The making of the enlightenment in the age of imperial expansion through the analytical frame of knowledge and pedagogies were subjects of debate in nineteenth-century India, and continue to remain so. There was a set of complicated political, social and psychological process involved in colonial schooling in India as a public site to frame native subjectivities. This has resulted in a unique formulation of racial-civilisational location of Indian subjectivity, with its alternate configuration of power. The article seeks to emphasise the disparate discourses on the prevalent education system, and the reaction of Bengali intellectuals towards ‘modern’ Western pedagogy in nineteenth-century Bengal. The critical debates, ranging from commendation to condemnation underline the dilemma of a period of transition. As a subject of experimental formulations of ideas and system, the native learner was at the centre of a cultural tussle that got torn between Western impositions and nationalistic sentiments.
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