Modern Indian Education System represents an intriguing fusion of the Eastern and Western values, albeit in a feudal fashion. The origin of the present day Indian education system can be traced to the famous "Macaulay's Minute" when the British East India Company decided to establish a western type education system in India, thereby ending the medieval rule of "madrasas" and "toles". The decision was taken after intense debates among different groups regarding the direction of education system. The orientalists promoted the idea of an educational system based on the traditional culture in local schools, and mass educational programs to be carried out in vernacular Indian languages, and in Sanskrit and Persian. However, many modernists of that period, including leading Indians such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, preferred the establishment of western education, and the use of English language. These views of the modernists were forcefully expressed by Lord Thomas Macaulay in his Minute and were accepted by the Governor General of India in 1835. Lord Macaulay believed in the "downward filtration" theory of education that is very similar to the 20th Century economic "trickle-down" theory of development experts. We are all aware that neither downward filtration nor trickling-down has occurred in education, or in poverty alleviation. The colonial roots of the education system prevented the education system to be universal. Instead it created a privileged section in the Indian society who used their new exposure to devise ways of exploiting the uneducated masses. Soon higher education system in India evolved along western lines but the primary education was neglected and India remained shrouded in illiteracy and backwardness. Most of the visionary educationalists of the pre-independence era like Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghosh, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, criticized and rejected the western approach to Indian education. Rabindranath Tagore did his experiments with education system in Shantiniketan, and Viswabharati University and set a new trend in education; while Swami Vivekananda concentrated on national resurgence through the Ramakrishna Mission movement; Sri Aurobindo on spiritual regeneration; and Mahatma Gandhi on achieving Swaraj. However their successes were limited and local and till today India predominantly uses the British infrastructure of the education system established in 1835.

Reforms Introduced in the Education System in Post-Independence India: