of European traders. These missionaries were the Portuguese, the French, the Danish and the English. Their main aim was to spread Christianity among Indians. Initially they established educational institutions to preach the principles of Christianity. The institutions that they built were all on the Western model. A.N. Basu argues that it was due to the efforts of the missionaries in the early years of nineteenth century that people witnessed an emergence of a new system of education on this country, a system which was different from the old and indigenous system in many