Scholarships and Silences: The Gap between Tribal Girls’ Hostel Policy and Bhil Women’s Oral Histories of Education (1960-1990)
Keywords:
Bhil women, tribal education, Ashram Shalas, oral history, post-independence India, educational policy, acculturation, gender, North Maharashtra, hidden curriculumAbstract
This paper investigates the disjuncture between the stated objectives of post-independence India’s tribal girls’ hostel policy Ashram Shalas and residential schools and the lived experiences of the first generations of Bhil girls from North Maharashtra who lived and studied within them between 1960 and 1990. Using a historical methodology that privileges oral histories, it contrasts the optimistic rhetoric of state documents with the intimate narratives of Bhil women, now in their 40s to 70s. The paper argues that these hostels, while providing critical physical access to education, functioned as ambiguous sites of acculturation, where a hidden curriculum of social discipline, cultural alienation, and internalized stigma was often more impactful than the formal syllabus. Through thematic analysis of interviews, supplemented by policy analysis, the study reveals that the hostels served as instruments of state-led modernization that simultaneously enabled and constrained Bhil women’s agency, creating a generation of bicultural mediators who navigated complex identity negotiations.
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