3 Review(s)

Was the British colonial education the only model available to Indian students during the nineteenth century? It is a well-known fact that several initiatives were undertaken by Indians to offer alternatives to colonial education. One such initiative, started by the Arya Samaj, was the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic (D.A.V.) movement, which began at Lahore with the establishment of the first D.A.V. School in 1886. This book documents, for the first time, the complete story of the D.A.V. movement which was one of the earliest and most popular Indian indigenous responses to colonial education. This book attempts to resolve the predicament of categorizing the D.A.V. movement as ‘modern’ or ‘traditional’. It also examines the successes and failures of the D.A.V. movement, and throws light on how it shaped the socio-political land­scape of India in the early twentieth century.