Paper short abstract:

Our joint paper spells out the history of how boarding schools for tribal children have proliferated in India, gauging the impacts on communities, languages and individuals

Paper long abstract:

From Christian missionary beginnings, and the 'ashram school' reaction, boarding schools for Adivasi or tribal children have proliferated in India, presently numbering several thousand. Assimilationism was openly advocated by leading educationalists in the 1940s; and although policy documents repudiated this policy, an undeclared assimilationism persists, in an attitude of cultural racism among teachers, and the normalisation of a boarding school system that takes children away from family and community for long periods. Similarly, tribal language textbooks have been printed, even while tribal languages are forbidden at school, or incorporated only 'tokenistically'. The ideology disseminated in most of these schools tends to combine hindutva (Hindu nationalism) with industrialism. The newer types of boarding schools are part-funded by the mining companies that are taking Adivasi land and resources, and displacing communities. In this context, tribal boarding schools play a major role in alienating children from their communities, land, languages and systems of knowledge and values, and in undermining social movements that are trying to stop these companies' perceived assault on the environment.