The State,Education and Inequality in Contemporary India: An Intersectional Exploration

Introduction

Social justice is an imperative in social and political life. It is an indisputable right, guaranteed by the Constitution, and a part of every individual’s aspiration for a meaningful life. In recent years, there has been the emergence of a new kind of neo-liberal India where the boundaries of distinction and, contrarily, inclusion, have been modified, or reproduced through encounters with ‘modernity’ or, contrarily, with tradition. The nation state remains central in this encounter as it sets the regulatory discourse, including boundaries, enclosures, as well as the liberatory parameters, in all aspects of governmentality. Tradition with caste, gender and religious prejudice also holds its own in a society marked by division, hierarchy, patriarchy and political ideologies about what is considered appropriate or necessary for the social well-being of India. However, India is not always viewed as a cohesive, unified whole. ¹ This fragmented social reality is viewed as being the outcome of political decisions made in the past and in current times, there is an effort to redress the ‘wrongs’ made by past dispensations through a focus on a particular form of identity politics. This inevitably results in further cleavages and social justice therefore evades the most vulnerable, and the excluded, who remain at the margins of the attempts to rewrite the social fabric.

The state plays a crucial role in not only the provision of equal access to educational institutions but also the resources and infrastructure for enabling practices and processes that ensure social justice. In a different context, Abdelmalek Sayad has argued that there are exhibits of ‘certain constants’ (emphasis in original) that inhere in and through the state. These may be social, economic, juridical and political and constitute a common basis which is ‘both a product and an objectification of “state thought”’ (2010, p. 165). The idea of ‘state-thought’ as influencing and in fact shaping the character of education, and its institutions, in India is indisputable. The Indian education system is one of the largest in the world with over 1.5 million schools, 8.5 million teachers and 250 million children from varied socio-economic backgrounds (GoI, MHRD, 2017–2018). This presages an enormous responsibility on the state and all stakeholders to ensure not just the availability of educational institutions and the quality of the education being transacted but also on equitable educational practices and processes to make the educational lived experience of children and young adults worthy of their aspirations.

Although state-thought forms and in fact determines the structure of institutions, it is also a reflection of society and social relations that inhere in society. Educational institutions in particular are microcosms of society and reflect the divisions, hierarchies, and attitudes that prevail as social ‘norms’, shaped by tradition, assumptions and a host of prevalent stereotypes that are inherent in social relations. Apart from these cultural factors, the socio-economic and political trajectory of a society’s development also shapes inequalities in educational institutions. For example, the crisis in India over the proposed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the controversies it has given rise to regarding the citizen status of people, especially those belonging to certain religions, has given rise to fears about citizenship. ² This has resulted in persisting anxieties about identity and place, location and nationality, and diversity. There is no doubt that identity politics and crises in identity are experienced in educational institutions as much as they are in society. Gender and sexuality, as much as social class, religion and caste, are central to this experience. Needless to say, this does not augur well for education which is meant to be a liberatory force, but in its very practice, and the processes that are adopted in educational institutions, ends up reproducing inequalities. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) have famously argued about the reproduction of social inequalities through education and Bourdieu (1974) has particularly emphasised the role of the school as a ‘conservative force’. The most significant contribution Bourdieu has made in this context is his view that educational institutions and the processes in them ‘transform pre-existing social inequalities into natural inequality’ (Bourdieu, 2008, p. 144). ³ There is an invisibility transposed upon social inequalities thereby resulting in our viewing them as natural and given in any society: ‘The educational system thus contributes to legitimising economic and social inequalities by giving a social order based on the transmission of economic and—still more so—cultural capital the appearance of an order based on educational merit and individual gifts’ (Bourdieu, 2008, p. 38). This is the most damning aspect of education that naturalises inequalities thereby resulting in their legitimacy, acceptance and subsequent reproduction.

It is however impossible to dismiss aspects of education that open up the possibilities for agency, for individuals to take decisions and exercise choice, as well as the opening up of livelihood opportunities. The value of education, especially in the lives of those who lack access to social goods, is marginalised and excluded, and cannot be dismissed. Education does reproduce existing inequalities and serves the interests of the upper echelons of society. At the same time, individuals do seek to exercise agency in whatever manner they can, despite the limitations and constraints of society. The hegemonic status quo is not maintained at all times. In a developing society as ours, where caste, religion and gender inequalities, among others, are persistent, despite access to education, it is therefore prudent to argue, as I have done elsewhere, that education liberates, even as it constrains. This allows for the interplay between structural and social limitations as well as for the possibility for a movement away from the constraining aspects of social life (Thapan, 2015b). In the words of the anthropologist, Michael Jackson, ‘Though individuals speak, act and work toward belonging to a world of others, they simultaneously strive to experience themselves as world makers’ (Jackson, 1998, p. 8). This is a view that is essential to understanding social change and to how it is possible to view education as a transformative process.

This reflective essay examines the fractured social reality and lived educational experience through an intersectional lens. ⁴ While social inequalities are present in education, there is a need to unpack why certain categories of citizens, more than others experience the inequality within educational institutions. These categories may be shaped for example by caste, class, religion, gender. However, to view individuals only within a caste, religious, or gender category essentialises not only identity but, being based on an identity, experience too, and further results in the reproduction of identities and experience as fixed and immutable. We therefore need to move outside understanding experience from an identity perspective to one that considers the wholeness of experience, based on a multitude of intersecting factors and categories. We may consider the question: ‘how is the lived experience of individuals connected to the virtual realities of tradition, history, culture, and the biology of the species that outrun the life of any one person ?’ (ibid., p. 3). While experience no doubt is personal, it is shaped by factors such as social class, location, ethnicity, caste, and other factors. In turn, experience informs our view of the world, the manner in which we look out at the world, whether as deeply fractured and exclusionary or as inclusive, and a multi-layered social reality. This further underscores our relationship to the world. It would not be an understatement to argue that our varied, complex and deeply personal experience of inequalities extends and further perpetuates the divide between us and the social world we inhabit.

Based on secondary material, this article seeks to unpack the educational experience of three categories with a focus on religion, caste and gender, respectively. I have selected these categories as they are the most visible and permeate social lives in India with such vigour and zeal, and remain embedded in the consciousness of individuals, whether or not they are agents of the state. Caste and gender differences have troubled the Indian psyche and social experience across religions in India. Patriarchy is central to women’s experience as is their caste status. Belonging to the lowest caste, being a woman or transperson, and having a particular religious identity, are all aspects of inequality. ⁵ Poverty exacerbates the experience and further pushes the human subject into marginal spaces that are difficult to exit. Regional and linguistic disparities are also prevalent and may push individuals, and whole communities, out of the ‘mainstream’ educational discourse. At the same time, it is apparent that even within the categories there is an interplay of difference such that one aspect of identity alone is not framing educational experience. There are a host of influencing factors, the most significant being the state, its role, and that of its agents and functionaries.

The state, and state-thought, that shapes educational policy, plans financial outlays and seeks their implementation, no doubt pays attention to some of these inequalities. However, there is a fragmentation in approach, as well as implementation. There is no point for example in having a new curricular framework unless there is an effort to simultaneously train or re-train in-service teachers in new pedagogies, textbooks, and social attitudes. With Bourdieu, I would like to pose the question, ‘are the values applied by teachers themselves socially neutral?…How could teachers not deploy the values of their milieu of origin in their manner of teaching and way of judging, even and above all unknowingly?’ (Bourdieu, 2008, pp. 37–38). ⁶ Bringing about an awareness and understanding among teachers about current social realities, the debates and shifts in the discourse around gender identity, the traumas inflicted on children and young adults who are excluded because of gender, caste, class, religious or other identities, all need to be part of the state agenda. The state has not only the primary responsibility, towards it citizenry, for providing basic education for all but to also ensure that it is grounded in equality, in both policy perspective and importantly, in implementation on the ground. This is only possible if the complete picture of the educational reality in the country is taken into account and addressed in a holistic manner through multiple strategies. The primary task is of state functionaries who must imbibe the impetus for change and be willing partners in the push for progress that does not focus on academic results alone but is equally emphatic about the well-being of students and teachers. The educator who is in charge of children’s and young adults’ development, both in terms of educational growth as well as, importantly, mental health, must have the capacities and capabilities, as well as the physical infrastructure, and resources, to complete their educational tasks. The state must also work in conjunction with civil society and other stakeholders, in a planned, organised and attainable approach, for transformative education.

Education Today: Some Indicators

In the aftermath of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, despite the Right to Education Act (2009), education in India is abysmal disarray. The grim reality is that despite their desire for education, children cannot and do not stay in school. It is not enough to argue that the state must provide free and compulsory education to all which some children, especially girls, do not access due to a number of factors. The truth is that every child has a right to education ‘India’s children require the right not just to free and compulsory education, but the right to free and compulsory equal education. Only this would be a true and comprehensive public good’ (Bhatty et al., 2014, p. 45). In this context, it may unequivocally be argued that the state has failed to deliver.

The recent Annual Status of Educational Report (ASER) 2022 findings, based on a rural household survey, are encouraging to the extent that the enrolment of children in 6–14 age group has increased from 97.2% in 2018 to 98.4% in 2022. The enrolment of girls in school has also been noteworthy. Apart from the state of Uttar Pradesh, the all India figure for 11–14-year-old girls not enrolled in school stands at 2%, down from 10.1% in 2006, and 4.1% in 2018 (ASER 2022). ⁷ These figures are very encouraging and point to a positive development in the enrolment of children in this age group. There is also an effort to improve quality of education, including teacher training, and other methods, to make learning more effective for children. However, we need to consider the educational lived experience of different categories of children at educational institutions to understand whether or not all our children and youth receive an equitable educational experience across genders, social class, religion, caste, ethnic and regional identities.

Recent findings indicate that despite access to education and ease of availability, equality within education remains the privilege of the upper caste, socially mobile, and those belonging to majority populations. The experience of minority children and young adults is also fraught and mired in various state norms and complex social and cultural attitudes that affect students’ retention in educational institutions. The latter for example play a significant role in the retention of young women in educational institutions leading to illiteracy among women, poor employment patterns, and lack of opportunity for personal growth. A recent study (Rammohan & Vu, 2018), based on World Development Indicators, points to the alarming trend of decreasing gender literacy among women in India (74% in the 15–24 age group) as compared to other South Asian countries. In Nepal and Bangladesh, the figure stands at 78%. Undoubtedly, social norms and practices are not merely linked but ‘strongly associated with women’s educational attainment’ (ibid., p. 144). These social norms are connected to marriage practices, residence rules, and factors such as caste, religion, women’s years of schooling all of which serve to emphasise the preference for male children/men over female children/women. In addition, the authors find a difference in these norms between the northern and southern regions of India. For example, in the North, ‘the gender gap in education is 25.95%, compared to 9.12% in the South. The North appears also to have greater gender bias in terms of sex ratios at birth where, for every 1,000 male births, there are only 873.86 female children, compared to 944.52 in the South’ (ibid., p. 156). There are a host of factors that perhaps lead to these differences but the fact remains that gender continues to be an important factor affecting lived educational experience. This experience is further exacerbated by religion and caste.

Challenges of Being a Muslim Woman in Educational Institutions in ‘Modern’ India

The role of the state in the process of creating or reproducing differences can be detrimental to the educational experience of the young. The state is a significant player in upholding Constitutional norms and submitting to ideological propaganda of different groups, for example, may destroy existing educational processes that enable the participation of women in higher education. In 2022, the hijab controversy in educational institutions in the state of Karnataka has played a distinct role in the educational experience of Muslim young women. The Karnataka hijab row began at the government Pre-University College for Girls, the single all women’s college in Udupi, Karnataka. For local residents of Udupi, it is an institute where students from poor and lower middle-class families can access good pre-university education. Being an all-women institution, conservative families do not hesitate to send their daughters for higher education. There are a total of around 1,000 students at this particular institution of whom 95 are Muslims (Kalasa, 2022). The majority of students come from nearby villages, roughly within a 5–10 km radius. Muslim women were suddenly prevented from entering college premises wearing the hijab; this was not easily accepted by the affected students and there was a protest by six students which spread to other colleges in Karnataka through social media (ibid.). ⁸

Kept out from the college premises, the women took part in individual and collective acts of resistance against the order, unfortunately, unable to shake off the new regulation, that appeared to be ideologically and politically motivated. The Karnataka High Court order in February 2022 has banned the use of headscarves in classrooms and further prevented these young women from an educational experience. They could no longer pursue their aspirations for higher education, achieved after a great struggle with personal and familial circumstances, and are now forced to stay at home. By disallowing young Muslim women wearing the hijab in the college classrooms, and thereby, denying access to institutions of higher education in Udupi and other places in Karnataka, Muslim women have lost their right to education. ⁹

According to one news analysis, with reference to a young Muslim woman:

But Sayed is angry that she had been robbed of her dream. ‘I am not meant to be stuck inside these four walls,’ she said, glancing around at the bright yellow walls of her bedroom, as she cradled her four-year-old son in her arms. ‘There must have been a reason why my mother gave birth to me, right?’ she added. ‘It couldn’t have been to just slog it out in the kitchen and scrub the bathrooms.’ (Deeksha, 2023)

This narrative poignantly brings out the determination women have in seeking out education and the harrowing depths to which they are plunged when it is denied for no fault of theirs. Sartorial choice is one of the privileges of higher educational institutions and has never been in dispute except when it concerns women belonging to a particular category. This is an essentialisation of women’s identity and a blatant refusal to view them as citizens with an equal right to access education.

The problem of headscarves in an educational institution arose in 2022 but it has been present in some form of discrimination in educational spaces for some time now. The Sachar Committee Report (2006) informs us that Muslim women in burqas and hijab had already complained of experiencing difficulties in institutions such as schools, hospitals, and in accessing public services. At the same time, this assertion of identity, viewed as problematic by the state in Karnataka and now elsewhere, is based on Muslim women’s experience in the public domain:

Women, sometimes of their own volition, sometimes because of community pressure, adopt visible markers of community identity on their person and in their behaviour. Their lives, morality, and movement in public spaces are under constant scrutiny and control. A gender-based fear of the ‘public’, experienced to some degree by all women, is magnified manifold in the case of Muslim women. The lines between ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe spaces’ become rigid. The community and its women withdraw into the safety of familiar orthodoxies, reluctant to participate in the project of modernity, which threatens to blur community boundaries. (ibid.)

The education of Muslim children and youth is already circumscribed and they fall in the lowest category, below the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe populations. The all-India enrolment of Muslim students in institutions of higher education is 2,100,860 in total, as compared to the 2,156,109 among the Scheduled Tribes, 5,657,672 among the Scheduled Castes, and 14,249,114 among the Other Backward Classes (AISHE, GoI., 2020). According to the AISHE, GoI. (2020) report, only 5.5% of the total enrolled students are Muslims, with more women than men students. Muslim women seek out higher education despite being disadvantaged by familial pressure and social attitudes, to study only in all girls’ institutions. ¹⁰ In the state of Karnataka, the enrolment of Muslims in higher education 2019–2020 was 144,511 in total, with 69,313 women (ibid., 2020). These women stand to be disadvantaged if Karnataka insists on their removal from college premises for wearing head scarves. ¹¹

The articulation of state-thought appears to rest on ideological premises, with little compassion or sensitivity towards members of disadvantaged communities who struggle to first gain an education and then find employment, against all odds. There is also a political angle to such decisions which serve the agenda of particular agents of the state, ignoring the interests of educational institutions and the right to equal access for all. ¹² In addition, while we may view this situation in the context of Muslim women alone, as it affects their participation in educational institutions, their exclusion is nonetheless educating others in the same institutions about identity and the politics around identity. This is done by creating divisions among the student body, by shaping ideas about what is the legimate form of dress especially for women, about who may be included and who must be excluded. This creation of differentiation feeds into the already existing divides of class, gender, and religion and further sows seeds of identity distinction, and thereby disparity, among students. Thus state-thought serves to reproduce social divisions through education, which is in fact meant to produce morally upright citizens for the future. Such citizens imbued with a divisive mind-set will perhaps further seek to create a future that will be devastating in its acrimonious and conflict-ridden character. ¹³

There is a skewed relationship between caste, gender, social class, minority status and educational equality. Access to education for girls and young women is not a new problem and inadequate access has been witnessed in the past due to a number of material and cultural constraints. At one level, state-thought suggests modalities of inclusion based precisely on gender, ¹⁴ and on the other hand, does not hesitate to exclude women based on the most trivial of reasons, primarily to fulfil ideological or political pressures. At the same time, there are a host of cultural and social factors that inhibit women’s equal participation in the education sector as students. Such forms of exclusion extend to other categories as well, most importantly, those based on caste and gender.

Afflictions of Caste and Gender

Caste is endemic to India. The relationship between caste and gender ensures the perpetuation of caste divisions. As is well known, caste endures primarily through the practice of endogamy, and purity is maintained through the woman’s body, by restricting marriage and regulating women’s sexuality. Patriarchy is the overarching paradigm as both caste and gender shape and submit to patriarchal norms and practices. Caste always ‘therefore functions within a rigidly gendered space’. This gendered caste space is also intersected by a class space and together these form and maintain women’s lived experience within particular caste and class groups (Ghosh & Banerjee, 2019, p. 6). Although young girls and women are particularly burdened by caste-based oppression in diverse ways, within the domestic sphere, and by upper caste men, at educational institutions, the workplace and elsewhere, men are also not exempt from the violence, humiliation and exclusion they have experienced in educational institutions.

Although rural India continues to exhibit caste consciousness and exclusion, it is assumed that it is less prevalent in urban India where modernity appears to have overtaken caste consciousness through globalisation and its outcomes. This however is a misnomer as the prevalence of caste-based attitudes, distancing practices, and acute caste consciousness is vividly present in urban India as well. ¹⁵ The enduring presence of casteism in higher education institutions in urban India is reflected in the spate of death by suicide by low caste students. It was doctoral student Rohith Vemula’s death by suicide (in 2015 at the Central University of Hyderabad) that rocked the higher education establishment, highlighting its lethargy and insensitivity in dealing with Dalit students’ problems on an ongoing basis. In 2019, the death by suicide of a woman doctor Payal Tadvi in a well-known medical college in Mumbai further underscored the continuing issue of discrimination, isolation and sheer callousness towards young Dalit professionals, which drives them to hopelessness and despair. Yet, peers, teachers and management often collude, and through their prejudice, and sheer neglect, there is a total lack of effort to redress the problem. This exclusionary process drives educated young Dalits to the edge. A recent case is that of a young Dalit student at the Medical College associated with the King Edward Hospital, Mumbai who has filed a FIR against his peers and is awaiting justice (The Quint Staff, 2022). The death by suicide of a Dalit student in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai in February 2023 is a further instance of abuse that could not be tolerated any longer. ¹⁶

Such cases are evidence of the persistence of caste discrimination in educational institutions despite the Constitution, legal safeguards, civil society initiatives and youth-led social movements. Above all, their own educational achievement, which Dalits work to realise against all odds, often do not meet with the deserved success due to the persistence of caste-based discrimination and violence against them. ¹⁷

Humiliation of the victims appears to be a strong motivation on the part of the perpetrators, all members of upper castes, and actions include physical violence, berating youth in higher education about their ‘privilege’ in accessing education through reservation, refusal to allow full participation in all activities, and all forms of verbal taunts and abuse to ensure complete abjection and despair. The Constitution has failed to protect the SCs and STs and, apart from the practice of endogamy and caste-based prejudice among the upper castes, there is rampant caste consciousness among the agents of the state, the police, who often fail to accept reports, are dismissive of them, and deny the victims recourse to the law.

The experience of Dalit children in schools bears witness to this humiliation and exclusion. ¹⁸ It has been observed that Dalit autobiographies focus on their experience in school as the school functions as ‘a transitional space between childhood in the village, portrayed as a place of unchanging oppression and minimal opportunity’ and their adult life in a city or elsewhere (Beth, 2007, p. 549). ¹⁹ The educational experience of Dalit children is therefore critical to understanding their emergence from the home into the public space where education is valued as a source having the potential to equip them with the skills and knowledge that can free them from the oppression they have faced so far. The school reproduces society through the organisation and content of the curriculum and through discursive modes of interaction and communication. This is borne out by the manner in which schools across the country conduct themselves vis-à-vis low caste and children from impoverished and marginalised families. Dalits form around 16.6% of India’s population; the 2011 census recorded nearly 20.14 crore people belonging to various scheduled castes in the country. Although the Dalit literacy figures are 66.1% as compared to 73% of the total population, Dalit children experience discrimination, exclusion and marginalisation at school that results in heavy dropout figures (Census of India, 2011). Dalit girl children experience the greatest forms of exclusion and have very low motivation to continue in schools. They are asked to sweep the school premises, clean toilets, sit and eat separately, drink water separately; they are also abused and humiliated. The educational experience of Dalit children is therefore critical to understanding their emergence from the home into the public space where education is valued as a source having the potential to equip them with the skills and knowledge that can free them from the oppression they have faced so far. Their struggle for an equal education is linked to their fight for equal rights, dignity, and well-being. ‘Dalits did not fight merely to attend school or to obtain employment; their agenda went beyond that. Education was for dignity, empowerment, self-help, emancipation and community uplift’ (Paik, 2014, p. 82). Enrolment and participation in educational processes for Dalits is about being ‘educated’ as opposed to being illiterate and Dalit. On the basis of fieldwork among the Manupur chamars near Banaras, Ciotti (2006) refers to ‘education as leading to the acquisition of a substance, often of a moral nature, which is seen as collectively shared (even though it is actually acquired by a minority) and believed to act upon an inherited Chamar substance’ (2006, p. 900). The latter is characterised by ritual impurity, and has been bolstered by untouchability practices, denying agency to the Dalit. Hence, the imperative to acquire education, ‘cultural capital’ as Bourdieu (1986) put it, is to remove the stigma of an essentialised caste identity. Inspiration for the faith in education as delivering Dalits from the curse of identity came from Ambedkar himself who argued that it could be used as a means ‘of intellectual liberation from the tentacles of a Brahmanical mythology’ (as cited in ibid., p. 905). The perception among Dalits therefore is not only about being successful in terms of status deriving from occupation but of being empowered by education to transcend a caste identity that ascribes a low status to them. This aspiration is however not always successfully met due to the continuity of caste prejudice within educational institutions and in the public domain in one form or another.

The category of the Musahars community in Bihar lies at the bottom of the hierarchy among untouchables. The state Mahadalit Commission’s interim report states that Bihar has nearly 2.2 million Musahars. However, according to local activists, the population of Musahars is not less than 3 million in Bihar. About 96.3% of them are landless and 92.5% work as farm labour. Literacy rates among this community, which upper caste Hindus still consider untouchable, is only 9.8%, the lowest among Dalits in the country (Khan, 2017). Despite higher literacy figure provided by Khan (2017), a report by the SC and ST Welfare Department of the Government of Bihar (2012) cites the literacy rate among the Musahars as 4.6% which is the lowest of all Scheduled or Mahadalit castes in the state. Although the parents, especially women, express the desire to educate their children, Musahar children are left out of the educational provisions due to the exclusion they experience in educational institutions and the complete lack of faith in their abilities by the teaching establishment at the local level. ²⁰ As a result, they often internalise the sense of failure and violence that they experience (Sahay, 2019). Lack of education ‘practically seals off their fate and banishes the Musahars to a life of labour and servitude’ (Hassan, 2014). Social inequalities are therefore perpetuated by educational institutions which, despite Constitutional provisions and the RTE Act (2009), are unable to provide a culture of inclusivity and sensitivity towards the community. ²¹ While their living conditions, poverty and social exclusion are the root cause of the Musahars’ inability to access education or stay on at school, the neglect by the state cannot be overemphasised. There is a 100% drop out rate of Musahar children from school education (Khan, 2017). Being well aware of the problems in schools where teachers and upper caste students’ attitudes and anti-low caste behaviour push Musahar children out of school, the state has failed to intervene with programmes to educate and sensitise the former and to help the Musahar children to stay on in school. Such a failure points to casteism in the state discourse itself which filters down to local actors at the ground level. There is a lack of governance and efforts to redress the challenges being faced by this community hardly exist on the ground. ²² It is an appalling situation that needs urgent intervention if India is going to project itself, as it does, as a great democracy with a growing economy and the promise of an egalitarian future.

Such a future also rests on the equitable treatment of transgender persons, increasingly in larger numbers, in social and public spaces including educational institutions. Despite the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, the transgender community in India continues to faces severe discrimination in all walks of life. ²³ In educational institutions as well, transgender children and young adults find themselves in difficult conditions, facing discrimination from teachers and their peers. Chacko and Narrain (2014) bring to our attention the harrowing experiences of ‘adolescent transpeople (at a time when it becomes evident that they are “different”)’ that ‘include being segregated, harassed, bullied, and even sexually abused by both teachers and students’ (ibid., 2014, p. 193). Despite the POCSO Act (2012), and persistent problems around sex education and sexuality at school, many teachers and management are hesitant to have a discussion around concerns around gender and sexuality.

It is a herculean task to bring about an awareness among teachers and students regarding the anxieties, dilemmas, and challenges being faced by adolescent transpeople. Some schools that have sought to address the issue head-on have faced flak from the parents of students at school and the general public for ‘brainwashing’ students about gender identity politics. ²⁴ The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in Delhi was forced to withdraw a Manual on the ‘Inclusion of Transgender Children in School Education: Concerns and Roadmap’ that it had prepared for sensitising teachers and students. NCERT removed it from its website in November 2019, after the National Council for the Protection of Child Rights protested against the Manual. However, also in 2019, newspapers report that with training and awareness exercises in Delhi, 27 schools, including 25 government schools, have been certified as ‘trans-friendly’. ²⁵ Bullying of children who are ‘different’ is expected to go down and a more inclusive culture has sought to be inculcated in such schools. It is not clear to what extent this intervention is working in these schools as the outcome remains unstudied and therefore unknown. The state has not provided any direction for the inclusion of adolescent transpeople in government and/or private schools or of a clear policy on gender inclusivity in education. It remains the work of civil society and social activists seeking equality in educational practice. One such initiative was the starting of a school (Sahaj International) for transgender students by transgender activists in Kerala in 2016. It did not however gain much success for a number of reasons including continuing discrimination, lack of management, and is now used as a shelter and hostel by transpeople. ²⁶ It is not easy therefore to deal with difference in educational institutions when it is so clearly marked on the bodies of those who are othered whether these are differences based on gender, caste or religion. There is a tendency to continue to see the pattern that emphasises privilege, entitlement, upper caste, heteronormative, majoritarian identities as being the only truth and everything else lying outside it therefore not worthy of either attention or inclusion.

In this section, I have argued that educational institutions are thwarted in their goals by social and cultural prejudices among teachers, management, parents, and children against some sections of society who are marginal to what is considered mainstream. Caste, class, gender and, increasingly, religious identity are the primary lens through which educational policy implementation and educational institutions function. For policy to be effective on the ground, there must first and foremost be a willingness to eschew all forms of cultural and social othering and focus on an equal education for all, regardless of students’ attributes, identities, or other aspects that lead to difference. This is possible when there is an attempt to understand, with compassion, sensitivity and respect, the lived experience of those who, despite all their supposedly different characteristics, are equal citizens of this country.

Conclusion: Significance of Voice as Agency

From time to time, with pressure from civil society and social movements that emphasise social justice for all, the state attempts to implement legal safeguards for the protection of minority populations. Such efforts are not always equitable in their distribution or in their implementation and as we have seen, there are strategic possibilities that lend themselves to greater and greater violation, often by agents of the state themselves. These need to be questioned, rallied against, and the call for justice must be the heartbeat of every citizen’s cry for social well-being.

The minimum starting point for any functioning democracy is ‘voice’ and the exercise of voice as a critical thinker and citizen. It is the task of education to create not a culture of silence, in the name of classroom management, but rather, encourage and enable the articulation of voice and agency. Students in schools and higher education institutions must be able to exercise their voice when they comprehend an anti-democratic act that violates the basic principles of justice. Such voice, and its articulation, is essential for the robust functioning of democracy. We cannot sit back and hope that democracy will somehow flourish on its own steam, that it so much part of the social fabric that it will endure across generations. For such a democracy to prevail, the cultivation and articulation of voice in all our educational institutions is essential. I am not here referring to the blind repetition of political slogans, or of personal rants against particular points of view, because that is merely the cry of one ideological dispensation against another. It is voice as representative of democracy that is the agent of transformation in any society. The teacher must first have this voice before students can understand and learn what the significance of voice is in their own lives and in their responsibility as citizens. It is the responsibility of every educational institution, government or private, to empower teachers and students to have this voice by allowing it to thrive in the prevailing culture of the institution. This is not an ideal to be aspired to but an imperative that all educational institutions must embody in their functioning as spaces for personal growth and social change. The reality is that most educational institutions in India, especially at the elementary and secondary levels, encourage children to be passive learners, quietly repeating the textbook, and hardly questioning social, political or economic inequities. ²⁷

In such a context, it is imperative that we seek to build the voices of citizens for seeking out an equitable future. The state must be compelled to face the future of unemployment, rootlessness and anxieties that the lack of educational access will perpetuate. The transformation can only come about if we enable children and young adults to articulate their distress and seek out change through voice and agency without fear of retribution, or of further exclusion, as might sometimes be the case. It is possible that eventually there will be change if we are persistent and emphatic in our articulation, expression and insistence for an inclusive and equitable education.