Contributed articles presented at the 20th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia, organized by the Zakir Husain Center for Educational Studies and Educational Records Research Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru University, held during 14-17 November 2008.

The collection of essays in this volume tries to address some of the issues and developments in the making of an inclusive knowledge society in colonial India, and the transmission of knowledge through agents and institutions of education in modern India from a historical perspective. The pace of knowledge diffusion has increased particularly over the last century, but the education system in India today is basically a legacy of the two centuries of colonial rule, with limited and uneven access to knowledge. The volume traces the growth of knowledge in India in modern times and its conflict with existing societal and religious expectations and also of the conflict between individual and institutional ideas. It also addresses the issue of social exclusionbe it sectional, regional or gender orientedand explores the growth of a new system of education in modern India.