/u/Shmebbar gave a wonderful answer to a similar question last year:
In the follow-up questions, too, there's some great information about the modern reinforcement of English through education programs under post-WW2 American imperialism.
Shmebbar gave an excellent answer, but I disagree somewhat, especially when it comes to the analysis of British policy in India. I know little about language and history in Indonesia, but it isn't exactly correct to say that the British invested in education in India. Education in investment in British India never exceeded 1% of GDP, much lower than in most other colonial empires. Levels of literacy and educational attainment in India and Indonesia were very similar and very low throughout the colonial period in both India and Indonesia (this claim is based on page 65 of Human capital and economic growth in India, Indonesia and Japan). Anecdotally, few of my older relatives, even educated and succesful ones, can speak much English. I have a grand aunt who was an English teacher, who could not speak a sentence of grammatical English. At independence, India had a narrow educated elite who spoke English, but in north India, the lingua franca was Hindustani, not English, and only a small percent of the population was educated.
I think the rise of English as a lingua franca is just as much about post-colonial decisions as it is about the colonial legacy. First, although Hindi was an acceptable lingua franca for the northern two thirds of the country, it was unacceptable in the south. From personal experience, people in Tamil Nadu often take a perverse sort of pride in knowing no Hindi, and anti-Hindi agitation was once a major feature of Tamil politics. Many southerners feared that making Hindi the official language would put them at a disadvantage for public sector jobs, because Hindi knowledge in the south is often very weak. India was forced to use keep English the official language, because at least all people from all states would struggle equally with English. The impetus for English grew with the economic reforms of the 1990s. As it became clear that India's English speaking heritage gave it a powerful edge economically, education systems started emphasizing English. Almost all of my upper middle class relatives in India send their kids to English medium schools from as early as grade school (whereas my parents went to Gujarati medium schools), and the learning of Indian languages has been deemphasized to a level that is often shocking.
To strengthen my argument that the role of English is largely a post-colonial phenomenon, I'd like to point to Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan shared similar colonial histories. However, the political pressures in Pakistan were very different than in India, and Urdu (sort of) was an acceptable lingua franca. The colonial legacy means English was always present, and economic usefulness of English is fueling massive growth in English language teaching, the spread of English outside the elite is much less widespread outside the elite and upper middle classes.
Determinants of primary schooling in British India, Latika Chaudhry
Big BRICs, weak foundations: The beginning of public elementary education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, Latika Chaudhry
Human Capital and Economic Growth in India, Indonesia, and Japan: A quantitative analysis, 1890-2000 Bas van Leeuwen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravida_Munnetra_Kazhagam
English as the language for development in Pakistan: Issues, challenges and possible solutions, F Shamin
/u/Erezen
If we are to talk about India and Indonesia in the present times w.r.t. the influence of their respective majority colonial masters, we have to consider what happened in the lead-up to WW2, and what happened afterwards.
If we are going to talk about the Dutch language in the former Dutch East Indies, we have to also talk about how the Indonesian language came to be the national language and how it came to be the dominant first language today.
In short, the rise of Indonesian language was due to pragmatic compromise made by liberal-minded colonial policy, in line with rising nationalist groups, while literacy in Dutch was very poor. Over WW2, the use of Dutch was suppressed. Following WW2 enmity between the independent Republic of Indonesia and the Dutch government ensured there was no space for the Dutch language. Over time, government policy determined that Indonesian became the only official language.
The Dutch East Indies
In the Dutch East Indies (DEI), by the later 19th-early 20th century there was already awareness that the teaching of Dutch language has advantages and should be encouraged. Even at the end of the 19th century, there were many more speakers of Dutch than there were speakers of Malay -- which was later to become the Indonesian language -- in the Dutch East Indies. After all, it was only in the 1880s that Malay-language newspapers started to be printed.
With the rise of Ethical Policy in the DEI, further primary and secondary education was made available to the public. See this thread where /u/MrTimmer , /u/davepx , /u/itsalrightwithme discussed some numbers on education rates. However, there was a major difference between primary and secondary education, and what was available to the masses versus some of the native elites. The sekolah-desa system that was founded was a 3-year education in native languages. Dutch was used in schools reserved for the elites. Thus, effective literacy rates remained poor.
With rising nationalism, the issue of language came to a head again in the early 20th century, along with the question of whither the entire DEI should become one independent country or if it should become several. The current government would like all of us to think the former had always made sense. But did it? Even if it did to remain a united country, what should it be? Organizations such as Budi Utomo (for Javanese only, or at best Javanese-culture) focused on regional identity, while Sarekat Islam (only for Muslims) wanted a pan-DEI Islamist country, while the Indische Partij (IP) of Douwes Dekker the notable Indo eurasian, along with his partner Mangunkusumo, proposed a multi-ethnic, secular Indonesia. The history of IP is quite important but is overlooked, even as they played an important role in furthering public education through the so-called Wild Schools in the 1920s, founded following their All Indies Congress in Bandung. Thousands of students were enrolled in education given in the Dutch language.
Around this time, the use of Malay as a national language was being advanced in the Eurasians and Chinese communities, who were ahead of native Indonesians when it came to literacy rates. Malay was the chosen language since it was easy to learn and they were commonly used in the coastal regions exposed to trade. The Eurasians were used to speaking it as they dealt with native traders, and the Chinese often used elements of Malay to speak among themselves in order to bridge the various Chinese ethnic dialects. The DEI colonial government itself promoted the use of Malay. After all, the Volksraad (People's Council) had two official languages: Dutch and Malay.
Further, in 1928 the 2nd (Nationalist) Youth Congress in then-Batavia declared the Indonesian language (based on Malay) to be the national language, and Indonesia Raya to be the national anthem. To most nationalists, there was no contradiction in seeking education in the Dutch language, as it gave them access to government and the economic apparatus of the colonials. And importantly, the nationalists themselves were working hand-in-hand with the colonial Volksraad when it came to the language issue. The colonial government itself founded Balai Pustaka, a publishing house, to promote literacy in the Malay language. Over time, it came to be one instrument through which the Indonesian government promoted the Indonesian language.
Thus, that was the situation approaching WW2, namely that education was highly uneven, the nationalists were pragmatically promulgating a "new" national language, while at the same time the use of Dutch in instruction was still sought. This was aligned with the policy of the colonials. However, literacy in Dutch and Malay were still very poor outside the elite.
We can quote van Mook, the Dutch Minister of Colonies, lamenting in his exile in England in 1943 that,
A common language is the surest measure for spreading culture and loyalty. The British always encourage the speaking of English in their dominions and colonies. We have not done this in the Netherlands East Indies. Let us do it after the war.
WW2 and Independence
The Japanese administration of the former DEI was done very poorly, up to and including suppression of Dutch personnel and administration, resulting in widespread famine and suffering. As the Dutch administration and citizenry were torn down and put into prison camps respectively, so did the use of Dutch as a language. Regardless, the Japanese knew they needed local collaborators and promoted nationalist leaders such as Sukarno, who further promoted the use of Indonesian.
At the end of WW2, the relationship between newly-independent Indonesia and the Netherlands was fraught from the get-go. See for example, 1, 2, 3.
When the Dutch launched the Police Action they faced opposition almost everywhere, even if they were largely not yet fully organized with each other. The Dutch leveraged a combination of post-war loans, British military presence, and available British war materiel. The 1945-1947 period saw chaotic fighting with all sides committing atrocities against opposing civilian and military groups, prisoners of war, civilians recently liberated from internment camps.
The US was concerned that continuing instability in Indonesia would provide an inroad for Communism: and it did. It was known that the Dutch East Indies had a large population and significant mineral wealth -- a key flashpoint in the new emerging world order. But Sukarno and Hatta's suppression of the 1948 Communist uprising in Madiun demonstrated to the US that they may end up being friendly to US interests in the region. Regardless, the Dutch insisted on a weak federal republic, the Republic of the United States of Indonesia (RUSI) and they had significant economic goals to pursue in the negotiations. Thus, they launched their last major offensive at the end of 1948.
The US and UN strongly opposed this offensive and forced the Dutch to negotiate. Unable to secure further loans -- the cost of the Police Action had risen to 20% of the Dutch national budget -- the Dutch had no choice. Truman also threatened to withhold further Marshall Plan aid. Indonesian negotiators agreed to a federation, RUSI, in a symbolic union with the Netherlands. They also agreed to return and respect the properties of Dutch companies and to allow Dutch nationals to continue to control those companies.
However, the Dutch insisted that RUSI assume the total cost of war, a magnificent 6 billion guilders in debt ($1.7 billion USD), and income from exports of tin and foreign exchange!!! The translation of this, that RUSI had to assume the cost of war against it. Unsurprisingly, Indonesians refused, instead offering to assume debts but only up to 1942. The US envoy finally forced a compromise that RUSI accept the agreement to assume 4.3 billion guilders of debt, and at the same time that West Papua remain under Dutch control. All this in exchange of promise of aid from the US.
Most importantly to this thread, the Indonesian Constitution declared Indonesian to be the official state language, with no space for the Dutch language. It became the only official language. Starting in the 60s-70s, the government standardized education and most publications to use the official Indonesian language, through institutions such as Balai Pustaka.
Whither India?
By contrast, as India secured her independence in 1947, it was recognized that language was a major issue, and a compromise was made in the next few years whereby Hindi was to be the official language, but that the use of English for government purpose was allowed up to 1965, with the option for extension. Over time, English retained its place even if periodically this rose to become a political issue. See for example, 4, 5.
References
J. Bresnan, Indonesia: The Great Transition, ISBN-13: 978-0742540118, 2005.
R.E. Elson, Constructing the Nation: Ethnicity, Race Modernity and Citizenship in Early Indonesian Thought, Asian Ethnicity (2005) 6 (3): 145-160.