Asian (Re)Education on Film, Episode 14

The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, UK/Italy/France/China, 1987)

For the last episode in this series, I’ll be discussing The Last Emperor, which was actually the first feature film about China that I ever saw, shortly after it came out in 1987. Unlike the other films I’ve been discussing, this is a Hollywood blockbuster with a Western director, Bernardo Bertolucci. But like Chen Kaige’s King of the Children (Episode 2), which appeared in the same year, it’s also a document of China’s liberal 1980s, the decade of Beijing’s ‘Opening Up’, when the country was more tolerant and open that it had ever been, or would subsequently become.

Bertolucci was given permission to shoot on location in Beijing’s Forbidden City, as well as in other locations such as the former palace of the Emperor of Manchukuo in Changchun. This makes for a visually stunning production, and one that I find particularly evocative. In the early 2000s, I worked in a compound just north of the Forbidden City, at the People’s Education Press (PEP). PEP’s offices were just east of Jingshan Park, and during my lunch break, I would often climb the hill in the park to admire the panoramic view of the old imperial palace.

My role at PEP was to write and edit English language textbooks for China’s secondary schools, but the sort of education with which The Last Emperor deals is rather less conventional. The central narrative thread consists of the story of the ‘re-education’ of Aising Gioro Pu Yi, the boy-emperor of the Qing Dynasty who was deposed in 1911. The film cuts backwards and forwards between the portrayal of Pu Yi’s life in a Communist-run re-education camp during the 1950s, and episodes from his earlier life. It is largely based on Pu Yi’s heavily censored autobiography, From Emperor to Citizen, published in English by Beijing’s Foreign Languages Press, which I remember seeing prominently displayed in every ‘Foreign Languages Bookstore’ on my early visits to China in the 1990s. It also draws on the book Twilight in the Forbidden City, the memoir of Pu Yi’s tutor, Reginald Johnston, a British educator whose stint at the heart of Beijing preceded mine by 80 years or so.

Pu Yi’s autobiography, which can be read as a particularly elaborate example of the Communist genre of ‘self-criticism’, was meant to showcase the regime’s humanity and integrity. ‘Re-education’, as a method for dealing with the regime's ideological opponents, was promoted as emblematic of the essential humanity of Communism. Other regimes might kill or torture their enemies: the corrupt Kuomintang, for example, whom the Communists displaced, or the brutal, hated Japanese imperialists. But Communism - as a creed underpinned by ‘science’ and enlightenment - would reason with its opponents, demonstrate to them the error of their ways, and turn them towards the one true path of progress. That, at least, was the theory that Pu Yi’s story, above all, was meant to exemplify.

As we’ll see, though, this film - despite having been made with the approval of the Communist authorities - somewhat subverts that narrative. It does so particularly through its depiction at the end of the Cultural Revolution. For that reason, amongst others, this is a film that almost certainly could not be made today. And as I’ll discuss, there is more to say about the doctrine of re-education itself, and its contemporary application in the China of Xi Jinping.

You can watch the film online here:

Further reading:

Aising Gioro Pu Yi (1960). From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aising Gioro Pu Yi. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Reginald Johnston (1934). Twilight in the Forbidden City. Cambridge University Press (reissue 2011).

Bulag, U. E. (2023). The wheel of history and minorities’ ‘self-sacrifice’ for the Chinese nation. Comparative Education, 60(1), 96–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2271781

Asian Education on Film, Episode 13

Red Beard (赤ひげ) (Kurosawa Akira / 黒澤明, Japan, 1965)

From a contemporary Japanese primary school, the setting for the film Monster, in this episode we move back in time to mid-19th century Japan and a very different educational context. Red Beard, by the great director Kurosawa Akira, portrays a public clinic in a city in late Edo-era Japan (that is, around the early or mid-19th century). It offers a classic portrayal of the sensei/deshi or teacher-disciple relationship typical of the deeply hierarchical educational culture of so-called ‘Confucian’ societies. As Confucius himself put it in one of his aphorisms: ‘A teacher for a day is a father for life’ (一日為師，終生為父). In other words, the respect one owes to a teacher forms a sacred bond of loyalty equivalent to that between a father and son.

That sort of hierarchical, rather authoritarian, teacher-disciple relationship is a feature of education in many Asian societies. We see it in Amitabh Bachchan’s portrayal of the guru-like college principal in the film Aarakshan. The immense patriarchal authority that teachers or professors wield in South Asia is reflected in the deferential habit of addressing teachers - and former teachers - as ‘Sir’ (or less frequently ‘Madam’). Similarly, in East Asia, senior professors enjoy enormous homage from former students, and the associational activity of academic life often revolves around the sage-like figure of a venerable scholarly patriarch.

Mifune Toshio’s character in Red Beard, the head physician of the clinic, Niije-sensei, is in one sense a sagely archetype of precisely this kind. The film revolves around Nike’s relationship with his impatient - and initially reluctant and disrespectful - young disciple, Yasumoto. The film charts the taming of Yasumoto, as he learns to appreciate the wisdom of his elder colleague, and finally realises that his supreme ambition is to emulate and serve him.

But Kurosawa films, things are seldom quite as straightforward as at first sight they might appear. Niije is certainly stern and rather autocratic, but he exercises his teacherly authority primarily by force of example. He himself exudes contempt for corruption amongst those in positions of power and authority. And far from insisting on undying loyalty, he smooths the way for Yasumoto to pursue fame and fortune elsewhere, only for Yasumoto voluntarily to reject that path and pledge himself to the service of his master.

The story also reflects a certain scepticism about the value of modern science. Yasumoto’s initial arrogance stems largely from pride in his modern medical expertise, lending him knowledge superior to that of his seniors. He has been studying in Nagasaki, the hub for exchanges between Edo Japan and the wider world, and the centre for what was called ‘Dutch Learning’ (蘭学). Niije is keen to discover what Yasumoto has learnt to derive knowledge that will be useful in treating his patients. But at the same time, the older doctor expresses scepticism concerning the curative power of medicine and science on their own.

For Kurosawa, that scepticism regarding the power of science carried a message, or warning, for the Japan of the 1960s, which was experiencing surging growth and rapid industrialisation and modernisation. He’s reminding those seduced by the power of science of its limits in the face of poverty and injustice. Rather than treating his patients as malfunctioning machines, as bodies to be repaired and retuned for productive labour, Niije-sensei is acutely conscious of how individual sickness can often be traced to the moral malaise of society.

So, Red Beard shows the completion of the education of a young man who thinks he knows it all, but who comes to appreciate how little books alone can teach him. Yasumoto learns that tending for the sick is as much a matter of understanding suffering and injustice as of knowledge of anatomy or science. At the same time, he is challenged to question the ultimate purpose of learning itself: Is it a route to profit and power, or a means of serving others? The learned man must confront a moral choice. Will he use his learning for self-aggrandisement, or for the benefit of his suffering fellow-men?

The film can be viewed here:

Further reading:

Ronald Dore. 1984. Education in Tokugawa Japan. University of Michigan / Athlone Press.

Wolfgang Michel. 2007. ‘Border Crossing and Intellectual Curiosity: On the Modernisation of Japanese Medicine during the Edo Period’, Conference Paper. International Conference: 150th Anniversary of the Beginning of Modern Western-style Medical Education in Japan. Nagasaki University, 9 Nov. 2007. (available at https://api.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/opac_download_md/25942/michel-2007-border-crossing.pdf)

Asian (Re)Education on Film, Episode 14

The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, UK/Italy/France/China, 1987)

For the last episode in this series, I’ll be discussing The Last Emperor, which was actually the first feature film about China that I ever saw, shortly after it came out in 1987. Unlike the other films I’ve been discussing, this is a Hollywood blockbuster with a Western director, Bernardo Bertolucci. But like Chen Kaige’s King of the Children (Episode 2), which appeared in the same year, it’s also a document of China’s liberal 1980s, the decade of Beijing’s ‘Opening Up’, when the country was more tolerant and open that it had ever been, or would subsequently become.

Bertolucci was given permission to shoot on location in Beijing’s Forbidden City, as well as in other locations such as the former palace of the Emperor of Manchukuo in Changchun. This makes for a visually stunning production, and one that I find particularly evocative. In the early 2000s, I worked in a compound just north of the Forbidden City, at the People’s Education Press (PEP). PEP’s offices were just east of Jingshan Park, and during my lunch break, I would often climb the hill in the park to admire the panoramic view of the old imperial palace.

My role at PEP was to write and edit English language textbooks for China’s secondary schools, but the sort of education with which The Last Emperor deals is rather less conventional. The central narrative thread consists of the story of the ‘re-education’ of Aising Gioro Pu Yi, the boy-emperor of the Qing Dynasty who was deposed in 1911. The film cuts backwards and forwards between the portrayal of Pu Yi’s life in a Communist-run re-education camp during the 1950s, and episodes from his earlier life. It is largely based on Pu Yi’s heavily censored autobiography, From Emperor to Citizen, published in English by Beijing’s Foreign Languages Press, which I remember seeing prominently displayed in every ‘Foreign Languages Bookstore’ on my early visits to China in the 1990s. It also draws on the book Twilight in the Forbidden City, the memoir of Pu Yi’s tutor, Reginald Johnston, a British educator whose stint at the heart of Beijing preceded mine by 80 years or so.

Pu Yi’s autobiography, which can be read as a particularly elaborate example of the Communist genre of ‘self-criticism’, was meant to showcase the regime’s humanity and integrity. ‘Re-education’, as a method for dealing with the regime's ideological opponents, was promoted as emblematic of the essential humanity of Communism. Other regimes might kill or torture their enemies: the corrupt Kuomintang, for example, whom the Communists displaced, or the brutal, hated Japanese imperialists. But Communism - as a creed underpinned by ‘science’ and enlightenment - would reason with its opponents, demonstrate to them the error of their ways, and turn them towards the one true path of progress. That, at least, was the theory that Pu Yi’s story, above all, was meant to exemplify.

As we’ll see, though, this film - despite having been made with the approval of the Communist authorities - somewhat subverts that narrative. It does so particularly through its depiction at the end of the Cultural Revolution. For that reason, amongst others, this is a film that almost certainly could not be made today. And as I’ll discuss, there is more to say about the doctrine of re-education itself, and its contemporary application in the China of Xi Jinping.

You can watch the film online here:

Further reading:

Aising Gioro Pu Yi (1960). From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aising Gioro Pu Yi. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Reginald Johnston (1934). Twilight in the Forbidden City. Cambridge University Press (reissue 2011).

Bulag, U. E. (2023). The wheel of history and minorities’ ‘self-sacrifice’ for the Chinese nation. Comparative Education, 60(1), 96–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2271781

Asian Education on Film, Episode Twelve

Monster (怪物) (Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2023)

The Taiwanese film I discussed last time, After School, offered a slightly corny treatment of themes of adolescent sexuality, transgression of gender norms, and so-called ‘boys love’. The 2023 Japanese film, Monster (or 怪物 / Kaibutsu), directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu (是枝 裕和), touches on somewhat similar themes in a rather more thoughtful and troubling way. Monster also carries echoes of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Rashomon, telling the same story from multiple perspectives so as to challenge our initial evaluation of its characters’ actions and motives. It also features the final film score by the late, great composer (and occasional actor), Sakamoto Ryuichi.

Monster is set in an anonymous town or small city. It’s not Tokyo or Osaka, but it could be almost anywhere. Over the landscape of abandoned railways, rusting industrial machinery and mould-stained concrete lingers the aura of gentle decay characteristic of contemporary Japan. The story initially seems to involve a case of bullying - the source of much recent moral panic in Japan - but other themes also emerge. These include the tension between the suffocating conformity of Japanese life and the individual search for meaning, a favourite theme Kurosawa, too (exemplified by his portrayal of bureaucracy in the 1952 film, Ikiru).

Like After School, this film, Monster, makes extensive use of flashback as a narrative device. But it does so to very different effect. After School relies on a conventional, mono-perspectival narrative, using flashback to evoke nostalgia and to dramatise the contrast between the homophobic 1990s and the tolerant progressivism of present-day Taiwan. But in Monster, flashback is used in the style of Rashomon to present multiple narratives of the same events. The effect is to disrupt the viewer’s initial assumptions about the key characters. As we experience that disruption, we begin to realise that stories told by those in authority may be self-serving fictions designed to deflect criticism and avoid trouble. We also realise how those fictions conceal and suppress the struggles of individuals - adults or children - for meaning and recognition. We’re confronted with the vision of an oppressively conformist society that stigmatises and ostracises individuals who disturb its superficial calm.

Watching the film:

Further reading:

Andrea Gevurtz Arai (2016). The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan. Stanford University Press.

Thomas P. Kasulis (2002). Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Asian Education on Film, Episode Eleven

After School (成功補習班) (Blue Lan / Lan Cheng-lung, Taiwan, 2023)

The supplementary tutoring industry, or ‘cram schooling’, is a phenomenon we’ve already touched on in Episode 8 on the Indian film Aarakshan. There, the cram school chain the ‘KK Institute’ stood for all that was rotten in the Indian system: for rampant profiteering, for the antithesis of genuine education. But in many contemporary Asian societies, tutorial schooling or ‘shadow education’ has become an integral part of the education system, for better or for worse.

Taiwan, and East Asia more generally, has been at the forefront of what some see as a shadow education ‘craze’. After School (成功補習班) is set in Taipei during the mid-1990s, an era when, as we’re told at the start of the film, competition for university entrance in Taiwan was intense (with only a 30% acceptance rate). The late twentieth century witnessed a massive expansion of higher education across East Asia, but universities remained acutely stratified. The numbers competing for entry to the most prestigious institutions sky-rocketed, intensifying competition. Factors contributing to the peculiar competitive intensity of education systems in East Asia include rigid labour markets featuring seniority-based arrangements for hiring and promotion; and chronic insecurity stemming from minimal public welfare guarantees.

Cram schooling was already ubiquitous when I arrived in East Asia in 1992, as I quickly learnt when I started looking for work as a tutor. My first job was tutoring a five-year-old Taiwanese boy for the entrance examination to the kindergarten of an international school in Hong Kong. Shortly afterwards, when I became a teacher at a local secondary school, I found that most of my students were spending hours outside school receiving private tutoring. Cram schools were big business, and posters advertising them were plastered on billboards and buses around Hong Kong, promoting famous young tutors like glamorous rock stars. From my time in Taiwan in the late 1990s, I remember one cinema advertisement for a tutorial school chain. It showed two homeless men on the streets of New York. One says, ‘Life’s terrible here, Joe!’ The other replies, ‘Yeah, Bill! Let’s go to Taiwan and teach English!’ The punchline: ‘We only employ qualified English teachers!’

But cram schools are not just about examination preparation - for many teenagers, they are also places to socialise, away from cramped apartments, squabbling siblings and busy parents. It’s this aspect of tutorial schooling that After School takes as its main focus or theme. This is a story of adolescent friendship and sexuality, rather than soul-destroying academic competition.

It’s also a celebration of Taiwan’s reputation as an Asian beacon for progressive attitudes on gender and sexuality. Amongst many younger Taiwanese, the embrace of LGBTQ+ discourse and liberal stances on gender issues are integral to visions of Taiwan as a tolerant, multicultural Asian democracy. That’s not to suggest that the adoption of these values is merely instrumental. But Taiwan’s relative openness to these trends can certainly be attributed, in part, to the pride many feel in the island’s distinctiveness as a vibrant democracy.

You can watch the film via this link:

**Further reading

Chen-Dedman, A. (2022). ‘Tongzhi Sovereignty: Taiwan’s lgbt Rights Movement and the Misplaced Critique of Homonationalism’. International Journal of Taiwan Studies, 6(2), 261-290. https://doi.org/10.1163/24688800-20221267

Chao, T. Y., Sung, Y. T., & Tseng, F. L. (2024). ‘High-stakes test anxiety among Taiwanese adolescents: a longitudinal study’. Cogent Education, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2321019

Asian Education on Film, Episode Ten

Lunana - A Yak in the Classroom (Pawo Choyning Dorji, Bhutan, 2019)

From bustling New York, the setting of the film I discussed last time, English Vinglish, we move to the Himalayas for a story about what is portrayed as ‘the most remote school in the world’. Lunana - A Yak in the Classroom is set in Bhutan, the Buddhist kingdom nestled between Northeast India and Tibet, famous in recent years for its pursuit of ‘Gross National Happiness’.

The difficulties of delivering modern schooling in poor, geographically remote regions is one theme here. Demand for modern education in remote communities is strong; herders and farmers see schooling as offering their children a chance of a better life, through employment in the modern economy. At the same time, governments interested in social control and strong borders see schools as useful for nation building as well as rural uplift. In Lunana, we’re shown village children raising Bhutan’s national flag and singing the national anthem at the start of the school day.

The challenges of schooling in such remote regions are cultural as well as logistical. Sometimes, transforming local culture is precisely the point: to Bhutan’s north, in Tibet, boarding schools have been used in recent years to suppress the Tibetan language and promote consciousness of a monolithic ‘Chinese national community’. Elsewhere, for example in Soviet-era Mongolia, boarding schools performed a more complex role, offering modern education to herding communities partly in order to maintain the herding lifestyle. In remote communities, primary schooling is typically local, but secondary education happens in boarding schools. We hardly see any secondary-age children in Lunana. Perhaps some are away at school in the town or city.

If so, how many of those young people will return? As modern education reaches the most remote communities, young people are increasingly drawn towards modern, urban life. The lure of the city is hard to resist. I remember visiting a fairly remote region of the Peruvian Amazon on a rainforest tour in 1988. Our small party arrived by boat at a riverside village, to be greeted by locals dressed in grass skirts who sold us beads and necklaces with pirhana skulls. But as we returned to our boat, passing the village school playground, we saw the same children who had just greeted us in native dress playing basketball in trainers and Michael Jordan t-shirts. The vision of pure, uncorrupted, indigenous jungle life sold to tourists like us concealed a more complex reality.

But is the inevitable transformation of indigenous cultures a reason for limiting the spread of modern education? In recent years, some scholars have tended almost to fetishise indigeneity. The ineffable wisdom of indigenous peoples is often contrasted with the shallow consumerism of modern, Western life. This lament for lost traditions is understandable. However, exoticising indigenous communities, or portraying them simply as victims of Western colonialism, can deny or belittle their agency. And the dichotomy between Western and non-Western societies is far too simplistic. For almost all of us, the comforts and stimulation of modern city life possess an almost irresistible allure, but their pursuit can leave our lives feeling soulless, empty and stripped of deeper meaning. This tension is at the heart of that foundation stone of modern German literature, Goethe’s Faust, which Marshall Berman described as ‘a veiled debate about the modernisation of Germany’. Faust pursues freedom and cultural dynamism, but at the cost of his soul. The protagonist of Lunana, the teacher Ugyen, finds himself facing a somewhat similar dilemma.

The film can be viewed here:

Further reading:

Marshall Berman (2010). All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso.

Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Ines Stolpe (2006). Educational Import: Local Encounters with Global Forces in Mongolia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Leibold, J., & Dorjee, T. (2023). 'Learning to be Chinese: colonial-style boarding schools on the Tibetan plateau'. Comparative Education, 60(1), 118–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2023.2250969

Asian Education on Film - Episode 9

English Vinglish, Gauri Shinde (India, 2012)

The previous two films in this series dealt with educational inequality in India (Aarakshan) and the (sporting) legacy of British imperialism on the subcontinent (Lagaan). In different ways, both also highlighted India’s diversity and the challenges of forging a cohesive national identity there. One feature of contemporary Indian (and South Asian) society that is intimately related both to social divisions and attempts to transcend them is language; namely, the tensions between vernacular languages and English.

Across post-colonial South Asia, English has maintained its cultural dominance and social cachet. It remains a major language of government and administration; of law and justice; and of elite education. Amidst the region’s linguistic diversity, English continues to function as an important ‘link language’. And while Britain may no longer be the major world power it once was, the economic and cultural dominance of the USA has further bolstered English as the global lingua franca. Command of English is therefore required for many desirable jobs in the professions, academia, and commerce - not least in India’s burgeoning tech sector. It has consequently become entrenched as a crucial marker of social and cultural status for South Asia’s educated middle classes - some of whom even speak English at home.

This association of English proficiency with ‘elite’ status has fuelled significant resentment amongst the majority of South Asians for whom English-medium education is beyond reach. The neglect of vernacular languages by many educated South Asians also widens divisions of sentiment and identity between them and less privileged social groups. Anglophone South Asian elites may come to feel more culturally connected to the USA or Britain than to their own societies, and end up feeling truly at home neither in South Asia nor the West. Meanwhile, nativist political movements such as India’s BJP have capitalised on widespread resentment of Anglophone dominance to promote increasingly extreme forms of xenophobic nationalism.

The film English Vinglish offers a relatively light-hearted examination of the implications of the role of English language proficiency as an indicator of social status and education. It does so by focusing on the experience of Shashi Godbole (played by Sridevi), a housewife who suffers various humiliations due to her inability to speak English. By making Shashi the focus of an exploration of the tensions surrounding the role of English, the film also highlights the dimension of gender, in a society where the educational attainment of women still significantly lags behind that of men.

This film can be viewed online via this link:

Further reading:

LaDousa, C., C. P. Davis, and N. Choksi. 2022. “Postcolonial Language Ideologies: Indian Students Reflect on Mother Tongue and English.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 32 (3): 607–628. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12378.

Asian Education on Film, Episode Eight

Aarakshan: India vs. India (Prakash Jha, India, 2011)

India’s immense diversity was given a positive spin (no pun intended) in the cricketing film we looked at last time, Lagaan. But that romantic fantasy only scratched the surface of the explosively controversial issue of caste. Lagaan, as you may remember, features a spin bowler with a crippled arm who is initially shunned by the other villagers because he is a casteless untouchable. Untouchables, or ‘Dalits’, along with so-called ‘Scheduled Tribes’, were granted reserved places in government jobs and higher education institutions soon after Indian independence. This was enshrined in India’s 1950 Constitution, whose main author, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, was himself from a Dalit family.

But the inequities of the caste system affect far more of India’s population than Dalits alone. Patterns of caste hierarchy vary across India’s regions, but the ‘lower’ castes include many millions who sit just above the casteless Dalits. For decades after independence, there were calls for these groups to benefit from the sort of reservations or quotas afforded to Dalits.

Those calls were eventually considered by the Mandal Commission, established by the Janata Party Government of Prime Minister Morarji Desai in 1979. The left-leaning Janata Party had won the elections of 1977, held after the lifting of Mrs Gandhi’s State of Emergency; this was the first time in India’s post-independence history that Congress had lost a national election. In 1980, the Commission delivered its report, recommending a 27% reservation for ‘other backward castes’ (OBCs) in government jobs and higher education institutions. But by that time, the Congress had returned to power, and for ten years nothing was done to implement the report’s recommendations.

The recommendations were finally implemented in 1990 by the government of V.P. Singh, which was a coalition of the Janata Dal, the BJP, the Communist Party and several smaller parties. The principle of reservations in centrally-funded educational institutions was extended in 2006 by a Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act introduced by the then Congress-led government. This sparked protests amongst upper caste groups, and a legal challenge that went all the way to India’s Supreme Court.

In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld the 2006 Act, although it capped reservations at 50% of total admissions. It also stipulated that the concept of ‘backwardness’ should encompass measures of wealth, not just caste identity. As a result, richer members of OBCs, a so-called ‘creamy layer’, are excluded from reservations.

The expansion of reservations and the Supreme Court’s clarification of the criteria defining ‘backwardness’ have spurred campaigns by various groups for OBC recognition. This in turn has contributed to inter-caste rivalries that have been exploited by politicians. The Hindu nationalist BJP, in power at the centre since 2014, has been quite effective in expanding its appeal especially amongst poorer OBCs who tend to gain less from the reservations policy. These groups are often more receptive to identity-based messaging that blames out-groups for their disadvantage. The political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot has done some interesting analysis of the BJP’s use of caste rivalries to build its electoral base.

The film Aarakshan gives the Bollywood treatment to the dispute over caste-based reservations in Indian higher education. It stars Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood superstar who also provided the narration for the film Lagaan. Aarakshan is set at the time of the Supreme Court ruling of 2008, and depicts the related social tensions.

Watching the film:

Further reading:

Barrington Moore, Jr. 1966. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Harmondsworth: Pelican.

Christophe Jaffrelot. 2021. Modi’s India. Princeton University Press.

Kaur, S., Dutt, M. 2025. ‘Education during the COVID-19 pandemic: Experiences of urban poor children in Chandigarh city’, International Review of Education. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-025-10147-4

Asian Education on Film, Episode Seven

Lagaan - Once Upon a Time in India (Ashutosh Gowariker, India, 2001)

In the previous episode, I discussed the baseball film Kano, based on the real story of a 1930s Taiwanese high school baseball team. That film reflects a fashionable nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule that helps reinforce the image of Taiwan today as a multicultural Asian society. This time, I want to look at another film that deals with the colonial origins of a massively popular Asian sport, and it’s one closely related to baseball: cricket. This is Lagaan, the 2001 Indian film starring Bollywood superstar, Amir Khan. In stark contrast to Kano, this makes no pretence at historical authenticity; it’s a rollicking fantasy about how the Indians came to learn cricket from the British and then beat them at their own game. Also unlike Kano, while Lagaan deals with themes of colonialism and of cultural and religious diversity, it is anything but nostalgic; on the contrary, it is all about anti-colonial defiance.

But is Lagaan about education? Why include it in this series looking at ‘Asian Education on Film’? Well, one reason is simply that I love this film: it's a gloriously over the top melodrama, in the all-singing, all-dancing Bollywood style. It’s also very funny: on one level, it’s a sort of parody of a nationalistic, anti-colonial propaganda film. It’s glorious entertainment, and was both enormously popular and critically acclaimed when it was first released.

Alongside its entertainment value, though, there’s also a more serious aspect to Lagaan which explains my decision to include it here. The film was released in 2001, in the midst of the Hindu nationalist BJP’s first spell in national power. Although that earlier BJP regime seems moderate by the standards of Narendra Modi’s government today, it sparked alarm in many quarters through its efforts to challenge or undermine the secular basis of India’s post-colonial constitutional settlement. It did that not least through reforms to the curricula and textbooks issued by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), based in Delhi. Those reforms sought to promote a Hindu nationalist narrative of the Indian past, ignoring or denigrating the historical role not just of the British, but also - and in particular - of Muslims and their contribution to Indian culture and society.

Lagaan can be seen in part as an attempt by Bollywood to defend or reassert the secular, inclusive vision of India that the BJP was attacking. Bollywood itself has always been a multi-faith, multicultural enterprise; many of its most prominent stars - including the star of this film, Amir Khan - have been Muslim. Besides Khan, this film involved Bollywood royalty: Amitabh Bachchan, perhaps Indian cinema’s biggest star, provided the voiceover or narrative. This, then, is Bollywood itself in educational mode, using the power of cinema to deliver a form of civic instruction to Indian audiences. And doing it brilliantly through a romantic fantasy of the origins of the game of cricket that, in truth, does unite Indians of all faiths and classes.

A simple summary of the rules of cricket is available here.

Lagaan can be viewed here:

Further reading:

Ramchandra Guha. 2016. A Corner of a Foreign Field: the Indian History of a British Sport. Gurgaon: Penguin India (second edition).

Chris England. 2002. Balham to Bollywood. London: Hodder and Stoughton

Kano (Umin Boya (馬志翔), Taiwan, 2014)

Sport is an aspect of education that seldom receives the attention it deserves, whether from policymakers, academics, or many teachers and parents. However, historically team sports have played a vital role in the socialisation of students, especially of boys. This is partly a matter of health and physical training, but also, crucially, of moral and military preparation. The Duke of Wellington, the British commander who defeated Napoleon, famously remarked that ‘The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton’. At the height of the British Empire, in 1892, the poet Henry Newbolt published the poem ‘Vitae Lampada’ (‘The Torch of Life’), which features the famous line, ‘Play up, play up and play the game!’ This draws an explicit parallel between the ethos of the game of cricket and the spirit with which the British soldier was expected to confront perils in remote lands where ‘England’s far and Honour’s a name’.

I will have more to say about cricket in the next episode, when I discuss the Indian film, Lagaan, but this time I want to discuss the role of sport in socialising young men in another Asian empire - that of Japan. This sport is the American variant of cricket: baseball. Leaving aside the reasons why Japan came to adopt this sport in the first place, by the 1920s and 1930s baseball had come to assume an iconic status as the team sport for Japanese boys. By the same token, baseball training and the ethos of the sport were infused with core beliefs concerning the character and duties that defined Japanese manhood and the loyal imperial subject.

But the imperial subjects of the baseball team in Kano are not stereotypically ‘Japanese’, but multiculturally Taiwanese. This film, which is based on a true story, depicts the baseball team of the Chiayi School of Agriculture and Forestry, or Kagi Nourin Gakkou (嘉義農林学校) - ‘Kano’ for short. The Kano team reached the final of the Japanese high school baseball tournament - the Koshien - in 1931. The Koshien is still a big deal today in Japan, where it's broadcast every summer on national television. Back in the 1930s, commentary was broadcast over the radio, and the tournament included teams from across the Japanese Empire, including Taiwan, Korea and Dalien in Northeast China. ‘Kano’ were the first team from outside the main Japanese archipelago to get to the Koshien final.

This film is directed by the indigenous Taiwanese actor-director, Umin Boya, but produced and co-written by Wei Te-sheng. In a sense, it forms the third of a trilogy of films written or directed by Wei which deal with aspects of Japan’s colonial legacy in Taiwan. The first of those films, Cape Number 7 (海角七號), which came out in 2008, is the highest-grossing Taiwanese film of all time. That film epitomises the sepia-tinted nostalgia for the Japanese colonial era that has been a major theme of popular culture in post-Martial Law Taiwan. The second film in the trilogy, Seediq Bale (in which Umin Boya acted), is rather different: it tells the story of a bloody anti-Japanese rebellion by indigenous Taiwanese. In Kano, the nostalgic tone is once again more to the fore, but intermingled with other themes. Prominent amongst these is the ethos of baseball itself, and its association with a particular ideal of masculinity.

The film can be viewed online via the following link:

Further reading:

Robert Whiting (1989/2009). You Gotta Have Wa. Knopf Doubleday.

Juyeon Bae (2023). ‘Mnemonic Politics around the Japanese Colonial Era in Post–Cold War Taiwan: Wei Te-sheng's Colonial Trilogy and Post–New Cinema’. positions 1 November 2023; 31 (4): 839–862. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-10714285