Decolonizing the Banjara Education Space: A Participatory Reflexive Initiative in Rural India

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Anticolonial Resistance and Knowledge-Based Systems (Table 2)

Abstract

The recent National Education Policy in India has stressed the use of mother tongue as a language of instruction, an effort to move away from English, to decolonize educational spaces (NEP, 2020). However, mother tongue at the school level is equated with the official language of each state, further colonizing marginalized communities with different home language like the Laman Banjara. The Banjara students have a high drop-out rate, partly due to traumatic early schooling experience due to language difference. We describes the experience of designing and conducting Anandshala (school of joy), an ongoing program in collaboration with the Banjara community, that reimagines educational spaces that are inclusive, respect and celebrate the language of the community, and their ways of living.

Author

• Devayani Tirthali, Independent Researcher and Evaluator