Post-secondary education in India was never considered free and universal. It has always been the prerogative of the few. It was not considered worthwhile for all till Mahatma Jyothirao Phule, in a memorandum to the Hunter Commission in 1882, criticised the British, saying that they were providing higher education to upper castes by taxing illiterate farmers. Muslims in the Madras Presidency also appealed to the Hunter Commission for places in schools and colleges. Thereafter, the government introduced what is now known as reservations in educational institutions, which became an all-India programme after Independence.
But higher education was never made universal, as it was offered by private colleges from the beginning. The British Indian government introduced the grant-in-aid system to support private enterprise and philanthropy before Independence. That continued for a long time till the unaided (“self-financing”) college scheme came in to operation a few decades ago.
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