{"id":23353,"date":"2026-08-31T04:56:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T04:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=23353"},"modified":"2026-08-31T04:56:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T04:56:31","slug":"hinduism-today-planning-article-on-traditional-gurukulams-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2026\/08\/31\/hinduism-today-planning-article-on-traditional-gurukulams-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Hinduism Today Planning Article on Traditional Gurukulams in India"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">KAUAI, HAWAII, August 30, 2026 (Hinduism Today): Please send us your recommendations for high quality gurukulams and pathasalas in north and south India for a story we&#8217;re planning on the modern form of these ancient educational systems to the managing editor at <a href=\"mailto:ar@hindu.org\">ar@hindu.org<\/a>.<br><br>A little background: India has a long history of schools which have taught Sanskrit and the ancient knowledge systems. Their typical form was that of a school in the guru&#8217;s home where students came to live and learn over a period of many years. This has been the principal means, to give one example, of training priests who serve in temples, conduct various forms of worship in homes, perform last rites, etc.<br><br>These traditional schools were a target of the educational reforms designed in the 1830s by Thomas Macaulay who declared the old systems useless and set about instituting  a British style system of education, most famously to form &#8220;a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect&#8221; to serve as interpreters for colonial rule. He was quite successful at this and India is dealing with the consequences to this day.<br><br>Starting with Dayananda Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj in 1875, there has been organized pushback against this imposed system with a goal to restore the intent and values of the old system. Starting in 1902, his followers have created gurukulams, mostly in north India. Other organizations have copied their pattern.<br><br>In South India, the older gurukulam\/pathasala system was not as impacted as much, apparently because of the continued need to train temple priests for the large number of temples in the south. There are pathasalas who can date their origin back hundreds of years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KAUAI, HAWAII, August 30, 2026 (Hinduism Today): Please send us your recommendations for high quality gurukulams and pathasalas in north,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23353"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23359,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23353\/revisions\/23359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}