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Abstract
British colonial education policies profoundly transformed Indian society between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While these reforms introduced Western knowledge, modern administrative skills, and new professional opportunities, they also produced deep social, cultural, and ideological fractures. This research paper examines the dual impact of colonial education—its role in modernizing Indian society by creating an English-educated elite and simultaneously marginalizing traditional knowledge systems, indigenous social groups, and vernacular cultures. Through an analysis of key interventions such as Macaulay’s Minute (1835), Wood’s Despatch (1854), the Hunter Commission (1882), and subsequent reforms, the study explores how education became an instrument of imperial control and cultural restructuring. The paper argues that colonial education acted as both a catalyst of social mobility and a tool of hegemonic domination, contributing to the emergence of nationalism even as it created new hierarchies and exclusions. Ultimately, it reveals that the legacy of colonial education in India is paradoxical: it generated modernization yet entrenched marginalization that persists in contemporary socio-educational structures.