This paper attempts to examine the childhood and education of girls in India in the context of their socialisation in the family and the historical evolution of the State’s capacity to deal with gender issues. The customs and rituals under which girls are brought up and gendered into womanhood constitute a regime which is incompatible with the normative view of childhood implicit in child-centred policies of education. The evolution of the Indian state under colonialism has made it structurally predisposed towards the maintenance of patriarchy. Education can hardly be expected to interfere with gender asymmetry unless it is epistemologically reconceptualised with the help of a collective academic enterprise involving several different disciplines.