JUDGMENT :

Dama Seshadri Naidu, J.

Introduction:

Emancipation through Education:

A boy began the battle. It was in 1856. Branded by birth as a Dalit, he wanted to join a school in Bombay Presidency. It raised a storm, a storm of indignation and disbelief. And that boy’s battle for admission has changed the course of Indian educational history. But the battle has not ceased, it seems. It continues in one form or another—in the arena of courts, though.

2. It was in June 1856 that boy applied for admission into a government school in Dharwar, Bombay Presidency. The incident had created a furore in the administration; that ultimately attracted the attention of the rulers. The East India Company was forced to formulate an educational policy. That policy mandated that if the schools were maintained by the government, the ‘classes of its subjects’ were to be given admission without any distinction of caste, religion, and race. But that policy did not translate into action. Until 1872, education remained the privilege of the few. That year, Mahatma Phule contested the discrimination in acce