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India, a country with more than 1.3 billion people living in an area of 1,269,219 square miles has only three teaching positions dedicated to the history of education. This denotes little importance given to the discipline. India produced no historian of education during the first twenty-six years after attaining independence. Bhagaban Prasad Majumdar, the first historian of education in independent India, published his First Fruit of English Education in 1973, through a local publisher that no longer exists. The book analyzed the answers written in annual examinations during the first half of the nineteenth century to evaluate the growth of modern education in India. It is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand curriculum history in India, particularly a teacher education student. However, the book is seldom quoted and difficult to find. In all of Delhi, only one library holds a single copy. This is representative of the fate that has befallen even scholars who have worked in the field at the international level and published books and papers in recognized journals. This year, India is celebrating seventy-five years of independence, and so far, it has produced six sets of major historical works and five micro studies that are limited in scope, again, are seldom quoted and recognized in the public debates on education in India.

Thus wrote a retired officer about his opposition to the British elitist policies. This was no anomaly. Hume, like most of the Scottish officers in India, defended Indian interests before the colonial administration since his arrival in 1849. In 1854, as a young officer of Etawah district in North India, Hume countered the Orientalist idea that the people of Etawah were uncivilised. He established schools and interacted with Indians very closely. Unable to tolerate his reformist endeavours, he was transferred out of the district, and his schools were destroyed. His father, Joseph Hume, too had defended Indians on more than one occasion in the House of Commons and attempted to empower them by giving direct representation. This paper looks at the Scottish radicalism carried forward by the father and son duo, which dispels the conventional historical narratives that place all colonial officials as instruments of imperialist oppression.

Taking modern time into historical considerations, the era from the mid-19thcentury to the end of the 20th century was full of heterogeneous facts and events, including the two World Wars. Of such diverse national histories, movement of people crossing borders was common to a greater extent for Asians. In this special edition, v. 7, n. 2 (2020), the editors choose first the mobility of students as a common trend in history. The second commonality is the problems of language teaching. Japan introduced modern knowledge and skills from Europe and America. It was urgent to acquire languages of European people so that they might understand European thought and institutions as correctly as possible. Another question addressed in this Special Issue is what kind of translation there could be between nations. This kind of question reminds us of a common task for the Asians to establish their national languages. Mutual dialogue between different nations should require either common language or translation. The translation must cover not only vocabulary but concept and way of thinking. Special attention is paid too to the question of the types of tertiary education institutions which were modified into plural forms, and their curriculum and teaching styles were also re-directed towards capabilities adaptable to market needs.

The colonial state always asserted itself as a harbinger of ‘modernity’ and emphasised its role in India as a ‘civilising mission’. The 1811 Educational Minute of Governor General Minto, declared Hindus and Muslims of India as inherently corrupt and insisted on the British role as ‘civilising’. Conventionally the terms ‘modern’ and ‘civilising mission’ have been considered as offensive, and scholars have critiqued them as Eurocentric and racist. However, these terms have not been analysed at the implementation stage in India. The colonial government used these terms to actually strengthen the structures of the traditional hierarchy. When Minto declared that the education policy was to civilise Hindus and Muslims of India, it was through the ‘the dread of their religion in this world and the next’ and through strengthening and empowering the priestly class of Hindus and Muslims (Sharp, 1920, pp. 19–21). The colonial administration regarded this kind of education as the corner stone of its education policy. This article looks at the education policies of the colonial state towards lower castes in the nineteenth-century India and how these policies upheld and reinforced the caste system.

In May 1857, a number of battalions in the Bengal army of the East India Company rebelled against their immediate British officers and the British administration in the North Western Provinces (NWP), Oudh and Bihar. The protracted conflict that stretched over a year was extremely violent, killed thousands of British officers and civilians and provoked an equally ruthless suppression. It ended the Company’s rule and the British Crown assumed administration in 1858. Even before the end of the conflict, the British elites such as former governor of the NWP George Russell Clerk and former Governor-General of India Ellenborough argued that English education was responsible for the revolt. They also listed the missionary schools and girls’ education as the leading causes. This paper attempts to examine the educational policies prior to the revolt and the condition of schools during the revolt, as well as the historical validity of the arguments put forth by Clerk and Ellenborough.

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 discourse of the colonial state as well as of Indian nationalists.

‘Under the alien rule… when Brahmins break the law they are punished like other persons and women are visible in public like railway carriages where men could cast improper glances’. These were the words from the article ‘Shivaji's Utterances’ in the nationalist weekly Kesari for which Tilak was prosecuted for sedition in 1897. Vishwanath Narayan Mandalik, Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar and Bal Gangadhar Tilak criticized the reformers for encouraging women and non-Brahmins to occupy public space. They called their opposition as nationalist and reformers’ support to women and non-Brahmins as ‘un-national’. They argued that the caste system and confining women to the domestic space formed the basis of the Hindu nation. Reformers like Jotirao Phule, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, Mahadev Govind Ranade, Kashinath Triyambak Telang, Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar and Narayan Ganesh Chandavarkar were criticized as ‘denationalised persons.’ The nationalists in Maharashtra questioned ‘the right of alien rulers to interfere in the internal affairs of the Hindu society who encouraged the non-Brahmins and women to take up education and become visible in the public space’. This formed the core of the nationalist agenda during 1880-1920.

Women's education in Mysore was not a product of social reform movement as was the case in the Presidencies. Here it began as a conscious effort first by the British bureaucracy during the direct colonial rule and then by the Indian bureaucracy after the rendition. The elite conflict among the Madras Party consisting of officials from the Madras Presidency, the Mysore Party consisting of Tamil speaking Iyangars and the third group consisting of local Kannada speaking Mysorians for controlling the administration dominated the public space during this period. The debates regarding the regional and linguistic identity often centred on the issues related to women. This article deals with the identity conflict and their positive effect on the growth of women's education in princely Mysore during 1860–1920.