BACKGROUND: (INDIGENOUS EDUCATION, SYSTEMS THAT EXISTED

PRIOR TO THE BRITISH RULE)

● The early British records give us an idea about the systems of education that existed
prior to the advent of British rule.There were ‘Madrasas’ and ‘Maktabs’ for the
Muslims and ‘Tols’ and ‘Pathshalas’ for the Hindus.
● Traditionally, the pathshala was a traditional form of imparting education to children. It
was a very flexible and variable institution that was closely tied to the means and needs
of the village community.
● These ranged from the centres for higher learning in Arabic and Sanskrit to lower levels
of institutions for schooling people in Persian and Vernacular languages. Lack of
scientific and secular learning was one of the major limitations of the centres for higher
learning in those days.
● Schools were generally run with the help of contributions from Zamindars or from local
rich men.
● In the curriculum the main emphasis was on classical language like Sanskrit, Arabic or
Persian and subjects of classical Hindu or Islamic tradition like Grammar, Logic, Law,
Metaphysics, Medicines, etc. Though Sanskrit learning was the exclusive domain of the
Brahmans, from the reports available of the early 19th century we find that the non- upper
castes and the scheduled castes had also representation in the lower level schools.
● Women were generally debarred from the formal education system. 7. Besides the
centres for higher learning, there was a large number of elementary schools that were
each run by an individual teacher with the monetary help of the village Zamindars or the
local elite. Students from different sections of society, except the very backward
disprivileged castes, attended these schools.
● With the coming of colonial education policy, things changed and Orientalists,
Anglicists and Evangelists were the three major schools of thought that influenced the
colonial educational enterprise until the 1850s.

DEBATE
THE ORIENTALISTS
● The opinions were sharply divided as to whether the company should promote western
or oriental learning. In the Initial stage the company officials patronised oriental
learning.
● In this context we may mention the establishment of the ‘Calcutta Madrasa’ by Warren
Hastings (1781), the ‘Benares Sanskrit College’ by Jonathan Duncan (1791) and the
“Asiatic Society of Bengal’ by William Jones (1784). Those who were of Indian
classical tradition were called “Orientalists”.
● The argument put forward by the Orientalists was that generally there was a prejudice
among Indians against European Knowledge and science, so there might be complete
rejection of western knowledge. Some of them were also interested in exploring the
 classical tradition and culture of this ancient civilization.
● But even if we acknowledge the genuine desire of some of the Englishmen for the
promotion of oriental culture, there is no doubt that the Orientalists were guided by some
practical considerations. They wanted to teach the British officials the local language and
culture so that they would be better at their job. This was the prime objective behind the
foundation of the Port William College at Calcutta in 1800. The other motive was to
develop friendly relations with the elites of the indigenous society and to understand their
culture. This was the main reason behind the establishment of the ‘Calcutta Madras' and
the ‘Benares Sanskrit College’.

THE OPPOSITION TO THE ORIENTAL THOUGHT

● There was a strong opposition to this Orientalist approach by different groups in
England- the Evangelicals, the Liberals and the Utilitarians.
● The Evangelicals had a firm conviction in the superiority of Christian ideas and
western institutions. Two great exponents of the Evangelical view were Charles Grant
and William Wilberforce.
● Others who did not share Evangelical faith also were convinced of the superiority of
western knowledge and one of the chief promoters of this idea was Thomas Macaulay.
He recommended that western learning should be promoted in India through the
English language and this should be the objective of education policy in India. James
Mill, the chief advocate of Utilitarianism in India, was highly critical of India religion
and culture.
● In brief, all of these groups who may be called ‘Anglicists’, in general believed that
Indians were in a backward stage and Western education given through the English
language alone was the remedy.

DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

● The beginning of English education can be traced only to the early 19th century.
Before that the efforts made by the missionaries or by individuals were very limited in
nature.
● These missionary activities and the mounting pressure by some Englishmen like
Charles Grant and William Wilberforce compelled the Company to give up its policy
of nonintervention in education.
● Kochar notes that in 1793, when the proposal for English education for natives was
put before the parliament , the court of directors held wide consultations before
finally putting the proposal down.
● CHARTER ACT 1813- For the first time the British Parliament included in the
Company’s charter a clause that the Governor-General in Council is bound to keep a sum
of not less than one lakh of rupees per year for education. But the Company used this
fund mainly to promote and encourage Indian language and literature. The importance of
 the Charter Act of 1813 was that the Company for the first time acknowledged state
responsibility for the promotion of education in India.
● In 1823, a General Committee of Public Institution was set up to take after the
development of education in India. Most of the members of this committee belonged
to the Orientalist group and they strongly advocated the promotion of oriental
learning rather than the promotion of Western education.
● However, different sections both in England and in India created Mounting pressure on
the Company to encourage Western education. Macaulay, the President of the General
Committee of Public Instruction and Lord Bentinck, the Governor General, took the
side of the Anglicists
● Macaulay presented his famous minutes to the council in February 1835, which Lord
Bentik approved, and a resolution was passed in March 1835. 8. The following points
were emphasised by him:
a) Persian was abolished as the court language and was substituted by English.
b) Printing and publication of English books were made free and available at a
comparatively low price.
c) More funds were provided to support English education, while there was
curtailment in the fund for the promotion of oriental learning.
d) The main goal of the British government should be to promote European literature
and science among Indians, and that "all funds appropriated for the purpose of
education would be best spent on English education alone."
e) All existing professors and students at all institutions under the committee's
supervision shall continue to receive stipends, but no stipend shall be given to any
students who may subsequently enter any of these institutions.
f) No funds from the government were to be spent on the printing of oriental works.
g) All funds available to the government would be spent in the future on imparting
knowledge of English literature and science to Indians.
● Auckland who came after Bentinck as the Governor-General also believed in the need for
the promotion of English education in India. He recommended the opening of more
English colleges in Dacca, Patna, Benares, Allahabad, Agra, Delhi and Bareilly.
● The General Committee of Public Instruction was abolished in 1841 and its place was
taken by a Council of Education.
● WOOD’S DESPATCH OF 1854 - One of the most pivotal developments in colonial
education policy was the Education Despatch of 1854 or as popularly known, Wood’s
Despatch. Charles Wood, Secretary of State for India, issued his pivotal Education
Dispatch of 1854 from his remote vantage point at the India Office in London. The
dispatch signalled a more general government attempt to bring education to what it
now deemed to be “the masses” across India.
a) Sir Charles Wood, the president of the Board of Control, in 1854 laid down the
policy which became the guiding principle of the education programme of the
 government of India.
b) The Despatch categorically declared: “The education that we desire to see
extended in India is that which has for its object the diffusion of the improved
arts, science, philosophy and literature of Europe, in short of European
knowledge.”
c) The major recommendations of the Despatch were as follow: - the creation of a
department of public instruction in each of the five provinces of the company’s
territory, the establishment of university at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, the
establishment of a network of graded schools-high schools, middle schools and
the elementary schools, the establishment of teachers training institutions, the
promotion of vernacular schools, the introduction of a system of grants-in-aid
for financial help to the schools, etc.
d) In many ways, the proposals of Wood's Despatch set a broad direction, without
actually ensuring a wider spread of education.
● In 1857 three universities were established in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The
establishment of universities and the opening of education departments in the provinces
provided a basic structure to modern education in India. In fact Wood’s Despatch
provided the model for the further development in education in India.

STEPS TAKEN BY MISSIONARIES AND INDIVIDUALS TO PROMOTE

ENGLISH EDUCATION-
● These missionary institutions did play a role in spreading western knowledge,
though their basic objective was to attract people to Christianity.
● Besides the missionaries some individuals played a significant role to promote English
education in Calcutta. The Native School and Book Society of Calcutta was established
to open schools in Calcutta and to train up the teachers for the indigenous schools.
● The establishment of Hindu College (later Presidency College) in Calcutta by David
Hare and a group of local Hindu notables facilitated the promotion of secular education
among Indians.
● J.E.D. Bethune who was an ardent advocate of women’s education founded a girls’
school in Calcutta.
● All these institutions obtained a positive response from the local people who strongly
pleaded to the British for further expansion of educational opportunities.
● Similarly in Bombay and Madras also missionary schools were established. In Bombay
notable developments were the Native Education Society and the Elphinstone Institution
which played a role similar to the Hindu College of Calcutta.
● In Madras the Christian College was founded in 1837 and the Presidency College in
1853. In Uttar Pradesh the first English-medium College was founded at Agra in 1823.
Thus by 1850s we find that in most of the provinces in India the basis of modern
education was laid down by the British.
HUNTER COMMISSION:
● The first Indian Education Commission, popularly known as Hunter Commission, was set
up in 1882 to examine why the aims of Wood’s dispatch of 1854, to spread education to
“the masses”, had not been fulfilled.
● It was in the aftermath of the Hunter Commission that a large number of colleges and
institutions of higher learning emerged.
● The idea that the state could not be solely responsible for spreading education was
maintained throughout the period of colonial rule. It was always recognized that private
institutions run on market principles would have to play a key role in spreading
education.
● After the introduction of the dyarchy in 1919, education became a transferred
subject and all the expenses were now to be met by the provincial councils.

FACTORS RESPONSIBLE FOR INTRODUCING WESTERN EDUCATION

● In “On the Education of the People of India”, Charles Travelyn argued that
western education enabled Indians to revitalise their 'backward' society and
economy, and indeed provided them with "the tools for questioning colonial
authority”
● The conquest of India was undertaken as a pursuit of profit. The idea that British rule
might be a vehicle for 'improving' Indian welfare took a long time to take root.
● Various approaches were discussed and commended to establish hegemony. However, the
feeling within the council of the governor-general was that no potential strategy held out a
greater chance of success than education.
● Education was felt to be perfect for the job of civilising India because it afforded the
government a means of directly accessing the sons of the native elite at an age when their
minds were unformed and impressionable.
● Charles Trevelyn, Director of the government's Committee of Public Instruction
pointed out, children made prime subjects for imprinting.
● He believed if all went according to the plan within decades the Company would no
longer need force or the threat of force to keep the Indians down; they would police
themselves.
● Trevelyn and Macaulay lobbied hard throughout 1834 to persuade the government to
fund "European literature and science." The 'Orientalists' resisted stoutly; but in March
1835 the reform-minded governor-general, Bentick, fell in with their scheme.
● In 1844 the Hardinge administration strengthened this commitment by undertaking to give
preference, when selecting natives for the public service, to those who had mastered
European literature.
● Yet, even as the government embraced the educational project in principle, it shied away
from its fiscal implication.
● Therefore, it turned to the private sector. In the absence of suitable alternative
providers, the Calcutta authorities had no option but to enter into a partnership with
the several English- and Scottish-based Christian missionary societies.
● Missionaries-
a) By the 1850s, twenty-three British and American missionary organisations
had over 400 representatives on the ground in South Asia.
b) The ultimate goal of this enterprise was, of course, to 'save' the 'heathen' from
eternal damnation by persuading them to accept Christ, the 'Redeemer.'
Nevertheless, in India, the missionaries were deeply divided about the best
way to achieve this goal. One of these ways was education.
c) William Wilberforce, one of its earliest advocates, predicted that the
dissemination of Western education would lead to Indians becoming
Christians almost without knowing.
d) Another advantage of the educational route was that it had the potential to
provide privileged access to the children of high caste Hindus, education in
nineteenth-century India being an elite preserve.
e) If they could convert the Brahmins the lower orders would follow suit.
● Gauri Viswanathan argues that English literary study was made a central part of the
curriculum in the new government colleges in India as a means of conveying moral
instruction, short of exposing them to specific Christian proselytising, which was
prohibited within the public system under the Company's policy of religious neutrality.
● And in the 1850s the rule was further relaxed to permit government teachers, so minded,
to instruct willing pupils in Christianity after school hours. Second, most Indian college
students in the mid-nineteenth century attended missionary, not public schools.
● The missionary colleges taught Christianity openly and unapologetically. The
missionaries always rated the success of their pedagogy by the number of converts it
generated. Nor did they try to hide this aspiration from their pupils' parents.
● Despite this, Indians flocked to the missionary schools in great numbers, to the point
where many had to be turned away.
● Indians preferred their Western education unadulterated; given a choice, parents
invariably opted to put their sons through the secularist government system.
● English-medium government colleges were thin on the ground, especially in the south.
For example, just one institution located in Madras City attempted to service the needs
of an entire presidency. A good Western education, missionary style, even with risks
attached, was immeasurably preferable to none at all. Cost was another important
factor as missionaries were mostly free.
● However, it seems very doubtful whether the prospect of economic gain would by itself
have persuaded the religiously orthodox, high caste Hindus to trust their children to the
church school.
● Copland believes they took this step because, and only because, they believed the risk
 was negligible, that their children would not succumb to the missionaries' wiles.

CASE STUDY
Dhanjibhai’s case study
● The first Parsis arrived in Bombay in the early eighteenth century. Early on the
community forged a close association with the British rulers of Bombay.
● Internally the community was split ideologically and by class.
● With the commercial world of Bombay increasingly a closed shop, by the 1830s new
Parsi immigrants focused their aspirations on occupations that required a good Western
education. Their sons had to resort to private providers, which essentially meant the
missionaries.
● Dr John Wilson concurred with his countrymen and fellow General Assembly
missionary Duff in favouring the educational strategy.
● In 1832 he founded a more advanced, English- medium institution, which in 1838 was
reconstituted as the General Assembly Institution.
● Dhanjibhai Naoroji was among the first parsi kids to join that institute and it was his
conversion that triggered the 1839 crisis.
● A legal action of Habeas Corpus in the Bombay Supreme Court was filed with a view to
forcing Wilson to return the boys. The Chief Justice handed down his final ruling finding
in favour of the defendants.
● The Company had always interpreted this commitment quite narrowly, and had no
intention of legislating against religious proselytising, because any curbs of that nature
would have jeopardised its partnership with the mission societies in the provision of
education.

IMPACT OF EDUCATIONAL POLICIES OF THE BRITISH

● By the 1880s most of the mission societies were cutting back their investment in
schools, in favour of 'medical missions' and more traditional forms of evangelism.
Moreover, suchsuccesses as were achieved by the mission schools in India, in respect of
conversions to Christianity, need to be measured against the popular hostility that these
events provoked.
● The quick adoption of 'English' education by the elite natives of Calcutta, Bombay, and
other cities in the 1830s and 1840s has already been noted. If any- thing, the push for
Western knowledge acquisition strengthened during the second half of the century. In the
ten years after 1874 the number of college students in Bengal tripled.
● Question is whether Western education in colonial India fulfilled the hegemonic
expectations of its official sponsors. Did the plan work? The answer is more 'yes and no'
than either 'yes' or 'no.' At any rate, 'English' education clearly failed to produce the
bonding effect Macaulay and Trevelyn had hoped for. The main reasons were the ways it
was appropriated by the relatively small number of Indian graduates who managed to
 thoroughly penetrate its mysteries.
● Western education was not inherently hegemonic. The standard college curriculum
included hefty doses of British history. It did not take long for the brighter students to see
the hypocrisy included.
● Moreover, by the late nineteenth century large numbers of Indians were acquiring their
Western education through schools outside the public and missionary systems, such as
mixed in with large doses of nationalist rhetoric.
● Also, the emphasis placed in the new schools on English literature and the classics
restricted the range of occupations their graduates were fitted for.
● Against the ‘hegemony theory’- Ranajit Guha insists that the Raj was maintained solely
by force. British rule in India was a case, he says, of "dominance without hegemony”.
● 'English' education must be accounted as one of the more positive legacies left to the
country by colonialism. Indeed it would be fair to say that its long tradition of English-
language acquisition has been one of the elements that has underpinned India's recent
emergence as a substantial economic player in the global services sector, in which
English is the currency.
● Although the educational system introduced by Macaulay and Trevelyn eventually
produced a substantial class of Indians fluent in English and well versed in the values and
mores of English culture, it failed to create a mental climate, even at the elite level,
favourable to assimilation.
● From the colonial archive, however, there are hints that the agenda of transformation of
the receiver of education was not an unqualified success. For instance, colonial officials
commonly complained that Indian students were prone to learn up their portions by rote
for reproduction during the exams.
● Historian Sanjay Seth argues that this complaint reflected a frustration at the inability to
achieve the full ideological agenda that the colonial state established for Indian students.
This does not imply that the student was in any way 'free', or that the process of learning
was engaging, or indeed that power did not operate through it. It simply marks the fact
that the outcomes of the learning process were not exactly those that were intended by
the colonial authorities.

THE RESPONSE OF THE INDIANS TO THE EDUCATIONAL POLICIES

● The response of Indians to this debate over education policy was a mixed one.
● Raja Ram Mohan Roy and other favoured introduction of Western education with the
belief that it would help Indians to assimilate the knowledge of western science,
rationalism, new ideas and literature.
● Some other people believed that knowledge of Western education would help them in
getting jobs and coming close to the ruling elite.
● In opposition to this there were many conservatives who had the apprehension that
introduction of Western education would lead to the collapse of indigenous society
 and culture.

KOCHAR-IMPACT-ONLY HIGHLIGHTED
● The first newly wealthy natives were drawn from the weaver caste, with surnames such
as Basack and Sett, who acted as dadni merchants. In spite of their wealth they did not
come to play a major leadership role because of their caste status.
● The next to gravitate to the new city were the social riff-raff from the hinterland.
● Then there were the lucky ones who had the good fortune of attaching themselves to the
Company officials.
● The next stage of accrual into the mid-18th century Calcutta is represented by those who
made a successful transition from the old administration to the new, that is from Persian to
English. This class includes Kayasthas like Dr Rajendralala Mitra's ancestors who had
served the Nawab of Murshidabad; and Kayasthized Brahmins like Rammohun Roy.
● The transition from Sanskrit to English, that is the entry of the higher-caste Brahmins into
the British fold, was a later phenomenon. They included zamindars like Joykissen
Mukherjee of Uttarpara.