Bentinck promptly noted his
“entire”
concurrence with Macaulay's
views.
views.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
50-3.
## p. 105 (#141) ############################################
RAM MOHAN ROY
105
>
by Adam, Hastings's temporary successor, and entrusted with the
disbursement of the greater part of the annual one lakh grant. Arrears
were paid in; and the committee prepared to organise a Sanskrit
College which the government had decided to open in Calcutta.
A college on Western lines was being gradually established by the
Serampur missionaries, under the patronage of the king of Denmark
and the governor-general, “for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian
and other youths in Western literature and European science", while
“Bishop's College”, another missionary institution, had been founded
at Calcutta in 1820 by means of subscriptions raised in England. 1 In
1823 a college had been founded and endowed liberally at Agra by
a certain pandit Gangadhar without any pecuniary assistance from
the government. Progress was in the air; but hardly had the members
of the new committee assembled when they were called on to consider
a petition, addressed to Lord Amherst, by Ram Mohan Roy. Its most
notable passages were these:
“When this seminary of learning”. (the new Sanskrit College) “was proposed,
we understood that the government in England had ordered a considerable sum
of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We were
filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European
gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics,
natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences which the nations
of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the
inhabitants of other parts of the world. . . . We now find that the government are
establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindoo pundits to impart such knowledge as
is already current in India. . . . The pupils will here acquire what was known two
thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtilties since produced
by speculative men, such as is commonly taught in all parts of India. The Sanskrit
language, so difficult that almost a lifetime is necessary for its perfect acquisition,
is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of know-
ledge; and the Icarning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from
sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it. If it had been intended to keep the
British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not
have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best
calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of
education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such
had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native
population is the object of the government, it will consequently promote a more
liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural
philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be
accomplished with the sum proposed, by employing a few gentlemen of talents and
learning educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with the necessary
books, instruments and other apparatus. '
It does not appear that this petition produced any immediate im-
pression, but it certainly bore fruit later on.
There were other progressive Indians who thought with Ram
Mohan Roy. Bishop Heber's journals and correspondence throw con-
siderable light on currents of opinion at this time. In a letter dated
Calcutta, October, 1823, he remarked on the friendly atticude of
1 Whitehead, op. cit. pp. 166–7.
2 Sharp, op. cit. pp. 99-101.
## p. 106 (#142) ############################################
106 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
>
Hindus and Muhammadans towards mission schools, which, however,
were very rarely attended by Muslim children. No objection was
made to the use of the Bible as a class-book provided that the teachers
did not urge their pupils to eat what would break their caste, or be
baptised, or “curse their country's gods”. Twenty schools had re-
cently been established by Church of England missionaries. In
December, 1823, he observed the increasing tendency “to imitate the
English in everything”. This had already led to important results and
would lead to still more important results in future. Many wealthy
Indians spoke English fluently and were tolerably read in English
literature. In the Bengali papers, of which there were two or three,
politics were canvassed with a bias to Whiggism. Among the lower
orders the same feeling was visible in a growing neglect of caste, and
in an anxiety to learn and speak English, which, if properly encouraged,
might in fifty years "make our language what Oordoo (Hindustani)
is at present” 2 In 1824 Heber visited the Benares Sanskrit College,
and after attending a lecture on astronomy wondered that such
rubbish should be taught in a government college. 3
The Committee of Public Instruction started with a credit of arrears
of the government grant, but even so, suffered from narrowness of
means. In the year 1824 the sum which could be spared for the Bengal
Presidency was only £19,970. Thuy decided to spend their money
“on the best means of improving the education of the more re-
spectable members of Indian society especially those who make
letters their profession? ”. This they attempted to do by ignoring the
indigenous schools and by printing in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic,
both original works and translations of such books as Hutton's
Mathematics, Croker's Land Surveying and Bridge's Algebra. They
further provided “literary endowments” for promising students
of Indian classical literature, attached English classes to certain
Orientalist colleges and started a few schools for teaching English.
In fact they endeavoured to carry out the vague monitions of the
directors, but soon found their path beset by eager applicants for the
means of instruction in English. The situation has been described in
these words by Charles Trevelyan, a young civil servant, one of their
number who subsequently rose to high distinction:
Upwards of 31,000 English books were sold by the school-book society in the
course of two years while the committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit
volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months,
to say nothing of the printing expenses. . . . Among other signs of the times a petition
was presented to the committee by a number of young men who had been brought
up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically representing that, notwithstanding the long
and elaborate course of study which they had gone through, they had little prospect
of bettering their condition; that the indifference with which they were generally
1 The first Bengali newspaper--the Samachar Darpan (mirror of news)—was issued from
the Serampur Press on 31 May, 1818 (Marshman, op. cit
. pp. 280–1).
? Heber, Narrative and Letters, 11, 306–7.
3 Idem, 1, 295-6.
>
## p. 107 (#143) ############################################
THE ORIENTALIST CONTROVERSY
107
regarded by their countrymen left them no hope of assistance from them, and that
they therefore trusted that the government, which had made them what they were,
would not abandon them to destitution and neglect. The English classes which had
been tacked on to the Sanskrit and other oriental colleges had entirely failed in
their object. The boys had not time to go through an English in addition to an
oriental, course; and the study which was secondary was naturally neglected. The
translations into Arabic, also, appeared to have made as little impression upon the
few who knew that language, as upon the mass of the people who were entirely
unacquainted with it. 1
Faced with such representations, the committee split into halves,
the Orientalist and older party and the English, or younger, party.
The first wished to continue the policy of “letting the natives pursue
their present course of instruction, and of endeavouring to engraft
European science thereon". The second desired to spend no more
money on bounties to students of the Indian classical languages or
on printing Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian books, but to devote all
available funds to conveying to Indians, through the medium of
English, the literary and scientific information necessary for a liberal
education. Although for some time the knowledge so conveyed would
be confined to a limited circle, it would soon penetrate to the outer
community through the channel of a new vernacular literature. This
doctrine became famous as “the filtration theory”. Its advocates
took inadequate account of the rigidity of Indian caste and occupa-
tional distinctions. Neither party proposed to do anything for the
indigenous schools, and both agreed that the vernaculars "contained
neither the literary nor the scientific information necessary for a
liberal education”. 9 Bengal in fact stood at a parting of the ways.
We must now briefly review events in Bombay and Madras. In the
early years of the nineteenth century these presidencies greatly
expanded and were fortunate enough to obtain as their governors
two
remarkable men who devoted much attention to education. Both
presidencies had their own indigenous schools which roughly re-
sembled those of Bengal and Bihar. In Bombay, where indigenous
schools were far rarer than in Bengal, Mountstuart Elphinstone
obtained the sanction of the directors to the payment on a reduced
scale of the Dakshina allowances formerly distributed by order of the
Peshwas to Brahmans of distinguished learning in the Hindu scrip-
tures, selected after examinations held in the presence of the Poona
court. The money was eventually devoted to the establishment of
a Sanskrit College at Poona. Elphinstone was desirous of diffusing
"a rational education which by removing prejudices and communi-
cating British principles would pave the way for the employment of
natives in the higher branches of the public service”. He strongly
deprecated any admixture of religion with state education. He aimed
1 Trevelyan, op. cit. p. 10.
· Trevelyan, op. cit. p. 21.
* Elphinstone observed of these: “Reading is confined to Brahmans, Banyans, and such
of the agricultural classes as have to do with accounts" (Adam, op. cit. p. 268).
## p. 108 (#144) ############################################
108 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
at encouraging, improving, and increasing schools for vernacular
education and at establishing schools for the purpose of teaching
English to those disposed to pursue it as a classical language and
"a means of acquiring knowledge of European discoveries”. He con-
templated the preparation of books on moral and physical sciences
in the vernacular and "standard examinations” for public employ-
ment.
“If there be a wish”, he wrote, “to contribute to the abolition of the horrors of
self-immolation and of infanticide, and ultimately to the destruction of superstition,
it is scarcely necessary to prove that the only means of success is the diffusion of
knowledge.
Before he resigned office, an English school, an engineering institution,
and a medical school were opened in Bombay, and an English class
was added to the Sanskrit College at Poona. The famous Elphinstone
College represents subscriptions contributed in honour of his name
by “princes, chieftains and gentlemen connected with the West of
India as an endowment for three professors of the English language
and of European arts and sciences". 1 His successor, Sir John Malcolm,
recorded a minute in 1828 which expressed anxiety for the diffusion
of instruction which would open the road to wider employment of
Indians in posts of greater trust and responsibility. But for this
purpose, Malcolm considered, no knowledge of English was necessary.
“The acquisition of that would occupy a period required for other
studies and pursuits. ” It was, however, essential that aspiring Indians
should have the advantage of translations from English of scientific
works and of books which would enable them to understand English
principles of administration.
In Madras Sir Thomas Munro started enquiries in 1823 which
showed that among a population estimated to number 12,850,941
there was one school to every 1000; but only a very few females were
taught in schools.
“The state of education has”, he minuted, “been better in earlier times; but
for the last century it does not appear to have undergone any other change than
what arose from the number of schools diminishing in one place and increasing in
another, in consequence of the shifting of the population from war or other causes.
The great number of schools has been supposed to contribute to the keeping of
education in a low state, because it does not give a sufficient number of scholars
to secure the services of able teachers. "
He commented on the poor quality and general ignorance of the
teachers. He was inclined to assist indigenous schools in certain
cases, but not to interfere with them, and was anxious to establish
a “normal” school in a central place for training teachers as well as
two government schools in every district, one for Hindus and one for
1 Parl. Papers, E. I. C. 1832, general, App. I, p. 469.
2 Sharp, op. cit. 1, 73-4. It is clear from a letter from Munro to Canning that he also
contemplated the extension of a knowledge of English literature among the Hindus.
Gleig, Life of Munro, II, 186.
## p. 109 (#145) ############################################
BENTINCK
109
Muhammadans. But he died in 1827; and his scheme did not com-
mend itself to the directors, who had now become anxious to have at
their disposal “a body of natives qualified by their habits and acquire-
ments to take a larger share and occupy higher positions in the civil
administration of their country than had hitherto been the practice".
The Madras scheme dissolved; but in that presidency a colloquial
knowledge of English was more commonly found than in Bengal.
Several distinct languages were spoken there, and English had been
largely adopted as a common medium of intercourse. The mis-
sionaries too were busy. Their activities in the whole educational field
induced Charles Metcalfe to observe in 1834, when quitting the
governor-general's council on promotion: “They seem destined by
almighty Providence to be the chief instruments for improving and
enlightening the inhabitants of this country through the means of
education and moral instruction”. 1
In the year 1828 Lord William Cavendish Bentinck became
governor-general. A Whig in politics, he was a courageous and
zealous reformer. After careful investigation he summarily forbade
sati against the advice not only of Horace Hayman Wilson, the most
prominent Orientalist, but also of Ram Mohan Roy. Again despite
Orientalist advice to the contrary, he established a new medical
college for training Indian students entirely on Western lines. He
further meditated reforms in education, but decided first to obey the
old orders of 1814 and obtain definite information about the in-
digenous schools. Unfortunately, however, he delayed action till
January, 1835, the very year of his departure; and in the meantime
the differences between the two parties on the Committee of Public
Instruction had come to a head. The English party had been sup-
ported in Calcutta by a forceful recruit in the person of Alexander
Duff, a Scotch missionary who, arriving in India in 1829, had opened
a secondary school, with the assistance of Ram Mohan Roy, and had
already attracted numerous Hindu pupils. Duffurged vehemently
that not only was Sanskrit unadaptable as a medium of modern
education, but that, by an ordinance reckoned to be divine, three-
fourths of the people, consisting of the mixed and lower classes, were
forbidden the study of it.
"There are”, he argued, "scarcely any European works translated into Sanskrit;
and even if there were, every term in that sacred tongue is linked inseparably with
some idea, or sentiment, or deduction of Hinduism which is a stupendous system
of error;. . . whereas in the very act of acquiring English, the mind, in grasping the
import of new terms, is perpetually brought into contact with new truths and ideas
so that by the time that the language has been mastered, the student must be tenfold
less the child of pantheism, idolatry and superstition than before. ”
Kaye, Life of Metcalfe, 11, 229. Cf. Mahmud, op. cit. p. 39.
: Article, “Hindu Medicine and Medical Education", Calcutta Review, 1866, XLII,
106–25.
; Article by Duff on “Indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar," Calcutta Review, 1844.
Cf. Adam, op. cit. pp. 10–13.
• Paton, Life of Duff, p. 66.
>
26
## p. 110 (#146) ############################################
110
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
> >
Unlike Carey, Duff was no Orientalist, but he took pains to learn Ben-
gali and arranged that his pupils should study their mother-tongue.
These, then, were the issues which pressed for decision at Calcutta
in the early 'thirties.
(a) Should anything be done for mass-education; or should it be
left to unaided indigenous schools ?
(6) Should all idea of grafting the modern learning of the West on
the ancient learning of the East be abandoned as impracticable?
(c) Should the filtration theory be adopted and all available funds
be devoted to advancing Western knowledge among the upper classes
through the medium of English? No one at Calcutta argued that the
Bengal vernaculars would serve as a medium, although the govern-
ments of Bombay and Madras were disposed to use their own very
different vernaculars for the diffusion of general knowledge. The
Calcutta Government, too, had recently substituted vernaculars for
Persian in the law courts of the Bengal Presidency.
The filtration theory and the virtual supersession of the classical
languages by English were advocated by advanced Hindus in
Calcutta, by the followers of Hare and Ram Mohan Roy, by Duff
and his missionary supporters, and by “the English party” on the
Committee of Public Instruction. It is important to notice that the
strongest influences in bringing this “English party" into existence
were the petition of Ram Mohan Roy and the practical experience of
the committee. In this way a policy was shaped which contemplated
the eventual use of the vernaculars for the diffusion of Western know-
ledge, but the immediate employment of English for this purpose,
and of English alone. It commended itself to the directors who,
from motives of economy as well as for reasons of policy, wished to
see a substantial contingent of Western-educated Indians in the
public services. Their interest in indigenous schools had long since
evaporated; and on 8 February, 1829, they had reminded the
governor-general that the one lakh grant was to be placed at the
disposal not of one alone, but of all three presidencies, and that it was
only to be allotted “in the event of there being a surplus revenue after
defraying all the expenses of government”,3
Ram Mohan Roy had gone to England in 1830, where he was
received with honour and gave evidence on Indian affairs before a
select committee of the House of Commons; but, to the bitter loss of
his country, he died at Bristol in 1833. 4 In the same year parliament,
See Prinsep's Diary, ap. Sharp, op. cit. 1, 133. It appears, however, from circular 220
of the nizamat adalat dated 27 January, 1837, that while the depositions of parties or
witnesses were to be taken down in the languages in which they were delivered, Persian
translations were to be annexed to the records if the latter were called for by the nizamat
court (Circular orders of the Calcutta Nizamal Adawlat, 1846, p. 268).
2 Dispatch, 29 September, 1830.
• Howell, op. cit. p. 20. Cf. Mahmud, op. cit. p. 47.
• See The Last Days of Ram Mohan Roy, especially pp. 9o and 94, also Reports, Com-
mittees, E. I. C. 1831-2 (4), viII, 391.
8
## p. 111 (#147) ############################################
MACAULAY
III
after prolonged enquiry, decided when renewing the charter of the
East India Company to dissociate that body altogether from trade,
to add a “legal member” to the governor-general's council, and to
declare that no native of India would in future be debarred from
office or employment by reason of religion, place of birth, descent or
colour. 1 On 10 December, 1834, the directors informed Bentinck's
government that every effort must be made to enable natives of India
to compete for the public service with fair chance of success, “whether
by conferring on them the advantages of education or by diffusing
on them the treasures of science, knowledge and moral culture”.
In the autumn of 1834 Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had been
appointed to the legal membership of the governor-general's council,
arrived at Calcutta and was appointed president of the Committee of
Public Instruction, which he found hopelessly divided between the
Orientalist and the English parties. The Orientalists had lost a strong
champion in H. H. Wilson, who had left India in January, 1833.
Macaulay declined to take an active part in its proceedings until the
government had passed judgment on the main issue in dispute; but
on 2 February, 1835, he presented a lengthy minute to Bentinck in
support of the English party. In some passages he poured scorn on
Oriental literature, of which he knew nothing. In others, while
asserting that he would strictly respect all existing interests, he pro-
posed not only to stop the printing of Arabic and Sanskrit books, but
to abolish the Muhammadan Madrasa which had been founded by
Warren Hastings and the Calcutta Sanskrit College. No stipends, he
urged, should in future be given to students at the Benares and Delhi
colleges. The funds thus set free would be given to the Vidyalaya at
Calcutta and to the establishment of English schools in the principal
cities of Upper India. With the limited means available it was im-
possible to educate the body of the people, Endeavours should be
made to form a class of persons “Indian in blood and colour, but
English in tastes, in opinion, in morals and in intellect". These would
refine the vernaculars, enrich them with Western terms of science and
render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the
great mass of the population.
Bentinck promptly noted his “entire” concurrence with Macaulay's
views. In the previous month he had placed William Adam, editor
of a popular Calcutta journal and ex-missionary, under the orders
of the Committee of Public Instruction to conduct enquiries into
the state of indigenous education in Bengal. In a minute dated
20 January, 1835, 2 he had observed, when appointing Adam, that a
true estimate of the Indian mind and capacity could not be formed
without the information which Adam was to collect. Adam, however,
had barely begun when Macaulay's minute was laid before Bentinck's
1 C. pp. 3 sqq. , supra.
· Adam, op. cit. pp. 10-13.
## p. 112 (#148) ############################################
II2
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
colleagues with the governor-general's note of concurrence and an
adverse memorandum drawn up by H. T. Prinsep, a civil servant
of twenty-six years' service, Persian secretary to the government
and member of the Committee of Public Instruction. But already
the news had leaked out that the Sanskrit College and the Muham-
madan Madrasa were to be abolished, and petitions against such
proceedings, signed by thousands of Hindus and Muhammadans, had
been presented. After a hot debate in council between Macaulay and
Prinsep, it was decided on 7 March, 1835, that
a
the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European
literature and science among the natives of India, and that all the funds appro-
priated to education would best be employed on English education alone.
But no college or school of Indian learning, which enjoyed any
popularity, would be abolished. Existing professors and students at
such institutions as were under the committee's superintendence were
to go on receiving their stipends. No more students, however, were
to be supported during the period of their education and no money
should be employed on printing Oriental works. All funds thus
released should be employed “in imparting to the native population
a knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of
the English language".
Prinsep's memorandum,2 dated 15 February, 1835, was by
Bentinck's order excluded from the record on the ground that its
author was a secretary and not a member of council. But it survived
and still gives the case for the Orientalists. The weightiest passages
were those in which the author urged the veneration in which Sanskrit
and Arabic were still held by Hindus and Muslims as communities.
Bounties to students were, he contended, really scholarships, and in
the Muhammadan Madrasa had been given for proficiency in English.
"Undoubtedly”, ran the memorandum, “there is a very widely spread anxiety
at this time for the attainment of a certain proficiency in English. The sentiment is
to be encouraged by all means as the source and forerunner of great moral improve-
ment to those who feel its influence; but there is no single member of the Education
Committee who will venture to assert that this disposition has yet shown itself
extensively among the Mussalmans. It is the Hindus of Calcutta, the sirkars
(accountants and commercial managers) and Kulin (Brahman) connections, and
the descendants and relations of the sirkars of former days, those who have risen
through their connexion with the English and with public offices, men who hold
that a knowledge of English is a necessary qualification. These are the classes of
persons to whom the study of English is as yet confined; and certainly we have no
reason yet to believe that the Mussalmans in any part of India can be reconciled
to the cultivation of it, much less give it a preference to the polite literature of their
race or to what they look upon as such. ”
1 Brother of the remarkable James Prinsep, F. R. S. , sometime secretary of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal (see James Prinsep, Essays on Indian antiquities, ed. by Edward Thomas,
John Murray, 1858, 1, iii).
2 Sharp, op. cit. I, 117.
## p. 113 (#149) ############################################
MACAULAY
113
This passage elicited the following marginal note from Macaulay:
“There is no good English scheme for the Mussalmans; and one of
our first duties is to establish one". No such scheme was, however,
established. The Muhammadans were opposed to the whole project,
looking upon the exclusive encouragement of English as a step toward
religious conversion. 1
In a minute dated 20 May, 1835, laid before the council after
Bentinck's departure, Prinsep called the resolution of 7 March "a rash
act". The natives should (he said) be left to choose their own courses
of education, and all should equally be encouraged by the govern-
ment, who should however arrange “to give them the direction to
true science and good taste in literature which the superior lights of
Europe enable us to bestow”. Any deviation from this principle of
free choice and equal encouragement could only do mischief by
exciting feelings of distrust and perhaps irritation.
Macaulay remained president of the Committee of Public Instruc-
tion till 1838. His writings show how seriously he took his voluntary
and unpaid duties, and how earnestly he tried to lead the young
generation to a knowledge of the best English literature, which he
relied on as a strong cultural and religious influence. Unlike Grant,
he took no particular thought for science or agriculture. European
knowledge would soon, he thought, be exhibited in the vernacular
languages. As things were going, in thirty years there would not be
a single idolater among the respectable classes of Bengal. ? His com-
mittee began to establish Anglo-vernacular schools at the head-
quarters of various districts. These were first known as “zillah”
(district) schools and afterwards as "high" schools. The courses of
study therein were mainly literary, an arrangement which accorded
with Macaulay's own taste and with the inclinations of people whose
traditional systems of learning were chiefly literary and religious.
It is regrettable that such important issues as those involved in the
decision of 7 March, 1835, had become "a watchword for violent
discussion and personal feeling”. : Had there been less heat in the
whole contention, Macaulay would have been persuaded that he
really had something to learn from the Orientalists, and that the
whole past and present of the great religious and social systems, which
he did not care to understand, forbade even the remotest possibility
of their collapse within any measurable period of time. That in any
case the new education would leave women untouched, that the
Muhammadans were strongly averse to it, these and other obvious
considerations were dismissed by him as negligible. It was unfor-
tunate too that the results of Adam's enquiries were not available for
Bentinck and his council. Had they been aware of the extent of self-
supporting indigenous education, they might have cut the Gordian
· Mahmud, op. cit. p. 54.
· Trevelyan, Life and Lelters, p. 464.
• Lord Auckland, ap. Sharp, op. cit. 1, 147.
CHIVI
8
## p. 114 (#150) ############################################
114 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
knot in less trenchant a fashion. But their funds were extremely
limited, and in view of the ideas prevalent both in parliament and in
Leadenhall Street, they naturally made a strong effort to push the
kind of education for which there was evidently a clamant local
demand. Macaulay and his minute precipitated a decision which was
hardly avoidable. Yet the views recorded by Bentinck in his minute
of 20 January, 1835, show that, after writing it, he was completely
carried away by Macaulay's vigorous eloquence. 1
Duff was better informed than Macaulay, for he viewed the situa-
tion with some degree of Indian experience. He approved of the
decision of 1835, but considered that the exclusion of religious teaching
from the government schools would leave a void which the mis-
sionaries must labour-to fill: modern knowledge was like the ocean
seen to roll its waters from shore to shore. But if like the ocean it had
its gentle breezes, might it not have its storms and quicksands too? 2
He returned to his work as a Christian educationist and achieved
remarkable success. Believing his own creed to be true, he believed
that it could be reconciled with everything else which is also true.
With the power of a great personality he influenced the lives of many.
In spite of Bentinck's very definite declaration and Macaulay's
prompt action, in Bengal only was the teaching of English con-
tinuously preferred to all other educational objectives. Even there
the pendulum swung back in some small degree. The decision to
spend no more money on Oriental works was modified in 1838 and
a grant of 500 rupees a month was allotted to the Asiatic Society of
Bengal which enabled it to carry on the valuable Bibliotheca Indica
series of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian texts. The directors hesitated
to make English a medium of teaching; and had not the rage for
learning English spread rapidly in Calcutta, the history of education
in after years might have taken a somewhat different course.
In March, 1836, Lord Auckland became governor-general and was
faced by an attempted renewal of the controversy of 1835. Before his
arrival restrictions on the press had been removed by Metcalfe, and
journalism had thus been greatly stimulated. Now Adam's reports
began to come in and afforded food for much reflection. Accurate
information regarding the indigenous systems was at last provided;
there were no vernacular textbooks; the miserable condition of the
schools was emphasised; the possibility of converting them into some-
thing better was insisted on. They should be left in the hands of the
1 Adam, op. cit. p. 10. We may note that on 28 December, 1855, Max Müller was given
an interview by Macaulay when the Professor, “primed with every possible argument in
favour of Oriental studies, had to sit silent for an hour while the historian poured out his
diametrically opposite views, and then dismissed his visitor who tried in vain to utter a
single word. I went back to Oxford', he said, 'a sadder and a wiser man'”. Life of Max
Müller, edited by his wife, 1, 162, Longmans, Green, 1902.
2 Duff, op. cit. p. 265.
3 See Paton, op. cit.
* Centenary Review of Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784-1883), p. 59.
1
## p. 115 (#151) ############################################
ADAM'S REPORTS
115
people, but assisted in various ways. This should be the supreme
objective. Western knowledge was much needed, but nowhere should
English be a medium of instruction. At present a class of men was
being produced who stood apart from both their fellow-countrymen
and the British, and found inadequate scope for their attainments.
The masses were left in ignorance; so industry languished; crime
flourished; the support of the people for salutary measures could not
be counted on. The press was now free; the civil and political rights
of the people had been enlarged; but the government should, by a
general system of instruction, timely established, teach the people
“the proper use of the mighty instrument which had been placed in
their hands and of the various franchises that had been and might be
from time to time bestowed”. ? Auckland was impressed by Adam's
arguments but saw that to accept them would mean delay and open
up vistas of heavy expenditure; the filtration theory must now be
fully tested. Money too was scarce. Only £24,000 was annually
available for the whole Bengal Presidency. So the governor-general
wrote a minute of prodigious length, adhering to the filtration theory
but emphasising the importance of providing a larger number of good
vernacular class-books. Orientalist colleges must be kept in funds;
but nothing could be done at present for the indigenous schools. In
a dispatch of 20 January, 1841, the directors agreed with him; but
abandoning to some extent the views of Macaulay and Bentinck, they
stated that the diffusion of European knowledge need not necessarily
be through English. Vernacular translations of English books would
serve for the purpose.
In 1842 the Committee of Public Instruction was superseded by
a Council of Education composed partly of Indian gentlemen. This
body's activities were mainly limited to Calcutta. Outside the capital
the government was responsible; and in April, 1843, the control and
management of educational institutions in the Upper Bengal or the
North-Western Provinces were made over to the lieutenant-governor,
Sir G. Clerk, who in August attacked the accepted policy, laying
stress on the difference between the habits and customs of the in-
fluential classes in the upper and the lower provinces. In the former
the native gentry neither countenanced nor supported the govern-
ment schools. In 1844 Lord Hardinge's government announced that
candidates qualified by a knowledge of English would be preferred
for the public service. 3 Examinations were instituted by the Council
of Education and students who qualified therein were enrolled as fit
for (although not necessarily entitled to) employment. The distinction
1 Adam, op. cit. pp. 341-2.
Sharp, op. cit. I, 160.
3 In 1830 the government of the Bengal Presidency had notified that in the nomination
of government vakils (agents) in the native courts and of agents with the Commissioners”,
familiarity with English would constitute a recommendation to preference unless on special
grounds this rule was disregarded. It is, however, doubtful if it was ever acted nr. History
of the Benares Sanskrit College, p. 73.
2
8-2
## p. 116 (#152) ############################################
116
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
was not appreciated, and those who were unsuccessful in obtaining
such posts as they desired resented the disappointment. Western
education, however, had been clearly declared a passport to govern-
inent service, the most coveted of all professions.
Anglo-vernacular schools were established in outlying districts of
Bengal, and in 1844 some vernacular village schools were started
which ended in failure. The indigenous vernacular schools were left
out in the cold; they neither improved in quality nor declined in
number. From considered reluctance to infringe in any way on social
custom and on long-standing ideas regarding the seclusion or sub-
jection of women, the government stood aside from the efforts of the
missionaries, of David Hare, and of a few private societies and in-
dividuals, to promote female education. The missionaries started day-
schools for girls, boarding establishments for orphans and domestic
instruction in the families of the middle and higher classes. The results
were small; but the main credit of a great initiative rests with them. 1
From Leitner's Report it appears that there was far more indigenous
female education in the Panjab than there was in the older provinces.
A school for girls was in 1849 established and maintained in Calcutta
by J. E. D. Bethune, member of the governor-general's council and
president of the Council of Education, who spent his money freely on
the undertaking. 2 Dalhousie considered that this generous example
was likely to be followed by Indian gentlemen and that schools for
girls could be promoted by district officers. The directors, however,
threw cold water on this idea as they were unwilling to alarm con-
servative Indian opinion. After Bethune's untimely death, the ex-
penses of his school were borne first by Dalhousie and afterwards by
a fund raised by public subscription to carry on Bethune's work.
While Western education was acquiring increasing momentum
among the Hindus of Bengal, it progressed very slowly in inland
provinces where government servants were practically the only
European residents. James Thomason, lieutenant-governor of the
North-Western Provinces from 1843 to 1853, was anxious to promote
rural education: “enlisting the persons whom the people may them-
selves select as teachers, and support for that purpose". Enquiries
had disclosed the fact that in these provinces only 64,335 (50,026
Hindus and 14,309 Muhammadans) out of a population of 21,630, 167
were in receipt of any education. Eventually a halqabandi (circle)
school system was devised whereby villages were grouped in circles
of five, the land-holders of each group undertaking to pay for a school
by a voluntary cess of i per cent. on the land-revenue. This system
was in 1852-3 introduced into eight districts and was afterwards
1 Richey, Selections from the Educational Records, p. 34; Adam, op. cit. pp. 335–7.
• Calcutta Review, xxi, 513.
• Richey, op. cit. p. 61; also a memorandum by R. Burn, Census Superintendent North-
Western Provinces and Oudh (unpublished).
## p. 117 (#153) ############################################
LACK OF A UNIFORM POLICY
117
6
extended as other districts came under land-revenue settlement. The
scheme, as sanctioned by the directors, involved the levy of a cess of
i per cent. on the rent, which was deducted before the revenue was
calculated, so that payment was shared by the government and the
land-holder. In Bombay the government ignored the filtration theory,
and endeavoured primarily to promote education through the ver-
nacular, admitting to education in English those who sought it and
“had the capacity to acquire European learning”. Throughout the
southern presidency missionary enterprise was busy. English, Scotch,
Americans and Irish Presbyterians vied with each other in honourable
rivalry. 2 In 1839 Lord Elphinstone, governor of Madras, advocated
the establishment of a university open to students who possessed some
knowledge of English. The institution came into existence as a school
which in 1852 bore the title of the “Madras University High School”.
It was then the only state or state-controlled school or college in the
presidency. But the gap left by the government had been filled by
missionaries of various denominations, Jesuit fathers, Wesleyans and
the English, Scottish and American Churches. The number of mis-
sionary schools in Madras exceeded those in all other presidencies put
together. 3
Kaye tells us that the state educational expenditure in 1853
amounted to about £70,000. For many years, as Dalhousie observed,
the public finances had been “in a condition which clogged the action
of the government”. 4 In Bengal the government was maintaining
thirty colleges and schools in which English was taught, but only
thirty-three vernacular schools against Bombay's 233. Among the
most successful government institutions were the Medical College
started by Bentinck in Calcutta, and the Thomason Engineering
College at Rurki in the North-Western Provinces. Throughout India
the Hindu aristocracy held aloof from the new learning. Their literary
tastes were satisfied by the poetry of their race; and they had no
inclination to send their sons to schools where social contact with boys
of a lower order would mean contamination. The Muhammadans, as
a body, also stood outside. They had never felt disposed to do anything
else. Proud of an imperial past, attached to their own classics, they
held that religious and secular instruction should go together. Their
young men were freely employed in administrative posts, but despised
clerical and office work.
As the time approached for another revision of the Company's
charter, it became more and more apparent that uniformity and
constancy of aim were lacking in the educational policies of the various
provincial governments. The situation was reviewed by Dalhousie,
· Richey, p. 18.
* Report of the Education Commission of 1882, pp. 12–13.
* Madras Administrative Report, 1855-6; Richey, op. cit. p. 183. See also Satthianadhan,
History of Education in Madras, pp. 38-9, and Report of the Education Commission of 1882, p. 10.
• Richey, op.
## p. 105 (#141) ############################################
RAM MOHAN ROY
105
>
by Adam, Hastings's temporary successor, and entrusted with the
disbursement of the greater part of the annual one lakh grant. Arrears
were paid in; and the committee prepared to organise a Sanskrit
College which the government had decided to open in Calcutta.
A college on Western lines was being gradually established by the
Serampur missionaries, under the patronage of the king of Denmark
and the governor-general, “for the instruction of Asiatic, Christian
and other youths in Western literature and European science", while
“Bishop's College”, another missionary institution, had been founded
at Calcutta in 1820 by means of subscriptions raised in England. 1 In
1823 a college had been founded and endowed liberally at Agra by
a certain pandit Gangadhar without any pecuniary assistance from
the government. Progress was in the air; but hardly had the members
of the new committee assembled when they were called on to consider
a petition, addressed to Lord Amherst, by Ram Mohan Roy. Its most
notable passages were these:
“When this seminary of learning”. (the new Sanskrit College) “was proposed,
we understood that the government in England had ordered a considerable sum
of money to be annually devoted to the instruction of its Indian subjects. We were
filled with sanguine hopes that this sum would be laid out in employing European
gentlemen of talents and education to instruct the natives of India in mathematics,
natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy and other useful sciences which the nations
of Europe have carried to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the
inhabitants of other parts of the world. . . . We now find that the government are
establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindoo pundits to impart such knowledge as
is already current in India. . . . The pupils will here acquire what was known two
thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtilties since produced
by speculative men, such as is commonly taught in all parts of India. The Sanskrit
language, so difficult that almost a lifetime is necessary for its perfect acquisition,
is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of know-
ledge; and the Icarning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from
sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it. If it had been intended to keep the
British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not
have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen, which was the best
calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of
education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such
had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native
population is the object of the government, it will consequently promote a more
liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural
philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be
accomplished with the sum proposed, by employing a few gentlemen of talents and
learning educated in Europe, and providing a college furnished with the necessary
books, instruments and other apparatus. '
It does not appear that this petition produced any immediate im-
pression, but it certainly bore fruit later on.
There were other progressive Indians who thought with Ram
Mohan Roy. Bishop Heber's journals and correspondence throw con-
siderable light on currents of opinion at this time. In a letter dated
Calcutta, October, 1823, he remarked on the friendly atticude of
1 Whitehead, op. cit. pp. 166–7.
2 Sharp, op. cit. pp. 99-101.
## p. 106 (#142) ############################################
106 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
>
Hindus and Muhammadans towards mission schools, which, however,
were very rarely attended by Muslim children. No objection was
made to the use of the Bible as a class-book provided that the teachers
did not urge their pupils to eat what would break their caste, or be
baptised, or “curse their country's gods”. Twenty schools had re-
cently been established by Church of England missionaries. In
December, 1823, he observed the increasing tendency “to imitate the
English in everything”. This had already led to important results and
would lead to still more important results in future. Many wealthy
Indians spoke English fluently and were tolerably read in English
literature. In the Bengali papers, of which there were two or three,
politics were canvassed with a bias to Whiggism. Among the lower
orders the same feeling was visible in a growing neglect of caste, and
in an anxiety to learn and speak English, which, if properly encouraged,
might in fifty years "make our language what Oordoo (Hindustani)
is at present” 2 In 1824 Heber visited the Benares Sanskrit College,
and after attending a lecture on astronomy wondered that such
rubbish should be taught in a government college. 3
The Committee of Public Instruction started with a credit of arrears
of the government grant, but even so, suffered from narrowness of
means. In the year 1824 the sum which could be spared for the Bengal
Presidency was only £19,970. Thuy decided to spend their money
“on the best means of improving the education of the more re-
spectable members of Indian society especially those who make
letters their profession? ”. This they attempted to do by ignoring the
indigenous schools and by printing in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic,
both original works and translations of such books as Hutton's
Mathematics, Croker's Land Surveying and Bridge's Algebra. They
further provided “literary endowments” for promising students
of Indian classical literature, attached English classes to certain
Orientalist colleges and started a few schools for teaching English.
In fact they endeavoured to carry out the vague monitions of the
directors, but soon found their path beset by eager applicants for the
means of instruction in English. The situation has been described in
these words by Charles Trevelyan, a young civil servant, one of their
number who subsequently rose to high distinction:
Upwards of 31,000 English books were sold by the school-book society in the
course of two years while the committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit
volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months,
to say nothing of the printing expenses. . . . Among other signs of the times a petition
was presented to the committee by a number of young men who had been brought
up at the Sanskrit college, pathetically representing that, notwithstanding the long
and elaborate course of study which they had gone through, they had little prospect
of bettering their condition; that the indifference with which they were generally
1 The first Bengali newspaper--the Samachar Darpan (mirror of news)—was issued from
the Serampur Press on 31 May, 1818 (Marshman, op. cit
. pp. 280–1).
? Heber, Narrative and Letters, 11, 306–7.
3 Idem, 1, 295-6.
>
## p. 107 (#143) ############################################
THE ORIENTALIST CONTROVERSY
107
regarded by their countrymen left them no hope of assistance from them, and that
they therefore trusted that the government, which had made them what they were,
would not abandon them to destitution and neglect. The English classes which had
been tacked on to the Sanskrit and other oriental colleges had entirely failed in
their object. The boys had not time to go through an English in addition to an
oriental, course; and the study which was secondary was naturally neglected. The
translations into Arabic, also, appeared to have made as little impression upon the
few who knew that language, as upon the mass of the people who were entirely
unacquainted with it. 1
Faced with such representations, the committee split into halves,
the Orientalist and older party and the English, or younger, party.
The first wished to continue the policy of “letting the natives pursue
their present course of instruction, and of endeavouring to engraft
European science thereon". The second desired to spend no more
money on bounties to students of the Indian classical languages or
on printing Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian books, but to devote all
available funds to conveying to Indians, through the medium of
English, the literary and scientific information necessary for a liberal
education. Although for some time the knowledge so conveyed would
be confined to a limited circle, it would soon penetrate to the outer
community through the channel of a new vernacular literature. This
doctrine became famous as “the filtration theory”. Its advocates
took inadequate account of the rigidity of Indian caste and occupa-
tional distinctions. Neither party proposed to do anything for the
indigenous schools, and both agreed that the vernaculars "contained
neither the literary nor the scientific information necessary for a
liberal education”. 9 Bengal in fact stood at a parting of the ways.
We must now briefly review events in Bombay and Madras. In the
early years of the nineteenth century these presidencies greatly
expanded and were fortunate enough to obtain as their governors
two
remarkable men who devoted much attention to education. Both
presidencies had their own indigenous schools which roughly re-
sembled those of Bengal and Bihar. In Bombay, where indigenous
schools were far rarer than in Bengal, Mountstuart Elphinstone
obtained the sanction of the directors to the payment on a reduced
scale of the Dakshina allowances formerly distributed by order of the
Peshwas to Brahmans of distinguished learning in the Hindu scrip-
tures, selected after examinations held in the presence of the Poona
court. The money was eventually devoted to the establishment of
a Sanskrit College at Poona. Elphinstone was desirous of diffusing
"a rational education which by removing prejudices and communi-
cating British principles would pave the way for the employment of
natives in the higher branches of the public service”. He strongly
deprecated any admixture of religion with state education. He aimed
1 Trevelyan, op. cit. p. 10.
· Trevelyan, op. cit. p. 21.
* Elphinstone observed of these: “Reading is confined to Brahmans, Banyans, and such
of the agricultural classes as have to do with accounts" (Adam, op. cit. p. 268).
## p. 108 (#144) ############################################
108 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
at encouraging, improving, and increasing schools for vernacular
education and at establishing schools for the purpose of teaching
English to those disposed to pursue it as a classical language and
"a means of acquiring knowledge of European discoveries”. He con-
templated the preparation of books on moral and physical sciences
in the vernacular and "standard examinations” for public employ-
ment.
“If there be a wish”, he wrote, “to contribute to the abolition of the horrors of
self-immolation and of infanticide, and ultimately to the destruction of superstition,
it is scarcely necessary to prove that the only means of success is the diffusion of
knowledge.
Before he resigned office, an English school, an engineering institution,
and a medical school were opened in Bombay, and an English class
was added to the Sanskrit College at Poona. The famous Elphinstone
College represents subscriptions contributed in honour of his name
by “princes, chieftains and gentlemen connected with the West of
India as an endowment for three professors of the English language
and of European arts and sciences". 1 His successor, Sir John Malcolm,
recorded a minute in 1828 which expressed anxiety for the diffusion
of instruction which would open the road to wider employment of
Indians in posts of greater trust and responsibility. But for this
purpose, Malcolm considered, no knowledge of English was necessary.
“The acquisition of that would occupy a period required for other
studies and pursuits. ” It was, however, essential that aspiring Indians
should have the advantage of translations from English of scientific
works and of books which would enable them to understand English
principles of administration.
In Madras Sir Thomas Munro started enquiries in 1823 which
showed that among a population estimated to number 12,850,941
there was one school to every 1000; but only a very few females were
taught in schools.
“The state of education has”, he minuted, “been better in earlier times; but
for the last century it does not appear to have undergone any other change than
what arose from the number of schools diminishing in one place and increasing in
another, in consequence of the shifting of the population from war or other causes.
The great number of schools has been supposed to contribute to the keeping of
education in a low state, because it does not give a sufficient number of scholars
to secure the services of able teachers. "
He commented on the poor quality and general ignorance of the
teachers. He was inclined to assist indigenous schools in certain
cases, but not to interfere with them, and was anxious to establish
a “normal” school in a central place for training teachers as well as
two government schools in every district, one for Hindus and one for
1 Parl. Papers, E. I. C. 1832, general, App. I, p. 469.
2 Sharp, op. cit. 1, 73-4. It is clear from a letter from Munro to Canning that he also
contemplated the extension of a knowledge of English literature among the Hindus.
Gleig, Life of Munro, II, 186.
## p. 109 (#145) ############################################
BENTINCK
109
Muhammadans. But he died in 1827; and his scheme did not com-
mend itself to the directors, who had now become anxious to have at
their disposal “a body of natives qualified by their habits and acquire-
ments to take a larger share and occupy higher positions in the civil
administration of their country than had hitherto been the practice".
The Madras scheme dissolved; but in that presidency a colloquial
knowledge of English was more commonly found than in Bengal.
Several distinct languages were spoken there, and English had been
largely adopted as a common medium of intercourse. The mis-
sionaries too were busy. Their activities in the whole educational field
induced Charles Metcalfe to observe in 1834, when quitting the
governor-general's council on promotion: “They seem destined by
almighty Providence to be the chief instruments for improving and
enlightening the inhabitants of this country through the means of
education and moral instruction”. 1
In the year 1828 Lord William Cavendish Bentinck became
governor-general. A Whig in politics, he was a courageous and
zealous reformer. After careful investigation he summarily forbade
sati against the advice not only of Horace Hayman Wilson, the most
prominent Orientalist, but also of Ram Mohan Roy. Again despite
Orientalist advice to the contrary, he established a new medical
college for training Indian students entirely on Western lines. He
further meditated reforms in education, but decided first to obey the
old orders of 1814 and obtain definite information about the in-
digenous schools. Unfortunately, however, he delayed action till
January, 1835, the very year of his departure; and in the meantime
the differences between the two parties on the Committee of Public
Instruction had come to a head. The English party had been sup-
ported in Calcutta by a forceful recruit in the person of Alexander
Duff, a Scotch missionary who, arriving in India in 1829, had opened
a secondary school, with the assistance of Ram Mohan Roy, and had
already attracted numerous Hindu pupils. Duffurged vehemently
that not only was Sanskrit unadaptable as a medium of modern
education, but that, by an ordinance reckoned to be divine, three-
fourths of the people, consisting of the mixed and lower classes, were
forbidden the study of it.
"There are”, he argued, "scarcely any European works translated into Sanskrit;
and even if there were, every term in that sacred tongue is linked inseparably with
some idea, or sentiment, or deduction of Hinduism which is a stupendous system
of error;. . . whereas in the very act of acquiring English, the mind, in grasping the
import of new terms, is perpetually brought into contact with new truths and ideas
so that by the time that the language has been mastered, the student must be tenfold
less the child of pantheism, idolatry and superstition than before. ”
Kaye, Life of Metcalfe, 11, 229. Cf. Mahmud, op. cit. p. 39.
: Article, “Hindu Medicine and Medical Education", Calcutta Review, 1866, XLII,
106–25.
; Article by Duff on “Indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar," Calcutta Review, 1844.
Cf. Adam, op. cit. pp. 10–13.
• Paton, Life of Duff, p. 66.
>
26
## p. 110 (#146) ############################################
110
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
> >
Unlike Carey, Duff was no Orientalist, but he took pains to learn Ben-
gali and arranged that his pupils should study their mother-tongue.
These, then, were the issues which pressed for decision at Calcutta
in the early 'thirties.
(a) Should anything be done for mass-education; or should it be
left to unaided indigenous schools ?
(6) Should all idea of grafting the modern learning of the West on
the ancient learning of the East be abandoned as impracticable?
(c) Should the filtration theory be adopted and all available funds
be devoted to advancing Western knowledge among the upper classes
through the medium of English? No one at Calcutta argued that the
Bengal vernaculars would serve as a medium, although the govern-
ments of Bombay and Madras were disposed to use their own very
different vernaculars for the diffusion of general knowledge. The
Calcutta Government, too, had recently substituted vernaculars for
Persian in the law courts of the Bengal Presidency.
The filtration theory and the virtual supersession of the classical
languages by English were advocated by advanced Hindus in
Calcutta, by the followers of Hare and Ram Mohan Roy, by Duff
and his missionary supporters, and by “the English party” on the
Committee of Public Instruction. It is important to notice that the
strongest influences in bringing this “English party" into existence
were the petition of Ram Mohan Roy and the practical experience of
the committee. In this way a policy was shaped which contemplated
the eventual use of the vernaculars for the diffusion of Western know-
ledge, but the immediate employment of English for this purpose,
and of English alone. It commended itself to the directors who,
from motives of economy as well as for reasons of policy, wished to
see a substantial contingent of Western-educated Indians in the
public services. Their interest in indigenous schools had long since
evaporated; and on 8 February, 1829, they had reminded the
governor-general that the one lakh grant was to be placed at the
disposal not of one alone, but of all three presidencies, and that it was
only to be allotted “in the event of there being a surplus revenue after
defraying all the expenses of government”,3
Ram Mohan Roy had gone to England in 1830, where he was
received with honour and gave evidence on Indian affairs before a
select committee of the House of Commons; but, to the bitter loss of
his country, he died at Bristol in 1833. 4 In the same year parliament,
See Prinsep's Diary, ap. Sharp, op. cit. 1, 133. It appears, however, from circular 220
of the nizamat adalat dated 27 January, 1837, that while the depositions of parties or
witnesses were to be taken down in the languages in which they were delivered, Persian
translations were to be annexed to the records if the latter were called for by the nizamat
court (Circular orders of the Calcutta Nizamal Adawlat, 1846, p. 268).
2 Dispatch, 29 September, 1830.
• Howell, op. cit. p. 20. Cf. Mahmud, op. cit. p. 47.
• See The Last Days of Ram Mohan Roy, especially pp. 9o and 94, also Reports, Com-
mittees, E. I. C. 1831-2 (4), viII, 391.
8
## p. 111 (#147) ############################################
MACAULAY
III
after prolonged enquiry, decided when renewing the charter of the
East India Company to dissociate that body altogether from trade,
to add a “legal member” to the governor-general's council, and to
declare that no native of India would in future be debarred from
office or employment by reason of religion, place of birth, descent or
colour. 1 On 10 December, 1834, the directors informed Bentinck's
government that every effort must be made to enable natives of India
to compete for the public service with fair chance of success, “whether
by conferring on them the advantages of education or by diffusing
on them the treasures of science, knowledge and moral culture”.
In the autumn of 1834 Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had been
appointed to the legal membership of the governor-general's council,
arrived at Calcutta and was appointed president of the Committee of
Public Instruction, which he found hopelessly divided between the
Orientalist and the English parties. The Orientalists had lost a strong
champion in H. H. Wilson, who had left India in January, 1833.
Macaulay declined to take an active part in its proceedings until the
government had passed judgment on the main issue in dispute; but
on 2 February, 1835, he presented a lengthy minute to Bentinck in
support of the English party. In some passages he poured scorn on
Oriental literature, of which he knew nothing. In others, while
asserting that he would strictly respect all existing interests, he pro-
posed not only to stop the printing of Arabic and Sanskrit books, but
to abolish the Muhammadan Madrasa which had been founded by
Warren Hastings and the Calcutta Sanskrit College. No stipends, he
urged, should in future be given to students at the Benares and Delhi
colleges. The funds thus set free would be given to the Vidyalaya at
Calcutta and to the establishment of English schools in the principal
cities of Upper India. With the limited means available it was im-
possible to educate the body of the people, Endeavours should be
made to form a class of persons “Indian in blood and colour, but
English in tastes, in opinion, in morals and in intellect". These would
refine the vernaculars, enrich them with Western terms of science and
render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the
great mass of the population.
Bentinck promptly noted his “entire” concurrence with Macaulay's
views. In the previous month he had placed William Adam, editor
of a popular Calcutta journal and ex-missionary, under the orders
of the Committee of Public Instruction to conduct enquiries into
the state of indigenous education in Bengal. In a minute dated
20 January, 1835, 2 he had observed, when appointing Adam, that a
true estimate of the Indian mind and capacity could not be formed
without the information which Adam was to collect. Adam, however,
had barely begun when Macaulay's minute was laid before Bentinck's
1 C. pp. 3 sqq. , supra.
· Adam, op. cit. pp. 10-13.
## p. 112 (#148) ############################################
II2
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
colleagues with the governor-general's note of concurrence and an
adverse memorandum drawn up by H. T. Prinsep, a civil servant
of twenty-six years' service, Persian secretary to the government
and member of the Committee of Public Instruction. But already
the news had leaked out that the Sanskrit College and the Muham-
madan Madrasa were to be abolished, and petitions against such
proceedings, signed by thousands of Hindus and Muhammadans, had
been presented. After a hot debate in council between Macaulay and
Prinsep, it was decided on 7 March, 1835, that
a
the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European
literature and science among the natives of India, and that all the funds appro-
priated to education would best be employed on English education alone.
But no college or school of Indian learning, which enjoyed any
popularity, would be abolished. Existing professors and students at
such institutions as were under the committee's superintendence were
to go on receiving their stipends. No more students, however, were
to be supported during the period of their education and no money
should be employed on printing Oriental works. All funds thus
released should be employed “in imparting to the native population
a knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of
the English language".
Prinsep's memorandum,2 dated 15 February, 1835, was by
Bentinck's order excluded from the record on the ground that its
author was a secretary and not a member of council. But it survived
and still gives the case for the Orientalists. The weightiest passages
were those in which the author urged the veneration in which Sanskrit
and Arabic were still held by Hindus and Muslims as communities.
Bounties to students were, he contended, really scholarships, and in
the Muhammadan Madrasa had been given for proficiency in English.
"Undoubtedly”, ran the memorandum, “there is a very widely spread anxiety
at this time for the attainment of a certain proficiency in English. The sentiment is
to be encouraged by all means as the source and forerunner of great moral improve-
ment to those who feel its influence; but there is no single member of the Education
Committee who will venture to assert that this disposition has yet shown itself
extensively among the Mussalmans. It is the Hindus of Calcutta, the sirkars
(accountants and commercial managers) and Kulin (Brahman) connections, and
the descendants and relations of the sirkars of former days, those who have risen
through their connexion with the English and with public offices, men who hold
that a knowledge of English is a necessary qualification. These are the classes of
persons to whom the study of English is as yet confined; and certainly we have no
reason yet to believe that the Mussalmans in any part of India can be reconciled
to the cultivation of it, much less give it a preference to the polite literature of their
race or to what they look upon as such. ”
1 Brother of the remarkable James Prinsep, F. R. S. , sometime secretary of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal (see James Prinsep, Essays on Indian antiquities, ed. by Edward Thomas,
John Murray, 1858, 1, iii).
2 Sharp, op. cit. I, 117.
## p. 113 (#149) ############################################
MACAULAY
113
This passage elicited the following marginal note from Macaulay:
“There is no good English scheme for the Mussalmans; and one of
our first duties is to establish one". No such scheme was, however,
established. The Muhammadans were opposed to the whole project,
looking upon the exclusive encouragement of English as a step toward
religious conversion. 1
In a minute dated 20 May, 1835, laid before the council after
Bentinck's departure, Prinsep called the resolution of 7 March "a rash
act". The natives should (he said) be left to choose their own courses
of education, and all should equally be encouraged by the govern-
ment, who should however arrange “to give them the direction to
true science and good taste in literature which the superior lights of
Europe enable us to bestow”. Any deviation from this principle of
free choice and equal encouragement could only do mischief by
exciting feelings of distrust and perhaps irritation.
Macaulay remained president of the Committee of Public Instruc-
tion till 1838. His writings show how seriously he took his voluntary
and unpaid duties, and how earnestly he tried to lead the young
generation to a knowledge of the best English literature, which he
relied on as a strong cultural and religious influence. Unlike Grant,
he took no particular thought for science or agriculture. European
knowledge would soon, he thought, be exhibited in the vernacular
languages. As things were going, in thirty years there would not be
a single idolater among the respectable classes of Bengal. ? His com-
mittee began to establish Anglo-vernacular schools at the head-
quarters of various districts. These were first known as “zillah”
(district) schools and afterwards as "high" schools. The courses of
study therein were mainly literary, an arrangement which accorded
with Macaulay's own taste and with the inclinations of people whose
traditional systems of learning were chiefly literary and religious.
It is regrettable that such important issues as those involved in the
decision of 7 March, 1835, had become "a watchword for violent
discussion and personal feeling”. : Had there been less heat in the
whole contention, Macaulay would have been persuaded that he
really had something to learn from the Orientalists, and that the
whole past and present of the great religious and social systems, which
he did not care to understand, forbade even the remotest possibility
of their collapse within any measurable period of time. That in any
case the new education would leave women untouched, that the
Muhammadans were strongly averse to it, these and other obvious
considerations were dismissed by him as negligible. It was unfor-
tunate too that the results of Adam's enquiries were not available for
Bentinck and his council. Had they been aware of the extent of self-
supporting indigenous education, they might have cut the Gordian
· Mahmud, op. cit. p. 54.
· Trevelyan, Life and Lelters, p. 464.
• Lord Auckland, ap. Sharp, op. cit. 1, 147.
CHIVI
8
## p. 114 (#150) ############################################
114 EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
knot in less trenchant a fashion. But their funds were extremely
limited, and in view of the ideas prevalent both in parliament and in
Leadenhall Street, they naturally made a strong effort to push the
kind of education for which there was evidently a clamant local
demand. Macaulay and his minute precipitated a decision which was
hardly avoidable. Yet the views recorded by Bentinck in his minute
of 20 January, 1835, show that, after writing it, he was completely
carried away by Macaulay's vigorous eloquence. 1
Duff was better informed than Macaulay, for he viewed the situa-
tion with some degree of Indian experience. He approved of the
decision of 1835, but considered that the exclusion of religious teaching
from the government schools would leave a void which the mis-
sionaries must labour-to fill: modern knowledge was like the ocean
seen to roll its waters from shore to shore. But if like the ocean it had
its gentle breezes, might it not have its storms and quicksands too? 2
He returned to his work as a Christian educationist and achieved
remarkable success. Believing his own creed to be true, he believed
that it could be reconciled with everything else which is also true.
With the power of a great personality he influenced the lives of many.
In spite of Bentinck's very definite declaration and Macaulay's
prompt action, in Bengal only was the teaching of English con-
tinuously preferred to all other educational objectives. Even there
the pendulum swung back in some small degree. The decision to
spend no more money on Oriental works was modified in 1838 and
a grant of 500 rupees a month was allotted to the Asiatic Society of
Bengal which enabled it to carry on the valuable Bibliotheca Indica
series of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian texts. The directors hesitated
to make English a medium of teaching; and had not the rage for
learning English spread rapidly in Calcutta, the history of education
in after years might have taken a somewhat different course.
In March, 1836, Lord Auckland became governor-general and was
faced by an attempted renewal of the controversy of 1835. Before his
arrival restrictions on the press had been removed by Metcalfe, and
journalism had thus been greatly stimulated. Now Adam's reports
began to come in and afforded food for much reflection. Accurate
information regarding the indigenous systems was at last provided;
there were no vernacular textbooks; the miserable condition of the
schools was emphasised; the possibility of converting them into some-
thing better was insisted on. They should be left in the hands of the
1 Adam, op. cit. p. 10. We may note that on 28 December, 1855, Max Müller was given
an interview by Macaulay when the Professor, “primed with every possible argument in
favour of Oriental studies, had to sit silent for an hour while the historian poured out his
diametrically opposite views, and then dismissed his visitor who tried in vain to utter a
single word. I went back to Oxford', he said, 'a sadder and a wiser man'”. Life of Max
Müller, edited by his wife, 1, 162, Longmans, Green, 1902.
2 Duff, op. cit. p. 265.
3 See Paton, op. cit.
* Centenary Review of Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784-1883), p. 59.
1
## p. 115 (#151) ############################################
ADAM'S REPORTS
115
people, but assisted in various ways. This should be the supreme
objective. Western knowledge was much needed, but nowhere should
English be a medium of instruction. At present a class of men was
being produced who stood apart from both their fellow-countrymen
and the British, and found inadequate scope for their attainments.
The masses were left in ignorance; so industry languished; crime
flourished; the support of the people for salutary measures could not
be counted on. The press was now free; the civil and political rights
of the people had been enlarged; but the government should, by a
general system of instruction, timely established, teach the people
“the proper use of the mighty instrument which had been placed in
their hands and of the various franchises that had been and might be
from time to time bestowed”. ? Auckland was impressed by Adam's
arguments but saw that to accept them would mean delay and open
up vistas of heavy expenditure; the filtration theory must now be
fully tested. Money too was scarce. Only £24,000 was annually
available for the whole Bengal Presidency. So the governor-general
wrote a minute of prodigious length, adhering to the filtration theory
but emphasising the importance of providing a larger number of good
vernacular class-books. Orientalist colleges must be kept in funds;
but nothing could be done at present for the indigenous schools. In
a dispatch of 20 January, 1841, the directors agreed with him; but
abandoning to some extent the views of Macaulay and Bentinck, they
stated that the diffusion of European knowledge need not necessarily
be through English. Vernacular translations of English books would
serve for the purpose.
In 1842 the Committee of Public Instruction was superseded by
a Council of Education composed partly of Indian gentlemen. This
body's activities were mainly limited to Calcutta. Outside the capital
the government was responsible; and in April, 1843, the control and
management of educational institutions in the Upper Bengal or the
North-Western Provinces were made over to the lieutenant-governor,
Sir G. Clerk, who in August attacked the accepted policy, laying
stress on the difference between the habits and customs of the in-
fluential classes in the upper and the lower provinces. In the former
the native gentry neither countenanced nor supported the govern-
ment schools. In 1844 Lord Hardinge's government announced that
candidates qualified by a knowledge of English would be preferred
for the public service. 3 Examinations were instituted by the Council
of Education and students who qualified therein were enrolled as fit
for (although not necessarily entitled to) employment. The distinction
1 Adam, op. cit. pp. 341-2.
Sharp, op. cit. I, 160.
3 In 1830 the government of the Bengal Presidency had notified that in the nomination
of government vakils (agents) in the native courts and of agents with the Commissioners”,
familiarity with English would constitute a recommendation to preference unless on special
grounds this rule was disregarded. It is, however, doubtful if it was ever acted nr. History
of the Benares Sanskrit College, p. 73.
2
8-2
## p. 116 (#152) ############################################
116
EDUCATION AND MISSIONS TO 1858
was not appreciated, and those who were unsuccessful in obtaining
such posts as they desired resented the disappointment. Western
education, however, had been clearly declared a passport to govern-
inent service, the most coveted of all professions.
Anglo-vernacular schools were established in outlying districts of
Bengal, and in 1844 some vernacular village schools were started
which ended in failure. The indigenous vernacular schools were left
out in the cold; they neither improved in quality nor declined in
number. From considered reluctance to infringe in any way on social
custom and on long-standing ideas regarding the seclusion or sub-
jection of women, the government stood aside from the efforts of the
missionaries, of David Hare, and of a few private societies and in-
dividuals, to promote female education. The missionaries started day-
schools for girls, boarding establishments for orphans and domestic
instruction in the families of the middle and higher classes. The results
were small; but the main credit of a great initiative rests with them. 1
From Leitner's Report it appears that there was far more indigenous
female education in the Panjab than there was in the older provinces.
A school for girls was in 1849 established and maintained in Calcutta
by J. E. D. Bethune, member of the governor-general's council and
president of the Council of Education, who spent his money freely on
the undertaking. 2 Dalhousie considered that this generous example
was likely to be followed by Indian gentlemen and that schools for
girls could be promoted by district officers. The directors, however,
threw cold water on this idea as they were unwilling to alarm con-
servative Indian opinion. After Bethune's untimely death, the ex-
penses of his school were borne first by Dalhousie and afterwards by
a fund raised by public subscription to carry on Bethune's work.
While Western education was acquiring increasing momentum
among the Hindus of Bengal, it progressed very slowly in inland
provinces where government servants were practically the only
European residents. James Thomason, lieutenant-governor of the
North-Western Provinces from 1843 to 1853, was anxious to promote
rural education: “enlisting the persons whom the people may them-
selves select as teachers, and support for that purpose". Enquiries
had disclosed the fact that in these provinces only 64,335 (50,026
Hindus and 14,309 Muhammadans) out of a population of 21,630, 167
were in receipt of any education. Eventually a halqabandi (circle)
school system was devised whereby villages were grouped in circles
of five, the land-holders of each group undertaking to pay for a school
by a voluntary cess of i per cent. on the land-revenue. This system
was in 1852-3 introduced into eight districts and was afterwards
1 Richey, Selections from the Educational Records, p. 34; Adam, op. cit. pp. 335–7.
• Calcutta Review, xxi, 513.
• Richey, op. cit. p. 61; also a memorandum by R. Burn, Census Superintendent North-
Western Provinces and Oudh (unpublished).
## p. 117 (#153) ############################################
LACK OF A UNIFORM POLICY
117
6
extended as other districts came under land-revenue settlement. The
scheme, as sanctioned by the directors, involved the levy of a cess of
i per cent. on the rent, which was deducted before the revenue was
calculated, so that payment was shared by the government and the
land-holder. In Bombay the government ignored the filtration theory,
and endeavoured primarily to promote education through the ver-
nacular, admitting to education in English those who sought it and
“had the capacity to acquire European learning”. Throughout the
southern presidency missionary enterprise was busy. English, Scotch,
Americans and Irish Presbyterians vied with each other in honourable
rivalry. 2 In 1839 Lord Elphinstone, governor of Madras, advocated
the establishment of a university open to students who possessed some
knowledge of English. The institution came into existence as a school
which in 1852 bore the title of the “Madras University High School”.
It was then the only state or state-controlled school or college in the
presidency. But the gap left by the government had been filled by
missionaries of various denominations, Jesuit fathers, Wesleyans and
the English, Scottish and American Churches. The number of mis-
sionary schools in Madras exceeded those in all other presidencies put
together. 3
Kaye tells us that the state educational expenditure in 1853
amounted to about £70,000. For many years, as Dalhousie observed,
the public finances had been “in a condition which clogged the action
of the government”. 4 In Bengal the government was maintaining
thirty colleges and schools in which English was taught, but only
thirty-three vernacular schools against Bombay's 233. Among the
most successful government institutions were the Medical College
started by Bentinck in Calcutta, and the Thomason Engineering
College at Rurki in the North-Western Provinces. Throughout India
the Hindu aristocracy held aloof from the new learning. Their literary
tastes were satisfied by the poetry of their race; and they had no
inclination to send their sons to schools where social contact with boys
of a lower order would mean contamination. The Muhammadans, as
a body, also stood outside. They had never felt disposed to do anything
else. Proud of an imperial past, attached to their own classics, they
held that religious and secular instruction should go together. Their
young men were freely employed in administrative posts, but despised
clerical and office work.
As the time approached for another revision of the Company's
charter, it became more and more apparent that uniformity and
constancy of aim were lacking in the educational policies of the various
provincial governments. The situation was reviewed by Dalhousie,
· Richey, p. 18.
* Report of the Education Commission of 1882, pp. 12–13.
* Madras Administrative Report, 1855-6; Richey, op. cit. p. 183. See also Satthianadhan,
History of Education in Madras, pp. 38-9, and Report of the Education Commission of 1882, p. 10.
• Richey, op.
