Educating the National Imagination Shalini Advani This essay seeks to examine the construction of nation by our educational system as reflected in the intentions and visions of policy-makers and in the nature and structure of ideas embedded in textbooks. By analysing the various contradictory and complementary discourses that inhabit the curriculum, the essay notes the process of essentialisation, mythification and romanticisation of Indian history, society and economy which denies interrogation by alternative paradigms of development and social justice.
