Nai

Talim
The principal idea is to impart the
whole education of the body, mind
and soul through the handicraft that
is taught to the children.
Mahatma Gandhi
Nai Talim is a spiritual principle which
states that knowledge and work are not
separate. Mahatma Gandhi promoted an
educational curriculum with the same
name based on this pedagogical principle.
[1]

It can be translated with the phrase 'Basic

Education for all'.[2] However, the concept

has several layers of meaning. It

developed out of Gandhi's experience with
the English educational system and with
colonialism in general. In that system, he
saw that Indian children would be
alienated and 'career-based thinking'
would become dominant. In addition, it
embodied a series of negative outcomes:
the disdain for manual work, the
development of a new elite class, and the
increasing problems of industrialization
and urbanization.

The three pillars of Gandhi's pedagogy

were its focus on the lifelong character of
education, its social character and its form
as a holistic process. For Gandhi,
education is 'the moral development of
the person', a process that is by definition
'lifelong'.[3]

Education[edit]
Gandhi's model of education was directed

toward his alternative vision of the social

order: "Gandhis basic education was,
therefore, an embodiment of his
perception of an ideal society consisting of
small, self-reliant communities with his
ideal citizen being an industrious, selfrespecting and generous individual living
in a small cooperative community. Nai
Talim also envisaged a different role for
the teacher, not simply as a professional
constrained by curricula and abstract
standards, but rather as a person relating
directly to the student in the form of a
dialogue: "A teacher who establishes
rapport with the taught, becomes one with
them, learns more from them than he
teaches them. He who learns nothing from
his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless.
Whenever I talk with someone I learn from
him. I take from him more than I give him.
In this way, a true ?": teacher regards
himself as a student of his students. If you
will teach your pupils with this attitude,
you will benefit much from them. Gandhi's

disciple, Vinobha Bhave, developed the

idea further as a means of social
transformation: "The crux of Nai Talim lay
in overcoming distinctions between
learning and teaching, and knowledge and
work. Vinoba discusses the need to
redefine the relationship between teacher
and student, "they must each regard the
other as a fellow worker..." Instead, the
teacher was to be skilled in a kala/hunar .
The student was to live, work and grow
with the teacher and his/her family. In this
process s/he would learn the kala/hunar
the skill as part of a way of life, code of
ethics, web of relationships, etc.".[4]
Finally, Nai Talim was conceived as a
response to one of the main dialectics of
modernity as Gandhi saw it--the dialectic
between human being and 'machine' or
'technology': "In this dialectic, man
represented the whole of mankind, not
just India, and the machine represented
the industrialized West."[5] It is for this
reason, among others, that Gandhi placed

such central emphasis in his pedagogy on

the role of handcrafts such as spinning;
they symbolized the values of selfsufficiency or Swaraj and independence or
Swadeshi.

Handicrafts[edit]
Traditional and colonial forms of education
had emphasized literacy and abstract,
text-based knowledge which had been the
domain of the upper castes. Gandhi's
proposal to make handicrafts the centre of
his pedagogy had as its aim to bring about
a "radical restructuring of the sociology of
school knowledge in India" in which the
'literacies' of the lower castes--"such as
spinning, weaving, leatherwork, pottery,
metal-work, basket-making and bookbinding"would be made central.[6] The
other aim of this use of handicrafts was to
make schools financially and socially
independent of the statean even more

radical concept. Thus in his influential

article on education in Harijan in 1937 he
argued: "By education I mean an all-round
drawing out of the best in child and manbody, mind and spirit. Literacy is not the
end of education nor even the beginning.
It is only one of the means by which man
and woman can be educated. Literacy in
itself is no education. I would therefore
begin the child's education by teaching it
a useful handicraft and enabling it to
produce from the moment it begins its
training. Thus every school can be made
self-supporting."[7]

History[edit]
Gandhi's first experiments in education
began at the Tolstoy Farm ashram in South
Africa.[8] It was much later, while living at
Sevagram and in the heat of the
Independence struggle, that Gandhi wrote
his influential article in Harijan about

education. In it, he mapped out the basic

pedagogy: I hold that the highest
development of the mind and the soul is
possible under such a system of
education. Only every handicraft has to be
taught not merely mechanically as is done
today, but scientifically i.e. the child
should know the why and wherefore of
every process....I have myself taught
sandal- making and even spinning on
these lines with good results. This method
does not exclude a knowledge of history
and geography. But I find that this is best
taught by transmitting such general
information By word of mouth. One
imparts ten times as much in this manner
as by reading and writing. The signs of the
alphabet may be taught later...Of course,
the pupil learns mathematics through his
handicraft.
I attach the greatest importance to
primary education, which according to my
conception should be equal to the present

matriculation less English...."Harijan of the

31st July 1937 "[8]

A national education conference was held

at Wardha on October 2223, 1937.
Afterwards two model schools were
opened at Wardha and nearby Segaon.
Post-basic education and pre-basic
education schools were developed after
Gandhi's death.

The National Planning Commission set up

by the central government expressed its
opposition to Gandhi's vision of Basic
Education on several grounds. The Nehru
government's vision of an industrialized,
centrally planned economy had no place
for 'basic education' or self-supported
schools, rather it reflected the "vision of a
powerful and growing class of
industrialists, their supporters in politics
and intellectuals with high qualifications in

different areas, including science and

technology. Finally, as has been noted by
Krishna Kumar, "the implementation of
Gandhis plan could not survive the
development decade of the 1960s when
the Indian economy and its politics
entered into a new phase featuring the
penetration of Indian agriculture by the
advanced economies of the West and the
centralization of power."

Quotations[edit]
"Basic education links the children,
whether of cities or the villages, to all that
is best and lasting in India."

"The principal idea is to impart the whole

education of the body, mind and soul
through the handicraft that is taught to
the children. (Mahatma Gandhi)

"An education which does not teach us to

discriminate between good and bad, to
assimilate the one and eschew the other,
is a misnomer."

"The aim of university education should be

to turn out true servants of the people
who will live and die for the country's
freedom."

"The schools and colleges are really a

factory for turning out clerks for
Government