The Body and the Possibility of an Ethical Experience of Education: A Perspective from South Asia

Philosophical traditions from South Asia conceptualised mind and body as integral entities. Embodiment of the mind as a body-mind, articulated as a sensing, thinking and acting body, is conceptually distinct from the mind-body dualism within the Cartesian framework. The case of India is further complicated from its twofold colonial heritage—British colonialism and a longstanding internal colonialism perpetuated through social categories such as caste, gender and class. Educational philosophers and social reformers such as J Krishnamurti, M K Gandhi and Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule made the body a contested site for accessing knowledge and learning. In this chapter, the relationship between embodiment, metaphysics and the social process of learning in the Indian context is explained as offering an ethical experience of education to learners.