Colonialism Through Education: A Case Study of How the British Raj Colonized India by Colonizing the Minds of the Indians

Colonization through weapons can only go as far as the weapons last. However, subjugation through mind control will last until a new thought process is developed to challenge it. The English Raj in India understood this soon enough to divert their attention towards ‘educating’ the indigenous people of India. The colonial education system, which the Indian government still follows to this day, was designed more to legitimise the English rule in India and to streamline the process of economic exploitation, rather than to actually educate the people of the country. This was also a conscious attempt by the Raj to indoctrinate the Indians into believing the superiority of the west while undermining their own tradition and culture. The consequence of such indoctrination, they imagined, would lead the Indians to accept the dominance of the colonizers without ever questioning it. Hence, in the words of the President himself of the General Committee of Public Instruction, which was set up to impart English education to the Indians, he was looking to create a class of Indians who were “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” This paper, therefore, attempts to shade light on how the colonizers destroyed the traditional Indian education system and replaced it with their westernized English education system, in order to strengthen the political and economic dominance of the colonialist country over the colony. This paper would also attempt to explore, how many of the modern day problems that exist in India is the direct result of such colonial indoctrination and why decolonisation of mind is the need of the hour.