PANEL | Re-Schooling Society: Cosmopolitanism and Mofussil Education in Contemporary India
WHEN: 9 May 2025 – 1 pm - 2:30 pm
WHERE: Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin
PANELLISTS: Madhumeeta Sinha, Yogesh Maitreya, Florian Schybilski and Satish Poduval
Panel Description
The peripheral hubs of Indian metropolises are today getting drawn into the orbit of the contemporary Indian state and its assorted projects, on a scale and with a rapidity that is unprecedented. The mofussil—variously framed as provincial or tier-2 or “small-town” India—is being integrated with national sockets of power and global networks of profiteering in two significant ways: first, through rapidly expanding infrastructure networks; and second, through pedagogic reforms, aesthetic initiatives and subjective interpellation.
Education is emerging as a two-way process in which the mofussil citizen becomes subject to global “demands” while also becoming a subject of cosmopolitical “desires.” The three presentations in this panel seek to put the spotlight on a key aspect of this transformation: how schools are getting remade to fit the ambitions of the new society, and how society in turn is learning the cost of exclusive schooling which ignores the aspirations of new learners.
An Unsentimental Education: Caste and School in the Artwork of K.P. Reji
Satish Poduval (Department of Cultural Studies, EFL University, Hyderabad) will introduce the overall theme of the panel, through an engagement with images of schooling from the oeuvre of the Kerala-born, Baroda-based dalit artist K.P. Reji.
Who Fails Whom?: English Language Education and Mofussil Students in India Today
Madhumeeta Sinha(Department of Training and Development, EFL University, Hyderabad) will explore the cultural politics of the English language classroom and the specific challenges faced/posed by the gendered mofussil student in India today.
Education as Emancipation – The Dalit Goddess EnglishFlorian Schybilski(Institute for English and American Studies, University of Potsdam) will be in conversation with Yogesh Maitreya(Panther’s Paw Publications, Nagpur) about the role of English in Dalit anti-caste activism and education citing the example of Chandra Bhan Prasad’s project of creating the secular Dalit Goddess English.
Bios of Panellists and Speakers
Satish Poduval is Professor of Cultural Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad, India. His research interests include film and media studies, contemporary Indian literature, and critical theory. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Potsdam, where he is also currently DAAD’s Postcolonial Chair in Global Modernities. He has edited Re-Figuring Culture: History, Theory and the Aesthetic in Contemporary India, and is part of the editorial team of maidaanam.org and indiancine.ma
Madhumeeta Sinha teaches in the School of English Language Education at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad (India). Her research interests include multilingual education, learner-centred classrooms, and feminist media studies. She has been guest faculty at the Technical University of Dresden and the Munich University of Applied Sciences. She has co-edited a broadsheet on Sexuality and Harassment: Gender Politics on Campus Today and has published several essays on education, gender and documentary cinema in India.
Florian Schybilski is project coordinator of the research training group 'minor cosmopolitanisms' and the research unit 'Collaborations' at the Institute for English and American Studies at the University of Potsdam. Florian wrote his PhD dissertation on the theme of democracy in India with a focus on the democratizing initiatives in anti-caste activism, which informs his intersectional approach to caste, class, race and gender.
Yogesh Maitreya is a writer, a publisher and a campaigner for social democracy. He runs Panther’s Paw Publications (PPP) from the city of Nagpur, which drives the pro-democratic movement spearheaded by Dalits. His memoir Water in a Broken Pot has been published by Penguin in 2023 and the first German translation of his short story collection Flowers on the Grave of Caste has come last year as Blumen auf dem Grab der Kaste. Currently, Yogesh is on a tour of Germany as part of which he will return to Berlin for the literature fair MissRead in June to bring the works of caste-oppressed writers to audiences in Germany.
