Role of Modern Education and Socio-Cultural Movements in India's Independence

Abstract: At the outset it may be stated explicitly that this paper has tried to argue that the spread of modern education and consequent socio-culturalreforms, among other factors, indirectly played a key role in the struggle for India's independence. The role of other such factors, however, are not underplayed in the freedom movement. The British were highly zealous of spreading their education and culture outside. Statesmen like Lord Macaulay and Sir Cecil Rhodes were of the view that the English culture was the best and the most liberal in the world and if India, South Africa and later on, the entire world were “Anglicized” culturally through British pattern of education, it would pave the way for the social and political unification of the world. The idea of “Anglicizing” the world and thereby building up the empire and forging political and social unity of peoples at the global level under the leadership of the British, is apparent in the will of Sir Cecil Rhodes. He had desired “the extension of British rule throughout the world, the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Valley of the Euphrates … the whole of South Africa … the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament, which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity [1].” Thus the belief in Britain’s role as the Messiah to civilize and unify the world by disseminating the British culture was one of the important reasons for the introduction of modern education in India.