Nai Talim

**Nai Talim**, also called **Basic Education**, is an idea that says learning and work should not be separate. Mahatma Gandhi supported an educational system based on this idea.

The name can be translated as "Basic Education for all". The idea has many meanings. It grew from Gandhi’s experience with the English school system and colonial rule. Gandhi believed that this system made Indian children feel separate from their own culture and forced them to think mainly about careers. He also believed it caused harmful attitudes, including looking down on manual work, creating a new elite class, and adding to the problems of industrialization and urbanization.

Gandhi’s educational thought was based on three main ideas: education is a lifelong process; education is social and connected to the community; and education should be holistic, developing the whole person. Gandhi said that real education is the moral growth of a person and that this growth continues throughout life.

## Education

Gandhi’s model of education supported his vision of a different kind of society. He imagined small, self-reliant communities where the ideal citizen would be hard-working, self-respecting, generous, and cooperative.

Nai Talim also gave teachers a new role. Teachers were not only professionals following rules and curriculum, but also people who built real relationships with students. Gandhi said that a true teacher learns from students as much as they learn from him, and that teaching should be like a dialogue. A real teacher should also see himself as a student of his own students.

Gandhi’s follower Vinobha Bhave expanded the idea as a way to transform society. He said that teaching and learning should not be separated, and that knowledge and work should be connected. He believed that teacher and student should see each other as co-workers. The teacher would be skilled in a craft (kala/hunar) and support himself or herself through that craft, not through a teaching salary. The student would live and work with the teacher’s family and learn the craft as part of daily life, including its ethics and relationships.

Gandhi also believed that Basic Education was a way to solve one of the main problems of modern times: the conflict between human beings and the machine. In this idea, “the machine” represented industrialized Western society. For this reason, Gandhi placed great importance on handcrafts like weaving, metal work, pottery, and spinning. These crafts represented the values of self-sufficiency, or Swaraj, and independence, or Swadeshi.

## Handicrafts

Before Gandhi, both traditional and colonial education in India focused mainly on reading, writing, and abstract knowledge. These forms of knowledge were mostly controlled by the upper castes. Gandhi wanted handicrafts to be at the centre of education so that the skills of the lower castes, such as spinning, weaving, leatherwork, pottery, metal work, basket-making, and book-binding, would become equally important.

Gandhi also hoped that schools would become financially and socially independent from the state. In a 1937 article in _Harijan_, he wrote that education should bring out the best in body, mind, and spirit, and that literacy is only one part of education. He said that a child’s education should begin with learning a useful handicraft and producing something from the start. In this way, schools could support themselves.

## History

Gandhi first experimented with these ideas at the Tolstoy Farm ashram in South Africa. Much later, at Sevagram and during the fight for independence, Gandhi wrote his important article in _Harijan_ explaining his educational plan.

A national education conference was held at Wardha on 22–23 October 1937. Two model schools were opened at Wardha and nearby Segaon. After Gandhi’s death, pre-basic and post-basic schools were also developed.

The National Planning Commission of the central government opposed Gandhi’s idea of Basic Education. The government under Jawaharlal Nehru supported industrialization and a centrally planned economy, which did not match Gandhi’s ideas about self-supported schools. This reflected the goals of industrialists, political leaders, and educated intellectuals.

A detailed history of the attempts to use Basic Education in India is described by Marjorie Sykes in The History of Nai Talim.

Later, as noted by Krishna Kumar, Gandhi’s plan did not survive the “development decade” of the 1960s, when Indian agriculture and politics became more influenced by Western economies and central government control.

## Related pages

- Basic Education
- Gandhigram Rural Institute
- Mahatma Gandhi

## Other websites

- The Story of Nai Talim