ABSTRACT
In the second half of the nineteenth century, a small group of people proficient in the English language emerged in several areas under British rule. From the 1860s the British increased their efforts to promote English education with the result that, by the end of 1870s, all the district headquarters in eastern India had at least one government-run and managed high school. The English education had helped to bring into focus a middle-class though it was not as yet similar in form and character to the middle-class of the West. The English educated element thus set the pattern which the society by and large emulated. The new elite group was in the best position to find out how things were going on in the world and what should be adopted or discarded, and how far and to what extent the society should stir itself. The Theosophical Society established a little earlier immediately struck root in Bihar, especially among English-educated members.
