“I Love to Share Lunch with My Friends” — Analysing Socialisation Processes in Indian Schools with Relational Sociology

India’s school system is in a race to catch up in the 21st century. The diversity of the pupil body remains an unresolved issue. Children of groups that had previously been excluded from education are marginalised and have high dropout rates. Against this backdrop, we examine the inclusion efforts in four Indian schools, drawing on data generated during our field research. In-depth interviews with students and teachers, observations and “drawing-telling” during school visits were used to collect data. Our study sheds light on a promising attempt by school leaders to create the idea and practice of a “we”, that is, a relational programme in which children can and should participate. The four schools differ in terms of the social backgrounds of their pupils, and there are corresponding variations in the relational programme and children’s contribution to it. These schools thus remain deeply unequal socialisation contexts. We seek to enrich the literature on schooling in the Global South by drawing on a macro-sociological understanding of relational sociology.