Why do I feel so Indian?

Thoughts on diasporic engagement through education

Suggested Citation: Nainika Dinesh. 2020. 'Why do I feel so Indian?', Think Pieces Series No. 3. Education.SouthAsia (https://educationsouthasia.web.ox.ac.uk/).

Despite spending most of my life outside India—my country of citizenship—I have always felt extremely ‘Indian’. I was born in Bahrain and grew into an adult there but always felt like I belonged to India. I felt a sense of belonging to the geographical territory defined as ‘India’ and deeply felt Tamil and Malayalam language movies. In this paper, I will explore the paradox of feeling attached to a geographical space without spending time in the space itself. The paper asks: what contributed to the production of my strong feelings of belonging to India? Reflecting on personal experiences and using scholarship on education, I show that formal education and curriculum, experiences of educational hierarchies, and racial hierarchies shaped certain ‘Indian’ sensibilities and my diasporic engagement with Indian-ness. My conclusions also shed light on the politics of transnational education, of ‘Indian’ education offered outside India—a subject that has not received a lot of academic attention.

I attended Delhi Public School (DPS) in Bahrain, one of seven schools that followed the Indian Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus and curriculum. My personal experiences, and the school’s curriculum, lessons and routine practices reveal how certain ways of being were taught and learnt. It reveals how ‘education’ and the ‘educated person’ were perceived by the school. DPS is one of the more recent additions to CBSE schools in Bahrain. It was established in 2004 with promises of quality education and impressive student-teacher ratios. The school population comprised mostly of students from Indian backgrounds with a small number of Pakistani and Bahraini students as well. The teaching population of the school had a similar composition to the student population. The school claims its vision is to ‘nurture responsible global citizens’—hinting at some form of ideal ‘international’ citizenship. [i] Our lessons, however, shaped us into ideal ‘Indian’ citizens. The formal syllabus consisted of lessons in Indian history, politics, and languages; Hindi was mandatory for primary grades as a second language; and students chose one of other Indian regional languages (or French) as a third language. Our school-leaving examinations were designed and marked in India. I will not analyse the syllabi here since several scholars have already conducted analyses of Indian school syllabi for its systematic erasure of Dalit histories, Adivasi histories, and the Maoist movement; and for its efforts to teach nationalist histories. [ii] Suffice to say, the ‘India’ we were exposed to in Bahrain and expected to belong to was primarily an upper-caste North India.

Upper-caste Hindu-ness was performed not only in education materials but in the everyday life of my school. Events like ‘Annual Day’ began with the ‘lighting of the traditional lamp’ and an invocation dance dedicated to Hindu god Ganesha. The casual embracing of Hindu rituals went along with the simultaneous—almost contradictory—hailing of ‘secularism’ as an important value of the Indian constitution and Indian society. Scholars like Sanjay Srivastava have pointed out similar contradictions between formal lessons of secularism and actual prevalence of upper-caste symbols and rituals. [iii] By making this observation of a school in Bahrain, I want to point out the ways in which school education contributed to ideas of ‘Indian-ness’ outside India. In addition to images of the ‘ideal Indian citizen’, feelings of patriotism also were generated in this Indian school in Bahrain. At the daily school assembly, students were expected to recite lines familiar to most school-going children in India, “All Indians are my brothers and sisters… To this world and its people, I pledge my devotion”. At the end of the assembly, everyone was expected to sing both the Bahrain National Anthem as well as the Indian national anthem—which acted as a reminder that we were residents of one country but citizens of another. We even hoisted the Indian flag on school grounds every year for India’s Independence Day. These routine practices acted as daily reminders of the country we were expected to love and respect unconditionally. Importantly, as Véronique Bénéï has suggested, feelings of belonging and patriotism needed constant repetition. [iv] Through the combination of formal education and informal everyday learning, feelings of belonging to India were produced outside India.

In addition to activities and lessons that took place within the formal school institution, engagement with other complexities contributed to feelings of belonging to India. The first was an awareness of different ‘schooled populations’ in Bahrain. Not only were there Indian curriculum schools, but also Bahraini schools, American schools and British schools. The students who went to these different categories of schools rarely interacted with each other. That is, students from my school would have plenty of opportunities to meet and interact with students from other Indian schools but rarely meet students from Bahraini, American or British schools. By pointing out these divisions, I want to flag an important hierarchy within education in Bahrain. At the top of the hierarchy were British and American curriculum schools which allowed its students to aim ‘big’. Realities of higher education make the apparent superiority of Western education hyper visible. Several British and American universities do not accept applications from students studying non-Western curriculums. For instance, the London School of Economics does not recognise the Pakistan Higher Secondary School Certificate for undergraduate admissions.[v] UK universities began to accept Indian school certifications for undergraduate admissions in 2014 but the entry requirement for students continues to be very high.[vi] Additionally, British and American universities demand that South Asian students provide TOEFL and IELTS English language tests even if students have attended English-medium schools in South Asia. [vii] Annual ranking systems published by international and media outlets sustain and reinforce the ‘superiority’ of Western education. Naturally then, Indian curriculum schools came second to American and British curriculum schools in the hierarchy among schools in Bahrain.

Indian CBSE curriculum schools were affordable and the preferred option for Bahrain’s big Indian expatriate population. With a student population of over ten thousand divided among seven schools, our awareness of our position vis a vis Western curriculum schools shaped our aspirations. While we took pride in our education, the acknowledgement of Western education as ‘superior’ was prevalent. For instance, I clearly recall being reminded by family and teachers that ‘good English’ was necessary for upward social mobility. I also remember excited conversations in school about CBSE’s decision to introduce an ‘international curriculum’. In its initial phase, the ‘international curriculum’—called CBSE(i)—was introduced as a choice in 50 schools in India and 26 schools outside India. While it did not reach my school, I remember teachers speaking excitedly about the curriculum. Today, one school website claims that the international curriculum trains children to become critical thinkers and develop practical skills to survive in a global world. [viii] This implies that the standard curriculum would not offer the same kind of exposure to global living as the international curriculum would. The tuition fee charged for CBSE (i) students was much higher than the standard CBSE curriculum. One of my friends who went to a school that offered both CBSE(i) and the main CBSE curriculum said that there was a perception in the school that CBSE (i) students were independent thinkers and were more likely to be leaders in the world. Students studying the main curriculum were thought to be ‘rote-learners’ and ‘uncreative’. Exposure to and internalisation of these hierarchies shaped my own aspirations—and the aspirations of my many classmates. It made us hyper aware of our Indian-ness. I was aware that while my classmates and I aspired for higher education and jobs in India, our counterparts in British and American schools aimed for higher education in the US and UK. Indeed, there were hierarchies even among the seven Indian schools (which demands a separate paper), but my aim here is to begin a complicated conversation about the realities of transnational education.

Finally, at the bottom of the artificial hierarchy of education were Bahraini schools, most often government run. Students studying the Bahraini Tawjahiya curriculum are not able to apply to undergraduate courses in several UK and US elite universities. [ix] There are two complex consequences of the hierarchy for students in Bahrain. First, it assumes that Western education is not just ‘superior’ but is also the ubiquitous default. American and British education was not just ‘transnational’ but international. This explains why I am met with surprise when I say I went to an Indian school abroad but students who received British and American education abroad are not met with the same surprise. It also explains why most scholarship on transnational education is on Western education offered in non-Western countries. [x] South Asian education offered outside of South Asia is yet to receive attention as ‘transnational education’. Second, the placement of Indian education above Bahraini education in the artificial hierarchy created a market for and space for Indian curriculum in Bahrain. That is, while Indian education was able to find a place in Bahrain (and other Gulf countries) it was not welcome in Western countries given the apparent ‘higher’ standard of Western education. This is despite the extremely large Indian diasporas in the UK and US. It also meant that students in Indian schools did not aspire (with some exception) for higher education in Bahrain. Western universities were difficult to reach and Indian universities were realistic, but Bahraini universities were rarely even considered. In addition to the repeated formal and informal lessons at school, these complex structures shaped my firm belief that I was Indian.

I moved from Bahrain to Delhi in India for my undergraduate studies and spent four years there aspiring for a post-graduate education in the UK or US. I was constantly reminded and convinced to dream for higher education in the US or UK. My aspirations were realised when I started a post-graduate degree in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford and moved to the UK. I expected to learn about and conduct excellent research on South Asia from outside South Asia in the UK—at the centre of colonial knowledge production. The concentration of archival material on South Asia in UK libraries and museums structurally allows it to remain the centre of knowledge production. What I did not expect was to feel more ‘Indian’ than ever in the UK. This brings me to another complicated experience—of encounters with race—that contributed to the construction of my Indian-ness. At Oxford, I was receiving the education I aspired for, but I became aware that it was knowledge and education I could never own. While conducting research and talking to peers, I became aware of the marked category of ‘Indian scholar’ that I had occupied. I became aware that even if I wanted to learn and conduct research on British history, I would never be an expert. On the other hand, ‘Western’ (mostly white) scholars enjoy unmarked and expert status on knowledge in general. Within South Asian academia of course, the idea of marked and unmarked scholars is further complicated by caste, where the marked category of ‘Dalit scholars’ and ‘Dalit history’ is separated from ‘mainstream’ academia. [xi] Reflecting critically about these experiences and talking to other scholars of color at Oxford, I recognised the need to use the abundance of archival material on South Asia in British museums and libraries to critique these structures. Recently, the movement to decolonise Oxford led by professors of color has made important demands and gained positive support. [xii] Learning from this movement and becoming aware of the marked category of ‘Indian scholar’ that was attached to me made me assert myself strongly as Indian.

Through a reflection on personal experiences of transnational education, I have shown that engagement with multiple complexities contributed to my diasporic engagement with ‘Indian-ness’. The first was the formal and informal lessons I received in school which regularly reminded me of my Indian-ness; and which taught me to belong to textbook Indian-ness. Second, the structural hierarchy defined among schools in Bahrain further shaped my realistic aspirations for higher education in India. Finally, my encounters with race at Oxford and the awareness of my marked status as an ‘Indian scholar’ forced me to feel as ‘Indian’ as ever. This essay is not about what ‘Indian’ means in general or to me personally; rather, I explored the structures and experiences that contributed to my strong sense of belonging to India despite having spent most of my life outside India. I began this semi-academic reflection because of the unexpectedness of this strong sense of belonging. Now that I understand my visceral feelings of belonging are mostly constructed, I wonder if I will falter the next time someone asks me where I am from.