Sitting on the School Verandah-Ideology of Untouchable Educational Protest and Practice in late 19th century Western India

Abstract

This seminal article analyses late 19th-century Dalit educational initiatives and agency in western India by examining a series of case studies of late 19th-century Dalit school entry protest. The article and its source evidence have subsequently been much cited and paraphrased in other secondary academic texts. The article argues that Dalit educational reform in western India was not driven by high-caste Hindu interventions or primarily by active colonial policy to promote Dalit educational rights of school entry. It indicates that, although some Christian missionary organisations facilitated Dalit educational protest of both Christian or potential Hindu-Christian converts, it was ultimately local Hindu and Christian Dalit agency and protest that led to a growing if hard fought struggle for Dalit children to be admitted to government and missionary schools in late 19th-century western India.