Struggles of Gandharva Pursuing Higher Education: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

This research presents narratives of four Gandharva and my own journey of higher education. My inquiry was shaped to explore the experience of Gandharva in pursuing higher education, with social exclusion at the centre. The narratives of my research include how social exclusionary practices and supporting contexts shape their journey to higher education. This research, through the experiences of my research participants, unearths how Nepal’s education system has embedded the power structure and sustained caste-based exclusion, impacting the lower representation of Dalit, including Gandharva, in higher education. I choose my research participants based on their status as higher education students in Nepal. In doing so, this narrative inquiry uses Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social and cultural capital to explain Gandharva’s journey to higher education. This research adopts a critical lens to unearth the power dynamics between Dalit and non Dalit and their implications for reducing the representation of Gandharva in higher education. This research sought to explore two research questions: How do Gandharva experience social exclusion in the pursuit of higher education? How do power relations between Dalit and non-Dalit contribute to the exclusion of Gandharva in the pursuit of higher education? The narrative inquiry with four Gandharva and my experience as a community member laid the foundation for meaning making. The experiences have exemplified various themes for explaining their journey to higher education. Their experiences demonstrate that Nepal’s education system has been fuelling caste-based discrimination, both in direct and subtle ways, which has a powerful impact on the lower representation of Gandharva in higher education. Likewise, it appears that Gandharva’s livelihood priorities over education, community humiliations towards their educational achievement, caste-based discrimination within academic institutions, and a visible gap between their culture and higher education curriculum have been adversely impacting their access to and completion of higher education. In addition, it shows that Gandharva’s preference for immediate earnings has outweighed long-term investment in education, and their peer pressure to engage early has led them to take up income-generating activities, creating a barrier to pursuing higher education. The findings show that Gandharva who have taken the journey of higher education hold a strong resilience towards the embedded caste-based discrimination and exclusion across Nepali society. Likewise, they aspire to do something good for the betterment of their society, which enables them to pursue higher education. In conclusion, Nepal’s education system can advance education justice through identifying caste-based disparity in education policies and their implementation, reaching the doorsteps of backward communities like Gandharva, facilitating the internalization of the importance of higher education for their social and economic transformation, indigenizing education through the integration of Gandharva’s arts, culture, and traditional knowledge, and securing the inclusion of Gandharva-like communities in today’s neoliberal capitalism-led higher education system.