A new book shows how modern education became the first step to freedom for womxn in British India

In 19th-century British India, modern education meant organized schooling and literacy beyond traditional limits. It included primary schools, secondary schools, colleges, female education, and practical reading and writing. Books, slates, and paper became signs of expanding learning. Education mattered because it gave people tools to record grievances, question caste power, and imagine a different social identity.

The Khasi territories offer a clear example. Chiefs requested schools, females wanted to study, and the sale of books, slates, and paper increased alongside pupil numbers. In Bombay, missionary education moved from primary schools to secondary schools and colleges after 1833. Savitribai Phule trained as a teacher, while her school educated a young Dalit writer, Mukta Salve.

This education was never equally available. Caste and class still controlled access across the subcontinent. British policy also favored basic schooling over higher education in places such as Assam. Thus, modern education expanded freedom while remaining uneven and politically limited.

Schools and literacy expanded across several parts of British India, especially in presidency towns and areas touched by reform or missionary work. Girls gained access in places where schools were established, and entire tribes converted to Christianity alongside the spread of modern literacy. Yet caste, class, region, and colonial priorities produced a deeply uneven expansion.

In Khasi territories, chiefs requested schools and females were willing to study. The number of schools and pupils rose for both boys and girls, while sales of books, slates, and paper increased. Christian missionaries educated girls in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies. In Maharashtra, Savitribai Phule’s school included Dalit students such as the fourteen-year-old Mukta Salve. Assam received basic education aimed at creating “intelligent labour,” not broad collegiate access.

The article gives no single total for schools or literate people. Its evidence shows growth, but not equal access. Expansion created new voices without removing educational exclusion.

Literacy gave women a public method for challenging power. Writing could preserve a complaint, organize an argument, and place injustice before officials or readers. This mattered because women from marginalized communities were often denied knowledge and forced to endure poverty, disease, and social indifference without recognized platforms.

Parvati Nawar, a fish-seller, wrote to the British Raj in 1883. She used a format colonial authorities could not easily ignore or erase from their archives, asking protection from police oppression at a local market. Mukta Salve, a fourteen-year-old Dalit student, wrote methodically for the Marathi weekly Dnyanodaya in 1855. She described the treatment of Mahars and Mangs and asked why doctors did not treat poor people freely.

Their writing did more than report suffering. It challenged police, caste power, and social apathy. The article does not confirm whether officials helped Nawar, but both women show literacy becoming public agency.

Education expanded through cooperation and tension among three groups. Christian missionaries established schools and educated girls, colonial officials developed systems that served imperial goals, and Indian reformers opened opportunities for people excluded by caste and gender. Together, they widened literacy, but they did not create equal education everywhere.

Missionaries worked in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies and expanded Bombay schooling from primary institutions to secondary schools and colleges after 1833. In missionary areas, conversion to Christianity came with modern literacy. Colonial policy supported large-scale basic education, especially in Assam, where officials sought “intelligent labour.” Indian reformers gave education a sharper social purpose: Savitribai and Jyotirao Phule promoted female and anti-caste schooling, while Iyothee Thass often worked directly with British and missionary networks.

These roles could reinforce one another while serving different interests. Missionaries pursued education alongside evangelisation. Officials pursued administrative and economic aims. Reformers used schooling to challenge caste and build self-conscious identities.

British policy promoted basic education because it served colonial administration and the economy. Officials could present schooling as benevolent progress while limiting the kinds of knowledge and opportunity available to Indian subjects. The article describes this as an “undercutting” technique: education expanded, but higher learning remained harder for “natives” to reach.

Assam provides the clearest example. Colonial policy concentrated on a basic minimum education for the general population. Its stated purpose was to create “intelligent labour,” while the state avoided higher collegiate education because of a strategic calculation about economic benefits. Basic literacy could produce useful workers without broadly opening elite educational pathways.

This policy created a lasting contradiction. Schools could introduce modern ideas and help oppressed people speak publicly, as Mukta Salve’s writing demonstrates. At the same time, restricted higher education preserved unequal power. The article does not describe later policy changes, but its example shows why access, not schooling alone, determines education’s social effect.

Savitribai Phule and Iyothee Thass connected education with liberation from caste hierarchy. Their work sought more than female instruction within existing social expectations. It aimed to help oppressed people construct a modern, self-conscious identity without caste and class constraints, and to a large extent without gender constraints. Education therefore became a tool for social transformation.

Savitribai trained as a teacher and, with Jyotirao Phule, led an anti-caste movement emphasizing female education. Her school taught Mukta Salve, a Dalit girl who wrote publicly against caste oppression. Iyothee Thass and other Dravidian reformers dealt directly with the British and often collaborated with missionaries, bypassing caste Hindus. By contrast, caste-Hindu protonationalist reformers and revivalists often cast women in traditional moulds while competing with Victorian morality.

The difference was political as well as educational. Phule and Thass centered agency and equality for excluded groups. The article does not claim every caste-Hindu reformer behaved identically, but it presents these two reform traditions as sharply contrasting.

Education creates freedom when people can read, write, organize arguments, and address power directly. It can expose injustice and support new identities, as seen in the writings of Parvati Nawar and Mukta Salve. But education reproduces inequality when entry depends on caste, class, gender, region, or money. Those denied schools are also denied the tools that make grievances visible.

The article shows this double effect clearly. Khasi females entered expanding schools, and missionaries educated girls in Bombay and Madras. Savitribai Phule’s school welcomed Dalit students. Yet caste and class still determined access across the subcontinent, poor Mahars and Mangs lacked money for doctors and medicine, and Assam’s policy restricted higher learning. Education was expanding, but opportunity remained stratified.

The result is not a simple choice between education and exclusion. Schooling can challenge hierarchy only when access is widened and learners can use knowledge freely. The article offers no present-day evidence, but its history points toward inclusion as the necessary next step.