Articles by Anu Kumar

Could Bhogwan Singh, the actor, and Bhagwan Singh, the revolutionary, be one and the same?

The initial outrage in the United States after a gunman killed 20 children in a school has faded. Indeed, many states have loosened and not tightened laws on gun control. In the meanwhile children have to go through "lockdown" drills in school to learn how to face possible violent events. Since the matter of gun rights is so related in the US to the concepts of individual liberty and the doctrine of self-suffi ciency, it is time perhaps that the latter concepts themselves were re-examined.

The tensions between Japan and China over control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands go back more than a century. But there was a time when the islands were a part of the Ryukyu kingdom which was independent of both countries and had trade links with both.

A Pedagogue's Romance: Reflections on Schooling by Krishna Kumar;

Education policy as it came to be elucidated over the 19th century was driven by colonial imperatives. The early 19th century was a time of experimentation, it was a period of acquaintance and also of open ideological debate. Barely a few decades later, however, and especially following the revolt of 1857, as the Raj asserted itself, and imperialism gained in zeal, some of this early experimentation was lost in the drive for more Anglicisation of education. The setting up of the universities in the three presidency towns reflected the growing assertiveness in colonial ideology. This article, however, looks at two experiments in education, located in the vernacular medium, that had their origins in the earlier period of new understanding, but were decisively affected by the events of 1857 and reactions to it.