Fading Alma Mater

India once crowned minds, its education system rivalling global-hests. Today, the once-empire of learning limps in prestige, rich in numbers but thin on heft

- 

There is one space where India’s glory can now be found only in the ancient. Long before colonialism reshaped the subcontinent, Indias intellectual horizons were among the brightest on Earth.

In those times, Takshashila and Nalanda were not quaint relics but bustling hubs where medicine, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy were taught with zeal and depth, drawing thousands from around the world. These were not narrow corridors of rote learning but crucibles of inquiry, debate and cultural exchange; the earliest embodiments of what the modern world would call “universities”.

Education in India began as a civilizational instinct - open, contested, rigorous ~ long before today's modern nations learnt to manufacture universities. Such an inheritance should have anchored the republic. Instead, it serves only as a jarring reminder of how India has slipped. The regression is not just abstract. Across India, government schools (the first rung of learning for millions) are being shut down or merged out of existence, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas. Classrooms are disappearing even as political speeches invoke demographic dividends and knowledge economies. A nation that closes its schools while celebrating its youth is not confused; it is in complete denial.

Yielding to Prejudice