Lecture one   

Time 9.30 — 11.30 am (please be seated by 9.15 am)

Geopolitics, the British Education Policy in India: 1780 – 1947

Britain was a global empire with 50 colonies and was deeply entrenched in European wars. When the EIC acquired territories in India and began consolidating its power during 1757 – 1800, its North American colonies rebelled and became independent. The EIC believed that the spread of radical European ideas and the establishment of colleges led to the loss of colonies. So, it made every possible effort to insulate India from radical European ideas. The French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848 and the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 greatly influenced education policies in India. The Five Medium of Instruction Debates were fought in the shadows of these influences. This talk addresses how geopolitics guided the British educational policies in India. 

Lecture two   

Time 1.30 — 3.30 pm

Compulsory Education Debates in Colonial India 1840s ‑1920

Contrary to Popular belief, the compulsory education debate did not begin in 1910, when Gopal Krishna Gokhale introduced a Bill in 1910-11. The Scottish and Indian liberals’ idea of educated masses defending their rights against oppression dates back to the 1820s. Though the term ​‘compulsion’ was not used, the idea that every boy should have sufficient literacy to read a contract before signing it or a tax receipt before accepting it conveyed the same. The colonial state’s effort to introduce ​‘National Education’ in the 1840s and ​‘Mass Education’ in the 1860s also points to the same end. The talk will discuss these developments, Gokhale’s Bill and the subsequent provincial Compulsory Education Acts. 

Tea: 3.30 — 4 pm

About the speaker

Dr Parimala V Rao is a historian and professor of the History of Education at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Education in London in 2011 and 2014. She has written extensively on education in colonial India. She is the author of Foundations of Tilak’s Nationalism: Discrimination, Education, and Hindutva (2010, paperback 2011) and Beyond Macaulay: Education in India 1780 – 1860 (2020, Second Edition 2025). She has also edited a critical volume of New Perspectives in the History of Indian Education (2014; paperback 2016). She co-edited the Encyclopedia of Asian Educators (Routledge UK, 2021). She has written 23 research papers in national and international research journals. Her latest work is the Routledge Companion to the History of Education in India: 1780 – 1947.