Authors: Steffi Brian Dsouza, Sushil Verma
Abstract: The British colonial rule significantly transformed the educational environment in India by entrenching the policies which were aimed at supporting the imperial rule, and not the intellectual growth of Indians. Colonial education was not neutral knowledge transmission practice, it served as an administrative instrument of knowledge control, and also reorganization of culture, and social control. This essay will look at how the British great British educational policies, starting with the Charter Act of 1813 to the late colonial education commissions, contributed to shaping modern Indian education. Using a historical analysis- approach, the research uses a synthesis of colonial policy documents, commission reports, and critical historiographical writing to follow changes in curriculum design, language of instruction, institutional structure and access to education. The discussion shows that colonial education brought about standardized forms of school education, universities and bureaucratic rationality which helped bring efficiency to the administration and professional training. Nonetheless, all these processes also pushed away indigenous knowledge systems, solidified prevailing social structures, and supported education in English language as the only means of access, thus restricting equal opportunities. Colonial education has left legacies in post-independence India in terms of examination-based pedagogy, curriculum preference, language policy and elite reproduction. According to the argument of the paper, modern Indian education has become a paradoxical inheritance because it has provided social mobility to a few individuals and has also made compliant structural inequality. This colonial genealogy is vital to a critical approach in the present with the debates of educational reform and decolonization in India.
