The paper explores the historical significance of Hindu College Calcutta, a key institution in colonial India's intellectual discourse. Established in the early 19th century, the college faced numerous challenges, including opposition from conservative factions and financial constraints, as it evolved into a hub for education and independent…

Thomas Babington Macaulay's 1835 minute on Indian education is widely held to be representative of the views which underpinned the English East India Company's replacement of Persian with English as the official language of administration in India in 1837, and the promotion of English and Indian vernacular languages as part of colonial educational…

Women missionaries who came to India with a superior Protestant religious imaginary were keen on critiquing Hindu cultural practices that created divergences and transfigurations. They blatantly proclaimed that the deep-rooted custom of women's "seclusion" was a stumbling block to education, evangelisation and modernisation. This study…

Purpose: By the mid-19th century the British colonial state introduced liberal education to India. Amongst various disciplines, political economy illustrates the concerns of the colonial state with the education of Indians, and its anxiety with quelling political discontentment. The emerging Indian nationalist intelligentsia also utilized ideas…

Thomas Munro, a Scottish highlander, came to the Madras Presidency in South India as a soldier in the army of the East India Company in 1780. He rose to the position of its governor 40 years later in 1820 and died in India in 1827. His rise was not through military campaigns but peaceful administrative policies. During his stay in India, he…

Agricultural improvement was a vital aspect of the 'development scheme' of the British Government in India as agriculture was the most revenue-generating industry in Bihar. From the first Famine Commission Report of 1880, there was a set agenda to improve agriculture through education. This was to be achieved through importing western science and…

This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more…

Indian students in Britain before the Second World War were a sizeable social group who exerted noticeable influence on Indian nationalism and on British institutions and society. The politics of race and empire were mediated through British schools and universities in this period with consequences for Indian students, and their peers. This…

A geophysical perception of the ecumene had always existed in the consciousness of Indians even in precolonial days. But with the advent of the British, and with the establishment of territorial mapping and institutionalised education, there was a growing awareness of differences and similarities related to ethnicity, race and space. Colonial…

In this article, I draw attention to the early 1850s in the Bombay Presidency when the colonial government first assumed responsibility for mass education. I show that in the subsequent decades, publicly funded schooling was narrow and extremely exclusive as a result of the strong opposition of dominant castes to the education of the Dalits…

As the British expanded their dominions in India, political and administrative needs made it imperative for them to acquire more information about their subjects. Hence, systematic and meticulous surveys began to be commissioned by the East India Company as it assumed charge of educating the natives. These surveys were an integral part of what…

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was one of the foremost leaders of the Indian freedom struggle. He was not a run-of-the-mill politician, but an intellectual and thinker who spent several decades writing and speaking on diverse issues, including education. His commitment to the pluralist ethos of the Indian freedom struggle is reflected in his work and…

Concerns about the professional development of teachers have a political dimension as governments around the world engage in the discourse on global standards and want to improve the quality of their school education. Increasingly, teachers are feeling the pressure of securing high achievement scores and large-scale assessments of student learning…

The encounter between the pre-colonial education system in India, dominated by poor teachers and students, and the British education system, which defended and perpetuated the "English class system", created a complex and problematic relationship. This article explores this problematic relationship between poverty and education in the…

The article traces the fundamental incoherency that structured the Danish Missionary Society's work at a boarding school for low-caste "heathen" children in South India in the 1860s and 1870s. Through elaborate disciplinary methods, the missionaries set out to Christianize and civilize the Indian children's morality, social behaviour and…