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 exclusion—be it sectional, regional or gender oriented—and explores the growth of a new system of education in modern India.