Imposition of Alien Rule: Colonial Motives and Education in Kerala

Abstract

Cultural assimilation is an effective form of subordination of the colonized. Education plays an important role in the process. Education as the ideological state apparatus deprives the colonized of their indigenous learning culture. It leads to a condition of hybridity wherein the colonized cannot differentiate their own from the alien. It reflects on their perception of their language, literature, rituals, beliefs and ultimately on them. Their culture appears to be demeaning to them and eventually disassociate them from their own native practices.  Education facilitates conquest by consent. The idea of infiltration first made the elite the admirers of the culture of the colonizers and the masses were being taught by using them. Thus without much efforts and bloodshed, the British subdued the colonized. The paper attempts to explain how cultural assimilation, the main motive of the colonizers, was achieved through education in Kerala.