‘History is all around us… As part of the Youth Affairs department, we organized a small competition: Students were encouraged to write on the theme, ‘My Village’s Story’ and we had some great entries, mostly by women. It is clear that they feel connected to that world, more than perhaps men… girls had spoken to older women, recorded their lifestories.’ ~Vasanthi Devi

These words encapsulate Vasanth Devi’s ideas on how to make a university a valued resource and a congenial space for students from Bahujan and Dalit communities, especially those who were first- generation learners from rural India. As the Vice-Chancellor of Manonmaniam Sundaranar (M.S.) University (1992–98), Tamil Nadu, she had undertaken a series of reforms in higher education in the mid-1990s, which led her to advocate for education that did not dissociate the learner from their context, and which, instead, enabled them to adopt a critical and empathetic relationship to it.

This book describes and contextualises her educational endeavour, delineating an educational vision that addressed in tandem the political economy of higher learning and its administration in modern India. It also focuses on experiments in curricular content and pedagogy, and on the complex relationship between caste, labour and knowledge.