Education

Before the British, an eighteen-year-old in India learned Sanskrit in a pathshala, Persian and Arabic in a maktab, or a craft from a family elder — not English, not science, and not in a colonial university. Within a century, English had become the language of law, government and opportunity. This topic is the story of how that happened, one policy at a time, and why every one of those policies still shapes the syllabus you are reading right now.

In two minutes

British education policy in India moved from indifference, to a one-lakh-rupee promise in 1813, to Macaulay's decisive turn toward English in 1835, to Wood's Despatch building a real system in 1854, and finally to the Hunter Commission and the Indian Universities Act correcting its excesses.

The rest of this chapter

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