The Role of Post-Colonial Politics in Re-Theorizing India’s National Identity

Abstract

This chapter provides a backdrop to the rest of the book, showing how education became the vehicle that linked neoliberalism with Hindu nationalism and allowed to it permeate Indian society. It opens by explaining the origins of India’s national identity and how the Nehruvian doctrine (Lall, 2001) defined Indian citizens after independence in 1947. It engages with the inclusive nature of this approach, showing how India’s key policies and its Constitution embraced this vision and translated it into the education system. The chapter also engages with the Nehruvian vision for an educated India and the development of a higher education system, and briefly engages with the main education policies and reforms that took place between 1947 and the 1990s. The chapter then turns to the economic reforms of 1991 under the leadership of PM Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, which emerged in an increasingly neoliberal global economic climate. The chapter further examines how the increasingly neoliberal reality led to economic disaggregation and deregulation as well as decentralization, the rise of regional parties, and larger inequalities between India’s north and south.