Have they no godfathers? Educational innovation, identity politics and the role of District Educational Councils in South India

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Ellis, Catriona (2025) Have they no godfathers? Educational innovation, identity politics and the role of District Educational Councils in South India. Paedagogica Historica. pp. 1-17. ISSN 1477-674X (https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2025.2556022)

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Abstract

This paper considers the role of the District Educational Councils (DECs) in expanding educational provision in the south of India in the 1920s and 1930s. The DECs were intended to provide a central co-ordinating body at a local level which would harness the enthusiasm of social reformers to work alongside state and municipal educational authorities to increase educational provision for Tamil children. The DECs gave new opportunities for philanthropists, teachers, parents and policy-makers to take responsibility for finance, taxation and school management and to influence the nature of the expansion of compulsory education in local areas. This paper traces the twenty-year history of the policy, considering its aims, the successes in pushing for greater educational provision, and the limitations of using local elites to administer and encourage reforms which were usually assumed to be the responsibility of the state. The DECs, as a devolved structure of educational administration, were distinctive in British India, a uniqueness that was consistently emphasised in the education reports of the period. While generally forgotten by scholars, they raise interesting questions around regional difference, the possibilities and constraints of innovation in the provinces, the role of local elites in the education of children and the complex intersections of transnational flows of information, local educational structures and Tamil identity politics.

ORCID iDs

Ellis, Catriona ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7423-8335;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)