HISTORY OF
EDUCATION IN INDIA
UNDER THE
Rule of the East India Company
F
*
t
MAJOR B. D. BASU, I.M.S. (Retired)
THE MODERN REVIEW OFFICE
CALCUTTA
Published by
R. CHATTERJEE,
210-3-1, Cornwallis Street, Calcutta.
Printer: S. C. MxjUMDAR
SRI GAURANGA PRESS
71/1, Mirzapur Street, Calcutta.
1028/22.
/33
TO THE
REVERED MEMORY OF MY FATHER
SHYAMA CHARAN BASU
WHO
By the organization of the Educational Department,
By zealously supporting the cause of female education,
By the foundation of the Punjab University, and
By "throwing himself actively into all the movements,"'
Calculated to ameliorate the condition of
The people of the Punjab,
Was looked upon as one of the chief makers of
The Young Punjab.
* The Indian Public Opinion of Lahore, dated 13th August, 1867.
M640323
PREFACE
The history of education in India under British
rule has yet to be properly written. It should
be remembered that in the Pre-British period, India
was not an illiterate country. This land was far more
advanced in education than many a Christian country
of the West. Almost every village had its school
for the diffusion of not only 3 but 4 R's the last R
being Religion or the Ramayana. That work has
contributed not a little to the preservation of Hindu
culture.
Stress has not been laid on another fact, which is,
that educational institutions were not established in
this country as soon as the East Ind'a Company obtain-
ed political supremacy here. It took the Christian
merchant "adventurers" just a century to come to
the decision that it was for their benefit to impart
education to the swarthy "heathens" of India. The
battle of Plassey was fought in 1757; and Wood's
Despatch, commonly called the Educational Charter
of India, is dated 1854. This would show that the
system of education now in vogue in this country
was not introduced in hot haste but after the mature
deliberations of nearly a century. The number of
those English Christians who consider that it was a
IV
mistake to have introduced Western education in this
country is not a small one. But they should be
reminded of the fact that the mistake was committed
after nearly a century's deliberation.
It should also not be lost sight of that the
Indians themselves were the pioneers in introducing
Western education in this country. The Hindu
College of Calcutta was established long before
Macaulay penned his celebrated minute or Wood sent
out his Educational Despatch to India.
It was to emphasize these facts that the prepara-
tion of this work was undertaken. It appeared
originally in The Modern Review in the shape of
serial articles, from which it is reprinted with a few
additions and alterations.
CONTENTS
Education of Indians (1813-33)
I. State Aid ... 1
II. Private Enterprise ... ... 35
Education of Indians ( 1 833- 1 853)
Anglicization of Education ... ... 51
Vernacular Education in the Days of the East
India Company
Education of Indians 1833-1853 ... ... 115
The Renewal of the East India Company's
Charter in 1853 ... ... ... 139
The Education Despatch of 1854 ... ... 152
The Establishment of the Presidency Universities 1 76
Conversion and Education of Indians 184
HISTORY OF
EDUCATION IN INDIA
UNDER THE
Rule of the East India Company
EDUCATION OF INDIANS (1813-1833).
I. STATE AID.
When the East India Company attained political
supremacy in India, they did not bestow any thought
on the education of the inhabitants of their domi-
nions.* Gold was their watchword. Every one of
their servants who came out to India tried to enrich
himself as quickly as possible at the expense of the
children of the soil. It was on this account that
Burke described them as "birds of prey and passage"
in India. Regarding this class of the British
sojourners in India, Burke said :
"Young Magistrates who undertake the government
* In the pre-British period in India, there were four methods of
education at work ; viz., the instruction given by the Brahmanas to
their disciples ; the tols, or seats of Sanskrit learning; the maktabs
and madrassas for Moharnedans ; and schools in almost every village
of note.
L HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
and spoliation of India, animated with all the avarice of
age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one
after another, wave after wave ; and there is nothing
before the eyes of the natives but an endless hopeless
prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with
appetite continually renewing for a food that is continually
wasting. * * Their prey is lodged in England, and
the cries of India are given to seas and winds, to be blown
about, in every breaking up of the monsoon, over a remote
and unhearing ocean. * * *
"Here (in England) the manufacturer and husbandman
will bless the just and punctual hand that in India has
torn the cloth from the loom, or wrested the scanty por-
tion of rice and salt from the peasant of Bengal, or wrung
from him the very opium in which he forgot his oppression
and his oppressors."
According to Herbert Spencer,
"The Anglo Indians of the last century 'birds of
prey and passage,' as they were styled by Burke showed
themselves only a shade less cruel than their prototypes
of Peru and Mexico. Imagine how black must have been
their deeds, when even the Directors of the Company
admitted that 'the vast fortunes acquired in the inland
trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyran-
nical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in
any age or country.'
These residents of Britain after making their
fortunes retired to England, where they were known
as "Indian Nabobs."
The Christian " Indian Nabobs" looked on the
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
heathens of India in the same light as their co-reli-
gionists of America did on their Negro slaves. Writes
a modern historian :
"But we should carry away an utterly misleading
impression if we supposed that the colonial slavery of
modern times reproduced the servile system of states like
ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. Whereas in the
ancient world men of every race and rank were, owing
to the fortunes of war, liable to fall into servitude, the
modern planters of America and the West Indies laid
violent hands on a single race the African negroes.
Moreover the labour which, under the lash, they com-
pelled the negroes to perform was restricted to such pro-
ducts as rice, sugar, indigo, cotton and tobacco. In the
slave states there was no attempt to teach those men any
handicraft.
"On the contrary, the education of negroes was
expressly forbidden. Here, for instance, are some pas-
sages from the Code of Virginia in 1849 ; 'Every assem-
blage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading
or writing shall be an unlawful assembly. Any justice
may issue his warrant to any officer or other person
requiring him to enter any place where such assemblage
may be and seize any negro therein ; and he or any other
justice may order such negro to be punished with stripes.
Again, if a white person assemble with negroes for the
purpose of instructing them to read or write, he shall be
confined to jail not exceeding six months and fined not
exceeding one hundred dollars.'
"Here is another paragraph from an Act passed in
South Carolina in 1834: 'If any person shall hereafter
4 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
teach any slave to read or write, or shall aid in assisting
any slave to read or write, or cause or procure any slave
to be taught to read or write, such person, if a free white
person, upon conviction thereof, shall for every such
offence against this act be fined not exceeding one hundred
dollars, and imprisoned not more than six months ; or if
a person of colour, shall be whipped not exceeding fifty
lashes, and fined not exceeding fifty dollars. And if a
slave, shall be whipped not exceeding fifty lashes/
Similar acts were passed in Georgia and Alabama.
"Those Christian Legislators thus doomed the entire
servile population to perpetual ignorance and degrada-
tion. Their aim was to exclude their slaves from all human
and humanising influences. Contrast this policy, however,
with the policy of antiquity. No doubt thousands and
thousands of slaves worked and perished in chains on
the harvest fields of Egypt, Babylonia, and Sicily, and
in Asiatic and European copper, tin and silver mines.
Their forced labour upon the raw materials of ancient
industry was as severe as the labour which Christian States
imposed upon the negroes of Africa in the nineteenth
century. But the slave products of antiquity were not
confined to agricultural and mineral wealth. There was
no department of art or of industry in which servile labour
was unrepresented." (Harm worth History of the World,
Vol. IV, p. 2814.)
But as years rolled on, it became patent to some
thoughtful Anglo-Indians, that their dominion in
India could not last long unless education especially
Western was diffused among the inhabitants of that
land. Accordingly in 1 793 A.D. on the occasion of
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 3
the renewal of the East India Company's Charter,
an attempt was made by some people in England to
compel the Company to spend a portion of the
revenues of India on the education of Indians. But
this proposition struck terror and dismay into the
hearts of the generality of the people of England.
In his evidence on the 15th June, 1853, before
the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed
to inquire into the affairs of the East India Company,
Mr. J. C. Marshman said:
"For a considerable time after the British Government
had been established in India, there was great opposition
to any system of instruction for trie Natives. The feelings
of the public authorities in this country were first tested
upon the subject in the year 1792, when Mr. Wilberforce
proposed to add two clauses to the Charter Act of that
year, for sending out schoolmasters to India ; this
encountered the greatest opposition in the Court of
Proprietors, and it was found necessary to withdraw the
clauses. That proposal gave rise to a very memorable
debate, in which, for the first time, the views of the Court
of Directors upon the subject of education, after we had
obtained possession of the country, were developed. On
that occasion, one of the Directors stated that we had just
lost America from our folly, in having allowed the
establishment of Schools and Colleges, and that it would
not do for us to repeat the same act of folly in regard to
India ; and that if the Natives required anything in the
way of education, they must come to England for it. For
20 years after that period, down to the year 1813, the same
6 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
feeling of opposition to the education of the Natives
continued to prevail among the ruling authorities in this
country."
Twenty years rolled away and the Company's
Charter came to be renewed in 1813. This time the
attempt to make the Company set apart a fractional
portion of their revenues in educating the people of
India was successful. A clause was inserted on the
motion of Mr. R. P. Smith, who had been Advocate-
General in Calcutta, in the Charter Act of 1813,
which ran as follows :
"53 Georgii 3, Cap. 155, Sec. 43. And be it further
enacted, that it shall be lawful for the Governor General
in Council to direct that out of any surplus which may
remain of the rents, revenues and profits arising from the
said territorial acquisitions, after defraying the expenses
of the military, civil and commercial establishments, and
paying the interest of the debt, in manner hereinafter
provided, a sum of not less than one lac of rupees in each
year shall be set apart and applied to the revival and
improvement of literature, and the encouragement of the
learned natives of India, and for the introduction and
promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the in-
habitants of the British territories in India ; and that any
schools, public lectures, or other institutions for the pur-
poses aforesaid, which shall be founded at the presidencies
of Fort William, Fort St. George, or Bombay, or in any
other parts of the British territories in India, in virtue of
this Act, shall be governed by such Regulations as may
from time to time be made by the said Governor General
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 7
in Council, subject, nevertheless, to such powers as are
herein vested in the said Board of Commissioners for the
affairs of India, respecting colleges and seminaries ;
provided always, that all appointments to offices in such
schools, lectureships, and other institutions, shall be made
by or under the authority of the Governments within which
the same shall be situated."
It was of course from considerations of political
expediency that the magnificent sum of one lac of
rupees was ordered to be set apart for the instruction
of the natives of India. This is also evident from the
letter of instructions communicated to the Bengal
Government by the Court of Directors, an extract from
which is reproduced below :
Extract from a letter, in the Public Department, from the
Court of Directors to the Governor General in Council
of Bengal ; dated 3rd June, 1814.
"In our Letter of the 6th September last, in the Public
Department, we directed your attention generally to the
43rd Clause in the Act of the 53rd of the King, by which
our Governor General in Council is empowered to direct
that a sum of not less than one lac of rupees out of any
surplus revenues that may remain shall be annually applied
to the revival and improvement of literature, and the
encouragement of the learned notives of India. We pur-
pose in this Despatch to convey to you our sentiments as
to the mode in which it will be advisable you should
proceed, and the measures it may be proper, you should
adopt with reference to that subject.
"In the consideration of it, we have kept in view
8 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
those peculiar circumstances of our political relation with
India which, having necessarily transferred all power and
pre-eminence from native to European agency, have
rendered it incumbent upon us, from motives of policy
as well as from a principle of justice, to consult the feelings,
and even to yield to the prejudices, of the natives, when-
ever it can be done with safety to our dominions.
"The Clause presents two distinct propositions for
consideration ; first, the encouragement of the learned
natives of India, and the revival and improvement of
literature ; secondly, the promotion of a knowledge of
the sciences amongst the inhabitants of that country.
"Neither of these objects is, we apprehend, to be
obtained through the medium of public colleges, if estab-
lished under the rules, and upon a plan similar to those that
have been founded at our universities, because the natives
of caste and of reputation will not submit to the subordi-
nation and discipline of a college ; and we doubt whether
it would be practicable to devise any specific plan which
would promise the successful accomplishment of the
objects under consideration.
"We are inclined to think that the mode by which
the learned Hindoos might be disposed to concur with us
in prosecuting those objects would be by our leaving them
to the practice of an usage, long established amongst them,
of giving instruction at their own houses, and by our
encoui aging them in the exercise and cultivation of their
talents, by the stimulus of honorary marks of distinction,
and in some instances by grants of pecuniary assistance.
"In a political point of view, considerable advantages
might, we conceive, be made to flow from the measure
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 9
proposed, if it should be conducted with due attention to
the usages and habits of the natives. They are known
to attach a notion of sanctity to the soil, the buildings and
other objects of devout resort, and particularly to that at
Benares, which is regarded as the central point of their
religious worship, and as the great repository of their
learning. The possession of this venerated city, to which
every class and rank of the Hindoos is occasionally
attracted, has placed in the hands of the British Govern-
ment a powerful instrument of connexion and conciliation,
especially with the Mahrattas, who are more strongly
attached than any other to the supposed sanctity of
Benares.
"Deeply impressed \vith these sentiments, we desire
that your attention may be directed in an especial manner
to Benares and that you call upon your public representa-
tives there to report to you what ancient establishments
are still existing for the diffusion of knowledge in that
city ; what branches of science and literature are taught
there ; by what means the professors and teachers are
supported ; and in what way their present establishments
might be improved to most advantage.
* * * *
"We refer with particular satisfaction upon this
occasion to that distinguished feature of internal polity
which prevails in some parts of India, and by which the
instruction of the people is provided for by a certain charge
upon the produce of the soil, and by other endowments
in favour of the village teachers, who are thereby rendered
public servants of the community.
"The mode of instruction that from time immemorial
has been practised under these masters has received the
10 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
highest tribute of praise by its adoption in this country,
under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Bell, formerly
chaplain at Madras ; and it is now become the mode by
which education is conducted in our national establish-
ments, from a conviction of the facility it affords in the
acquisition of language by simplifying the process of
instruction.
"This venerable and benevolent institution of the
Hindoos is represented to have withstood the shock of
revolutions, and to its operation is ascribed the general
intelligence of the natives as scribes and accountants.
We are so strongly persuaded of its great utility that we
are desirous you should take early measures to inform
yourselves of its present state, and that you will report
to us the result of your inquiries, affording, in the mean-
time, the protection of Government to the village teachers
in all their just rights and immunities, and marking by some
favourable distinction any individual amongst them who
may be recommended by superior merit or acquirements ;
for, humble as their situation may appear, if judged by a
comparison with any corresponding character in this
country, we understand those village teachers are held
in great veneration throughout India.
"We are informed that there are in the Sanskrit
language many excellent systems of Ethics, with codes
of laws and compendiums of the duties relating to every
class of the people, the study of which might be useful
to those natives who may be destined for the Judicial
Department of Government. There are also many tracts
of merit, we are told, on the virtues of plants and drugs,
and on the application of them in medicine, the knowledge
of which might prove desirable to the European practi-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 1 1
tioner, and there are treatises on Astronomy and
Mathematics, including Geometry and Algebra, which,
though they may not add new lights to European science,
might be made to form links of communication between
the natives and the gentlemen in our service, which are
attached to the Observatory and to the department of
engineers, and by such intercourse the natives might
gradually be led to adopt the modern improvements in
those and other sciences.
"With a view to those several objects we have deter-
mined that due encouragement should be given to such
of our servants in any of these departments as may be
disposed to apply themselves to the study of the Sanscrit
language, * *
"We encourage ourselves to hope, that a foundation
may in this way be laid for giving full effect in the course
of time to the liberal intentions of the Legislature ; and
we shall consider the money that may be allotted to this
service as beneficially employed, if it should prove the
means, by an improved intercourse of the European with
the natives, to produce those reciprocal feelings of regard
and respect which are essential to the permanent interests
of the British Empire in India.***
It is evident from the letter, an extract from
which has been given above, that it was not so much
the intention of the Legislature to do anything in the
shape of disseminating knowledge among the in-
habitants of India as to make a survey of the indi-
* Affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. Published 1832,
pp. 446-47.
12 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
genous educational institutions that existed in the
country and also to take steps for their preservation.
It should be remembered that India was not a country
inhabited by savages and barbarians. In the Pre-
British period, India possessed educational institu-
tions of a nature which did not exist in the countries
of the West.
That even in the beginning of the Nineteenth
Century, India, in the matter of education, was
in advance of the European countries is proved by the
fact of her teaching those countries a new system of
tuition, to which attention was drawn by the Court
of Directors in their letter to the Governor-General in
Council in Bengal, dated 3rd June, 1814, extracts
from which have been already given above. Very few
in India know that the system of <4 mutual tuition*'
which has been practised by Indian school-masters
since time immemorial has been borrowed by the
Christian countries of the West from India. The
man who first introduced it into Great Britain was
a native of Scotland by the name of Dr. Andrew
Bell.
The village communities of India had not then
been destroyed, and it being the duty of every village
community to foster education, a school formed a
prominent institution in every village of any note.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY -
Thus one Mr. A. D. Campbell, Collector of Bellary,
wrote in his Report, dated 1823, as follows:
"16. The economy with which children are taught
to write in the native schools and the system by which the
more advanced scholars are caused to teach the less
advanced, and at the same time to confirm their own
knowledge, is certainly admirable, and well deserved the
imitation it has received in England. The chief defects in
the native schools are the nature of the books and learning
taught, and the want of competent masters.
"17. Imperfect, however, as the present education
of the natives is, there are few who possess the means
to command it for their children. Even were books of
a proper kind plentiful, and the master every way adequate
to the task imposed upon him, he would make no advance
from one class to another, except as he might be paid
for his labour. While learning the first rudiments, it is
common for the scholar to pay to the teacher a quarter of
a rupee, and when arrived as far as to write on paper,
or at the higher branches of arithmetic, half a rupee per
mensem. But in proceeding further, such as explaining
books which are all written in verse, giving the meaning
of Sanskrit words, and illustrating the principles of Verna-
cular languages, such demands are made as exceed the
means of most parents. There is. therefore, no alter-
native but that of leaving their children only partially
instructed, and consequently ignorant of the most essential
and useful parts of a liberal education : but there are
multitudes who cannot even avail themselves of the
advantages of the system, defective as it is.
"18. I am sorry to state, that this is ascribable to
14 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
the gradual but general impoverishment of the country. The
means of the manufacturing classes have been of late years
greatly diminished by the introduction of our own English
manufactures in lieu of the Indian cotton fabrics. The
removal of many of our troops from our own territories
to the distant frontiers of our newly subsidized allies has
also, of late years, affected the demand for grain ; the
transfer of the capital of the country from the native
government and their officers, who liberally expended it in
India, to Europeans, restricted by law from employing
it even temporarily in India, and daily draining it from
the land, has likewise tended to this effect, which has
not been alleviated by a less rigid enforcement of the
revenue due to the State. The greater part of the middling
and lower classes of the people are now unable to defray
the expenses incident upon the education of their offspring,
while their necessities require the assistance of their
children as soon as their tender limbs are capable of the
smallest labour.
"19. It cannot have escaped the government that
of nearly a million of souls in this District, not 7,000 are
now at school, a proportion which exhibits but too strongly
the result above stated. In many villages where formerly
there were schools, there are now none and in many
others where there were large schools, now only a few
children of the most opulent are taught, others being unable
from poverty to attend, or to pay what is demanded.
"20. Such is the state in this District of the various
schools in which reading writing and arithmetic are taught
in the vernacular dialects of the country, as has been always
usual in India, by teachers who are paid by their
scholars.** But learning, though it may proudly decline
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 15
to sell its stores, has never flourished in any country except
under the encouragement of the ruling power, and the
countenance and support once given to science in this
part of India has long been withheld.
21. Of the 533 istitutions for education now existing
in this District, I am ashamed to say not one now derives
any support from the State.**
"22. There is no doubt, that in former times,
especially under the Hindoo Governments, very large
grants, both in money and in land, were issued for the
support of learning.* *
23. * * Considerable alienations of revenue, which
formerly did honour to the State, by upholding and
encouraging learning, have deteriorated under our rule into
the means of supporting ignorance ; whilst science,
deserted by the powerful aid she formerly received from
Government, has often been reduced to beg her scanty
and uncertain meal from the chance benevolence of chari-
table individuals ; and it would be difficult to point out any
period in the history of India when she stood more in need
of the proffered aid of Government to raise her from the
degraded state into which she has fallen, and dispel the
prevailing ignorance which so unhappily pervades the
land."
Extracts from the report of A. D. Campbell, Esq., the
Collector of Bellary, dated Bellary, August 17, 1823,
upon the Education of Natives : pp. 503-504 of Report
from Select Committee on the affairs of the East India
Company, Vol. I., published 1832.
The late Mr. Keir Hardie, in his work on India,
(p. 5) wrote :
16 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
"MaxMuller, on the strength of official documents
and a missionary report concerning education in Bengal
prior to the British occupation, asserts that there were
then 80,000 native schools in Bengal, or one for every
400 of the population. Ludlow, in his history of British
India, says that 'in every Hindoo village which has retained
its old form I am assured that the children generally are
able to read, write, and cipher, but where we have swept
away the village system as in Bengal there the village
school has also disappeared.'
Regarding education in the Deccan, in the Pre-
British period, Mountstuart Elphinstone, in his
Minute on Education written in March, 1 824, said :
"The great body of the people (of the Deccan)
are quite illiterate ; yet there is a certain class in which
men capable of reading, writing, and instructing, exist in
much greater numbers than are required, or can find
employment. This is a state of things which can not long
continue. The present abundance of people of education
is owing to the demand there was for such persons under
the Maratha Government. That cause has now ceased,
the effect will soon follow, and unless some exertion is
made by the Government, the country will certainly be
in a worse state under our rule than it was under the
Peshwas'. I do not confine this observation to what is
called learning, which, in its present form, must unavoid-
ably fall off under us, but to the humbler acts of reading
and writing, which, if left to themselves, will decline
among the Brahmins without increasing among the other
castes."
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 17
What Elphinstone anticipated has actually come
to pass.
We thus see, that in all the three presidencies
of Bengal, Madras and Bombay, there was a kind of
mass education in the pre-British period.
But with the destruction of the village commu-
nities and the inpoverishment of the people which
were inseparably connected with the British mode of
administration of India, educational institutions which
used to flourish in every village of note became things
of the past.
The baneful effect of the administration of the
British merchants constituting the East India Com-
pany was observable not only in the destruction of
Indian trades and industries, but also in that of the
indigenous system of education. Thus Walter Hamil-
ton, writing in 1828 from official records, said :
"It has long been remarked that science and literature
are in a progressive state of decay among the natives of
India, the number of learned men being not only
diminished, but the circle of learning, even among those
who still devote themselves to it, greatly contracted. The
abstract sciences are abandoned ; and no branch of
learning cultivated, but what is connected with the peculiar
religious sects and doctrines, or with the astrology of the
people. The principal cause of this retrograde condition of
literature may be traced to the want of that encouragement
which was formerly afforded to it by princes, chieftains
18 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
and opulent individuals, under the native governments,
now past and gone." (vol. I. p. 203).
The British administrators of India of those
days were actuated by political motives in keeping
Indians ignorant. Thus one gallant Major-General
Sir Lionel Smith, K.C.B., at the enquiry of 1831 , said :
"The effect of education will be to do away with
all the prejudices of sects and religions by which we have
hitherto kept the country the Mussalmans against Hindus,
and so on ; the effect of education will be to expand their
minds, and show them their vast power."
When the framers of the Charter Act of 1813
set apart one lac of rupees, it was their intention that
the Government of India would make a survey of the
indigenous educational institutions and do something
for their preservation. But the Indian Government
did nothing of the sort. It was so late as June 25th,
1822, that is, nine years after the passing of the
Charter Act of 1813, that Sir Thomas Munro in
inditing a Minute in his capacity as governor of
Madras was compelled to say :
"We have made geographical and agricultural surveys
of our provinces, we have investigated their resources,
and endeavoured to ascertain their population ; but little
or nothing has been done to learn the state of education.
We have no record to shew the actual state of education
throughout the country. Partial inquiries have been made
by individuals, but those have taken place at distant
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 19
periods, and on a small scale, and no inference can be
drawn from them with regard to the country in general."*
The Indian Government did not pay any heed
to the other instructions which the Court of Directors
communicated to them in their letter of 3rd June
1814. Thus the Court had written:
"There are also many tracts of merit, we are told,
on the virtues of plants and drugs, and on the application
of them in medicine, the knowledge of which might prove
desirable to the European practitioner."
But the Indian Government did absolutely
nothing for the study of the indigenous drugs of
India.
It appears that it was not the intention of the
Legislature to diffuse knowledge among the mass of
the people.
Thus one Mr. Fraser of Delhi
"reported to the Chief Secretary to Government in
September, 1823, that considering the ignorance and
immorality of the mass of the people, and actuated by
a desire to improve their moral and intellectual condition,
he had at different periods since the year 1814, instituted
schools for the instruction of about 80 boys, children of
the Zaminders, or peasantry, in reading and writing the
Peisian language, at an expense to himself of about Rs.
200 per mensem. This institution he proposed to place
under the patronage of the Government, and recommended
Ibid, p. 500.
20 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
that it should be extended so as to afford instruction in
the English, Persian and Hindoo languages to 400 boys,
the children of Zaminders, at an expense of Rs. 8,400 per
annum.
"The general committee to whom this proposition
was referred, considered the charge large in comparison
with the extent of benefit to result from it, and with the
village schools of Chinsurah, and objected, on general
principles, to the government charging the school fund
with this expenditure, remarking that fund was not equal
to any extended patronage of village schools, and that as
the peasantry of few other countries would bear a com-
parison as to their state of education with those of many
parts of British India, the limited funds under the com-
mittee's management ought in preference to be employed
in giving a liberal education to the higher classes of the
community. The Government concurring in this opinion,
Mr. Fraser was informed accordingly."*
The Court of Directors of the East India Com-
pany also concurred in this opinion. In their letter
to the Governor-General in Council of Bengal, dated
5th September, 1827, they wrote:
"From the limited nature of the means at your disposal,
you can only engage in very limited undertakings ; and
where a preference must be made there can be no doubt
of the utility of commencing both at the places of the
greatest importance, and with the superior and middle
classes of the natives, from whom the native agents whom
you have occasion to employ in the functions of Govern-
* Ibid, p. 409.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 21
ment are most fitly drawn, and whose influence on the
rest of their countrymen is the most extensive."*
It was political expediency which prompted the
Indian Government to undertake the education of
Indians. Even a very large portion of the magni-
ficent sum of one lac of rupees was not spent for
many years for the purpose for which it had been
recommended to be set apart. But it was necessary
to spend money on education, otherwise it was
impossible to get servants for the public services of
the State. Thus some of the witnesses in their
evidence before the Lord's Committee of 1830
deposed that
"The Sudder Adawlut has represented that the
knowledge of the Hindoo and Mahomedan law is becom-
ing extinct among the natives, and that there is much
difficulty in finding law officers. "f
The Calcutta Madrissa, or Mahomedan College was
founded by Mr. Warren Hastings in 1781 "with a view,**
to the production of well-qualified officers for the Courts
of Justice. "t
The Benares Hindoo College was founded in
1791 with the same object in view as the Calcutta
Madrissa, that is to say to produce well-qualified
Hindoo law officers for the Courts of Justice.
* Ibid, p. 490.
t Ibid, p. 298.
J Ibid, P . 369.
HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
These were perhaps the only two educational
institutions which received any support from the
Government of India previous to the passing of the
Charter Act of 1813 which authorised the annual
expenditure of one lac of rupees for educational
purposes.
The Deccan College at Poona was established
in 1 82 1 . The Peishwas used to annually distribute
large sums of money among learned Brahmins. After
the annexation of the Deccan to the British territory,
it was proposed by Mr. Chaplin, Commissioner of
the Deccan, to devote part of the funds which the
Peishwas used to distribute annually to the support
of a College. Such was the origin of the Poona
College.
Thus the Government of India were compelled
to spend some money on the education of Indians,
otherwise it was impossible for them to get employes
for their public services. We have said above that
it was the intention of the Legislature to spend a
portion of one lac of rupees per annum on the
education of Indians in order to qualify them for the
public services of the State. As a matter of fact,
the Indian Government were getting Indian public
servants not only very cheap but without paying
much for their education. The truth of this assertion
will be proved to demonstration, if we take into con-
sideration the large sums which the Governments
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 23
of Bengal, Madras and Bombay had to spend every
year from the beginning of the nineteenth century
on the education of their Civil Servants.
There was a college established at Calcutta in
1800 for the education of Civilians. The sum of
1,50,000 rupees was fixed by the Honourable Court
of Directors for the annual expenses of the College.
The following is the Memorandum, showing the
average expense of the education of each writer during
three years (18251828).
Rs. A. p.
"In the year 1825 26, the expenses of
the College of Fort William, exclu-
sive of the Salaries of the students,
amounted to ... ... ... 1,36,497 13 5
"In 1826-27 ... ... 1,26,500 9 1
"In 1827-28 ... ... ... 1,39,636 10 7
"Rent of the Writers-buildings for two
years, at 140 rupees for each of 19 sets
of the rooms in them ... ... 95,760
"Salary of 114 Students for three years,
at 300 rupees per month ... 2,56,470
TOTAL ... 7,54,865 1 1
"And this sum divided by 114, the number of writers
in three years, will give an average expense for each writer
of 6,621 rupees.*
The following tablef gives an account of the
* Page 644 of Appendix (L) to Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. Public.
t Page 676 of Appendix (L) to Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. Public.
24 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
expense attending the establishment of the College
from its institution in 1 800 to 1 830 ; also the number
of individuals who have received instruction there in
each year :
Expense attending the Number of
Year. establishment of the Students
College.
1801-2 52,411 57
1802-3 51,540 40
1803-4 53,197 44
1804-5 36,665 67
1805-6 29,797 41
1806-7 18,884 38
1807-8 18,635 36
1808-9 18,456 38
1809-10 18,105 44
1810-11 20,738 45
1811-12 20,861 32
1812-13 20,172 41
1813-14 23,707 46
1814-15 23,674 49
1815-16 21,378 37
1816-17 17,204 32
1817-18 15,682 34
1818-19 15,752 29
1819-20 14,368 19
1820-21 14,489 18
1821-22 14,314 17
1822-23 15,953 16
1823-24 13,247 9
1824-25 13,240 16
1825-26 16,215 16
1826-27 14,731 23
1827-28 15,694 38
1828-29 15,895 53
1829-30 14,598 49
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 25
Regarding the College at Madras, in a letter
from the Civil Finance Committee, dated 1st October,
1 829, it was written that
"The College of Fort St. George is similarly superin-
tended by a Board, consisting of a member of Council
as president, and of three other gentlemen selected from
amongst those holding offices at the Presidency, attached
to which are a Secretary and Assistant Secretary, on salaries
amounting to Rs. 350 and 300 respectively. There are
no professors or examiners attached to the institution,
but,* * the translators to Government perform the duty
of examiners. The native establishment consists chiefly
of moonshees, retained for the purpose of affording instruc-
tion to the junior civil servants, whose salaries, regulated
at different rates according to the mode in which they
are employed, amount to Rs. 1,125 per mensem ; the
total charge on account of the institution being Rs. 1,995'8
per mensem, or including contingencies, Rs. 24,807
annually.
"At Madras, the allowance of junior civil servants
on their first admission into the College is Rs. 175, which
is increased progressively, on the attainment of prescribed
degrees of proficiency, to Rs. 260 and Rs. 350. In addition
to the allowances above mentioned, each student receives
the sum of Rs. 35 per mensem for house rent, 4
"One of the principal items of charge connected with
the College at Calcutta, which does not exist at the presi-
dency of Fort St. George, is the salaries of the professors,
and of the pundits, &c., attached to them.
* Page 65 1 of Appendix (L) Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. (Public).
26 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
The expenses of the college at Madras were as
follows ; *
In 1818 58,296
1819 ... ... 65,439
1820 ... 57,880
1821 ... 50,842
1822 ... ... 47,661
In a letter from the Secretary to the Madras
College to the Chief Secretary to the Government of
Madras, dated 27th August 1 828, it was stated that
"On a computation of the expenditure on account of
junior civil servants attached to the College of Fort St.
George from the year 1820 up to the present time, it
appears that the annual expense to Government at which
instruction has been afforded to each student may be
stated at between three and four thousand rupees, the
salary of the student being included in this amount : as
the fluctuating number of the students prevents the
expenditure of one year forming any criterion whereby
to judge of that of another, the Board have thought it
advisable to state the actual expenditure at which instruc-
tion has been afforded to the junior civil servants attached
to the College during the last three years.
Amount of Junior
Amount of Junior
Number of stu-
Civil Servants*
Civil Servants*
Year.
dents attached
salaries and allow-
salaries and allow
to the College.
ance drawn at the
ance drawn at
Presidency.
Out-Stations,
Rs. A. P.
Rs.
1825
23
42,287 4 51/2
10,780
1826
26
61,349 2 334
6,030
1827
30
67,850 13 8
4,650
* Page 689 of Appendix (L) to Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. (Public).
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 27
year.
1825
1826
1827
Amount of Native
Teachers* salaries
drawn at the
Presidency.
15,176
17,972
19,326
Amount of Native
Teachers' salaries
drawn at Out-
Stations.
1,104 2 8!/2
165
1,520
Total of the
year.
69,347 7 2
85,516 2 3V4
93,346 13 8
Regarding Bombay, in a letter from the Civil
Finance Committee, dated 1st October, 1829, it was
stated that
"At Bombay there is no College, but the young men
receive Rs. 38 per mensem for maintaining a moonshee,
and are attached soon after their arrival to different collec-
tors in the provinces, as supernumerary assistants, until
they are reported ready to pass an examination. They
are then examined by a committee temporarily formed
at the Presidency, and if they pass in one language they
are promoted to the station of an assistant, but they must
pass in two languages before they become eligible to the
station of a second assistant. We have no alteration to
suggest in the system thus generally described, as it is
stated to be efficient, and is clearly economical."'
At one time it was proposed to establish a college
for the education of civil servants at Bombay. Thus
in the public letter from the Bombay Government
dated 29th August 1821 it was stated that,
"The instructions conveyed by your honourable Court
in the 57th paragraph of your despatch, dated the 14th
of July 1819, in the Revenue Department, have induced
* Page 652 of Appendix (L) to Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. (Public).
28 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
us to take measures for the establishment of a college at
this presidency ; and as the subject has occupied our
serious attention during the last year, we proceed to sub-
mit our proceedings to your honourable Court. *
"The establishment was to be placed under a College
Council, assisted by a Secretary, who was also to be
examiner and librarian.
"In addition to the salary of the Secretary of 1,000
rupees per month, the following sketch of the expense of
the college comprehends the best estimate we can form
of the amount, the salaries for the teachers having been
fixed at the lowest possible scale ; viz.
"The College for instructing Europeans, calculated
for from 30 to 40 students :
1 Native of Arabia, for Arabic ... ... Rs. 100
2 Natives of Persia, for Persian (who might also
occasionally teach Arabic, if qualified,) at
Rs. 100, and Rs. 80 ... ... 180
10 Teachers of Hindoostanee, average 60 (the
majority might be expected to be qualified to
teach Persian) ... ... 600
5 Teachers of Mahratta (also qualified to teach
Sanscrit,) at rupees 60, average ... ... ,, 300
5 Teachers of Guzzerattee, qualified to teach
Sanscrit ... ... ... ,, 300
TOTAL Rs. 1,480
"With regard to the establishment of a college at
Bombay on the plan thus submitted to your honourable
Court, we have been prevented from carrying the arrange-
ment into immediate effect, * * but we strongly recom-
mend the adoption of it.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 29
"The only possible objection that appears in our
minds is the expense, but the greater part of it must be
incurred whether the college be eventually instituted or
not, while the education of your junior civil servants is
evidently indispensable ; nor are we aware of any other
arrangement by which this can be effectually provided
for."*
In other words, the Bombay Government con-
sidered an annual expenditure of Rupees thirty
thousand necessary for the instruction of some 30 or
40 European Government servants. Had the
College been established, the annual expense to
Government at which instruction would have been
afforded to each student would have been about one
thousand rupees, the salary of the student not being
included in this amount.
But the Court of Directors of the East India
Company did not approve of the Establishment of
the College at Bombay. In their letter to the Bombay
Government, dated 1 1th June, 1823, they wrote :
"This being the view which we take of the subject,
and nothing being regarded by us as essential but the
teaching of these three native languages, Hindoostanee,
Mahratta and Guzzerattee, we are far indeed from being
of opinion that the apparatus of a College and its great
* Page 693 of Appendix (L) to Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. (Public).
30 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
expense are either required for the purpose, or would
afford the best means of accomplishing the end.
"Two things alone appear to us to be necessary ; the
first, a sufficient number of natives qualified to teach to
young Englishmen the three languages in question, the
second, a well-constituted organ of superintendence for
seeing that the masters perform their duty, and for
examining the students."*
So the scheme for the establishment of the
College for the instruction of junior civil servants at
Bombay fell through. But nevertheless the educa-
tion of the European public servants of the Bombay
Government cost the Indian tax-payer as large a sum
as that of Bengal or Bombay.
Now, let us see what it cost the Indian Govern-
ment to educate the Indian from whom also public
servants had to be recruited.
Previous to 1813, there were only two educa-
tional institutions in India, viz., the Calcutta Madrissa
and the Benares Hindoo Sanscrit College, which were
maintained at the expense of the Indian Government.
The pecuniary aid afforded to these institutions is
exhibited in the following tables :
"An Abstract Statement of Pecuniary Aid, granted
by the Bengal Government to the Calcutta Madrissa, from
its first institution to the end of the year 1824, so far as
the same can be ascertained.
* Page 697 of Appendix (L) to Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. (Public).
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 31
Rs.
Cost of the original building in 1781 75,745
Revenue of lands granted to the Institution
as an endowment of the estimated value
of 29,000 rupees per annum, from A.D.
1782 to 1793, 12 years ... ... 3,48,000
Actual expenditure from 1794 to 1818, 25
years as per account exhibited in July
1819 ... ... ... ... 4,94,197
Charges on account of the Madrissa as fixed
by Government,
A.D. 1819 ... ... 30,000
1820 ... ... ... 30,000
1821 ... ... ... 30,000
1822 ... ... ... 30,000
1823 ... 30,000
1824 ... ... ... 30,000
Sum appropriated in July 1823, for the pur-
chase of ground, and erection of a new
Madrissa 1,40,537
TOTAL ... 12,20,479*
"Amount of the pecuniary aid granted by the Bengal
Government to the College of Benares, (including the
assignments of revenue) :
Rs.
For the year 1791 ... ... ... 14,000
From 1st January 1792 to 31st December
1824, being 33 years, at 20,000 rupees
per annum ... ... ... 6,60,000
TOTAL ... 6,74,000f
* Ibid, p. 399.
t Ibid, p. 40.
32 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
It should be remembered that not an inconsider-
able portion of the above sums went into the pockets
of the Anglo-Indians who were appointed as Superin-
tendents of the above two institutions. Thus the
Superintendent of the Calcutta Madrissa used to get
6,000 Rupees and that of the Benares College 5,400
Rupees a year.
The following two tables* are very important.
An account of all sums that have been applied to the
purpose of educating the Natives in India from the year
1813 to 1830 ; distinguishing the Amount in each year.
Bengal Madras Bombay Total.
1813 4,207 480 442 5,129
1814 11,606 480 499 12,585
1815 4,405 480 537 5,422
1816 5,146 480 578 6,204
1817 5,177 480 795 6,452
1818 5,211 480 630 6,321
1819 7,191 480 1,270 8,941
1820 5,807 480 1,401 7,688
1821 6,882 480 594 7,956
1822 9,081 480 594 10,155
1823 6,134 480 594 7,208
1824 19,970 480 1,434 21,884
1825 57,122 480 8,961 66,563
1826 21,623 480 5,309 27,412
1827 30,077 2,140 13,096 45,313
1828 22,797 2,980 10,064 35,841
1829 24,663 3,614 9,799 38,076
1830 28,748 2,946 12,636 44,330
"The following Statement exhibits the estimated
Amount of the Sums annually chargeable on the Revenues
* (P. 483 Appendix I to Report from Select Committee on the
affairs of the East India Committee Vol. I. (Public).
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 33
of India for the support of Native Schools, as the same
appear upon the Books of Establishments, and by the
proceedings of the respective Governments last received
from India.
I. BENGAL.
Rs.
Calcutta Madrissa, per annum ... ... 30,000
,, Hindoo Sanskrit College (in which those
of Nuddea and Tirhoot have merged) 25,000
,, School Book Society ... ... 6,000
,, School Society ... ... ... 6,000
At the disposal of the Committee of
Public Instruction (inclusive of the
Chinsurah, Rajpootana and of the salary
to their Secretary Rs. 6,000) ... 1,06,000
*,, Old Charity Schools as rent for the
court-house, per month Rs. 800 ... 9,600
t,, Free School ... ... ... 720
Benares Sanskrit College ... ... 20,000
Charity School ... ... ... 3,000
Cawnpore Free School ... ... ... 4,800
Hidgelee Madrissa ... ... ... 365
Moorshedabad College and School ... 16,537
TOTAL ... 2,28,022
II. FORT ST. GEORGE.
Tanjore Schools, per annum ... ... 4,620
Sunday School at the Mount ... ... 1,200
Committee of Public Instruction for the Madras
School-book Society and the collectorate
and tehsildary schools ... ... 48,000
TOTAL 53,820
* Both these Schools were for the benefit of Europeans and
Anglo-Indians.
t Pages 433-434 of Appendix to Report from Select Committee on
the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I. (Public).
3
34 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
III. BOMBAY.
Bombay School ... ... ... 3,600
Society for promoting the Education of the Poor
within the Government of Bombay ... 11,385
Bombay Native School-book and School Society 12,720
Native School Society, Southern Concern ... 500
For the Education of natives on Captain
Sutherland's plan
Dukshina, in the Deccan ...
College at Poona
The Engineer Institution at Bombay
For an English class
TOTAL ... 99,395
EAST INDIA HOUSE, (Sd.) THOMAS FISHER,
February 7th, 1827. Searcher of the Records.
Thus it would be observed that the Indian
Government had to spend every year more money
on the education of their civil servants, who in the
three presidencies seldom exceeded more than 100
in number, than on the education of their Indian
subjects, who at the lowest computation must have
exceeded fifty millions of human beings.
Even the sum of one lac of rupees was not devoted
to the purpose for which it was intended till the year
1823, when a Committee of Public Instruction was
appointed by the Government of India, consisting of
the principal functionaries at Calcutta, and the arrears
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 35
of this lac of rupees from the year 1 82 1 were account-
ed to this Committee. Mr. C. H. Cameron, in his
Examination before the Select Committee of the
House of Lords on the Government of Indian Terri-
tories in 1853, was asked by Lord Monteagle of
Brandon on the 7th July, 1853 :
When you were at the head of the Council of Public
Instruction, did you ever endeavour to obtain the pay-
ment of any portion of the arrears of that lac of rupees
which had been left unpaid for so many years?"
His answer was, "No, we never did.'*
II. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.
It has been said before that the Government of
India did not devote the sum of one lac of rupees a
year to the purpose for which it had been intended
by the Legislature to be spent. They did not
establish any school or college for the instruction of
Indians.* The Court of Directors also did not
encourage the Government of India to do anything
for the diffusion of education among the inhabitants
* The Marquess of Hastings was Governor-General of India when
the Charter of the East India Company was renewed in 1813.
Although he did not do much for the spread of education, his wife,
Lady Hastings, established a school in Barrackpore, and under her
patronage got treatises compiled for the use of the scholars.
36 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
of this country. In their letter to the Governor-
General in Council of Bengal, dated 3rd June 1814,
the Court of Directors wrote :
"The Clause presents two distinct propositions for
consideration ; first, the encouragement of the learned
natives of India, and the revival and improvement of
literature ; secondly, the promotion of a knowledge of the
sciences amongst the inhabitants of that country.
"Neither of these objects is, we apprehend, to be
obtained through the medium of public colleges, if estab-
lished under the rules, and upon a plan similar to those
that have been founded at our Universities, because the
natives of caste and of reputation will not submit to the
subordination and discipline of a college ; and we doubt
whether it would be practicable to devise any specific
plan which would promise the successful accomplishment
of the objects under consideration.'*
So the Indian Government did not take the
initiative in the matter of the education of the people
of this country. It was the people themselves who
had to take the initiative and to do the needful. In
this direction the people of Bengal were the first to
understand the necessity of educating their country-
men by their own efforts. There was one man
amongst them, who may be truly called the prophet
of his race, who, understanding the importance of
education in elevating his countrymen in the scale
of nations, spared neither trouble nor money to get
that object accomplished. That man was the cele-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 37
brated Ram Mohun Roy. It was he who conceived
the idea of that educational institution which came
to be the well-known Hindoo College of Bengal. It
was the first institution of its kind in India and it
worked wonders, because the educated men it turned
out were the pioneers of all those movements in
Bengal which made that province the "Brain of
India".
Although Raja Ram Mohun Roy conceived the
idea of the establishment of the Hindoo College, it
was Sir Edward Hyde East who was principally
instrumental in establishing that institution. Sir
Edward Hyde East was Chief Justice in the Supreme
Court at Calcutta. In letters written to his friend
Mr. Harrington, who was the senior judge of the
Sudder Dewany and Nizamat Adawlut at Calcutta,
then absent in England, Sir Edward Hyde East gave
an account of the origin of the Hindoo College.
Extracts from these letters were published in one of
the Parliamentary Blue Books* from which the
following passages are reproduced :
In his letter, dated Calcutta, 18th May 1816,
Sir Edward Hyde East wrote :
"An interesting and curious scene has lately been
exhibited here, which shows that all things pass under
* Lords Committee's Second Report on Indian Territories,
Session 1852-53, p. 235 et seq.
38 . HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
change in due season. About the beginning of May a
Brahmin of Calcutta,* whom I knew, and who is well-
known for his intelligence and active interference among
the principal native inhabitants, and also intimate with
many of our own gentlemen of distinction, called upon
me and informed me, that many of the leading Hindoos
were desirous of forming an establishment for the educa-
tion of their children in a liberal manner as practised by
Europeans of condition ; and desired that I would lend
them my aid toward it, by having a meeting held under
my sanction. Wishing to be satisfied how the Government
would view such a measure, I did not at first give him a
decided answer ; but stated, that however much I wished
well, as an individual, to such an object, yet, in the public
situation I held, I should be cautious not to give any
appearance of acting from my own impulse in a matter
which I was sure that the Government would rather leave
to them (the Hindoos) to act in, as they thought right,
than in any manner to control them ; but that I would
consider of the matter, and if I saw no objection ultimately
to the course he proposed, I would inform him of it ;
and if he would then give me a written list of the principal
Hindoos to whom he alluded, I would send them an
invitation to meet at my house.
"After his departure, I communicated to the Governor-
General what had passed, who laid my communication
before the Supreme Council, all the members of which
approved of the course I had taken, and signified, through
* This of course refers to Raja Ram Mohun Roy.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 39
His Lordship, that they saw no objection to my permitting
the parties to meet at my house.
"It seemed indeed to be as good an opportunity as
any which could occur of feeling the general pulse of the
Hindoos, as to the projected system of national moral
improvement of them recommended by Parliament (and
towards which they directed a lac to be annually laid out),
and this without committing the Government in the ex-
periment. The success of it has much surpassed any
previous expectation. The meeting was accordingly held
at my house on the 14th of May 1816, at which 50 and
upwards of the most respectable Hindoo inhabitants of
rank or wealth attended, including also the principal
Pundits ; when a sum of nearly half a lac of rupees was
subscribed, and many more subscriptions were promised.
Those who were well acquainted with this people, and
know how hardly a Hindoo parts with his money upon
any abstract speculation of mental advantage, will best
know how to estimate this effort of theirs. It is, however,
a beginning made towards improvement which surprises
those who have known them the longest, and many of
themselves also. Most of them, however, appeared to
take great interest in the proceedings, and all expressed
themselves in favour of making the acquisition of the
English language a principal object of education, together
with its moral and scientific productions.
"I first received some of the principal Hindoos in
a room adjoining to that where the generality were to
assemble. There the Pundits, to most of whom I was
before unknown, were introduced to me. The usual mode
of salutation was on this occasion departed from ; instead
of holding out money in his hand for me to touch (a base
40 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
and degraded custom), the chief Pundit held out both
his hands closed towards me ; and as I offered him my
hand, thinking he wished to shake hands in our English
style, he disclosed a number of small sweet-scented flowers,
which he emptied into my hand, saying that those were
the flowers of literature, which they were happy to present
to me on this occasion, and requested me to accept from
them (adding some personal compliments). Having
brought the flowers to my face, I told him that the sweet
scent was an assurance to me that they would prove to
be the flowers of morality, as well as of literature, to
his nation, by the assistance of himself and his friends.
This appeared to gratify them very much."
Ram Mohun Roy was the prime mover for the
establishment of the Hindoo College. But the lead-
ing Hindoos of Calcutta strongly objected to associate
with him in this educational movement. The prin-
cipal ground of their objection has been very clearly
set forth by Sir Hyde East in the letter under refe-
rence. Ram Mohun Roy appeared to the Hindoos
to all intents and purposes a Mussalman.
"Talking afterwards with several of the company,
before I proceeded to open the business of the day, 1 found
that one of them in particular, a Brahman of good caste,
and a man of wealth and influence, was mostly set against
Ram Mohun Roy, * * He expressed a hope that no
subscription would be received from Ram Mohun Roy.
I asked, why not? 'Because he has chosen to separate
himself from us, and to attack our religion.*
"Upon another occasion I had asked a very sensible
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 41
Brahmin what it was that made some of his people so
violent against Ram Mohun. He said in truth, they did
not like a man of his consequence to take open part against
them ; that he himself had advised Ram Mohun against
it ; he had told him that if he found any thing wrong
among his countrymen, he should have endeavoured, by
private advice and persuasion to amend it ; but that the
course he had taken set everybody against him, and would
do no good in the end. They particularly disliked (and
this I believe is at the bottom of the resentment) his asso-
ciating himself so much as he does with Mussalmans, not
with this or that Mussalman, as a personal friend, but
being continually surrounded by them, and suspected to
partake of meals with them. In fact, he has, I believe,
newly withdrawn himself from the society of his brother
Hindoos, whom he looked down upon, which wounds
their pride.
"The principal objects proposed for the adoption of
the meeting * * were the cultivation of the Bengalee and
English languages in particular ; next, the Hindoostanee
tongue, as convenient in the Upper Provinces rand then
the Persian, if desired, as ornamental ; general duty to
God ; the English system of morals * *; Grammar, writing
(in English as well as Bengalee), Arithmetic (this is one
of the Hindoo virtues), History, Geography, Astronomy,
Mathematics ; and in time, as the fund increases, English
belles-letters, poetry, &c., &c.
"One of the singularities of the meeting was, that it
was composed of persons of various castes, all combining
for such a purpose, whom nothing else could have brought
42 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
together ; whose children are to be taught, though not
fed, together.
"Another singularity was that the most distinguished
Pundits who attended declared their warm approbation
of all the objects proposed ; and when they were about
to depart the head Pundit, in the name of himself and
the others, said that they rejoiced in having lived to see
the day when literature (many parts of which had formerly
been cultivated in their country with considerable success
but which were now nearly extinct) was about to be revived
with greater lustre and prospect of success than ever.
"Another meeting was proposed to be held at the
distance of a week ; and during this interval I continued
to receive numerous applications for permission to attend
it. I heard from all quarters of the approbation of the
Hindoos at large to the plan ; they have promised that a
lac shall be subscribed to begin with. It is proposed to
desire them to appoint a committee of their own for
management, taking care only to secure the attendance of
two or three respectable European gentlemen to aid them,,
and see that all goes on rightly."
It is not necessary to proceed any further with
the history of this institution and its successful career.
For nearly 40 years it maintained its independent
existence and it turned out such scholars and workers
as the late Revd. K. M. Banerji, Michael M. S. Dutt,
Raja Rajendra Lala Mitra, Ram Gopal Ghose, the
poet Kashi Prasad Ghose and many others whose
names have become almost household words in
Bengal. It was about 1854 that this institution was
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 45
incorporated in what is now known as the Presidency
College of Bengal. In August 1853, Dr. Frederick
John Mouat, Secretary to the Council of Education,
Bengal, drew up a history of the Hindoo College
which was published among the selections from the
Records of the Bengal Government.* Those who
are interested in the subject of education may consult
this publication with profit, because it contains much
valuable information.
Owing to the prejudice of his countrymen against
him, Raja Ram Mohun Roy, with characteristic self-
effacement, chose to sever his connection with the
Hindoo College. But he never ceased to take interest
in matters? educational. A writer in the "Indian
Echo" for 1883 presumably Mr. K. M. Chatterjee,
Barrister-at-law, a grandson of Ram Mohun Roy,
wrote :
"It is known to but a few of our generation that Ram
Mohun Roy, baffled in his objects with the Government
of the day, established a school of his own, supported
entirely by himself, near Cornwallis Square, which after-
wards went by the name of Purna Mittra's School. In
1830 the Raja, on the eve of his departure for England,
and scarcely sanguine of the success of his own institution,
did all in his power to induce people to join the Free
* No. XIV. Papers relating to the Establishment of the Presidency
College of Bengal, 1854.
44 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Church Institution just founded by the celebrated Dr.
Duff/'
As regards diffusion of education, the people
of Bombay were not idle. Mr. Warden, the President
of the Board of Education at Bombay, in his Report
for 1853, wrote :-
"The Board of education, which now superintends
under the general orders of the Government, the admini-
stration of public instruction throughout the Presidency of
Bombay, had its rise as follows :
"In the year 1820, a Committee of the 'Bombay
Education Society* * formed a committee which was
called 'The Native School-book and School Committee/ 1
"The main object of this Committee was to prepare
and provide suitable books of instruction for the use of
Native schools in the different vernacular languages and
to establish and improve Native Schools ; and two years
later this Committee became a separate society, denomi-
nated, The Bombay Native School-book and School
Society.' It was for some time supported solely by volun-
tary subscriptions ; but an appeal was made to Govern-
ment for assistance, and in 1824, Government granted an
annual allowance of about 6,000 rupees. In 1825 the
Society purchased the ground on which the Elphinstone
College stands, and the name of the Society was changed
to that of 'Bombay Native Education Society.*
"For several years these Societies laboured under
pecuniary and other difficulties, but on the retirement of
the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone from the Govern-
ment of this Presidency in 1827, a powerful stimulus was
given to the cause of education. In honour of that illus-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 45
trious man, * * who had governed Bombay seven years,
influential natives in every province on this side of India
came forward and raised, in conjunction with Europeans,
a durable monument to his memory, in the shape of a
subscription to the astonishing amount of nearly 30,000,
appropriated to the promotion of Native Education, * *.
This liberal conduct at once placed the cause on a firm
basis. It was determined to appropriate the sum raised
to the foundation of 'Elphinstone Professorships/ for
teaching the English language, and the arts, the sciences,
and the literature of Europe. Government then came for-
ward and placed an annual sum of 44,000 rupees at the
disposal of the Directors of Education, in support of the
Elphinstone Professorships, and for the use of the institu-
tions at the Presidency.
"In 1832 a plan for the establishment of the Elphin-
stone Professorships was arranged. The Elphinstone
College was erected, and a College Council appointed,
*. The connexion of this Society with the Elphinstone
College then ceased. The management of the College,
vested in the Council, became subject to the general
control of Government,"*
Private enterprise in the matter of education was
not limited to the presidency towns of Calcutta and
Bombay only, it extended also to many a mofussil
station of note. Thus one Bengali gentleman named
Joynarain Ghoshal, an inhabitant of Benares,
* Pp : 377-378. L. Committee's Second Report on Indian
Territories, 1853."
46 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
presented a petition to the Marquess Hastings when
his Lordship visited the Upper Provinces in 1814,
"with proposals for establishing a school in the neighbour-
hood of that city, and requesting that government would
receive in deposit the sum of Rs. 20,000, the legal interest
of which, together with the revenue arising from certain
lands, he wished to be appropriated to the expense of the
institution. The design meeting with the approbation of
Government, Joynarrain Ghossal was acquainted therewith.
Accordingly in July 1818, he founded his school, appoint-
ing to the management thereof, the Rev. D. Corrie, cor-
responding member of the Calcutta Church Missionary
Society, * * Owing to some litigation respecting the lands,
with the revenues of which it was Joynarrain Ghossal' s
original intention to endow the school, he delivered up to
Mr. Corrie a house in Benares, to be used as a schooV
house, and assigned a monthly revenue of 200 rupees for
the support of the institution.
"Nearly 200 children, Hindoo and Mussulman, were
soon collected for instruction, and great numbers continu-
ing to apply for admission, a statement of the school was
submitted, through the agents at Benares, to the Governor-
general in Council, with an application for pecuniary aid
from Government ; this was immediately granted to the
extent of Rs. 252. 12 as. per mensem or per annum,
Rs. 3,033.
"In this school, the English, Persian, Hindoostanee
and Bengallee languages are taught ; a number of poor
children are admitted into the house, where they are
subsisted and clothed ; other poor children receive small
allowances for subsistence out of the house. The children
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 47
are admitted without regard to caste or country : no scholar
is admitted under seven years of age, nor do any receive
pecuniary support for more than seven years ; * * A
library and museum, in connection with the school, were
proposed to be formed by voluntary contribution. * * * * -
"In April 1825, Colly Shunker Ghossal, son of Joy-
narrain Ghossal, augmented the funds of this school by
a donation of Rs. 20,000. * * * *
The College at Agra was established from the
rent of certain lands held by one Gungadhar Sastri.
"It is stated that in the year 1802, the local agents
in the Agra District reported the existence of certain lands
held by the late Gungadhar Pandit in Agra and Ally Gurh,
yielding an annual rent of nearly 16,000 rupees, which
constituted an endowment applicable to the maintenance
of schools and seminaries of learning. The accumulated
proceeds of these lands amounted to nearly 1 ,50,000 rupees,
interest upon which being allowed, an annual income
would be yielded by the endowment, of 20,000 rupees,,
forming a fund adequate to the support of a collegiate
establishment a scale creditable to the Government and
beneficial to the people. "f
In the districts of the Bombay Presidency also,
several institutions for the education of the natives
were founded by the voluntary contributions and
donations of the people themselves. The most note-
* Pp : 404-405 of Appendix to Report from Select Committee on
the Affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I (public)."
t Ibid, p. 408.
48 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
worthy of these institutions was the Native School
Society of the Southern Concan.
"This society was formed on the 15th June 1823, by
the exertions of Lieutenant J. B. Jervis, for the establish-
ment of native schools in the Southern Concan. It com-
menced its operations with a fund amounting, in annual
subscriptions and donations, to 1,600 rupees, including
some liberal contributions made by natives of distinction.
With this sum three schools were established at Rutna-
gherry, Nandwera, and Chiploon, for instruction in the
Mahratta language. * * * *
"Material assistance in the establishment and manage-
ment of these schools appears to have been derived from
two public-spirited natives, Mahomed Ibrahim Pacha and
Vittoba Ragoonath Gaunt, * * *"*
PATCHEAPPAH'S SCHOOLS.
Although these schools in the Madras Presidency
were not established during the period of which we
are treating here, yet this seems to be the proper place
to refer to them. Regarding these schools, it is
stated in an official publication :
"The founding of Patcheappah's Schools marks indeed
an era in the history of Madras education, as it was the
first example of intelligent natives of various castes com-
*Ibid. pp. 430-431.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 49
bining to aid the cause of popular instruction. Patch-
eappah, in whose name these institutions are founded,
was a wealthy Hindoo, who, dying in the last (18th)
century, left one lakh of pagodas by his will for the
establishment of charities, chiefly of a religious character,
but in part dedicated to objects of general benevolence.
The Advocate-General, Sir Herbert Compton, having
discovered that these charities were totally unperformed,
and the funds spoliated by the successive executors of his
will, filed an information in the Supreme Court, and
obtained a general decree against the party finally liable
for an account of the fund, to be paid with accumulated
interest amounting to many lakhs of rupees and also
for the performance of the charities. In the whole there
were finally collected to the credit of the charities nearly
eight lakhs of rupees. A scheme was prepared, whereby,
in due accordance with the provisions of the will, and
without trenching upon any specific religious or benevolent
charities mentioned in the will, it was proposed that all
the accumulated sums beyond one lakh of pagodas (that
is, upwards of four lakhs of rupees with all accumulating
interest) should be devoted to educational establishments
in various parts of the Presidency, and particularly at
Madras. The scheme provided all details for the quality,
localities, subjects of instruction, and governance of these
institutions ; and they were all finally incorporated in a
decree of the Court. After some years directions were
give ,, under Lord Elphinstone's government, for the
Beard of Revenue making such orders as were necessary
to carry out the decree of the Supreme Court and the
wishes of the Court of Directors. A school in Black Town
was established in January 1842, for affording gratuitous
4
50 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
education to the poorer classes of the native community
in the elemenary branches of English literature and science,
coupled with instruction in Tameel and Telegoo.
* * * In the same year [1846] the Patcheappah
trustees took over the charities of another rich native named
Govindoo Naidoo. In 1856 scholarships were given in
this benefactor's name at Patcheappah's Schools, and
later on a separate Primary School was opened from the
same funds. The new institution was called "Govindoo
Naidoo 's Primary School," and was opened in 1864. In
the year 1869 a third school of equal importance was
established by means of a bequest from C. Sreenivassa
Pillay, who had been for several years president of
Patcheappah's charities."
[P. 570, Vol. I, Madras Manual of Administration.]
It is not necessary to multiply other instances of
private enterprise in matters educational between the
years 1813 1 833. In the light of the facts narrated
here, it cannot be said that the Government took the
initiative in the diffusion of education or rather high
education amongst the people of India. Heaven
helps those who help themselves. And it was
because the people tried to help themselves in educa-
tion that the educational policy of Government met
with some amount of success. The British mode
of the administration of India reduced the people to
rank poverty and made them quite helpless and hence
they were unable to be quite independent of State aid
in education.
EDUCATION OF INDIANS (18331853.)
(Anglicisation of Education).
In the Charter Act of 1 833 no clause expressive
of motives of philanthropy and altruism in promoting
the happiness and interest of the natives of India
was inserted. But the grant of one lac in 1813 had
to be increased now tenfold, for by 1833 a much
larger portion of the map of India was dyed red
than had been the case twenty years earlier. The
Indian Government, however, did not take the lead
in founding colleges and schools for the diffusion of
education among their subjects. But what they did
within two years of the passing of the Charter Act
was the anglicisation of education. The controversy
between the two schools known as occidentalists and
orientalists came to a close in 1835 when the then
Governor-General of India, Lord Bentinck, issued
his famous minute by which he anglicised the educa-
tional system of India.
It is necessary here to say something about the
origin and history of the controversy between the
orientalists and occidentalists. In Bengal, when the
Committee of Public Instruction was formed in 1823,
Horace Hay man Wilson was appointed its Secretary.
Although he came out to India in the capacity of a
52 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
medical officer in the service of the Company, he did
not practise his profession in this country, but devoted
his attention to the study of Indian philology, anti-
quities and ethnology. He was a renowned Sanskrit
scholar. But like other Anglo- Indians of his class,
he looked upon India as the happy hunting ground
for his correligionists and compatriots and therefore
tried to keep its inhabitants in bondage and perpetual
tutelage of England. It was this motive which
prompted him to be an advocate of the cause of
oriental learning and not to teach Indians English.
On this point he expressed himself so clearly in his
evidence before the Select Committee of the House
of Lords on the Government of Indian Territories on
the 5th July, 1853, that a portion of it is reproduced
below. He did not want Indians in the convenanted
ranks of the Indian Medical Service. For in his
evidence he said :
"In truth, it would be difficult to render the services
of Native medical attendants acceptable to the Europeans,
as there is a great feeling of dislike to them. Europeans
in India cannot be made to believe that Native Surgeons
are fully qualified, although no doubt many of them are
very efficient even, as we know ; for we have had two
or three of them over in this country, and one of them
particularly was very highly distinguished in the medical
classes ; he took his degree both at the College of Physi-
cians and the College of Surgeons, Dr. Chuckerbutty ; but
still you cannot get over the prejudice which Europeans
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 53
entertain against them, and that is not the direction in
which their services are most valuable."
In plain language he meant to say that Indians
should not be admitted to the ranks of the Indian
Medical Service, because the Europeans entertained
prejudice against them ! He was asked by Lord
Boughton :
"7279. Do you know that an effort was made to
induce the East India Company to employ one or two of
those Native medical students in their own medical
service?"
In reply to which, H. H. Wilson said :
"I have heard so ; I do not know it ; I do not think
it is necessary.**
He was further asked by Lord Boughton :
"7280. Particularly that individual whom you men-
tioned just now?
"Yes ; I have heard that some of his friends think
that he has been rather ungenerously treated in not being
appointed to the Company's Service.
"7281. Do you see any objection to the employment
occasionally of very eminent medical students in the
covenanted service?
"You have to encounter a very strong feeling on the
part of all the European society against it.
"7282. But if the Europeans did not choose to employ
those persons in the medical profession, of course they
would not be obliged to employ them?
"At a civil station very often they would have no
choice. There is but one medical man attached to a
54 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
station ; and if he were a Native officer, whatever his
qualifications might be, I am sure there would be a very
strong feeling against employing him ; it would be very
repugnant to the prejudices of Europeans ; I do not think
the benefit of either the country or of the individual would
be consulted by forcing him into that position in which he
could not be of so much use to his countrymen as he
might be in independent practice, and in which he would
find himself in an uncomfortable position ; the other
medical officers of the Company would always be inclined
to look with jealousy and dislike upon him.
"7284. Would it not give additional reputation to
the Native medical practitioners if they were occasionally
employed in the Company's Service?
"* * I do not think that any advantage would result
from incorporating even qualified Natives in the Company's
Medical Service."
He was also against establishing universities in
India on the plan of English ones for the following
reasons. He said :
"I do not know what is meant by a university in
India ; if it is to consist in wearing caps and gowns, and
being called Bachelors of Arts and Masters of Arts, I do
not see what advantage is likely to accrue from it. The
Natives certainly could not appreciate the value of such
titles, it would be of no advantage to a young man to be
called a Bachelor of Arts amongst Natives of India, wha
could attach no positive idea to it ; it would be inconvenient
if it gave him place and precedence amongst Europeans ;
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 55
in fact I cannot consider that any advantages at all would
be derived from such an institution."
It is not difficult therefore to understand the
motives which prompted Wilson to take his stand
against English education. He did not want Indians
to stand on the same level with his countrymen. If
they were educated in English, then it would be
inconvenient for Anglo-Indians to treat Indians with
that supreme contempt which was their wont in their
dealings with the latter.
In can be safely asserted that the same feelings
guided the conduct of other orientalists like Shaks-
peare and the Prinsep brothers.
But at that time was living a Bengali who
thoroughly understood the temperament of those
'birds of passage' in India who in order to keep
Indians in bondage were averse to giving them
English education. That Bengali was the celebrated
Raja Ram Mohun Roy. To checkmate the machina-
tions of the scheming and designing Anglo-Indian
Orientalists, he addressed in December, 1823, a letter
to the then Governor-General of India, Lord
Amherst, extracts from which are given below :
"We find that the Government are establishing a
Sanskrit school under Hindoo Pundits to impart sudh
knowledge as is already current in India. * *
"From these considerations, as the sum set apart for
the instruction of the natives of India was intended by
56 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
the Government in England for the improvement of its
Indian subjects, I beg leave to state, with due deference
to your Lordship's exalted situation, that if the plan now
adopted be followed it will completely defeat the object
proposed, since no improvement can be expected from
inducing young men to consume a dozen of years of the
most valuable period of their lives in acquiring the niceties
of Vyakaran or Sanskrit Grammar. *
"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 perpe-
tuate ignorance. In the same manner, the Sanskrit system
of education would be best cauculated to keep this country
in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British
legislature. But as the improvement of the native popula-
tion is the object of the Government, it will consequently
promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruc-
tion ; embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemis-
try, anatomy, with other useful sciences, which may be
accomplished with the sum proposed by employing a few
gentlemen of talents and learning in Europe, and providing
a college furnished with necessary books, instruments and
other apparatus."
It is on record that
"The Bengal Government regarded this letter as having
been penned under a somewhat erroneous impression
respecting the views of Government in the establishment
of the Sanskrit College, but forwarded the letter to the
Committee of Public Instruction for their information."'
* Appendix to Report front Select Committee on the Affairs of
the East India Company, Vol. I (Public), p. 436.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 57
The controversy then was set afoot by Ram
Mohun Roy, and the members of the Education Com-
mission appointed by Lord Ripon in 1882 in the
sixth chapter of their report, referring to Ram Mohun
Roy's exertions, wrote :
"It took twelve years of controversy, the advocacy
of Macaulay, and the decisive action of a new Governor-
General, before the Committee could, as a body, acquiesce
in the policy urged by him."
The Court of Directors in their letter to the
Governor-General in Council of Bengal, dated 18th
January, 1824, wrote:
"With respect to the sciences, it is worse than a waste
of time to employ persons either to teach or to learn them
in the state in which they are found in the Oriental books.
As far as any historical documents may be found in the
Oriental languages, what is desirable is, that they should
be translated, and this, it is evident, will best be accom-
plished by Europeans who have acquired the requisite
knowledge. Beyond these branches what 'remains in
Oriental literature is poetry ; but it has never been thought
necessary to establish colleges for the cultivation of poetry,
nor is it certain that this would be the most effectual
expedient for the attainment of the end.
"In the meantime we wish you to be fully apprised
of our zeal for the progress and improvement of education
among the natives of India, and of our willingness to make
considerable sacrifices to that important end, if proper
means for the attainment of it could be pointed out to us.
But we apprehend that the plan of the institutions, to the
58 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
improvement of which pur attention is now directed, was
originally and fundamentally erroneous. The great end
should not have been to teach Hindoo learning but useful
learning. No doubt, in teaching useful learning to the
Hindoos or Mahomedans, Hindoo Media or Mahomedan
Media, as far as they were found most effectual, would
have been proper to be employed, and Hindoo and
Mahomedan prejudices would have needed to be con-
suited, while everything which was useful in Hindoo or
Mahomedan literature, it would have been proper to
retain ; nor would there have been any insuperable
difficulty in introducing under these reservations a system
of instruction from which great advantage might have been
derived. In professing on the other hand to establish
seminaries for the purpose of teaching mere Hindoo or
mere Mahomedan literature, you bound yourselves to teach
a great deal of what was frivolous, not a little of What
was purely mischievous, and a small remainder indeed in
which utility was in any ^vay concerned."*
"The Bengal Government, on receipt of the Court's
letter, communicated it to the Committee of General
Instruction, who in reply submitted some observations in
vindication of this establishment as it then existed.
"Admitting that the legitimate object to be pursued
was the introduction of European science to the extinction
of that which is falsely so called by Hindoos and Maho-
medans, circumstances, it was observed, had rendered
* Ibid, p. 488. It is believed that this letter was written by
Mr. James Mill, the historian and father of John Stuart Mill, the
philosopher. Mr. Mill occupied an important position in the India
Office.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 59
necessary the course which had been pursued, and it was
questionable 'Whether the Government could originally
have founded any other seminaries than those which it
actually had established, viz., the Madrissa, to teach
Mahomedan literature and law, and the Benares College,
to teach Sanskrit Literature and Hindoo law. The absence
of all media, either teachers or books, for instruction of a
different kind, the necessity for which has been acknow-
ledged by the Court of Directors, was considered fully to
have justified the course which had been pursued.
"It was further observed, as justifying that course,
that the Government stood pledged to its adoption, in the
case of the 'Sanscrit College in Calcutta, which was sub-
stituted for two colleges proposed to be endowed at Tirhoot
and Nuddea, the original object of which was declaredly
the preservation and encouragement of Hindoo learning ;'
that the state of public feeling in India did not then appear
to warrant any general introduction of Western literature
and science, although the prejudices of the natives against
European interference with their education in any shape
had considerably abated ; that the substitution of European
for native superintendence over all the schools maintained
by Government was an important change which had been
effected, and from the continuance of which exercised with
temper and discretion, it was expected that the confidence
of the officers and pupils of the several seminaries would
be won to an extent that would pave the way for the
unopposed introduction of such improvements as the
Government might thereafter have the means of effecting ;
and finally, that a necessity still existed for the creation o
those media by which useful science was to be diffused^
60 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
that is, by teaching native teachers and providing books
in the languages of India.
"On the unfavourable view taken by the Court of the
state of science among' the natives of India, the committee
remarked as follows :
"The position, that it is worse than a waste of time
to employ persons either to teach or learn the sciences
in the state in which they are found in oriental books,
'is of so comprehensive a nature, that it obviously requires
considerable modification, and the different branches of
science intended to be included in it, must be particularized
before a correct appreciation can be formed of their
absolute and comparative value. The metaphysical
sciences, as found in Sanscrit and Arabic writings, are, we
believe, fully as worthy of being studied in those languages
as in any other. The Arithmetic and Algebra of the
Hindoos lead to the same result and are grounded on the
same principles as those of Europe : and in the Madrissa,
the Elements of Mathematical science which are taught
are those of Euclid. Law, a principal object of study in
all the institutions, is one of vital importance to the good
government of the country, and language is the ground
work upon which all future improvements must materially
depend. To diffuse a knowledge of those things, language
and law specially, cannot therefore be considered a waste
of time.'
"The Committee conclude their letter by observing,
on the subjects of history and poetry, that the attachment
of the Mahomedans to their own history is great ; that
no good reason appeared why the natives of India should
be debarred from cultivating their own historical records,
or why the transactions of the country in which they had
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 61
a natural interest should not be thought deserving of their
perusal ; and that poetry was a branch of study in all
colleges, having ever been found to be a valuable auxi-
liary in the study of literature in every language and
country. 'As a part therefore, and a very important part
of Sanskrit and Arabic literature, as the source of national
imagery, the expression of national feeling, and the deposi-
tary of the most approved phraseology and style, the
poetical writings of the Hindoos and Mahomedans appear
to be legitimately comprehended amongst the objects
of literary seminaries founded for Mahomedans and
Hindoos."*
It cannot be denied that there was much force
and reason in the above arguments. But the Educa-
tion Committee did nothing for the cultivation of the
vernaculars. They were content with encouraging
the learning of Sanskrit and Arabic, and all that was
contained in the literatures of those two classical
languages. But they neglected to instruct the
students under their supervision in the sciences and
arts of Europe. Had they done that, there would
not have been any case for the occidentalists at all.
But the cause of the occidentalists received much
impetus from the appointment of Lord Bentinck as
Governor-General of India. Bentinck had been at
one time Governor of Madras and was mainly
responsible for the Mutiny at Vellore. He was,
therefore, disgraced and recalled from the Governor-
*Ibid, pp. 436-437.
62 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
ship of that Presidency. It was not out of love for
Indians but from motives of political expediency that
he wanted their anglicisation. He thought that
would perhaps strengthen the hold of England on
India.*
* Sir Charles Trevelyan brother-in-law of Macaulay who was
also a tower of strength to the occidental ists, in his evidence on
23rd June 1853 before the Select Committee of the House of Lords
on the Government of Indian Territories, said :
"According to the unmitigated native system, the Mahomedans
regard us as kafirs, as infidel usurpers of some of the finest realms
of Islam, for it is a tenet of that dominant and warlike religion
constantly to strive for political supremacy, and to hold all other races
In subjection. According to the same original native views, the
Hindoos regard us as mlechas, that is, impure outcasts, with whom
no communion ought to be held ; and they all of them, both Hindoo
and Mahomedan, regard us as usurping foreigners, who have taken
their country from them, and exclude them from the avenues to
wealth and distinction. The effect of a training in European learning
is to give an entirely new turn to the native mind. The young men
educated in this way cease to strive after independence according to
the original Native model, and aim at improving the institutions of
the country according to the English model, with the ultimate result
of establishing constitutional self-government. They cease to regard
us) as enemies and usurpers, and they look upon us as friends and
patrons, and powerful beneficent persons, under whose protection all
they have most at heart for the regeneration of their country will
gradually be worked out. According to the original native view of
political change, we might be swept off the face of India in a day,
and, as a matter of fact, those who look for the improvement of
India according to this model are continually meditating on plots
and conspiracies with that object ; whereas, according to the new and
improved system, the object must be worked out by very gradual
steps, and ages may elapse before the ultimate end will be attained,
and in the meantime the minority, who already regard us with
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 63
It should be mentioned here that Bentinck was
not in favour of educating Indians.
He saw danger in the spread of knowledge in
this country. So he recorded his opinion in a Minute,
respect, and aim at regenerating their country with our assistance,
Avill receive continual accessions, until in the course of time they
become the majority ; but when that will be, no one can say ; nor
can any one say how long we may continue to be politically connect-
ed with India, even after the whole of the civil employments have
been transferred to the natives. If we take the proper course, there
may be an intermediate period similar to that at which we are arrived
with respect to Canada and Australia. Supposing our connexion with
India to cease according to the native views, it will cease suddenly
it will cease by a violent convulsion it will cease with most irritated
feelings on both sides, and we shall leave a hostile country, and a
country which will be to a great extent unimproved. Whereas if the
connexion ceases according to the other course of circumstances, we
shall leave a grateful country and a highly improved country."
Then he was asked by Lord Monteagle of Brandon, "For a very
long time, as long as the educated classes of India are a small
minority in a country, with the enormous population of India, must
it not necessarily be the fact that the educated classes must, for their
own sakes, b'e more in association with English interests than they
can be with any system of Hindoo advancement, as separate from
the English interests?"
In reply to the above question, Sir Charles Trevelyan said :
"For a long time to come it would be greatly to their disadvantage
that a Native Government should be established. They would be the
first who would suffer from it. They would be the objects of plunder
and popular indignation, and it is every way their interest to hold
by us ; and as that class increases, the larger will be the proportion
of the people who will become attached to us/*
It can not be denied that Sir Charles reflected the views, opinions
and sentiments of the occidentalists, of Lord Bentinck and others who
were instrumental in introducing English education in India.
64 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
dated the 13th March, 1835. Sir Charles Metcalfe,
after he had assumed the Governor-Generalship of
India, in a Minute, dated the 1 6th May, 1 835, said :-
"His Lordship (Bentinck), however, sees further
danger in the spread of knowledge and the operations
of the Press. I do not, for my own part, anticipate danger
as a certain consequence from these causes. I see so
much danger in the ignorance, fanaticism, and barbarism
of our subjects, that I rest on the spread of knowledge
some hope of greater strength and security. Men will be
better able to appreciate the good and evil of our rule ;
and if the good predominate, they will know that they
may lose by a change. Without reckoning on the affec-
tion of any, it seems probable that those of the natives
who would most deprecate and least promote our over-
throw, would be the best-informed and most enlightened
among them, unless they had themselves, individually,
ambitious dreams of power. If, however, the extension
of knowledge is to be a new source of danger and I will
not pretend confidently to predict the contrary it is one
altogether unavoidable. It is our duty to extend know-
ledge whatever may be the result ; and spread it would,
even if we impeded it. The time is passed when the
operations of the Press could be effectually restrained even
if that course would be any source of safety, which must
be very doubtful. Nothing so precarious could in pru-
dence be trusted to. If, therefore, increase of danger be
really to be apprehended from increase of knowledge, it
is what we must cheerfully submit to. We must not try
to avert it, and if we did we should fail."*
* Kaye's Selections from the Papers of Lord Matecalfe, p. 197.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 65
Lord Bentinck was not in favour of educating
the people of this country, but he was desirous of
anglicising them or rather preventing them from
forming a homogeneous nation. With that object
in view, the first thing which he did the thing which
he as Governor-General of India had the power to
do, was the introduction of English as the court-
language of India. The Court of Directors in their
letter, dated 29th September, 1830, to Bengal,
wrote :
"With a view to give the natives an additional motive
to the acquisition of the English language, you have it in
contemplation gradually to introduce English as the
language of public business in all its departments, and
you have determined to begin at once by adopting the
practice of corresponding in English with all native princes
or persons of rank who are known to understand that
language, or to have persons about them who understand
it. From the meditated change in the language of public
business, including judicial proceedings, you anticipate
several collateral advantages, the principal of which is,
that the judge, or other European officer, being thoroughly
acquainted with the language in which the proceedings
are held, will be, and appear to be, less dependent upon
the natives by whom he is surrounded, and those natives
will, in consequence, enjoy fewer opportunities of bribery
or other undue emolument/'
The passage italicised above shows the real
motive for unduly favouring and encouraging the
5 ,<
.<N
66 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
English language. The interest of the millions of
Indians was to be sacrificed for the convenience and
profit of a handful of birds of passage in India. A very
large influx of the Britishers in India was taking
place, therefore, for their convenience, English was
made the language of business.
English was the language of the rulers ; so the
thoughtful portion of the Indian community were
doing their best to learn it themselves and teach it
to their children. Thus regarding the Calcutta
Hindoo College, the Court of Directors in their letter
of 29th September, 1 830, an extract from which has
been given above, wrote :
"But the Vidyalaya or Anglo-Indian College, originally
established by the natives themselves, for the study of
the English language, and for education through the
medium of that language exclusively, has had more decided
success than either of the other Calcutta colleges. The
number of scholars is now 436, of whom all except 100
pay for their tuition. The progress of these pupils is
highly encouraging, the higher classes being able to com-
pose tolerably in English, and to read the best authors in
the English language."
Further on, they wrote :
v/ our attention has been anxiously directed to the
accomplishing this object, and in particular to
-tive expediency of establishing separate
or of enlarging the plan of the existing
'o render them adequate to that more
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 67
extensive purpose. You have transmitted to us several
most interesting communications from the general Com-
mittee of Public Instruction, and from the local Committee
of Delhi College, on this question.
"Both the committees give a decided preference to
the plan of establishing separate colleges for the study of
English, and for the cultivation of European knowledge
through the medium of the English language. They urge
that a thorough knowledge of English can only be acquired
by natives through a course of study beginning early in
life, and continued for many years ; that the knowledge
of our language and of European science Which could be
acquired in a course of education mainly directed to other
objects, would not contribute in any high degree to the
improvement of the native character and intellect, while
the native languages and literature may be adequately pur-
sued, as a subordinate branch of education, in an English
college ; and that anything beyond the mere elements of
European science is most advantageously taught through
the European languages, with the additional recommenda-
tion, that when so taught, it comes into less direct collision
with the sacred books of the Mahomedans and Hindoos.
"By these arguments you have been convinced, and
you have accordingly authorized the establishment of an
English College at Delhi and another at Benares. The
project of establishing one at Calcutta seems to have been
tacitly abandoned ; the Anglo-Indian College, under its
present superintendence, being found capable of answering
the purpose.
"While we attach much more importance than is
attached by the two committees, to the amount of useful
68 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
instruction which can be communicated to the natives
through their own languages, we fully concur with them
in thinking it highly advisable to enable and encourage a
large number of natives to acquire a thorough knowledge
of English ; being convinced that the higher tone and
better spirit of European literature can produce their full
effect only on those who become familiar with them in
the original languages. While, too, we agree with the
committee that the higher branches of science may be
more advantageously studied in the languages of Europe,
than in translations into the oriental tongues, it is also to
be considered that the fittest persons for translating Eng-
lish scientific books, or for putting their substance into a
shape adapted to Asiatic students, are natives who have
studied profoundly in the original works.
' 'On- these grounds we concur with you in thinking
it desirable that the English course of education should
be kept separate from the course of oriental study at the
native colleges, and should be attended for the most part
by a different set of students."
The recommendations and suggestions of the
Court of Directors were very fair and had they been
acted upon by the Indian Government, there would
have been hope for the growth of the vernacular litera-
tures of India. But it was selfish considerations
which prompted the majority of Anglo-Indians to
strive to make English the medium of instruction.
Thus Mountstuart Elphinstone, the Governor of
Bombay, in a Minute, dated 13th December, 1823,
wrote :
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 69
"If English could be at all diffused among persons
who have the least time for reflection, the progress of
knowledge, by means of it, would be accelerated in a
tenfold ratio, since every man who made himself
acquainted with a science through the English, would be
able to communicate it, in his own language, to his
countrymen. At present, however, there is but little
desire to learn English with any such view. The first step
towards creating such a desire would be to establish a
school at Bombay where English might be taught classi-
cally, and where instruction might also be given in that
language on history, geography and the popular branches
of science. * * * *
"Should we ever be able to extend English schools
to the out-stations, admittance to them might be made a
reward of merit in other studies, which tend to render it
an object of ambition, or, at least, to remove all suspicion
of our wishing to force our own opinions on the natives.'*
One of the members of the Council of the
Bombay Government, Mr. F. Warden, in a Minute,
dated 29th December, 1823, also wrote:
"No doubt the progress of knowledge can be most
effectually and economically promoted by a study of the
English language, wherein, in every branch of science, we
have, ready compiled, the most useful works, which can-
not be compressed in tracts and translated in the native
languages without great expense and the labour of years.
A classical knowledge of English ought to constitute the
chief object of the Bombay seminary. As far as I have
conversed with the natives they are anxious that their
children should be thoroughly grounded in the English
70 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
language ; some of the wealthiest would be glad to send
their children to England for education, were it not for
the clamorous objection of their mothers ; nothing can
be more favourable for commencing, or for the establish-
ment of a good system of education, than such a dis-
position."
In another Minute dated 24th March, 1828, Mr.
F. Warden wrote :
"In the 24th para, of my Judicial Minute of the 25th
of June, 1819, I alluded to the very strong desire that had
sprung up among the natives to avail themselves of the
facilities which had been afforded of acquiring the benefit
of a better education. In a subsequent discussion, I
noticed the eagerness the natives had displayed to obtain
a knowledge of the English Language, and enlarged on
that subject in my Minute of the 6th of April, 1825. * *
"I have urged the policy of directing our chief effort
to one object, to a diffusion of a knowledge of the English
language, as best calculated to facilitate the intellectual
and moral improvement of India. We have as yet made
that only a secondary object.
"I must confess that I did not expect to receive so
unqualified a corroboration of the popularity at least of
that opinion among the natives as is afforded by the letter
from the leading members of the native community of
Bombay, bringing forward a proposition for establishing
professorsnips to be denominated the Elpninstone profes-
sorships, for the purpose of teaching the natives the English
language, and the arts, sciences and literature of Europe,
to be held in the first instance by learned men to be
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 71
invited from Great Britain, until natives of the country
shall be found perfectly competent to undertake the office.
"Nor did I expect to find so decisive a proof of the
facility with which the English language could be diffused
as is evidenced by the report recently published in the
papers, of an examination at Calcutta, of the natives
educated at that presidency, which exhibits a display of
proficiency in that tongue almost incredible.
"Under these impressions, I subscribe entirely to the
opinion expressed by the author of the Political History
of India, that it is better and safer to commence by giving
a good deal of knowledge to a few than a little to many,
to be satisfied with laying the foundation stone of a good
edifice, and not desire to accomplish in a day what must
be the work of a century.
"But the object of giving a good deal of knowledge
to a few can only be promoted by a better system of
education ; and the surest mode of diffusing a better
system is by making the study of the English language
the primary, and not merely the secondary object of atten-
tion in the education of the natives. The reviewer of the
work above alluded to remarks, in which I still more
cordially concur, that a more familiar and extended
acquaintance with the English language would, to the
natives, be the surest source of intellectual improvement,
and might become the most durable tie between Britain
and India.
"In any plan, therefore, for the public education of
the natives, the complete knowledge of our language
ought to form so prominent an object as to lay ground
for its gradually becoming at least the established vehicle
of legal and official business. The English tongue would
72 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
in India, as in America, be the lasting monument of our
dominion ; * *"
So it was selfishness, if not 'enlightened selfish-
ness', which prompted the occidentalists to advocate
the cause of English education. But Mr. Warden
was in favour of educating Indians in English,
because it would supply men for the State service.
In his Minute of December 29, 1823, he wrote :
"The field for employment then appears to me to be
sufficiently wide. It is our object to render it more in-
viting, by assigning greater salaries to natives of talent
and assiduity. That India has supplied, and will continue
under our government to supply, functionaries of that
character, able and expert in the administration of justice,
and keen and intelligent in a knowledge of revenue details,
there is evidence abundant on the records of India, pub-
lished and unpublished, whilst in respect to commerce,
and a conversancy with accounts, the natives display a
knowledge by which Europeans profit in no ordinary
degree."
Diffusion of English education was demanded
because then by the knowledge of the natives
Europeans would profit in still greater degree.
Mr. Warden's Minute reads not unlike that of
Macaulay to which reference will be made presently.
The fallacies underlying Mr. Warden's arguments
are the same as those of Macaulay.
Sir John Malcolm, who was Governor of Bom-
bay in 1828, was not in favour of making English
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 73
the medium of instruction. In his Minute of 1828,
Malcolm wrote :
"The chief ground on which I anticipate advantages
from the establishment of the Elphinstone professorships,
is, that a certain proportion of the natives will be in-
structed by them not only in the English language, but
in every branch of useful science. To natives so educated
I look for aid, in the diffusion of knowledge among their
countrymen, through the medium of their vernacular
dialects ; and I certainly think it is only by knowledge
being accessible through the latter medium that it ever
can be propagated to any general or beneficial purpose."
It was from reasons of political expediency that
Malcolm was averse to educate Indians in English.
For he wrote,
"I have on political grounds a consolation, derived
from my conviction of the impossibility of our ever dis-
seminating that half knowledge of our language, which
is all any considerable number of natives could attain.
It would decrease that positive necessity which now exists
for the servants of Government making themselves masters
of the languages of the countries in which they are
employed, and without which they never can become in
any respect competent to their public duties."
Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, K.C.B., brother-in-
law of Macaulay, had himself greatly helped the
cause of the Anglicists. He submitted to the Parlia-
mentary Committee of 1853 on Indian territories a
paper on "The political tendency of the different
systems of education in use in India." This docu-
74 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
ment is so important that copious extracts from it
are reproduced below :
"A nation which made so great a sacrifice to redeem
a few hundred thousand Negroes from slavery,* would
shudder at the idea of keeping a hundred millions of
Indians in the bondage of ignorance, with all its frightful
consequences, by means of a political system supported
by the revenue taken from the Indians themselves.
Whether we govern India ten or a thousand years, we
will do our duty by it, we will look, not to the probable
duration of our trust, but to the satisfactory discharge of
it, so long as it shall please God to continue it to us.
Happily, however, we are not on this occasion called upon
to make any effort of disinterested magnanimity. Interest
and duty are never really separated in the affairs of nations,
any more than they are in those of individuals ; and in
this case they are indissolubly united, as a very slight
examination will suffice to show.
"The Arabian or Mahomedan system is based on the
* It was not from any motive of philanthropy that England
redeemed a few hundred thousand Negroes from slavery. In a lead-
ing article on the "Armenian Problem," the London Times of
Tuesday, September 8, 18%, wrote :
"Foreigners disbelieve in the existence of the philanthropic ideas
and feelings amongst us ; they naturally believe that when we allege
them as a ground of international action we are using them as a
cloak to cover ulterior ends. Quite recently one of the greatest of
modern German historians ascribed England's zeal against the slave
trade at the Congress of Verona to her commercial jealousy. England,
says Von Treitschke, had her own colonies well supplied with
negroes. She protested against the slave-trade because she desired
to deprive her rivals of a similar advantage."
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 75
exercise of power and the indulgence of passion. Pride,
ambition, the love of rule, and of sensual enjoyment, are
called in to the aid of religion. The earth is the inherit-
ance of the Faithful ; all besides are infidel usurpers, with
whom no measures are to be kept, except what policy
may require. Universal dominion belongs to the Maho-
medans by Divine right. Their religion obliges them to
establish their predominance by the sword ; and those who
refuse to conform are to be kept in a state of slavish sub-
jection. The Hindoo system, although less fierce and
aggressive than the Mahomedan, is still more exclusive :
all who are not Hindoos are impure outcasts, fit only for
the most degraded employments ; and, of course, utterly
disqualified for the duties of Government, which are
reserved for the military, under the guidance of the priestly
caste. Such is the political tendency of the Arabic and
Sanskrit systems of learning. Happily for us, these prin-
ciples exist in their full force only in books written in
difficult languages, and in the minds of a few learned
men ; and they are very faintly reflected in the feelings
and opinions of the body of the people. But what will
be thought of that plan of national education which would
revive them and make them popular ; would be perpe-
tually reminding the Mahomedans that we are infidel
usurpers of some of the fairest realms of the Faithful, and
the Hindus, that we are unclean beasts, with whom it is
a sin and a shame to have any friendly intercourse. Our
bitterest enemies could not desire more than that we should
propagate systems of learning which excite the strongest
feelings of human nature against ourselves.
"The spirit of English literature, on the other hand,
cannot but be favourable to the English connection.
76 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Familiarly acquainted with us by means of our literature,
the Indian youth almost cease to regard us as foreigners.
They speak of our great men with the same enthusiasm
as we do. Educated in the same way, interested in the
same objects, engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves,
they become more English than Hindus, just as the Roman
provincials became more Romans than Gauls or Italians.
What is it that makes us what we are, except living and
conversing with English people, and imbibing English
thoughts and habits of mind ? They do so too : they
daily converse with the best and wisest Englishmen through
the medium of their works ; and form, perhaps, a higher
idea of our nation than if their intercourse with it were
of a more personal kind. Admitted behind the scenes,
they become acquainted with the principles which guide
our proceedings ; they see how sincerely we study the
benefit of India in the measures of our administration ;
and from violent opponents, or sullen conformists, they
are converted into zealous and intelligent co-operators
with us. They learn to make a proper use of the freedom
of discussion which exists under our government, by
observing how we use it ourselves ; and they cease to
think of violent remedies, because they are convinced that
there is no indisposition on our part to satisfy every real
want of the country. Dishonest and bad rulers alone
derive any advantage from the ignorance of their subjects.
As long as we study the benefit of India in our measures,
the confidence and affection of the people will increase in
proportion to their knowledge of us.
"But this is not all. There is a principle in human
nature which impels all mankind to aim at improving their
condition ; every individual has his plan of happiness ;
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 77
every community has its ideas of securing the national
honour and prosperity. This powerful and universal
principle, in some shape or other, is in a state of constant
activity ; and if it be not enlisted on our side, it must be
arrayed against us. As long as the natives are left to
brood over their former independence, their sole specific
for improving their condition is, the immediate and total
expulsion of the English. A native patriot of the old
school has no notion of anything beyond this ; his attention
has never been called to any other mode of restoring the
dignity and prosperity of his country. It is only by the
infusion of European ideas, that a new direction can be
given to the national views. The young men, brought
up at our seminaries, turn with contempt from the bar-
barous despotism under which their ancestors groaned, to
the prospect of improving their national institutions on the
English model.** So far from having the idea of driving
the English into the sea uppermost in their minds, they
have no notion of any improvement but such as rivets their
connection with the English, and makes them dependent
on English protection and instruction.**
"The existing connection between two such distant
countries as England and India, cannot, in the nature of
things, be permanent ; no effort of policy can prevent
the natives from ultimately regaining their independence.
But there are two ways of arriving at this point. One of
these is, through the medium of revolution ; the other,
through that of reform. In one, the forward movement is
sudden and violent, in the other, it is gradual and peace-
able. One must end in a complete alienation of mind
and separation of interest between ourselves and the
78 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
natives ; the other in a permanent alliance, founded on
mutual benefit and good will.
"The only means at our disposal for preventing the
one and securing the other class of results is, to set the
natives on a process of European improvement, to which
they are already sufficiently inclined. They will then
cease to desire and aim at independence on the old Indian
footing. A sudden change will then be impossible ; and
a long continuance of our present connection with India
will even be assured to us. * The natives will not rise
against us, because we shall stoop to raise them ; there
will be no reaction, because there will be no pressure ;
the national activity will be fully and harmlessly employed
in acquiring and diffusing European knowledge, and
naturalising European institutions. The educated classes,
knowing that the elevation of their country on these prin-
ciples can only be worked out under our protection, will
naturally cling to us. They even now do so. There is
no class of our subjects to whom we are so thoroughly
necessary as those whose opinions have been cast in the
English mould ; they are spoiled for a purely native
regime ; they have everything to fear from the premature
establishment of a native government ; their education
would mark them out for persecution. * * * * This class
is at present a small minority, but it is continually receiving
accessions from the youth who are brought up at the
different English seminaries. It will in time become the
majority ; and it will then be necessary to modify the
political institutions to suit the increased intelligence of
the people, and their capacity for self-government. * *
"In following this course we should be trying no new
experiment. The Romans at once civilised the nations of
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 79
Europe, and attached them to their rule by Romanising
them ; or, in other words, by educating them in the Roman
literature and arts, and teaching them to emulate their
conquerors instead of opposing them. Acquisitions made
by superiority in war, were consolidated by superiority in
the arts of peace ; and the remembrance of the original
violence was lost in that of the benefits which resulted
from it. The provincials of Italy, Spain, Africa and Gaul,
having no ambition except to imitate the Romans, and to
share their privileges with them, remained to the last faith-
ful subjects of the Empire ; and the union was at last dis-
solved, not by internal revolt, but by the shock of external
violence, which involved conquerors and conquered in one
common overthrow. The Indians will, I hope, soon stand
in the same position towards us in which we once stood
towards the Romans. Tacitus informs us, that it was the
policy of Julius Agricola to instruct the sons of the leading
men among the Britons in the literature and science of
Rome and to give them a taste for the refinements of
Roman civilization. We all know how well this plan
answered. From being obstinate enemies, the Britons
soon became attached and confiding friends ; and they
made more strenuous efforts to retain the Romans, than
their ancestors had done to resist their invasion. It will
be a shame to us if, with our greatly superior advantages,
we also do not make our premature departure be dreaded
as a calamity. It must not be said in after ages, that 'the
groans of the Britons* were elicited by the breaking up of
the Roman Empire ; and the groans of the Indians by the
continued existence of the British.
*****
"These views were not worked out by reflection, but
80 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
were forced on me by actual observation and experience.
I passed some years in parts of India, where owing to the
comparative novelty of our rule and to the absence of
any attempt to alter the current of native feeling, the
national habits of thinking remained unchanged. There
high and low, rich and poor, had only one idea of improv-
ing their political condition. The upper classes lived upon
the prospect of regaining their former pre-eminence ; and
the lower, upon that of having the avenues to wealth and
distinction reopened to them by the re-establishment of
a native government. Even sensible and comparatively
well-affected natives had no notion that there was any
remedy for the existing depressed state of their nation
except the sudden and absolute expulsion of the English.
After that, I resided for some years in Bengal, and there
I found quite another set of ideas prevalent among the
educated natives. Instead of thinking of cutting the throats
of the English, they were aspiring to sit with them on the
grand jury or on the bench of magistrates. * * * * "
As said before, the majority of Anglo-Indian
officers from interested motives were Anglicists and
did not favour oriental education or cultivation of
Indian vernaculars. Lord Bentinck was the chief
of them.
The Charter Act of 1833 saddled India with the
charge of the Indian Law Commission. Macaulay
was the first member of this Commission. He came
out to India to shake the pagoda tree and grow rich
at the expense of the Indian natives. He was a very
brilliant essayist, but from his writings he never made
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 81
more than a couple of hundred pounds a year. So
with no higher motive than that of accumulating
'filthy lucre/ he exiled himself to India. In a letter
to his sister, who shared with him his self-imposed
exile to India, he wrote :
"By the new India Bill, it is provided that one of the
members of the Supreme Council, which is to govern our
Eastern Empire, is to be chosen from among persons who
are not servants of the Company. It is probable, indeed
nearly certain, that the situation will be offered to me.
"The advantages are very great. It is a post of the
highest dignity and consideration. The salary is ten
thousand pounds a year. I am assured by persons who
know Calcutta intimately, and who have themselves mixed
in the highest circles and held the highest offices at the
Presidency, that I may live in splendour there for five
thousand a year, and may save the rest of the salary with
the accruing interest. I may therefore hope to return to
England at only thirty-nine, in the full vigour of life, with
a fortune of thirty thousand pounds.*
"I am not fond of money, or anxious about it. But,
though every day makes me less and less eager for wealth,
every day shows me more and more strongly how necessary
a competence is to a man who desires to be either great
or useful. * * I can live only by my pen : * * I have never
made more than two hundred a year by my pen. I could
not support myself in comfort on less than five hundred :
and I shall in all probability have many others to support.
The prospects of our family are, if possible, darker than
ever."
6
82 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
The Education Committee was composed of
both the parties of orientalists and occidentalists.
The discussion regarding the oriental and occidental
languages proceeded till the Committee became
equally divided, and it was difficult to get even the
ordinary business transacted. At this juncture
Macaulay arrived in India in 1834. He knew
nothing of Indian history and Indian literatures. He
was not acquainted with any branch of Indian
thought. Yet he was chosen by Lord Bentinck to
decide the very important controversy between the
occidentalists and orientalists. A worse selection
could hardly have been made. Just as three decades
back Bentinck as Governor of Madras selected Mr.
Thackeray to write that report which declared that
"It is very proper that, in England, a good share of
the produce of the earth should be appropriated to support
certain families in affluence, to produce senators, sages,
and heroes for the service and defence of the State. * * ;
but, in India, that haughty spirit of independence, and
deep thought, which the possession of great wealth some-
times gives, ought to be suppressed. We do not want
generals, statesmen, and legislators ; we want industrious
husbandmen."
Regarding the above, Mr. Digby in his * Pros-
perous British India' wrote :
"Lord William Bentinck, * of set purpose selected
Mr. Thackeray as his mouthpiece, they holding ideas in
common, * *'
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 83
Yes, in this instance also, Lord William
Bentinck of set purpose selected Mr. Macaulay as
his mouthpiece. The latter not only abused and
insulted Indians for no Indian or for the matter of
that no Asiatic can read Macaulay 's Minute without
feeling deep humiliation, but did all that lay in
his power to suppress 'deep' thought among Indians
by making them learn every thing through the
medium of a foreign language like English.
Mr. Macaulay 's Minute, though written in 1835,
remained unpublished till 1864. His nephew, the
present Sir George Otto Trevelyan, was the first to
publish it in MacMillan's Magazine for May, 1 864.
"We are at present," Macaulay said, "a Board for
Printing Books which are of less value than the paper
on which they are printed was when it was blank, and
for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd
metaphysics, absurd physics, and absurd theology."
The Minute, if not actually written by Bentinck,
must have been suggested by him. His lordship
held his ideas in common with Macaulay. So
Macaulay 's Minute gladdened his lordship's heart
to the utmost and one of the last acts of his adminis-
tration was the promulgation of the following resolu-
tion on the part of the Supreme Government of
British India :
84 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Fort William, General Consultation.
7th March, 1835.
"The Governor-General of India in Council has atten-
tively considered the two letters from the Secretary to the
Committee, dated the 21st and 22nd January last, and the
papers referred to in them.
"1st. His Lordship in Council is of opinion that 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 appropriated for
the purposes of education would be best employed on
English education alone.
"2nd. But it is not the intention of his Lordship in
Council to abolish any college or school of native learning,
while the native population shall appear to be inclined
to avail themselves of the advantages which it affords ;
and his Lordship in Council directs that all the existing
professors and students at all the institutions under the
superintendence of the Committee shall continue to receive
their stipends. But his Lordship in Council decidedly
objects to the practice Which has hitherto prevailed of
supporting the students during the period of their educa-
tion. He conceives that the only effects of such a system
can be to give artificial encouragement to branches of
learning which, in the natural course of things, would be
superseded by more useful studies ; and he directs that
no stipend shall be given to any student that
may hereafter enter at any of those institutions ; and
that when any professor of Oriental learning shall vacate
his situation, the Committee shall report to the Govern-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 85
ment the number and state of the class, in order that the
Government may be able to decide upon the expediency
of appointing a successor.
"3rd. It has come to the knowledge of the Governor-
General in Council that a large sum has been expended
by the Committee on the printing of Oriental works ; his
Lordship in Council directs tnat no portion of the funds
shall hereafter be so employed.
"4th. His Lordship in Council directs that all the
funds which these reforms will leave at the disposal of
the Committee be henceforth employed in imparting to
the native population a knowledge of English literature
and science, through the medium of the English language ;
and his Lordship in Council requests the Committee to
submit to Government, with all expedition, a plan for the
accomplishment of this purpose."
"(Sd.) H. J. PRINSEP,
Secretary to Government."
Regarding Macaulay's Minute and Bentinck's
resolution on the same, it is proper here to quote the
opinion of Professor Horace Hay man Wilson. In
his evidence before the Select Committee of the
House of Lords on the Government of Indian Terri-
tories, Wilson on the 5th July, 1853 said :
"* * I have a great respect for Mr. Macaulay's talents,
but he was new in India, and he knew nothing of the
people ; he spoke only from what he saw immediately
around him, which has been the great source of the
mistakes committed by the advocates for English exclu-
sively ; they have known nothing of the country ; they
86 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
have not known what the people want ; they only know the
people of the large towns, where English is of use, and is
effectively cultivated. But take the case of a young man,
a student of the Hindoo College, become a Sudder Amin,
who has gone into the Mofussil to administer justice he
does not meet with an individual who can converse with
him in English, or knows anything about English. In all the
transactions which come before him, he does not want
English; what he wants is a thorough knowledge of his own
language, of the law, and of the course of business, and
the character of the people, formed as that is by Native,
not English institutions ; so that when you take the country
at large, English is comparatively of no benefit, at least
beyond the Presidencies and the large towns, where are
our chief establishments and a European society.
****** No doubt English ought to be encouraged
as much as possible ; but there was no necessity to limit
our operations to that one object on the part of the
advocates for the maintenance of the Native Colleges ;
there never was any disinclination to encourage and support
in truth and earnestness the cultivation of English. All
that they maintained was that we should not tie our hands
up to either one or the other measure, but that we should
avail ourselves of all available means for diffusing useful
knowledge. Of course that knowledge was to come from
Europe. European literature and science were to form
the basis and the bulk of the knowledge ; but if we con-
fined the knowledge to those alone who had the inclination
and opportunity of acquiring English thoroughly, we con-
fined it to a very limited class ; in fact, we created a
separate caste of English scholars, who had no longer any
sympathy, or very little sympathy with their countrymen ;
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 87
whilst, if we could employ the services, as has been done
by Mr. Ballantyne, at Benares, of the learned men of the
country, we should have an additional instrument in our
power, and one from which, perhaps, in the end the
greater benefit of the two might arise."
But it was the policy of the authorities to create
a separate caste, as it were, of English scholars who
were expected not to have any or very little sympathy
with their countrymen. Macaulay pleaded for
English in the following terms :
"We must do our best to form a class who may be
interpreters between us and the millions Whom we govern ;
a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English
in taste, in opinions, words, and intellect.'*
Regarding Macaulay 's Minute, Wilson said :
"I have had an opportunity of reading it, and a very
clever Minute it is ; very ingenious, like all his writings ;
but there is throughout an evident want of experience and
knowledge of the country."
Being asked,
"7208. Has not the order of Lord William Bentinck
had any effect in increasing the study of the English
language?"
H. H. Wilson said,
"In Bengal it may, but not in the Upper Provinces.
The effects of that order have been very much misre-
presented ; the order itself was, in my opinion, an exceed-
ingly objectionable one ; it proposed to deprive the Native
Colleges, the Sanskrit College of Calcutta, the Madressa
88 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
and the Benares College, of the funds which had been
appropriated to them by the liberality of the previous
Governments, and to apply the whole to English educa-
tion ; it also deprived the students at those establishments
of the provision which it had been the practice of Native
Educational establishments to supply, the allowance of
monthly stipends in lieu of maintenance small scholar-
ships, in fact, which were given to the students in considera-
tion of their poverty ; because, although belonging to the
most respectable order of Native Society, they were
generally the sons of poor people ; they were not amongst
the opulent people of India, any more than scholars in any
other part of the world ; and it was also considered advis-
able to hold out some encouragement of this kind to
bring boys from a distance ; so that those establishments
should not be for the benefit solely of the inhabitants of
Calcutta. * * * * These stipends, by Lord William
Bentinck's order, were abolished entirely. The measure
gave extreme dissatisfaction to the Native population ;
and very strong protests were made against it, particularly
by the Mohammedans, who presented a petition, signed
by above 8,000 of the most respectable people of Calcutta
and the neighbourhood, protesting against the abolition
of the stipends, and the withdrawal of the encouragement
of Government from the Native establishments. In fact,
the order was never carried into operation ; for although
it was not formally rescinded, yet in the subsequent
administration of Lord Auckland it was essentially modi-
fied by the grant of pecuniary scholarships to a consider-
able number of the most industrious pupils in the Native
establishments, as well as in the Hindoo College ; these
scholarships, therefore, in some degree compensated for
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 89
the Abolition of the stipends. Since that modification was
introduced, the course of public instruction has gone on
in the Native colleges without any complaint."
In reply to another question, Wilson said :
"Lord William Bentinck's order was to the effect, that
it was his opinion that all the funds available for the
purposes of education should be applied to the study of
English alone ; that was justly objected to by many of
the members of the committee, who were best qualified
to judge of its effect upon the minds of the people and
upon the progress of education ; for although the cultiva-
tion of English is, no doubt, very important, and ought to
receive every possible assistance and countenance from
the Government, yet it is not the means by which anything
like a universal effect can be produced ; it is not the means
by which the people at large can be educated ; in fact,
no people can ever become instructed or enlightened,
except through their own language. It must be through
the medium of their own language that you must address
them, and disseminate useful knowledge amongst them.
Their own forms of speech are, it is true, in a comparatively
uncultivated state ; but they may and will be improved by
cultivation. * * * *"
Lord Elphinstone, one of the members of the
Committee, asked Wilson,
"7237. Was it not the fact that what Lord William
Bentinck recommended was not the introduction of English
to supersede the vernacular languages, but only the em-
ployment of English as a medium of education, instead
of the Persian and the Sanskrit?"
90 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
"No, there was no qualification in regard to the
vernacular languages ; the order begins with this sentence,
'It is the opinion of the Governor-General that all funds
which are available for the purposes of education should
be applied to the cultivation of English alone."
The fact should not be lost sight of that the
British administrator of India had for its prototype
that of Ireland. England tried to do in India what she
had succeeded in doing in Ireland. So England's
educational policy in heathen India was shaped
after that in Christian Ireland. Macaulay, who wrote
the Education Minute of 1835, was inspired by the
deeds of his countrymen in the field of education in
Ireland. In his English Nationl Education (p. 50)
Prof. H. Holman writes :
"As far back as 1537 the Irish Parliament, acting
under the English Privy Council, had founded parochial
schools for the purpose of changing Irishmen into
Englishmen, if that were possible."
Macaulay wrote in his Minute, as has already
been quoted above, that the object was "to form a
class of persons Indians in blood and colour, but
English in taste, in opinions, words, and intellect/*
In Macaulay's time, education in England be-
longed exclusively to the Church and the Church con-
trolled the teaching. There was appointed the Board
of Commissioners of National Education in Ireland.
Prof. Holman writes :
"This board not only took over the entire manage-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 91
ment of the education of the poor, because the
government was of opinion that no private society,
deriving its income from 'private sources, and only made
the channel of the munificence of the legislature without
being subject to any direct responsibility, could adequately
and satisfactorily accomplish the end proposed' ; but it
dealt firmly with the question of religious instruction,
laying down rules and regulations as to the time and
manner for it, and actually compiling a book of 'Scripture
extracts' to be read in schools, during the hours given to
ordinary literary instruction. It issued a series of official
school-books, and sold them to schools at reduced prices ;
and established a training college and normal schools ;
appointed inspectors to visit and report on the schools ;
and made grants for school buildings, and for increasing
teachers' salaries." (Ibid, p. 71).
Excepting *scripture extracts' to be read in
schools, almost everything that was done by the
Board of Commissioners in Ireland was introduced in
India by the Educational Minute of Lord Macaulay.
It was only on the ostensible plea of religious tolera-
tion that 'scripture extracts' for reading in schools
was not introduced.*
* This has since been done in recent years by the Calcutta
University, which is an officially constituted body.
VERNACULAR EDUCATION IN THE DAYS
OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.
At the present time many English statesmen and
politicians declare themselves more in favour of
education through the medium of the Indian verna-
culars than through that of English. But no en-
couragement was held out to the cultivation of these
vernaculars so long as the East India Company were
the rulers of the country. Speaking of Shivaji, the
late Revd. Dr. John Wilson of Bombay wrote :
"There can not be a doubt that the vernacular
literature which had sprung up in the province to which
he belonged, during the two centuries which preceded
him, nursed the spirit of Hinduism in himself and his
contemporaries, and was one of the main causes of their
hatred of, and successful rebellion against the Muham-
madan power which he was instrumental in heading."
A writer in the Bombay Quarterly Review for
October 1857 (page 322), quoting the above, said :
"Will it [the vernacular literature] exercise any
influence adverse to the British Government? Time will
show."
It is evident that Dr. Duff and other Anglicists
of those days were afraid of the growth of any verna-
cular literature in this country, for it might exercise
some influence adverse to the British Government.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 93
Macaulay was well versed in the history of his
own country. It would seem that he came out to
India to do what had been so successfully done in
Ireland. It is a historical fact that
The English Government passed Acts of Parliament
without number to suppress utterly the Irish language,
In Elizabeth's time even the King of Denmark was refused
by the English Government the services of an Irishman to
translate Irish MSS., lest that should injure English
interests ! Henry the Eighth required a knowledge of
English as the sine qua non for a Church-living in Ireland,
he got men who knew nothing of the people. Subse-
quently it was enacted, in case the minister could not read
the service in English, he might read it to the people in
Latin, but not in Irish."*
A writer in the Calcutta Review for December,
1855, p. 309, said:
* 'History tells us, that no nation has ever yet been
civilized or educated, save through its own vernacular, and
that the uprooting of a vernacular is the extermination
of the race, or at least of all its peculiar characteristics.
Speech, Thought and Existence are so closely bound
together, that it is impossible to separate them. They are
the great trinity in unity of the race. If then we strive to
up-root the vernacular of a country, or to deluge it not
only with foreign modes of thought, but with foreign
words, we shall either make no progress, or such a
progress that we would speedily wish to undo it. But the
Government system of Education has thus acted, * * * *
* Calcutta Review for June, 1854, p. 306.
94 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
and beginning at the wrong end the top of the tree, they
thought that like air-plants they would make education
grow downward, and so had colleges without schools, and
schools without primary schools, and Inspectors, with
schools to create for their inspection. Making but one
faint attempt to raise native teachers an attempt that
from the first contained in it the elements of its own
destruction, they went on using foreigners and a foreign
tongue, and a foreign literature, and thus never reached
those inner springs of thought and action, that exist even
in a Bengalee's soul, and will yet make a man of him and
men of his nation."
To prevent adverse criticism, to conciliate those
who had raised a hue and cry against the Anglicisa-
tion of Education, it was a grand stroke of policy
which Bentinck adopted in deputing Mr. Adam to
report on Vernacular Education in Bengal. Mr.
Adam submitted three reports on the subject in 1835,
1836, 1838, and recommended
"Government to afford encouragement to existing
schools, thus calling forth the efforts of the natives the
preparation of improved class books the appointment to
each district of a native examiner of teachers and scholars,
with an inspector to each five districts a model verna-
cular school in each district, to which promising pupils
from the ordinary schools should be admissible, to be paid
small stipends in order to enable them to continue their
studies."
A writer in the Calcutta Review for June, 1854
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 95
(No. XLIV), p. 324, commenting on the above,
said :
"It is now 1854, sixteen years have elapsed, nothing
has been done to carry out those plans in Bengal.
''Constituted as the Bengal Council of Education is, the
members residing in Calcutta, a semi-Angilcized city, we
could not expect them to take up with zeal vernacular
education. Their first act in this case was to set aside
Mr. Adam's plan, the only one feasible in this country.
Mr. Macaulay, their president, knew nothing of the
people ; his knowledge of India was limited by the bounds
of the Mahratta ditch. * * * : The Council have, however,
in words, constantly held forth the necessity of 'the
acquisition by the students, of a sufficient mastery of the
Vernacular, to enable them to communicate with facility
and correctness, in the language of the people, the
knowledge obtained by them.'
It was on the occasion of the renewal of the
Charter in 1813 that the authorities of the East
India Company had enjoined on the Governors of
the different Presidencies in India to institute inquiries
regarding the state of indigenous education in the
different provinces of this country. This inquiry
was neglected in Bengal. It was not until 1835,
during the closing days of the administration of Lord
William Bentinck, that Mr. Adam was appointed to
undertake this enquiry. Mr. Adam had been at one
time a Baptist Missionary, believing in the Trinity.
But his meeting with the celebrated Ram Mohun Roy
96 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
made him give up his belief in the Trinity and be
converted to Unitarian Christianity. He was on this
account nicknamed the "Second fallen Adam" by
his chritable Christian countrymen. He edited with
great ability The India Gazette, a popular Calcutta
Journal.
Mr. Adam performed his task with great zeal
and ability. The three reports which he drew up
on the state of Education in Bengal and Behar contain
a valuable mine of information on the contemporary
state of instruction in native institutions and in native
society. It is not necessary to refer to the contents
of these reports at great length. But it is necessary
to mention what Mr. Adam found to be the vernacular
media of instruction in Bengal Proper. According
to him Bengali is
"The language of the Musalman as well as of the
Hindu population.*'
And that, though
"The Hindustani or Urdu is the current spoken
language of the educated Musalmans of Bengal and Behar,
it is never employed in the schools as the medium
or instrument of written instruction. Bengali school books
are employed by the Hindus of Bengal, and Hindi school
books by the Hindus of Behar ; but, although Urdu is more
copious and expressive, more cultivated and refined than
either, and possesses a richer and more comprehensive
literature,* Urdu school books are wholly unknown. It is
* This is no longer the ce.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 97
the language of conversation in the daily intercourse of life
and in the business of the world, and it is the language
also of oral instruction for the explanation of Persian and
Arabic ; but it is never taught or learned for its own sake
or for what it contains."
A writer in the Calcutta Review for December,
1844 (Vol. II, p. 317), said:-
"Educated Mussalmans, * * learn to speak and write
the Bengali ; and even several low castes of Hindus,
occupying entire villages in various directions and amount-
ing to several thousand individuals, whose ancestors three
or four generations ago, emigrated from the Western
Provinces, have found it necessary to combine the use of
Bengali with the Hindi their mother-tongue. It thus
appears that in the provinces of Bengal proper, the Bengali
may justly be described as the universal language of verna-
cular instruction.'*
The argument of the Anglo- Indians, that there
being different languages used as vernaculars in a
province, it was impossible to encourage them all,
did not hold good so far as Bengal was concerned.
The Bengalee intellect was also of no mean
order. In one of his reports, Mr. Adam wrote :
"The native mind of the present day, although it is
asleep, is not dead. It has a dreamy sort of existence in
separating, combining, and recasting in various forms the
fables and speculations of past ages. The amount of
authorship shown to exist in the different districts is a
measure of the intellectual activity which, however now
misdirected, might be employed for useful purposes. The
7
98 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
same men who 'have wasted and are still wasting their
learning and their powers in weaving complicated allitera-
tions, recompounding absurd and vicious fictions, and re-
volving in perpetual circles of metaphysical abstractions,
never ending still beginning, have professed to me their
readiness to engage in any sort of literary composition that
would obtain the patronage of Government/*
The Indian vernaculars were neglected by the
Indian authorities. Thus Mr. (afterwards Sir Fre-
derick) Halliday, in his evidence before the Select
Committee of the House of Commons on Indian
Territories on the 25th July 1853, on being asked by
the Chairman,
"8788. I understand you to be in favour of the
extension of tuition in the vernacular languages?"
answered,
"Very much so indeed ; I am very desirous to see a
great effort made in that direction ; nothing serious has yet
been done ; the Government professes in all its schools
and colleges to teach English and the Vernacular, but it
does it imperfectly. Wherever English is taught it
swallows up everything else ; the natives are so anxious to
obtain it, and there is so much greater interest and excite-
ment with respect to it on the part of those who are at the
head of educational affairs, that there is more attention
and more exertion bestowed upon education in English
than upon education in the vernacular ; and the whole of
the means of education at their command being insuffi-
cient, the Vernacular is likely to be the more pinched of
the two, so that that is not done which might be wished.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 99
in Lord Hardinge's time an attempt was made to establish
a system of vernacular instruction ; it was done in the face
of great pecuniary difficulties ; 101 schools were estab-
lished, but the masters were very inadequately paid, and
there were other errors in the management of the plan
which, I think, caused it to fail. I will not conceal, that
with some persons in India the failure of those schools has
been thought to indicate that all such efforts towards verna-
cular education in Bengal must fail, but I am not one of
those ; on the contrary, I think the scheme failed on
account of its inadequacy to the object in view, and that
we are not the less bound, in consequence of the failure
of that scheme, to do our best towards introducing, heartily
and systematically, a good plan of vernacular education all
over the country."
"8789. What gave rise to the plan of Lord Hardinge ?
A general complaint that vernacular education was
neglected, and a constant call upon the Government to do
something towards extending Vernacular education ; there
happened to be at that moment certain funds temporarily
at the disposal of the Governor of Bengal, which were
applicable to that purpose, and he so applied them."
"8790. When you left Bengal, instruction in the
vernacular languages was made secondary to instruction in
English ; was it not? Quite so ; more than secondary."
"8791 . And that you think not desirable ? Not at all
desirable ; I think both are of enormous importance ; there
are parties in India who tell you the one thing needful is
English instruction, and other parties who tell you the one
thing needful is vernacular instruction. I differ with them
both. I think the two ought to go on ; they relate to
different classes of the people altogether, and they ought
100 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
to go on together. You ought, as far as possible, to give
a good vernacular education to the masses, at the same
time that you give opportunities to the classes who have
leisure to do so, to acquire a knowledge of English litera-
ture and science."*
But it was considered incompatible with the
'enlightened selfishness' we beg pardon with the
philanthropy of the Anglicists to encourage the
cultivation of the Indian vernaculars. The well-
known Scotch Christian Missionary Dr. Duff was an
earnest Anglicist. From such a man one should have
expected fairness. But as a zealous Christian he
perhaps thought it his duty to do everything that lay
in his power to destroy *heathen* institutions. And
therefore he could not encourage the cultivation of
Indian vernaculars. In a paper which was intended
to be a defence of Lord Bentinck's resolution on
Macaulay's Minute the reverend doctor wrote :
"The Act has been in substance styled, 'An Act of
extermination against the Literature and Classical
Languages of Hindustan/ * * * *
"Why, if common sense has not fled the habitations
of man, this determination of withdrawing positive support
is simply the restoration of the first position of strict
neutrality ; it is the resumption of an attitude of non-
interference ; it is a resolution to do nothing directly and
actively, either to uphold or abolish native literature, so
* Sixth Report from the Select Committee (House of Commons)
en Indian Territories, 1853, pp. 59-60.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 101
far as the British Government is concerned, it just leaves
it precisely as it existed before its intervention at all ; i.e.,
it resigns the classical literature of India to the patronage
and support of those who have cultivated and perpetuated
the knowledge of it during the last thirty centuries.
*****
"If it could be shown that at any time when the
British smote into the dust the confederacies of the Indian
Rajahs and Nawabs, mounted the throne of the Great
Mogul, and wielded the imperial sceptre over a domain
more extensive, an empire more consolidated than that
of the Mighty Aurangzeb, could it be proved that then, or
at any subsequent period, the Government had really
pledged itself, had actually entered into a solemn compact
with the representatives of the people of India, to devote
in perpetuity a determinate amount of funds for the
specific purpose of encouraging native literature in certain
native institutions ; then, indeed, but not till then, would
the sudden or gradual withdrawment of such funds impli-
cate the good faith, the honour or the justice of the British
Government."*
The Calcutta Review for June, 1 854, No. XLIV,
p. 297, wrote :
"It has been said, do nothing to enlighten the masses,
till you give a high education to a number, and these will
educate the masses we do not object to the former, but
we do not postpone the latter to an indefinite period. To
enlighten only the few is, to use a Hindu proverb, to
* The Lords' Committee's Second Report on Indian Territories,
1853, pp. 406-407.
102 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
sweeten the ocean by casting a few drops of milk on it.
The rush for keraniships with their deadening effects, and
the want of practical education among Hindus, show that
vernacular education should have been combined with the
English. The Government began in 1835 with educating
the few, is not the time now arrived, in 1854, after a
lapse of twenty years, for not ending there, but extending
education to the many ? To wait until our English students
awake from tne torpor of keraniship, until they renounce
the selfishness of making a monopoly of knowledge, will,
we fear, be like Horace's rustic waiting to cross the river
until it dries up. To carry out the principle of enlight-
ening only the few at first, we ought to have Colleges
before schools, and even an university before a college.
We see the case of France, where there was a highly
refined nobility, that of the days of Louis le Grand, the
salons of Paris were the resort of a brilliant class of sauans,
but the peasantry were kept in a state of awful ignorance
revolution broke out, and all this drapery of refinement
was torn to shreds before the whirlwind of infuriated
masses, discharging a lava of passions uncontrolled by any
barriers of knowledge. The aristocracy (the Young Bengal
of that day), who kept the peasantry debarred from
knowledge, were startled from their dream of fancied
security by the flames of their castles and midnight yell of
'la paix aux Chaumieres, la guerre aux Chateaux' a
warning voice, that the mere education of the few is a
vineyard clothing the volcanoe's side, * * * * of late years,
notwithstanding the influence of our universities and
classical schools, what awful disclosures have the Earl of
Shaftesbury and the promoters of ragged schools made,
as to the condition of the working classes, and the dense
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 103
ignorance and crime which even still form the substratum
of English society ; an able writer in the Agra Messenger
remarks on this subject, 'when we know how little the
English universities, colleges, and great public schools
existing through centuries, have done for the people of
England, we cannot hope that a similar system in India,
where the barriers of caste strengthen the wall of partition
betwixt the educated few and the ignorant many, will pro-
duce more satisfactory results. The light of knowledge
naturally burns upward. It was only when the National
Schools, Sunday Schools, Mechanics' Institutes, began to
spread their influence among the labouring body in
England, that the people received anything like enlighten-
ment. But even these agencies left a yet lower class in
darkness, to be in time illuminated by the heroic teachers
of ragged Schools.* Knowledge made a monopoly of by
a few, and invested with power, is an instrument of
despotism, as the Histories of Chaldea. India, Persia,
Egypt, and the Middle Ages show, and we say with Mr.
Hodgson in his letters, that 'making knowledge an official
monopoly, in the hands of a small number of people, is
not identifying the security of our dominion with the
happiness of the mass of the subjects'. Do not the waters
of knowledge, restrained in a limited space, stagnate,
whereas when diffused like the ocean, they become the
purifiers of the world? In 1848 the Government of the
N. W. Provinces very properly expressed their fears 'that
the village and district officers will be so far ahead of the
mass of the people, as the more to expose the latter to
injury from dishonesty and intrigues.' * In Ireland on
the other hand, we have had for centuries intelligent but
*
n~.-
104 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
tyrannical landlords, who ruled, with a rod of iron, the
tenantry they abandoned to ignorance.
* * Young Bengal, equally with the proud
Brahman, despises 'the vulgar tongue, reminding us of
the English squires in Locke's days, who could not write
correct English, though they could 'sport Latin verses.'
And this is justified on the plea that there is so little in
Bengali to read. Well, supposing it to be so is not this,
on the principle that *it is more blessed to give than to
receive a reason why the language should be enriched
by those who have got the wealth of another tongue?
Did Dante and Chaucer despise their own tongues because
they were poor ? No ! that was just the stimulus to
prompt them to raise them.
"Of course, those natives who wish their sons to get
employment in offices, where a knowledge of English is
requisite, would wish all the Government funds for
education, to be given to English schools, 'the high road
to affluence/ forgetting that the land revenue of Bengal
amounts to three and a half millions sterling, besides five
millions from salt and opium, and that the peasantry have
a claim on those revenues for an education suited to their
circumstances, a quid pro quo. * * And yet, for sooth,
all knowledge is to be excluded, unless the people will
sit down to an eight years' study of foreign language, with
its arbitrary pronunciation and intricacy of meaning. English
Education, to affect the mass, must have a vernacular
medium oil by itself will not mix with water.
"If we are to do nothing in Vernacular Education
until the upper classes are enlightened by English, then
let us be consistent, let us stop our Bible Societies, Verna-
cular Literature Committees, Tract Societies, for they will
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 105
be of very little use, if there be not a correspondent system
of Vernacular Education. Can we reckon that those few
will carry out the principle of 'doing what they can for the
benefit of their less favored neighbours?' Does not the
voice of history show that there are aristocrats in know-
ledge, who fear lest 'the peasants' toe should tread on the
courtier's heel.'
One of Macaulay's motives in introducing
English Education in India was that such a step would
help in the conversion of Indians to Christianity, a
hope never adequately fulfilled. Thus in 1836 he
wrote to his father that
"The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodi-
gious. No Hindu who has received an English education
ever remains sincerely attached to his religion. Some
continue to profess it as a matter of policy, but many
profess themselves pure Deists and some embrace
Christianity. It is my firm belief that if our plans
of education are followed up there will not be a single
idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty
years hence.*
Here also Macaulay tried to copy the Educational
* The Indian Daily News for March, 30, 1909, from which the
above extract is made, truly observes : "Lord Macaulay's triumph
over the Oriental School, * * was really the triumph of a deliberate
intention to undermine the religious and social life of India. It is
no doubt a hard thing to say that this was not merely the consequence
of his act but that it was also his deliberate intention, but the * *
letter written in 1836 to his father shows how behind his splendid
phrases, there lay quite a different view.**
106 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Policy then in vogue in his country. The author of
English National Education (p. 72) writes:
"The general character of the claims of the- High
Church party is shown by the words of its leader. Keble
boldly declared that England 'as a Christian nation was a
part of Christ's Church, and bound in all her legislation,
by the fundamental laws of that Church/
That the State should profess, and cause to be taught, at
least the Christian faith was, practically, held by all intelli-
gent and worthy men."
Again on p. 73 of the above mentioned work,
Prof. Holman writes :
"In the preface to a published sermon, preached in
February, 1838, Bishop Blomfield writes : 'No system of
education can be forced upon the people at large which
shall not be in conformity with the principles of the
Church of England, and worked by its instrumentality. It
will be our own fault if it be otherwise.' In the sermon
itself he frankly declares: "We assert that this [the
imparting of the rudiments of knowledge] is not to be the
main and primary, much less the sole, object of our
endeavours, in educating the youth of this country, of
whatever class they may be."
But the Anglicists probably meant to prevent the
growth of Indian nationality and therefore they made
use of arguments and language to serve their ulterior
ends. This is evident from what Dr. Duff further
wrote in the paper already referred to above. He
wrote :
"The vast influence of language in moulding national
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 107
feelings and habits, more especially if fraught with superior
stores of knowledge, is too little attended to, and too
inadequately understood. * * When the Romans con-
quered a province, they forthwith set themselves to the
task of 'Romanising' it ; that is, they strove to create a
taste for their own more refined language and literature,
and thereby aimed at turning the song and the romance
and the history the thought and the feeling and fancy of
the subjugated people into Roman channels, which fed
and augmented Roman interests. And has Rome not
succeeded ? Has she not saturated every vernacular dialect
with which she came in contact with terms copiously
drawn from her own? Has she not perpetuated for ages,
after her sceptre moulders in the dust, the magic influence
of her character and name? Has she not stamped the
impress of her own genius on the literature and the laws
of almost every European Kingdom with a fixedness that
has remained unchanged up to the present hour?
"And who can tell to what extent the strength and
perpetuity of the Arabic domination is indebted to the
Caliph Walid, who issued the celebrated decree, that the
language of the Koran should be the universal language
of the Mahomedan world, so that from the Indian
Archipelago to Portugal it actually became the language
of religion, of literature, of Government, and generally of
common life?'*
"And who can estimate the extent of influence
exerted in India by the famous Edict of Akbar, the greatest
and the wisest far of the sovereigns of the House of
Timur? Of this Edict, an authority * * wrote, * *
'The great Akbar established the Persian language as the
language of business and of polite literature throughout his
108 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
extensive dominions, and the popular tongue naturally
became deeply impregnated with it. The literature and
the language of the country thus became identified with
the genius of his dynasty ; and this has tended more than
anything else to produce a kind of intuitive veneration for
the family, which has long survived even the destruction
of their power ; and this feeling will continue to exist until
we substitute the English language for the Persian, which
will dissolve the spell, and direct the ideas and sympathies
of the natives towards their present rulers.'
* * He (Lord Bentinck) it was who first resolved
to supersede the Persian, in the political department of
the public service, by the substitution of the English, * * ;
and having thus by one act created a necessity and
consequently, an increased and yearly increasing demand
for English, he next consummated the great design by
superadding the enactment under review which provides
the requisite means for supplying the demand that had
been previously created ; and this united Act now bids
fair to outrival in importance the Edicts of the Roman,
the Arabic and the Mogul Emperors, inasmuch as the
English language is infinitely more fraught with the seeds
of truth in every province of literature, science and reli-
gion, than the languages of Italy, Arabia or Persia ever
were. Hence it is that I venture to hazard the opinion,
that Lord W. Bentinck *s double Act for the encourage-
ment and diffusion of the English language and English
literature in the East, will, long after contemporaneous
party interests, and individual jealousies, and ephemeral
rivalries have sunk into oblivion, be hailed by a grateful
and benefited posterity as the grandest master-stroke of
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 109
sound policy that has yet characterized the administration
of the British Government in India."'
From the above it is quite evident that the
Anglicists strove from interested motives to make
English the medium of instruction in Indian schools
and colleges. They were not actuated by any
altruistic or philanthropic considerations to diffuse
English education in India but to " direct the ideas
and the sympathies of the natives towards their
present rulers.*'
But it was impossible for the English to do what
the Caesars, the Caliphs and Akbar and Jehangir did.
The people of England lack sympathetic imagination
and therefore it is impossible for them to anglicise
their Indian fellow-subjects.f As a native of
Scotland, Dr. Alexander Duff lacked imagination and
therefore he failed to imagine the non-possibility of
his co-religionists and compatriots being able to do
what the Romans, Arabs and Moguls did.
Regarding the British Government of India, the
late Mr. R. C. Dutt in one of his speeches said :
EXCLUSIVE RULE UNEXAMPLED IN HISTORY.
Gentlemen, history records scarcely any example of
a great and civilised nation permanently placed under a
* Ibid p. 409.
t "The Anglo-Saxon nations," writes Lecky, "though sometimes
roused to strong but transient enthusiasm, are habitually singularly
narrow, unappreciative, and unsympathetic."
110 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
system of government which allowed them no share in
the control over their own concerns. In ancient India, the
entire village administration was in the hands of village
communities or local landlords, and though there was no
representation in its modern forms kings and potentates
listened to the wishes of the people and the leaders of the
people in deciding on great questions of administration.
In ancient Europe the policy of Imperial Rome was
inspired by the same spirit, and you no doubt recollect the
eloquent words in which Gibbon has described the treat-
ment of conquered provinces by Rome :
"The grandsons of the Gauls, who had besieged Julius
Caesar in Alesia, commanded legions, governed provinces,
and were admitted into the Senate of Rome. Their ambi-
tion, instead of disturbing the tranquillity of the State, was
intimately connected with its safety and greatness."
The history of Moghul Rule in India rray also be
described in almost the same words, and we can truly
say:
"The grandsons of the Hindus who had fought against
Babar in the field of Fatehpur Sikri, commanded legions,
governed provinces, and were admitted into the Councils
of Akbar. Their ambition, instead of disturbing the
tranquillity of the State, was intimately connected with its
safety and greatness."
Shall we for ever continue to describe British Rule
in India in words the reverse of this? Shall we for ever
have to say :
"The grandsons and great-grandsons of those who
helped the British in the fields of Plassey and Wandewash,
of Laswari and Assye, were excluded from the command
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 111
of armies, from the government of provinces, from the
Council of the Secretary of State for India, from the
Executive Council of the Viceroy, from the Executive
Councils of the Indian provinces."*
Gentlemen, this defect in British rule, this reproach
on British administration, cannot last. One of the strongest
of British Imperialists of modern days has recorded :
"To those who take a purely selfish view, it may be
urged that we can hardly long go on as we are, refusing to
proceed further in the direction of the employment of
natives in high office, with Russians at our door pursuing
the other policy. * * * The unshared rule of a close
bureaucracy from across the seas cannot last in the face of
widespread modern education of a people so intelligent
as Indian Natives."
The inhabitants of England, in whatever capacity
they come to India, whether as public servants of
the State or merchants or missionaries, do not make
India their homes. So they cannot be the objects of
that veneration which the descendants of Akbar even
after the destruction of their power received from the
Hindoos.
The Caliphs civilized the Christian nations of
Syria, Egypt, Northern Africa and even of Spain and
Portugal. The Arabs or Saracens, as they were
latterly called, behaved in such a chivalrous manner
that the Christian women of those countries willingly
* Indians are not now entirely excluded from these councils.
112 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
became the inmates of their harems and gladly
accepted the crescent in the place of the cross. Even
in the last century, Lady Ellenborough deserted
her legally married Christian husband and preferred
to become the inmate of the seraglio of a Muhamadan
Arab. It was not all by the confiscation of the women
of the Christian countries that Islam succeeded in ex-
terminating Christianity in the countries bordering
the Mediterranean. Of course, the author of the
Conflict between Religion and Science writes
"A nation may recover the confiscation of its pro-
vinces, the confiscation of its wealth ; it may survive the
imposition of enormous war-fines ; but it never can recover
from that most frightful of all war-acts, the confiscation of
its women. * * It was the institution of polygamy,
based upon the confiscation of the women in the van-
quished countries, that secured for ever the Mohammedan
rule. The children of these unions gloried in their descent
from their conquering fathers. No better proof can be
given of the efficacy of this policy than that which is fur-
nished by North Africa. The irrestible effect of poly-
gamy in consolidating the new order of things was very
striking. In little more than a generation, the Khalif was
informed by his officers that the tribute must cease, all the
children born in that region were Mohammedans, and all
spoke Arabic."*
But it is impossible to imagine that those
countries would have become Muhammadanized by
* Draper, pp. 100-101.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 1 13
mere confiscation of their women folk if those
Christian women were not willing to tender their
persons to their Muhammadan conquerors. India
never became a Muhammadan country by the * con-
fiscation' of her women. No, Hindoo women cheer-
fully mounted the funeral pyre and reduced them-
selves to ashes rather than suffer themselves to be
polluted by the touch of any conqueror.
The thorough Anglicisation of the whole of India
is not desired by Anglo-Indians. In his New India,
Cotton has written :
"The more Anglicised a native is, the more he is dis-
liked by Englishmen. The sense of jealousy becomes
greater. Whatever may be professed, Englishmen are
ready to encourage the natives who speak broken English
more than those who speak good English ; those who are
subject to Hindu prejudices more than those who have
renounced them ; and generally those who are far removed
from English habits of thought and life more than those
who have made a very close approach to them. They
are more pleased with the backward Hindu than with his
advanced compatriot, because the former has made no
attempt to attain equality with themselves.
"This abhorrence of equality rankles in the mind of
all Anglo-Indians, and especially of officials. It is the
peculiarity of residence in the East to develop sentiments
of intolerance and race superiority.***
Such being the feelings of the Anglo-Indians
*New India (Second Edition), 1886, pp. 40-41.
8
1 1 4 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
towards Indians, it is impossible for English people
to succeed like the Romans, the Caliphs or the
Moghuls in "anglicising" the whole of India.
But there can be no doubt that the occidentalists
or the Anglicists made English the medium of instruc-
tion for Indian scholars to prevent the cultivation of
Indian vernaculars, and thus of Indian nationality,
but also "aimed at turning * * * the thought
and the feeling and fancy of the subjugated people
into" English channels, to feed and augment English
interests, and to "direct the ideas and sympathies of
the natives towards their present rulers."
Whatever promotes better understanding be-
tween different races is bound to produce good results.
Therefore, whatever the motives of the Anglicists in
the days of the East India Company might have been
our knowledge of the English language and literature
has borne good fruit. The Anglicists have builded
better than they knew or perhaps meant to. English
education has been one of the causes of the birth
of national consciousness in India. If now the verna-
culars be encouraged instead of English, the ultimate
result will be a further impetus to the growth of
national feeling. Directly or indirectly, whatever the
educational policy adopted, it is destined to play a
leading part in the progressive nationalisation of the
Indian people.
EDUCATION OF INDIANS 18331853.
The Anglicists were triumphant, for Bentinck
issued the resolution * 'that all the funds appropriated
for the purposes of education would be best employed
on English education alone." The authorities were
averse to diffuse education among the masses of the
Indian population. Lord Bentinck himself was not
in favour of widely educating Indians. His successor
Metcalfe had expressed himself strongly in favor of
education. While recommending an improved sys-
tem of revenue settlement, he wrote as follows :
"Similar objections have been urged against our
attempting to promote the education of our native sub-
jects, but how unworthy it would be of a liberal Govern-
ment to give weight to such objections ! The world is
governed by an irresistible power which giveth and taketh
away dominion, and vain would be the impotent prudence
of man against the operations of its almighty influence.
All that rulers can do is to merit dominion by promoting
the happiness of those under them. If we perform our
duty in this respect, the gratitude of India, and the admira-
tion of the world, will accompany our name through all
ages, whatever may be the revolutions of futurity ; but if
we withhold blessings from our subjects, from a selfish
apprehension of possible danger at a remote period, we
shall not deserve to keep our dominion, we shall merit that
reverse which time has possibly in store for us, and shall
116 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
fall with the mingled hatred and contempt, hisses and
execrations of mankind."*
But as Governor-General of India, he did very
little to promote education. Of course it was from
considerations of ' *enlightened selfishness," that it
was thought necessary to give some sort of education
to Indians. Such education was to be given as would
produce cheap clerks and useful subordinates for
service in the different departments of the State.
With that object in view, Lord Hardinge wrote a
Minute, dated October 10th, 1844, extracts from
which are given below :
"The Governor-General, having taken into considera-
tion the existing state of education in Bengal, and being of
opinion that it is highly desirable to afford it every reason-
able encouragement by holding out to those who have
taken advantage of the opportunity of instruction a fair
prospect of employment in the public service, and thereby
not only to reward individual merit but to enable the State
to profit as largely as possible by the result of the measures
adopted of late years for the instruction of the people as
well by the Government as by private individuals and
societies, has resolved that in every possible case a prefer-
ence shall be given in the selection of candidates for public
employment to those who have been educated in the
institutions thus established, and especially to those who
have distinguished themselves therein by a more than
ordinary degree of merit."
* Pp. 46-47 of Kaye's Selections from the Writings of Metcalfe.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 117
The sum appropriated to education was very in-
adequate. Mr. J. C. Marshman, in his evidence on
21st July, 1853, before the Select Committee of the
House of Commons on Indian Territories, said :
"It was stated in the House of Commons that the
sum appropriated to education by the Government of India
did not exceed 65,000 sterling a year ; but in a series of
papers published at the India House in the present year,
the sum was stated at between 70,000 and 80,000.
Dr. Wilson, in his evidence, I see, has brought in the sum
of 10,000 rupees appropriated to Scinde, and 70,000 rupees
to Sattara, which were evidently not included in that
calculation. The sum, therefore, may be taken at 89,000
or 90,000 sterling per annum. If you compare the sum
thus devoted from the revenues of India to the object of
public instruction, with that which is voted by Parliament
annually from the revenues of England for education in
this country, I think it will be found to be very consider-
ably disproportionate. If you assume the revenues of
England at 52,000,000 sterling, and the sum appropriated
annually by Parliament at 250,000 sterling, which, I think,
is very nearly the sum, then from the 26,000,000 net
revenue in India we ought to obtain 125,000, and there-
fore if we have only 90,000 we are still, according to that
proportion, some 35,000 or 40,000 below the mark. But
even that sum is insufficient for the wants of the country,
and I am satisfied that if it were quadrupled, or increased
even five-fold, it would not be found too much for the
educational necessities of the country ; and it is especially
to be desired that there should also be an attempt at the
118 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
same time, to make those additional funds go as far as
possible by a new mode of appropriating them/'
Then he was asked
"8615. What mode of dispensing educational funds
in India do you contemplate?'*
In reply he said
* * * ^ we cou ld a l so borrow the plan adopted
by the Privy Council of Education in this country, of giving
Grants-in-aid to the various institutions in India, those
funds might be made to go much further, and that this
would be a more appropriate mode of expending any
additional funds which might be voted, than by exclusively
following the present mode. It is scarcely possible for the
Government in India to undertake the care and the respon-
sibility of managing all the institutions which will be neces-
sary for the diffusion of knowledge, and there is a general
desire in India, in the minds of almost all parties, that the
Government could be prevailed on to adopt the principle
of Grants-in-aid ; that is, they should determine to give
pecuniary assistance to the existing institutions which are
not connected with the State, in order to enable them to
increase the sphere of their exertions. In that case it
would be necessary for the Government to prescribe the
course of study, and possibly even to lay down the books
which should be used, and that an inspector should be
employed to visit every school thus taken under the
patronage of this Government, three or four times a year,
and make a report of the progress of the children ; the
Government aid to the institution being proportioned ac-
cording to the report made by the inspector. This would
produce the double effect of giving an extraordinary im-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 119
pulse to the cause of education in India, at the same time
that it would give the means of support to those institutions
which can scarcely obtain adequate encouragement from
local subscriptions.**
The witness was a son of the well-known
Serampore Missionary one of the trio Revd. Mr.
Marshman. When he made that recommendation of
Grants-in-aid, he had an ulterior end to serve. What
this was may be gathered from the answer to a further
question when he said that
"The Government would thus be enabled to give
assistance even to Christian schools and institutions,
without in any measure infringing that principle of religious
neutrality which has been always adopted, and which is a
very great element of our political strength.**
Although the Government did not do anything
for the diffusion of education, private enterprise was
not idle, at least in Bengal, for the cause of educa-
tion. The most notable institution established during
this period was the Hooghly College. It was founded
with funds furnished by the munificence of a Muham-
madan gentleman named Haji Muhammad Mohsin.
This seminary of learning has done much for the
education of Muhammadans and one of the most
notable Muhammadans of Bengal a man of very
humble origin owed his education to this institution.
The Right Honorable Mr. Syed Amir AH was one
of the alumni of the Hooghly College.
During the twenty years under review the Indian
120 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Government as in the previous twenty years did very
little for the diffusion of general education among the
people of this country. That was left to the people
themselves. And to their credit let it be said that
they performed their part very creditably. The
vernaculars were shamefully neglected. A Christian
Missionary like Dr. Duff even went the length of
advising the Government to preserve strict neutrality
regarding the vernaculars, that is to say, not to give
any helping hand for their cultivation. True it is
that the general Committee of Public Instruction of
The Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, in their
Report for the year 1835, wrote:
"We are deeply sensible of the importance of en-
couraging the cultivation of the vernacular languages. We
do not conceive that the order of the 7th of March pre-
cludes us from doing this, and we have constantly acted
on this construction. In the discussions which preceded
that order, the claims of the vernacular languages were
broadly and prominently admitted by all parties, and the
question submitted for the decision of Government only
concerned the relative advantage of teaching English on
the one side, and the learned Eastern languages on the
other. We therefore conceive that the phrases 'European
literature and science/ 'English education alone,* and
'imparting to the native population a knowledge of English
literature and science, through the medium of the English
language/ are intended merely to secure the preference to
European learning, taught through the medium of the
English language, over Oriental learning, taught through
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 121
the medium of the Sanskrit and Arabic languages, as
regards the instruction of those natives who receive a
learned education at our seminaries. These expressions
have, as we understand them, no reference to the question
through what ulterior medium such instruction as the mass
of the people is capable of receiving is to be conveyed.
If English had been rejected, and the learned Eastern
tongues adopted, the people must equally have received
their knowledge, through the vernacular dialects. It was,
therefore, quite unnecessary for the Government, in
deciding the question between the rival languages, to take
any notice of the vernacular tongues ; and, consequently,
we have thought that nothing could reasonably be inferred
from its omission to take such notice.
4 'We conceive the formation of a vernacular literature
to be the ultimate object to which all our efforts must be
directed. At present, the extensive cultivation of some
foreign language, which is always very improving to the
mind, is rendered indispensable by the almost total
absence of a vernacular literature, and the consequent im-
possibility of obtaining a tolerable education from that
source only. The study of English, to which many cir-
cumstances induce the natives to give the preference, and
with it the knowledge of the learning of the West, is there-
fore daily spreading. This, as it appears to us, is the first
stage in the process by which India is to be enlightened.
The natives must learn before they can teach. The best
educated among them must be placed in possession of our
knowledge before they can transfer it into their own
language. We trust that the number of such translations
will now multiply every year. As the superiority of
European learning becomes more generally appreciated,
122 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
the demand for them will no doubt increase, and we shall
be able to encourage any good books which may be
brought out in the native languages by adopting them
extensively in our seminaries.**
It is stated in the Calcutta Review for June, 1 854,
No. XLIV, p. 305 :-
"In Bengal, with its thirtjr-seven millions, the Govern-
ment bestows 8,000 rupees annually on Vernacular Educa-
tion ! One-third the salary of a Collector of the revenue I
As much is expended on 200 prisoners in jails. How
different is it in America. Siljestom in his Educational
Institutions of the United States, remarks :
'In America, popular education has from the
beginning been based upon the idea of citizenship, not of
philanthropy. There the gift of education to the people
has not been considered merely as an act of charity to the
poor, but as a privilege which every citizen as such, had a
right to claim, and a duty which, by virtue of the social
contract, every citizen binds himself to fulfil ; and for the
purpose of bestowing such education, (that is to say, the
minimum of knowledge which every citizen ought to
possess), the State is entitled to tax the community ;
whereas, the higher branches of education, which only a
small number of the people have the means of acquiring,
have been looked upon as matters concerning only those
individuals who are anxious to avail themselves thereof,
and have in consequence been left to private enterprise ;
the general force of circumstances, and the encouragement
held out by the emoluments bestowed by the State on its
servants, being regarded as sufficient inducements to those
who aspire to enter the public service, to acquire the neces-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 123
sary knowledge. The immediate consequences hereof
are, that while in America we find most excellent popular
schools, maintained at the expense of the State, there are
but few institutions connected with the higher branches of
education which do not owe their origin and maintenance
solely to the exertions of individuals or private associa-
tions.'
But, as shown by the evidence of Mr. Halliday,
no encouragement was given by the authorities in
India to the vernaculars. Their cultivation was left
to the natives. And how creditably they performed
their task is evident from the evidence of Mr. J. C.
Marshman before the Select Committee of the House
of Commons on Indian Territories on 21 st July, 1853.
He said :
"The difficulty which was felt 10 or 12 years ago
regarding books for a course of vernacular education is
rapidly disappearing ; and at the present time, if the Gov-
ernment were prepared to give suitable encouragement,
that is to say, to the extent of 1,000 or 1,500 sterling,
for the translation of the books which might be required,
in the course of three or four years it would have as com-
plete a vernacular school library as could be desired at
present.
* * * * *
"Those who have been opposed to vernacular educa-
tion, and are for confining all their exertions to English
instruction, have been in the habit of decrying translations ;
but there can be no reason why a translation of a good
work on history, or geography, or astronomy should not be
quite as useful as the original. Our own literature, al-
124 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
though it contains the finest classics, is at the present time
enriched by translations from the German, and that litera-
ture itself began three or four centuries ago in translations.
If the Committee will allow me, I will read a short extract
from Wharton, who in his 'History of English Poetry,'
says, 'Caxton, by translating, and procuring to be trans-
lated a great number of books from the French, greatly
contributed to promote the state of literature in England.*
This was the mode in which our literature, now so rich
and complete, commenced, and it is the mode in which
vernacular literature, more especially for schools, must
commence in India. I think it is worthy of remark, that
as the natives do necessarily receive their knowledge of
our laws, in which all their interests are bound up, through
the means of translations, there can be no reason what-
ever why they should not be able to receive the main facts
of history, geography, and astronomy through the same
medium."
But the Indian authorities did nothing to encour-
age the cultivation of the vernaculars. Perhaps it
was not considered politically expedient to do so. Or
it may be that some of the Anglicists wanted to sup-
press the vernaculars and thought it possible that these
languages could be extinguished. For the Chairman
asked Mr. Marshman
4 '8632. There has been an idea that the spread of
English will gradually supersede the use of the vernacular
dialects in India, and obviate the necessity of cultivating
them ; do you share that opinion X*
Mr. Marshman in reply said,
"Not at all ; I do not think it is borne out by experi-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 125
ence ; certainly not by the experience which we have in
Bengal. It is impossible to extinguish the language of
30,000,000 of people ; English will, doubtless in the course
of time, become the classical language of Bengal, and
every native of respectability will endeavour to give a
knowledge of it to his children ; but at the same time, the
vernacular language of Bengal, and that of the North-
Western Provinces, and of the other provinces throughout
India, will continue to be used and to be cultivated to an
increasing degree. In fact, as the Government have
abolished the Persian language, and made the vernacular
language of each province the language of the Courts and
of public business, those languages become permanently
and for ever fixed in the habits of the people. / do not
think there is an adequate idea in this country of the extent
to which the Bengalee language is at the present time
cultivated and employed by the natives themselves. We
have found that in exact proportion to the efforts which
are made for the dissemination of the English language,
the adherence of the natives to their old language, and their
anxiety to improve and to use it, is continually increasing.
In the year 1800, when the Serampore missionaries first
began their labours, and set about the civilisation (?) and
evangelisation of the province of Bengal, they found that
there was not a single printed book in Bengalee extant,
with the exception of the laws of the Government, and
one dictionary. There was not a prose work existing in
the Bengalee language, and they had everything to create.
They employed the ablest native to compose works, and
it was from their press that the first publications were
issued. About 13 years ago, the Committee of Public
Instruction published a list of the works in the Bengalee
126 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
language which they found then existing ; that is, 40 years
after the Serampore missionaries had begun to print books
in the language ; and they found that there were 50 works
which had been issued under the auspices of Europeans,
and 173 which had been published by the natives them-
selves. If the Committee will permit me, I will quote a
remark which was made by an influential paper, on the
first announcement of this fact : 'Many of these works are,
it is true, composed of the most contemptible trash ;
others, and by far too large a portion of them, consist of
amatory poems ; but many are of a higher character, and
contain disquisitions on law, religion, metaphysics,
medicine, and philosophy. With this list before us, we
ask whether a language which has already received such
a degree of cultivation as to be capable of conveying ideas
to the mind on so large a variety of subjects, of which
some are not wanting in abstruseness, can be that poor,
meagre, wretched, inefficient tongue which some of the
patrons of English have taken it to be ; whether a
language which can express the subtilties of law and philo-
sophy, and can impart the enthusiasm of poetry, and give
a stimulus to the most voluptuous imagination, does stand
in need of a whole century of improvement before it can
be fit for the purposes of national education/ This report
was published by the Committee about 12 years ago. Last
year a friend of mine made a collection of all the books
that could be obtained in the Bengalee language, and he
found that the number of works had been multiplied to
400 ; and at the present time there are no less than 40
native presses in Calcutta, continually employed by the
natives themselves in the publication of books. The
number of volumes sold the year before last amounted to
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 127
no less than 30,000 ; and hence, notwithstanding the
endeavour to diffuse English throughout the country, the
Bengalee language is a more powerful medium of impres-
sion on the native mind even than English. I think that
with the advantages which the Government have just
given to the natives of the country, by introducing a liberal
system for the transmission of books at a low price, the
native press is likely to receive an astonishing impulse."
Had the vernaculars been employed as the
media of instruction, their cultivation would have
progressed by leaps and bounds, and very useful
literature on every subject would have been produced
in them. It is the demand which creates the supply.
There being no demand for useful works in our verna-
culars, it is small wonder that we had hardly any
decent vernacular literature to boast of. In 1 853 the
Japanese language was not half so well advanced as
Bengalee, Hindee or other leading vernacular dialects
of India. If useful literature in Japanese has since
been cultivated, there is no reason why the same
should not have taken place in our vernaculars also
had they been properly encouraged. But the cultiva-
tion of the vernaculars was left to the people them-
selves.
Thus it would be seen that neither in the dis-
semination of general education nor in the cultivation
of our vernaculars, the people of India during 20
years, i.e., from 1833 1853 received that amount
of patronage and aid from the Government of their
128 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
country which every civilised government is bound
to render to its subjects.
There was established a Bengal Vernacular
Society, regarding whose programme, the Calcutta
Review for 1851 wrote as follows:
PROGRAMME OF THE BENGAL VERNACULAR SOCIETY, 1851.
"It has been objected by some, that translations into
the vernaculars are absurd, because they cannot transfuse
all the shades of thought of the original ; that the Bengali
is the rude tongue of a semi-barbarous race ; that dialects
are already too numerous in India ; and that we ought to
abandon translations, and teach the people through English
alone.
*****
"We shall take up the various objections urged
against the Vernacular Translation Society seriatim.
"1. 'There are so many dialects in India.' There
are only foe principal tongues to a population of 150
millions ; Bengali, the language of 25 millions, Urdu,
spoken from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, Telugu,
Tamil, and Mahratta. Now the Delhi Vernacular Transla-
tion Society's labours may be of use to 30 millions and
those of the Bengal Translation Society to 25 millions a
greater number than speak the Dutch, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, Danish. Swedish, and Polish languages res-
pectively. Would any of the nations using these languages
tolerate a proposition, that no translations should be made
into them, because they are used by a limited number?
Are we to have no translations made from German or
French into English, because the number of readers is
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 129
limited? So far from it we see even our American
friends devoting a considerable expenditure of time and
money to a series of translations from German into English,
even though only a limited number will avail themselves
of these.
"2. 'The Bengali is the rude dialect of a semi-
barbarous race.' We leave the Bengalis themselves,
on the ground of patriotism or nationality, to deal with the
latter part of this proposition. But, we ask, can that be a
rude dialect, which has been made to convey, expressively
and suitably, the truths of natural history, chemistry,
natural philosophy, mental philosophy, and above all,
which has been found fully equal to express the mysterious
dogmas of revelation, the lyric effusions of Isaiah, and the
lofty strains of the minor prophets of a Scripture ? Besides,
the Bengali, in its derivation from that noble tongue, the
Sanskrit, possesses unbounded resources for borrowing
terms and phraseology and is gradually increasing in its
capabilities. The Moslem power has not been able to extir-
pate it, and all the energy of an Aurungzebe could not
drive it from the homes and hearts of the people. By its
close affinity with their venerated Sanskrit, it preserves the
lingering rays of the long-faded glories of their ancient
literature. Without touching on its merits as a translation,
we would refer to Yates's translation of the Bible in Bengali
as a monument of the degree of elegance and expressive-
ness to which the Bengali language has attained.
"3. 'We ought to teach all the natives through
English ; and then translation would not be necessary.*
We do not now treat of what is desirable, but of what is
practicable. We think it very desirable that there were
only one language in the world, and regret that the con-
9
130 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
fusion of tongues ever took place ; but we have to deal
with a different state of things. We are in a country,
where the Europeans are but a handful compared with the
natives ; where we have to encounter the antipathies
arising from difference of race, creed, manners ; and
where, with few exceptions, the Hindus regard us with
jealousy, though conscious of the benefits we have con-
ferred. We have therefore to do with the practical.
Ample supplies of books are imported from England for
those natives who understand English. Are we to do
nothing for the millions in the present generation, who will
have no opportunitv of reading these books? The Calcutta
Bible Society has spent probably more than four lakhs of
rupees in Bengali translations of the Scriptures, but an
intelligent reading of the Scriptures requires other books
explanatory, as the Bible abounds with references to
subjects of Geography, Natural History, Ancient History,
Jewish customs, &c. Now, these books have to be trans-
lated ; and, if translations are to be condemned, it virtually
amounts to condemning translations of the Scriptures, and
to pronouncing useless the exertions of Missionary socie-
ties, who in rural districts have to instruct the people
through the medium of their own language. Indeed, if
England itself, which possesses such a rich indigenous
literature, has provided so many translations from other
tongues into its own, a fortiori, Bengal, with its poor verna-
cular literature, requires translations much more urgently.
"4. It is said, that 'translations do not convey the
full force of the original,* Very true : and this is simply
an argument for advising all, who can consult original
works, to do so ; but leading ideas and historical facts
admit of being easily transferred into another tongue, and
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 131
particularly into such a language as Bengali, which has
such unbounded resources in compounding terms. But
even in the most difficult class of works to be translated,
viz., the poetical, the English people insisted on having
translations, as in Mickle's Lusiad, Carey's Dante, Pope's
Homer, Fairfax's Tasso, Dryden's Virgil, &c. Unless a
design is entertained to extirpate the Bengali language,
translations must be adopted."
Let us hear on this question the voice of History. We
have seen lately that, the Protestant Church had been
established in Ireland for three centuries, and hitherto has
proved a signal failure in one of the objects it had in view,
viz., to unite England and Ireland by one religion, as well
as one language and that, after the experiment has been
tried for three centuries on the part of protestants of con-
veying religious knowledge solely through English, they
now admit that a wrong step had been taken, and that they
should have begun with education and translations into the
Vernacular, as had been the practice of the Romish priest-
hood there. Among the Welsh the feeling even now is so
strong, that their remonstrances succeeded in inducing the
Government lately to appoint a Bishop, who could preach
in Welsh. The English church has been a comparative
failure in Wales, owing partly to its clergy not being ac-
quainted with the language of the people, and despising
the Vernacular. We are not advocates ourselves for
perpetuating the colloquial use of the Gaelic and Welsh.
We think it far better that Ireland and Wales should use
the noble English language ; but we adduce it to shew
how difficult it is to eradicate a Vernacular language, and
particularly when it is identified with the historical recollec-
tions and literary glory of a people. Queen Elizabeth
132 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
proscribed under a severe penalty the use of the Irish
language ; and the Mussulmans applied every means to
extirpate the Vernaculars of India. What have been the
results, with respect to the Bengali in particular? It is in-
creasing in richness and energy of expression every day,
and is now much superior as a language, to what English
was in the days of Chaucer.
In Italy, the indigenous tongue was the Latin in Roman
days, the use of which has been maintained subsequently
with all the influence and supremacy of the Church of
Rome. All the municipal acts of the towns were recorded
in Latin ; public acts, solemn deeds, education, literary
and scientific intercourse, all were carried on in Latin.
Boccacio and Petrarch wrote their most elaborate works
in Latin, despising the * 'lingua vulgare," the language of
the mob ; (their Latin works are now forgotten, and only
what they have written in the vulgar language survives).
Everything, therefore, seemed to favour the perpetuation
of the Latin.
But was the formation of the Italian Vernacular, which
rose on the ruins of the ancient Latin, prevented? No ;
the influence of one man gave the impulse. Dante arose.
Deeply read in classic lore, and appreciating the beauties
of the Augustan age, he longed to impart them in the
"lingua vulgare," and to unseal to the many what had
been only known to the few : hence his immortal
"Commedia," which, like Milton's Paradise Lost, will ever
remain as an example of the influence of a great mind in
making a language great, in wielding vulgar phrases by the
magic pen of genius, and making them capable of ex-
pressing the most sublime ideas. Dante is justly called the
"Father of Italian literature,'* as Lorenzo de Medici may
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 133
be styled its foster parent, from the encouragement he gave
to literary composition.
Germany comes next, where literature was at such a
low ebb in the days of Frederic the Great, though Luther
had ennobled and fixed the language by translating the
Bible into it. Frederic the Great, not content with his
military conquests, aimed at superseding German literature
by French ; but he succeeded as little in his efforts against
the Vernacular, as the Mussulmans did in India. The
moment he laid his head on the pillow of death, the
German nation rose as one man in defence of their national
tongue, and we see, in the prodigious strides that German
literature has made since, the truth of the remark.
"Naturam fierca expellee, tamen usque recurret."
Spain presents another strong case. The Roman and
Moslem conquerors there had given every ascendancy to
their languages. Yet in spite of all social and political
obstacles, the Spanish language was formed and finally
gained the predominance.
We hope there may be no necessity again to recur to
this subject, but that all the friends of native education
will co-operate on the grand basis of giving every oppor-
tunity for the attainment of a complete education both in
English and the Vernacular ; so as to make the former the
medium for acquiring, and the latter of diffusing ideas.
C. R., Vol. XV (1851), V IX.
The Christian Missionaries also helped the cause
of the education of Indians by the establishment of
schools and colleges in this country. But what they
did was from interested motives.
134 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Missionaries and Education. The Calcutta
Review for June, 1851, wrote:
"But it ought to be frankly acknowledged, that
though the Missionaries were foremost in the field, and
foremost in labour and zeal and love for the natives of
this land, they do not seem to have entertained any
scheme for national education, or any idea of introducing
on a large scale the science and literature of Europe, as
helps to Christianization, or means of social improvement. '*
(P. 345.)
* * * * *
"The great and startling success of the Hindu College
attracted many eyes ; and none, with greater interest, than
those of the friends and supporters of Missions. It was
evident that a new door of access had been opened into
the native mind. The College of Serampore and Bishop's
College were the first steps, on the part of the Christian
community, to take advantage of the new opening ; but
the former was too remote, at that time, from the centre
of influence ; and the latter was too exclusively sectarian,
and too narrow in its basis, to have anything in common
with a popular movement. In the meantime, while the
Church of England and the Baptists were breaking ground,
the Presbyterians had not been idle.
In 1823, the Rev. Dr. Bryce memoralized the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland on the duty of sending
missionaries to India not, indeed, to teach, but to preach
to the educated natives. In 1825, the Assembly agreed to
establish a General Seminary of Education, with branch
schools in the surrounding district, and to recommend to
the head master, who was to be a regularly ordained
clergyman, to give lectures, distribute fitting tracts, and use
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 135
every effort to cultivate acquaintance with intelligent and
educated natives.
"The Church of Scotland was even more fortunate in
her choice, than the Government had been in the case of
Mr. Wilson. The lustre of every other name connected
with native education, pales before that of Duff ; and the
General Assembly's school, opened by him in 1830, soon
rivalled, and speedily eclipsed the popularity of the Hindu
College itself. His vast stores of information, his splendid
oratorical powers, his ready and astonishing argumentative
resources, the warmth and kindliness of his manner, his
happy gift in teaching, of seizing the attention, and im-
pressing the minds of the very youngest, and, above all,
the manifest fact, that his whole soul was in his work, in
a very short time, won for him a reputation, both native
and European, which has gone on increasing to this day.
By sheer dint of good teaching, the school won its way
into Dublic favour. The natives forgot or sacrificed their
fears and prejudices ; * *" (pp. 359-360).
THE HINDOO COLLEGE.
"On the 20th January, 1817, the school was opened
for the first time, in a house (304, Chitpore Road) hired for
the purpose ; ******
"During the six years that intervened between 1817
and 1823, the school was shifted about from place to place.
It was first removed to another house in the Chitpore Road,
then, to a house, afterwards occupied by Dr. Duff, for the
General Assembly's Institution. Its next flight was of all
the most eccentric. The sapient Managers removed the
so-called Hindu College into the heart of the Bow Bazar ;
which, when explained for the benefit of the uninitiated,
136 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
means, that they took it out of the native town altogether,
and set it down in a street, notorious as the haunt of
drunken sailors, and the most desperate and dissolute
characters of a great heathen metropolis. From this they
again moved off to a scarcely more congenial vicinity the
well known Tiretta Bazar.
"It (the Government) had already resolved to establish
a Sanskrit College in 1821, and to allow 30,000 rupees
annuallv for that purpose : and, when the question of a
building for the new institution came to be entertained in
1823, happily for the Hindu College, it was agreed to locate
them both under the same roof.
'Rome,' however, 'was not built in a day.* The
foundation stone of the new building was not laid, until
the 25th of February, 1824 ; and we may notice here, that
more than three years elapsed after that time ere it was
ready for the reception of the students. C. R., June, 1852,
pp. 346348.
The want of subordinates in the Medical and
Public Works Departments induced the Government
of India to establish Medical and Engineering
Colleges in this country. The Medical College of
Calcutta was established in 1835 during the regime
of Lord William Bentinck. The first Indian who
joined it and broke the trammels of caste prejudices
by performing dissections on human bodies was the
celebrated Pandit Madhu Sudan Gupta.
Regarding him, Mr. Frederick John Mouat in
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 137
a lecture delivered before the Society of Arts, London,
in March, 1888, said,-
"No man deserves more to live in the history of bene-
factors of his country than Pandit Madhu Sudan Gupta, of
the Medical College of Calcutta, the first Hindu of high
caste who dissected the human body in public, a feat of
courage and humanity impossible to surpass, when the
conditions of Hindu life are considered/*
It cannot be denied that medical education was
the best means of the destruction of the superstitions
and prejudices of the Indian community. The
establishment then of the Medical Colleges has done
incalculable good to the Indian society and has been
the most useful factor in the social reformation of the
country. It was the students from the Medical
College of Bengal who were the pioneers of Indian
students in England and by their brilliant achieve-
ments in the Colleges and University of London
proved to the natives of England that Indians could
hold their own in every walk of life. The Indian
Medical Service was the first bureacratic fort whose
strong wall was successfully breached by the assault
of a pure-blooded Indian.
The Engineering College at Rurki was estab-
lished in 1847 by Mr. Thomason, Lieutenant-
Governor of the North- Western Provinces, whose
name it bears, for the training of subordinates required
for the Ganges Canal, which was then being con-
138 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
structed. It has also done good work, but now it
has become the stronghold not of pure-blooded
natives but of " statutory" natives.
THE RENEWAL OF THE EAST INDIA
COMPANY'S CHARTER IN 1853.
Up to 1853, whatever the Indian authorities did
for education was in a very half-hearted and perfunc-
tory manner. They were, to speak the truth, afraid
of educating the people of this country. One Captain
P. Page in his Memorandum dated East India House,
April 9th, 1819, published in the Appendix to Report
from Select Committee on the affairs of the East India
Company, 1832, Vol. V. (Military) pp. 480483,
wrote :
"I would reward good conduct (of natives) with
honour, but never with power ; *
"Nullum imperium tutum, nisi benevolentia munitum.
The good will of the natives may be retained without
granting them power, the semblance is sufficient ; and
although I abhor in private life that maxim of Roche-
faucault's which recommends a man to live with his
friends as if they were one day to be his enemies, I think
it may be remembered with effect by the sovereigns of
India."
It is possible that there were other servants of
the East India Company who thought likewise and
were therefore afraid of imparting education, as
knowledge is power.
From the date of the attainment of political power
140 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
after the battle of Plassey in 1 757 down to 1 853, that
is, for nearly a period of 100 years, the Christian
Indian authorities always discussed in all its bearings
the question of the education of Indians. Was it wise
and safe to educate the heathens of India? that was
the question which was often and often asked by the
Christian administrators of India. Spoke Macaulay
from his place in the House of Commons in 1833 :
"We shall never consent to administer the pousta
to a whole community, to stupify and paralyse a great
people whom God has committed to our charge, for
the wretched purpose of rendering them more amenable
to our control. What is power worth if it is founded on
vice, on ignorance, and on misery ; * * * *
"Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in
order that we may keep them submissive? Or do we
think that we can give them knowledge without awaken-
ing ambition? Or do we mean to awaken ambition and
provide it with no legitimate vent? Who will answer one
of these questions in the affirmative? Yet one of them
must be answered in the affirmative, by every person who
maintains that we ought permanently to exclude the
natives from high office. I have no fears. The path of
duty is plain before us : and it is also the path of wisdom,
of national prosperity, of national honour/*
But an opinion has been expressed that Macaulay
was not sincere in what he said. Writes Mr. Digby
in his "Prosperous British India," p. 61 :
"The climax is reached by Thomas Babington
Macaulay, then Member for Leeds, who was in himself
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 141
as Law Minister in India, a Member of Parliament after-
wards to show that much of what he said was of the
tongue merely and not of the heart."
The Indian authorities, it has been said, were
afraid of educating the people of India.
Even so late as 1853, some of the Anglo-Indian
witnesses examined before the Select Committees on
Indian affairs were not in favour of educating the
natives of India, for they thought that would make
them disloyal. Take for instance the evidence be-
before the Select Committee of the Commons on 4th
August, 1853, of Major M. J. Rowlandson who
described himself as Persian Interpreter for seventeen
years under several Commanders-in-chief at Madras
and also being Secretary to a Board, and to a Com-
mittee for the public instruction of the natives of
that presidency. The questions and the answers
which he gave to those questions are reproduced
below :
"9745. Will you state to the Committee whether you
regard the operation of the Government system of educa-
tion as being favorable or otherwise to the best interests
of the natives of India? The result of my experience has
led me to think that it is not favorable.
* * * *
"9748. Do you or do you not regard the exclusion
of the Christian Scriptures, even from a class which parties
might voluntarily attend in the schools supported by the
Government, as a course which ought to be adopted or
recommended? I think not, from the result of my
142 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
experience ; and, on these grounds, that I have observed
in the native pupils that while, so to speak, there was an
aggravation of their capacity fdr evil by the elevation of
their intellects, there was not a counteracting principle to
prevent the exertion of that increased capacity for evil.
I have seen native students who had obtained an insight
into European literature and history, in whose minds there
seemed to be engendered a spirit of disaffection towards
the British Government.
"9775. You have expressed an opinion that the
education of the natives in India has a tendency to render
them inimical to the British Government? I believe that
such is the tendency of the Government system of
education.
"9776. Will you explain to the Committee what you
consider to be the cause of that and what is the nature
and object of their enmity to the Government? My
impression is this, that as the native of India gains an
insight into the history of British India, and into
the history of Europe generally, an idea is con-
veyed to his mind that it is something monstrous that
a country like India should be possessed by a handful of
foreigners ; and hence, there naturally almost springs up
a desire in his mind to be instrumental in setting that
country free from this foreign dominance, and there being
no counteracting principle, nor any sense of the duty of
obedience, the natural result is a feeling of disaffection to
the British Government.
"9777. Is that feeling found to exist in persons of a
military class, or those who are generally supposed to be
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 143
pacifically disposed ? I think I have observed it both in
Mahomedans and Hindoos, particularly in Mahomedans.
"9778. Such a feeling is found to exist, notwith-
standing their deep conviction of the integrity of the
administration under British rule, and the mysterious
character of the British power? I think the two things
exist together ; one is felt by the people at large, especially
by the Hindoo community, and the other I have observed
in the individual instances to which I have more promin-
ently alluded ; in fact, it is the almost uniform result, as
far as my experience goes, of their being enlightened
merely in European literature.
9779. Would not the same historical knowledge
lead them to suppose that, even if they could shake off
the English yoke, they would only become the subjects
of military adventurers from the north, whose yoke might
be still heavier? I believe reflecting Hindoos feel that
they are gainers by the rule of the British Government,
contrasting their present condition with what they suffered
under their former Mahomedan rulers ; but with native
students, in the Government Schools, I repeat, one sees
that the effect upon the native mind is this ; there appears
to be a feeling of insubordination and disquiet at the
thought that they should remain under the dominion of a
handful of Europeans, and from a love of change, and in
the hope that in the struggle they might themselves come
more to the surface, or uppermost, we find that the result
is this feeling of disaffection .
"9780. Would not they be inclined to think that the
result of the withdrawal of the British would be a state
of anarchy? I can quite conceive that they may think
that possible ; but with the hope of present advantage,
144 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
and a general feeling of dislike to foreign rule, particularly
when they become acquainted with the secret of the
British Empire, a sense of disaffection is created, and a
hope excited, that in the change of masters, or in the
change of rule, they may receive some personal benefit," 5
This gallant officer, no doubt, represented the
views and opinions of a very large class of his co-
religionists and compatriots. But there were others,
who did not share his views.
Thus Mr. (afterwards Sir Frederick) Halliday,
who rose to be the first Lieutenant-Governor of
Bengal, was asked the following question :
"8782. Is there any ground for the supposition that
the spread of education is dangerous to the British
Government ?"
His answer was :
"None whatever ; on the contrary, it appears to me
that the spread of education must assist the Government.
The educated classes, I think, feel themselves, and must
feel themselves, more bound to us, and as having more in
common with us, than they have with their uneducated
countrymen, apart from the general fact that it is more
easy to govern a people who have acquired a knowledge
of good and evil as to government, than it is to govern
them in utter ignorance ; and on the whole popular know-
ledge is a safer thing to deal with than popular
ignorance, "f
* Sixth Report from the Select Committee on Indian territories,
1853, pp. 155157.
t Ibid, p. 59.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 145
The same witness mentioned how anxious the
people of Bengal were to receive the benefits of
English education. He said,
"I am quite sure that the people of Bengal are in
a state, ready, not only to second, but to anticipate any
effort which the Government might make on the subject.
The condition of Bengal, with regard to English education,
is peculiar ; the desire for it is becoming a craving, the
people look for it most anxiously, even those of a very
low class. In obscure villages, to which you could
scarcely have supposed the name of English education
would have reached, you find persons joining together,
and making attempts to establish schools and obtain
teachers, to the best of their means, and anxiously looking
for assistance ; at the same time doing a great deal for
themselves according to the means at their disposal. It
is also a curious fact, that among the Bengalees^ unener-
getic as they are, in many respects a very extraordinary
degree of energy prevails in favour of English education
among those who have received it ; it appears as if a
reasonable inoculation of English education among them
begets a strong desire to inoculate others, and to spread
it to the utmost of their power. It is a very creditable
point in their character. You see constantly men who
have received a good education at our institutions going
forth, and at great pains, and even expense, exerting
themselves to the utmost for the sake of spreading know-
ledge, for the mere sake of the good which arises from it.
It is very desirable, I think, that the Government should
take speedy advantage of that extraordinary fact in the
present history of the native mind in Bengal ; and by
10
146 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
doing so, I believe you might spread education enor-
mously, and very advantageously, at a comparatively
small expense.**
As said so often before, the Government played
a very secondary part in the dissemination of educa-
tion in this country. The people themselves took
the initiative and paid for their education. Could
the Government now do anything to stop the flowing
tide or say, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther?"
No, it was impossible for the Government to do so.
Hence, they were obliged to look the danger if
imparting education to Indians were so in the face.
Yet, not in hot haste, did they take any step in the
matter of the spread of education in this country.
For nearly a century they discussed well this question
in all its pros and cons before they arrived at any
decision regarding it. On the occasion of the renewal
of the East India Company's Charter, for the last
time of its existence, in 1853, several witnesses were
examined before the Parliamentary Committees to
give their opinions whether it was desirable to impart
education to the inhabitants of India. Mr. J. C.
Marshman in his evidence before the Lord's Com-
mittee on the 16th June, 1853, was asked by Lord
Monteagle of Brandon :
"6566. You have given to the Committee many
important recommendations, coupled with the expression
of a strong opinion as to the necessity of extending
education in India, and with the expression of your judg-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 147
ment of the inadequacy of the present resources applied
for that purpose ; do you apprehend any danger to British
connexion in consequence of the extension of education
in India?"
In reply, Mr. Marshman said.
"I have never thought that there was any danger
whatever to our political supremacy connected with the
spread of education in India. I do not think that the
loyalty of the natives has been in the slightest degree
impaired by the amount of education which we have
already communicated to them. Perhaps some of the
Members of the Government may think that there is an
incompatibility between the idea of a despotic Govern-
ment and a free Press, and that hereafter there may
possibly be some difficulties arising from the circumstances
of the freedom of the Press ; but even those who entertain
that idea never suppose for a moment that there is any
danger to our dominion from the general education of the
natives."
Then he was asked by Lord Wynford
"6567. There is no indisposition on the part of the
Government of India to extend Grants for Education?"
Mr. Marshman in answer said
"I believe that the Government of India would rejoice
if they had the permission of the authorities in this country
to enlarge the educational institutions ; but they are of
course limited by the resources at their disposal, and
which can not be increased without the permission of the
Home Authorities."
Sir Charles E. Trevelyan was subjected to most
searching inquiry on the subject of education of
148 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Indians by the Members of the Lords* Committee on
Indian Territories in 1853. His examination lasted
for several days. Some of the questions put to him
and his answers to them are reproduced below :
"6719. [Chairman.] Are the Committee to under-
stand, that, in your opinion, the object most to be desired
is to bring about a separation between India and England
upon the terms most conducive to the interests of both
countries, or that you think it more desirable not to bring
about a separation between the two countries?
I conceive that in determining upon a line of policy
we must look to the probable eventualities. We must
have present to our minds what will be the ultimate result
of each line of policy. Now my belief is, that the ultimate
result of the policy of improving and educating India will
be, to postpone the separation for a long indefinite
period, and that when it does come, it will take place
under circumstances very happy for both parties. Whereas
I conceive that the result of the opposite policy of holding
and governing India for the benefit of the civilians and
the military men employed there, or according to any
view less liberal than that of doing the utmost justice we
can to India, may lead to a separation at any time, and
must lead to it at a much earlier period and under much
more disadvantageous circumstances than would be the
result if we take the opposite course.
* * * *
"6721. Therefore, in recommending the progress of
education, and, under proper safeguards, the employment
of the Natives in the public service, you are not contem-
plating such a separation, but you are recommending a
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 149
course which is, in your opinion, the least likely to lead
to that alternative?
I am recommending the course which, according to
my most deliberate view which I have held for a great
many years, founded, I believe, on a full knowledge of
the subject, will be most conducive to the continuance of
our dominion, and most beneficial both to ourselves and
to the Natives. I may mention, as a familiar illustration,
that I was 12 years in India, and that the first six years
were spent up the country, with Delhi for my head-
quarters, and the other six at Calcutta. The first six years
represent the old regime of pure native ideas, and there
were continual wars and rumours of wars. The only
form which native patriotism assumed up the country was
plotting against us, and meditating combinations against
us and so forth. Then I came to Calcutta : and there I
found quite a new state of things. The object there was
to have a free Press, to have Municipal institutions, to
promote English education and the employment of the
Natives, and various things of that sort.
"6724. Lord Monteagle of Brandon. Then, suppos-
ing one of two courses to be taken, either the abandonment
of the education and employment of the Natives, or an
extension of education, or an extension, with due pre-
caution, of the employment of the Natives, which of
those two courses, in your judgment, will lead to the
longest possible continuance of the connexion of India
with England?
Pecidedly the extension of education and the
employment of the Natives ; I entertain no doubt what-
ever upon that question."
150 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
It is not necessary to make any further extracts
from his evidence. Sir Charles Trevelyan succeeded
in convincing the noble and honorable members of
the Committees of both Houses of Parliament that
there was not only no danger, but it would be
expedient for the safety of British rule in India and
maintaining the political supremacy of England in the
East to educate the inhabitants of India, especially in
English and to anglicise them.
Mr. Charles Hay Cameron, who was President
of the Council of Education, as a witness before the
Lord's Committee on the 7th July, 1 853, was examin-
ed as follows :
"7450. Lord Monteagle of Brandon.] Do you
anticipate any danger to the connexion between England
and India by the extension of education amongst all
classes of the subjects of the Queen in India?
"No ; I look upon it as a bond of union.
"7451. Will you state your reason for that opinion?
"My reason is, that their own literatures, the Sanskrit
and the Mahomedan literatures, are of such a character
as to excite the minds of those who study them against
the dominion of infidels, as the Mahomedans would say,
and of Mlechas as the Hindoos would say. The influence
likely to be exercised by education in our literature and
science is, of course, of quite an opposite kind, calculated
to inspire respect for us, as their teachers, who bring them
up to the level of the most civilised nations of the world.
"7452. Would not the gravitation of the educated
classes be all in the direction of the civilization of Europe,
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 151
rather than the turbulence of Asia, and above all, of Asia
in a state of revolution?
"I think entirely so. I think the classes we are
educating know perfectly well that their sole dependence
is upon us ; and that if we were voluntarily to leave the
country, they would immediately have to succumb to the
warlike classes. They are perfectly aware of that, I think,
and that their safety consists, and will consist for a great
number of years to come, in the protection of the British
Government.
"7459. Earl of Ellenborough. Do you think that we
can educate the civil classes, and prevent education from
reaching the military classes ? *
"No ; I should desire to educate both.
"7454. Lord Monteagle of Brandon.] Do you think
that the military class, educated and improved by the
course of instruction which you have witnessed in some
of the Indian educational establishments, would be more
dangerous to British connection than the uneducated
military classes?
"No ; I think it would be less dangerous, for the
reason which I have given ; and, looking at the examples
of history, we know that the great conquering nations of
antiquity educated their subjects up to their own level.*'
THE EDUCATION DESPATCH OF 1854
From the evidence of competent witnesses like
Marshman, Trevelyan and others before the Select
Committees of the two Houses of Parliament appoint-
ed to enquire into the affairs of the East India Com-
pany on the occasion of the renewal of their Charter
in 1853, the authorities were convinced that it was
not politically inexpedient to educate the inhabitants
of India nay, on the contrary, the more the diffusion
of education took place in India, the greater would
be the security of their dominions ; that educated
Indians instead of being any source of danger would
be towers of strength to the rulers of British India.
It was after nearly a century's discussion then that
the British authorities, partly, at any rate, from con-
siderations of political expediency, determined to
impart education to their Indian fellow-subjects.
With that object in view was framed the famous
Educational Despatch of 1854, commonly known as
"the Intellectual Charter of India" or as Wood's
Despatch, for Sir Charles Wood was then President
of the Board of Control of the East India Company,
a situation corresponding at present to that of the
Secretary of State for India. This document is attri-
buted to the pen of Mr. John Stuart Mill, the well-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 153
known English thinker and philosopher, who was at
that time a clerk in the India Office. But we think
we are right in saying that it was prepared by Lord
Northbrook.
The Education Despatch of 1854 was a feeble
imitation of the English Education Minute of 1853.
Regarding this Minute, Prof. Holman writes that
"On April 2, 1853, appeared the great revolutionary
minute,
"This was indeed a far-reaching act. At last the
education of the people is very definitely, though by no
means wholly, in the hands of the government. At least
they are going to provide, more or less effectively, for
the doing of the work ; though the initiation and control
of this work is left in the hands of private individuals,
acting under certain limitations and obligations imposed
by the Committee of Council." ( Loc. Cit. pp. 128-130).
This despatch consisted of a hundred paragraphs
and was addressed by the Court of Directors of the
East India Company to the Governor General of India
in Council, dated July 19th, 1854, No. 49. The
opening paragraphs breathe lofty philanthropy and
altruism ;
1. "It appears to us that the present time, when by
an Act of the Imperial Legislature the responsible trust of
the Government of India has again been placed in our
hands, is peculiarly suitable for the review of the progress
which has already been made, the supply of existing
deficiencies, and the adoption of such improvements as
154 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
may be best calculated to secure the ultimate benefit of
the people committed to our charge.
2. "Among many subjects of importance, none can
have a stronger claim to our attention than that of educa-
tion. It is one of our most sacred duties to be the means,
as far as in us lies, of conferring upon the natives of India
those vast moral and material blessings which flow from
the general diffusion of useful knowledge, and which India
may, under Providence, derive from her connection with
England. For, although British influence has already, in
many remarkable instances, been applied with great
energy and success to uproot demoralising practices, and
even crimes of a deeper dye, which for ages had prevailed
among the natives of India, the good results of those
efforts must, in order to be permanent, possess the further
sanction of a general sympathy in the native mind, which
the advance of education alone can secure."
The concluding paragraphs of the despatch ran
as follows :
"As a Government, we can do no more than direct
the efforts of the people, and aid them wherever they
appear to require most assistance. The result depends
more upon them than upon us ; and although we are fully
aware that the measures we have now adopted will in-
volve in the end a much larger expenditure upon
education from the revenues of India, or, in other words,
from the taxation of the people of India, than is at present
so applied, we are convinced, with Sir Thomas Munro,
in words used many years since, that any expense which
may be incurred for this object, 'will be amply repaid by
the improvement of the country ; for the general diffusion
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 155
of knowledge is inseparably followed by more orderly
habits, by increasing industry, by a taste for the comforts
of life, by exertion to acquire them, and by the growing
prosperity of the people.'
Regarding this despatch, which was reprinted
by the General Council of Education in India, in a
note to the reprint, the Secretary of that Council, the
Rev. James Johnston, wrote :
"This important despatch, which was sent out to the
Indian Government 1854, by Sir Charles Wood (Viscount
Halifax), then President of the Board of Control, and was
ratified, after the mutiny, by the despatch of Lord Stanley
(Earl of Derby) in 1859, is still the great Charter of Educa-
tion in India.
"It is reprinted by the 'General Council of Education
in India/ for the purpose of showing how admirably it is
fitted to meet the great want of that country a healthful
and liberal education. Their only regret is, that its rules
have been so little applied to the general education of
the poor, for which it was specially designed ; and that
its principles have been and still are, so largely departed
from in regard to the higher education. And their great
aim is, to press upon Government, both at home and in
India, the importance of seeing to the faithful and ade-
quate carrying out of its provisions."
The Educational Department as it exists in this
country at present has been the outcome of that Des-
patch. The Educational Department seemed to
have been designed, among other reasons, for making
provision for natives of England. Englishmen were
156 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
(and are now)* appointed to all the high and coveted
posts in the service.
But the education of Indians was also a necessity,
for otherwise it was impossible for the Indian Govern-
ment to secure public servants to fill the subordinate
posts in the State. This is evident from the Educa-
tional Despatch itself. Thus in its third paragraph,
it is written :
"We have, moreover, always looked upon the
encouragement of education as peculiarly important,
because calculated 'not only to produce a higher degree
of intellectual fitness, but to raise the moral character of
those who partake of its advantages, and so to supply you
with servants to whose probity you may with increased
confidence commit offices of trust," &c.
* * * *
Also in the 72nd paragraph they wrote :
"We have always been of opinion that the spread of
education in India will produce a greater efficiency in all
branches of administration, by enabling you to obtain the
services of intelligent and trustworthy persons in every
department of Government ; * * *
Again in the 73rd paragraph of the Despatch,
they wrote;
* The case is worse now than formerly, since the establishment
of the Indian Educational Service, which is called Indian, perhaps
because it is practically closed against Indians, that is, natives of India.
In reply to the Hon. Mr. B. N. Basu's interpellation in the Imperial
Legislative Council, it was stated that there are 208 Europeans against
3 Indians in the Indian Educational Service. [Written in 1912-1
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 157
"And we understand that it is often not so much the
-want of Government employment as the want of properly
qualified persons to be employed by Government, which
is felt, at the present time, in many parts of India/'
In the next paragraph (74), the reason of
educated men not accepting Government employment
was mentioned. It was there stated,
"And we can readily believe, with the Secretary to
the Board of Revenue in Bengal, that young men who
have passed a difficult examination in the highest branches
of philosophy and mathematics, are naturally disinclined
to accept such employment as persons who intend to
make the public service their profession must necessarily
commence with."
They also did not lose sight of other advantages
that would result to England from the education of
Indians. This would
"secure to us a larger and more certain supply of
many articles necessary for our manufactures and exten-
sively consumed by all classes of our population, as well
as an almost inexhaustible demand for the produce of
British labour."*
It was not, therefore, entirely from motives of
pure philanthropy that education was sought to be
imparted to Indians and the Despatch was prepared.
The Despatch itself clearly indicates philanthropy,
political expediency, administrative necessity and
commercial expansion as the motives. In fact it is
* Paragraphs 4 of the Despatch.
158 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
only children, old or young, who believe in unmixed
generosity as the motive of any public measure in any
country, Western or Eastern, which has a governing
class or caste. In such countries one of the motives
is always political expediency or administrative neces-
sity. And this is not necessarily a sinister motive,
though it is not philanthropy.
The Government of India also did not act upon
all the suggestions and recommendations laid down
in the Educational Despatch. Lord Dalhousie was
the Governor-General of India to whom the Despatch
was addressed. It fell to his lot to organise the
Educational Department. His latest biographer Sir
William Lee Warner says that he had to carry out the
policy dictated to him by the home authorities, that
is to say, Dalhousie was acting upon what another
Scotch Governor-General, Lord Elgin, called the
** Mandate Theory."
It did not suit the convenience of the East India
Company to do anything for the technical education
of Indians. England never did anything for India
which in any way came in conflict with her interests,
or which would not make India depend on her for
her material welfare. So while in England grants of
money were made to Mechanics' Institutes, for the
encouragement of art instruction, nothing of the sort
was done in India. Prof. Holman writes that
"In 1841 Mr. Gillon moved, in the Commons that
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 159
grants of money be made to Mechanics' Institutes, for the
encouragement of art instruction other than that given in
schools of design. Sir Robert Peel supported the motion,
on the grounds that foreign countries, especially Prussia,
were in advance of us in art instruction, and, therefore,
our industries would be likely to suffer ; also such work
as was done in Mechanics' Institutes was good for the
health and morals of the working-classes." ( Loc. Cit.
P. SO).
Sir Charles E. Trevelyan In his evidence before
the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the
Government of Indian Territories, on 21st June,
1853, pleaded in very strong terms for the technical
education of Indians. In answer to a question of the
Earl of Ellenborough, he said :
"I would also establish a college for instruction in art.
The natives have great capacities for art. They have a
remarkable delicacy of touch ; they have great accuracy
of eye ; and their power of imitation is quite extra-
ordinary. The extent to which they are capable of
successfully cultivating the decorative and fine arts has
been shown by the result of the recent Exhibition in
London. I beg leave to read two or three extracts from
reports upon the Great Exhibition, which will establish
that point. This is a report from Mr. Owen Jones upon
the decorative arts in connection with the Exhibition :
'In the East Indian Collection of textile fabrics at the
Great Exhibition, the perfection at which their artists have
arrived is most marvellous ; it was hardly possible to find
a discord ; contrasting colours appeared to have just the
tone and shade required. The contrivances by which
160 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
they corrected the power of any one colour in excess were
most ingenious.' * * * * 'It would be very desirable that
we should be made acquainted with the manner in which,
in the education of the Eastern artists, the management of
colour is made so perfect. It is most probable that they
work only from tradition, and a highly endowed natural
instinct for which all Eastern nations have ever been
remarkable.' In another paper, Mr. Owen Jones says,
'In the Indian Collection, we find no struggle after an
effect ; every ornament arises quietly and naturally from
the object decorated, inspired by some true feeling, or
embellishing some real want ; the same guiding principle,
the same evidence of thought and feeling in the artist is
everywhere present, in the embroidered and woven
garment tissues as in the humblest earthen vase, *
'In the management of colour, again, the Indians, in
common with most Eastern nations, are very perfect ; we
see here the most brilliant colours harmonised as by a
natural instinct it is difficult to find a discord ; the
relative values of the colours of ground and surfaces are
most admirably felt.* * * * And, 'The temporary exhi-
bition of the Indian and other Eastern Collections in the
Great Exhibition of 1851, was a boon to all those
European artists who had an opportunity of studying
them ; and let us trust that the foresight of the Govern-
ment, which has secured to us a portion of those
collections as permanent objects of study, will lead to still
higher results.
"Mr. Waagen, the Superintendent of the National
Gallery at Berlin, and a well-known writer upon art, says,
'In the fabrics of India, the correct principle that patterns
and colours should diversify plain surfaces, without
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 161
destroying or disturbing the impression of flatness, is as
carefully observed as it was in the middle ages, when the
decoration of walls, pavements and carpets was brought
to such perfection by the Arabs. But it is not only the
observance of this principle which distinguishes the Indian
stuffs in the Exhibition, they are remarkable for the rich
inventions shown in the patterns, in which the beauty,
distinction and variety of the forms, and the harmonious
blending of severe colours, called forth the admiration of
all true judges of art. What a lesson such designs afford
to manufacturers, even in those nations in Europe which
have made the greatest progress in industry.*
"The last extract I will give is the following, from
Mr. Redgrave's work on Design : *If we look at the
details of the Indian patterns, we shall be surprised at
their extreme simplicity, and be led to wonder at their
rich and satisfactory effect. It will soon be evident,
however, that their beauty results entirely from adherence
to the principles above described. The parts themselves
are often poor, ill-drawn and common-place ; yet, from
the knowledge of the designer, due attention to the just
ornamentation of the fabric, and the refined delicacy
evident in the selection of quantity and the choice of tints,
both for the ground, where gold is not used as a ground,
and for the ornamental forms, the fabrics, individually
and as a whole, are a lesson to our designers and manu-
facturers, given by those from whom we least expected
it. Moreover, in the adaptation of all these qualities of
design to the fabrics for which they are intended, there is
an entire appreciation of the effects to be produced by
the texture and foldings of the tissue when in use as an
article of dress, in so much that no draft of the design
11
162 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
can be made in any way to show the full beauty of the
manufactured article, since this is only called out by the
motion and folding on the fabric itself. An expression of
admiration for these manufactures must be called forth
from every one who examines them, and is justly due to
merits which are wholly derived from the true principles
on which these goods have been ornamented, and which
result from perfect consistency in the designer.'
"6636. Earl of Ellenborough.] Were you not dis-
appointed by the Indian part of the exhibition ; did you
think it a fair representative of India?
"No ; such as it was, it excited the admiration of
people here, but it was decidedly inferior to what may be
seen in India. Those who have seen the beautiful
buildings designed and erected by the natives at Agra,
Delhi, Beejapore and Mandoo, will say at once that what
appeared at the exhibition was a very inadequate repre-
sentation of what they are capable of."
"6637. Chairman.] That being your opinion, how
would you set about instituting such a department?
"I would make the institution in Jermyn-Street the
model for the College of Science, and the institution at
Marlbo rough-House the model for the College of Art.
Art is taught there systematically, * * * * I would establish
an institution at Calcutta on that model. I conceive that
there is a peculiar call upon us to give the natives of India
all the advantage in the cultivation of the arts which it is
in our power to give ; for in order to favour our manu-
factures, we have, partly by levying no duty upon English
manufactures imported into India, and partly by levying
a heavy duty upon Indian manufactures imported into
England, in addition to the natural manufacturing
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 163
superiority of England, by these means swept away great
branches of manufacture, and have caused great distress
in India : consequently, I consider that we owe a heavy
debt to India in this respect, and that ft is specially our
duty to give to our Indian fellow-subjects every possible
aid in cultivating those branches of art that still remain
to them ; and I consider that in doing so, we shall benefit
ourselves as much as them, and that an institution such
as I have described, in which the results of Indian art
would be displayed for the imitation of the world, would
be quite as important in its relation to European art as
it would be in its relation to Native art.
"6638. Lord Monteagle.] Was not there at one
time a heavier duty in India itself upon cottons manufac-
tured in India than upon cottons exported from England ?
"Yes ; from the renewal of the Charter in 1813, until
the Transit Duties were abolished, English Cotton Goods
were charged only 2)/2 while the aggregate of the duties
levied upon Native Cotton Goods was 17J/^ percent
"6639. Were not India cottons paying 17J^ per cent.
duty in India, while the English were paying 5 per cent. ?
"English cottons paid only 2J^ per cent, on their
importation into India. It was a great injustice that heavy
duties were levied upon the cottons of India in India ;
and that another heavy duty was levied upon them when
imported into England. * * * *"
"6640. Earl of Ellenborough.] Is it not calculated
that, in addition to the returns from India, for what is
exported to India, India has to remit to this country large
sums every year, to the amount of nearly a million and a
half?
164 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
"Much more than that ; I think exceeding three
millions for the Government only, besides all the private
remittances. If we take the Government remittances at
three millions, and private remittances at half that, we
have the sum of four millions and a half to be remitted
every year from India to England, which forms a great
incubus upon the Indian trade.
But the pleading of Sir Ch. Trevelyan for the
technical education of Indians was fruitless.
FEMALE EDUCATION WAS NOT ENCOURAGED BY
THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.
No portion of the sum of one lac of rupees
allotted for the education of natives was to be spent
on female education. It was left to the people to
provide for the education of the fair sex of their
country. What they did in Bengal for female educa-
tion has been told by a writer in the pages of the
Calcutta Review for July, 1855, as follows :
"It was somewhere about 1818 or 1819, that a Society,
called, we believe, the Union School Society, was formed
in Calcutta, for educational purposes. Shortly after its
formation, its members, encouraged by the success that
had attended their operations amongst the boys, deter-
mined to make an attempt in the direction of female
education. At the invitation of this Society Miss Cooke
came to Calcutta, having been selected for this most
difficult service, if we have been rightly informed, and our
memory serve us aright, by the celebrated Richard Cecil,
whose admirable sagacity was never more distinctly
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 165
manifested than in this selection. Miss Cooke arrived in
Calcutta in May, 1921, * * . We have stated that she
came on the invitation of a certain educational society ;
but on her arrival, it appeared that the native members
of the Committee of that Society, although they had
spoken well -while yet the matter was at a distance and in
the region of theory, recoiled from the obloquy of so rude
an assault on time-honored custom. *
"The babus had been brought up to the talking-point,
but not to the acting-point. An arrangement was however
entered into with the Church Mission Society, and Miss
Cooke began her operations under their auspices. An
account of the commencement of these operations is given
by Mrs. Chapman, in her little work on Female Education ;
and we are sure that we shall gratify our readers by ex-
tracting it at length
'Whilst engaged in studying the Bengali language,
and scarcely daring to hope that an immediate opening
for entering upon the work, to which she had devoted
herself, would be found, Miss Cooke paid a visit to one
of the native schools for boys, in order to observe their
pronunciation ; and this circumstance, trifling as it may
appear, led to the opening of her first school in Thunthu-
niya. Unaccustomed to see a European lady in that part
of the native town a crowd collected round the door of
the school. Amongst them was an interesting looking
girl, whom the school pundit drove away. Miss Cooke
desired the child to be called, and by an interpreter asked
her if she wished to learn to read. She was told in reply,
that this child had for three months past been daily
begging to learn to read with the boys, and that if Miss
Cooke ( who had made known her purpose of devoting
166 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
herself to the instruction of native girls) would attend next
day, twenty girls should be collected. Accompanied by
a female friend, conversant with the language, she repeat-
ed her visit on the morrow and found fifteen girls, several
of whom had their mothers with them. Their natural
inquisitiveness prompted them to enquire what could be
Miss Cooke's motive for coming amongst them. They
were told that she had heard in England, that the women
of their country were kept in total ignorance, that they
were not taught to read or write, that the men only were
allowed to attain any degree of knowledge, and it was also
generally understood that the chief obstacle to their im-
provement was that no females would undertake to teach
them ; she had therefore felt compassion for them, and
had left her country, her parents and friends, to help them.
The mothers with one voice cried out, smiting themselves
with their right hands, "Oh what a pearl of a woman is
this !" It was added, she has given up every earthly ex-
pectation, to come here, and seeks not the riches of the
world, but desires only to promote your best interests. '-
'Our children are yours, we give them to you/ 'What
will be the use of learning to our girls, and what good will
it do to them?' She was told ; 'It will make them more
useful in their families, and increase their knowledge, and
it was hoped that it would also tend to give them respect,
and produce harmony in their families' 'True (said one
of them) our husbands now look upon us as little better
than brutes.' Another asked, 'What benefit will you
derive from this work I ' She was told that the only return
wished for, was to promote their best interest and happi-
ness. Then said the woman, 'I suppose this is a holy
work, and well-pleasing to God.* As they were not able
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 167
to understand much, it was only said in return that God
was always well-pleased that his servants should do good
to their fellow-creatures. The women then spoke to each
other, in terms of the highest approbation, of what had
passed."
"In the course of the first year eight schools were
established, attended, more or less regularly, by 214 girls,
* * * *
"Two or three years after Miss Cooke's arrival in
India, she became the wife of the Rev. Isaac Wilson, a
Missionary of the Church Mission Society ; but she did not
relax in her afforts in behalf of the good cause * * * *
Mrs. Wilson's efforts were now directed to the obtaining
of the means of erecting a suitable building for a Central
School. In order to do this, it was found necessary to
establish a special Society for Native Female Education.
This Society was established in the beginning of 1824.
Funds were raised, and on the 18th of May, 1826, the
foundation stone of the Central School, in Cornwallis
Square, was laid. In connection with this building, we
must not omit to notice the extraordinary munificence of a
native gentleman, the Rajah Buddinath Roy, who subs-
cribed the very large sum of 20,000 Sicca Rupees, or
upwards of 2,000 sterling, towards the erection. We
believe this donation for a great patriotic object, is to this
day unrivalled in the annals of native liberality ; and it is
properly commemorated by the following inscription on a
marble tablet, inserted into the wall of the principal hall
in the institution ;
168 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
This
Central School,
Founded by a Society of Ladies,
For the Education of
Native Female Children,
was greatly assisted by
A liberal donation of Rs. 20,000, from
RAJAH BUDDINATH ROY BAHADUR ;
and its objects further promoted
and funds saved by
Charles Knowles Robinson, Esq.,
Who planned and executed this building,
1828.
"* * * * On the 1st April, 1828, she removed into
the new building in Cornwallis Square, and into that focus
the rays of her influence, which had been before so widely
diffused, were now concentrated."
In ancient India, and even before the British
occupation of this country, the womenfolk of India
as a class were not altogether illiterate. But up to
1853, the Indian Government did not do anything
for female education. It was not encouraged,
because from the utilitarian point of view, it was of
little use to Government. Women clerks and women
subordinate officials were not in demand then in
Government establishments and hence there was no
need for educated females. And so they tried to
find reasons for not educating Indian women. Thus
the Lord Bishop of Oxford asked Sir Charles Treve-
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 169
lyan who appeared as a witness before the Lords'
Committee on the Government of Indian territories
on 28th June, 1853:-
"6818. Can you state to the Committee whether one
of the objections to the education of females in India is
not the fact, that they must, if they study oriental litera-
ture at all, study books of this exceedingly debasing
character ?
"It is very unusual for females to cultivate the learned
languages ; * * * * I presume the question does not
relate to their studying the learned languages ; and as
regards the vernacular languages, it depends entirely upon
the guidance under which they are. If they are under
the guidance of Missionaries or good Christian people, or
even of enlightened moral Hindoos and Mahomedans,
there is now a sufficient body of vernacular literature of
an improving and elevating character to furnish the basis
of a system of instruction for them, and it is rapidly
increasing.
"6819. But my question is not whether they could
not be taught in something else ; but whether you are
cognizant of the fact, that one of the great objections to
be made against females studying these languages was the
necessity, if they studied the learned languages at all, of
their being made conversant with a particular kind which
even male Hindoos thought unfit for females ?
"I never before heard it even proposed that native
females should study the learned languages of India ; but
certainly from my knowledge of those languages, I should
say that it would be impossible for a female to cultivate
Sanskrit literature without learning a great deal which
170 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
would be extremely objectionable for any female to read.
"6820. Even in the estimate of a Hindoo?
"Yes, even in the estimate of a Hindoo, because,
whatever license they may take themselves, they are very
careful of the purity of their women.
"6821. Lord Monteagle of Brandon.] The Com-
mittee are aware that the late Mr. Bethune, with great
generosity, devoted the sum of 10,000 for female educa-
tion ; and I believe other persons of piety and earnestness
in India have looked with great anxiety to the education
of native females. Is there any instance that has ver
come to your knowledge of the female instruction so
established, or so contemplated, involving that which has
formed the subject of the questions that have been recent-
ly put to you, namely, the cultivation of the ancient
learned languages?
"Never. The idea is quite new to me.
"6822. You never heard of that either in Asia or in
England ?
"Never. * * It is, however, evident from the
Sanscrit Plays, that in very ancient times, women of rank,
at least, were taught to read and write, and the accom-
plishments of drawing and music. Urvasi extemporises a
verse which she writes upon a birch leaf, and which,
falling into the hands of the Queen of Pururavas, is read
by her principal female attendant. Malati draws a
picture of her beloved Madhava ; and frequent allusions
are made to the Sangita Sala, or Music Hall. In the
Ajunta Cave paintings, Women are represented as en-
gaged in study with books of palm-leaves.
"6823. Lord Bishop of Oxford.] Is it not the fact,
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 171
that it is a principle settled in the Native mind, that
females should not be educated?
"I do not recollect any precept to that effect in their
books. * * * *
"6824. My question was, not what the sacred books
of the Hindoos taught, but whether there was not in the
Native mind, generally, a settled feeling against the
education of their females?
"Yes, I think there is a very strong prejudice against
it ; I do not think it goes the length of a principle : *
"6825. There is a strong prejudice in the native
mind against the instruction and education of females?
' 'Undoubtedly.
"6826. That is not of recent date, is it?
"No, ancient date ; it is gradually yielding to the
progress of enlightenment ; *
"6825. You have stated to the Committee, that
there has been of long standing a strong and great preju-
dice in the native mind against the instruction of their
females ; during the whole time that that prejudice has
been growing up, was it not impossible that any one of
their females should become learned in their literature
without becoming conversant with those abominations
which it contains?
"There are degrees ; but, speaking generally, that
was the case certainly.
"6828. To be conversant with those abominations
would even, according to Hindoo notions, be unfit for
females ?
"If it had seriously entered into the contemplation of
a Hindoo to teach his wife or daughters Sanscrit, I have
no doubt that objection would have occurred to him.
172 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
"6829. Therefore, in fact, it was impossible that
there could be any teaching of females without making
them acquainted with that against which the native niind
itself would have revolted?
4 'Yes.
"6830. May we not, in looking back to the long
period through which this state of things has lasted, see
one reason for the peculiarly strong prejudice in the native
against female education in that fact?
"I think so.
"6831. If that is the case, is it not exceedingly
important, if we wish to break down that prejudice, that
we should set the example of educating the men in a
literature which would not necessarily bring them into
contact with such abominations?
"Certainly.
"6832. Earl of Harrowby.] An Indian female could
not make any progress in Native literature without passing
through the study of very corrupt books?
"With the exception of the nascent vernacular litera-
ture, which is principally supported by the Missionaries.
"6833. Do you believe that the feeling of hostility
to female education which exists in the Hindoo mind
arises from the nature of their literature, or from the
general notion existing amongst all those nations, that
the women ought to occupy a subordinate condition?
"I think that the primary and main reason is, that
in order to keep the women in subjection and seclusion,
it is necessary to keep them ignorant. It arises from the
same cause which induces them to keep their women in
seclusion ; but, no doubt if there were not that reason,
the other would be a sufficient one.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 173
"6834. And, therefore, that would be an obstacle
to any future progress in female education, unless a litera-
ture of a better kind was supplied?
"Yes."
"6835. Lord Bishop of Oxford.] A literature of a
better kind, which shall be employed as an instrument of
male progress?
"Yes."
Of course it was prejudice against every thing
Indian which dictated the above questions and their
answers. Sanskrit is not so rich in books of an
exceedingly debasing character as the classical
languages of Europe. Sir Richard Burton, when he
translated the Arabian Nights into English, was told
that he probably would be prosecuted for publishing
his translation because it abounded with many
obscene and abominable passages and incidents.
His reply was very characteristic. He said
that he would go to the Court before which
he was to be prosecuted armed with the Bible in one
hand and Shakespeare's works in the other. He did
not consider the Arabian Nights more abominable or
obscene than the Sacred Scriptures of the Christians
or the plays of the greatest dramatist of the English.
It cannot be said that there was not a substratum of
truth in his contention. If English women can read
the Bible and Shakespeare, unexpurgated, without
getting their morals corrupted, there is no reason why
Indian ladies should not be instructed in Sanskrit.
174 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Although the Educational Despatch recommend-
ed the encouragement of Female Education, the
Indian Government did not do all that they ought to
have done for it. The initiative was not taken by
the Government in female education. It was, as
in the case of the highef education of males, taken
in hand by private individuals, most notable among
whom was Mr. Drinkwater Bethune. He was a great
friend of Dr. Frederick John Mouat, who in a lecture
delivered before the Society of Arts, London, in
March, 1888, said :-
"Two days before the close of his honoured and
valued life Mr. Bethune, at whose bedside I was watching
and whose eyes I closed in their eternal sleep, asked me
how long he had to live. 'Don't conceal it from me,' he
said, 'as I wish to complete the last work of my life.* When
I mentioned to him that I could only measure it by hours,
he called for his cheque book, drew a cheque for a very
large amount and bid me hasten to realise it and keep
it in my custody until he had passed away, for the benefit
of the female school he had established. This was done.
I was his executor and found that the whole of his large
official income in India was spent in the country and
chiefly in good works of which the foundation of the
female school which bears his name, was the chief."
We need not dwell at any great length on the
Education Despatch of 1854. We have said enough
to show the motives which led the authorities to
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 175
prepare it, and also how and why the recommenda-
tions contained in it were not given effect to by the
Government of the East India Company.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PRESIDENCY
UNIVERSITIES.
Dr. Frederick John Mouat came out to India
in the service of the East India Company as an
Assistant Surgeon on the Bengal Establishment in
the year 1840. He succeeded Mr. David Hare as
Secretary of the Calcutta Medical College and was
also placed on the professorial staff of that Institution.
It was due to his exertions that the buildings of the
Calcutta Medical College and the hospital attached
to it were erected. Again it was due to his advice
and exhortations that the four Bengalee Medical
students, the well known Dr. Bhola Nath Bose and
Dr. Surya Kumar Goodeeve Chuckerbutty and two
others, went to England in 1844 to complete their
education.
Dr. Mouat was also appointed Secretary of the
Council of Education. In those days there was no
Director of Public Instruction or any Inspector of
Schools under him. The duties of both these posts
had to be discharged by the Secretary of the Council.
So Dr. Mouat had to inspect all the schools and
colleges in the province of Bengal affiliated to the
Council of Education. As a result of his inspections,
he conceived the idea of the establishment of a
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 177
University for Bengal. In a lecture delivered by him
on the 23rd March, 1 888 before the Society of Arts of
London, he said :
"When I joined therefore and had personally visited
all the colleges and schools under the charge of the
Council and had become acquainted with the standards
in use, I was at once struck with the absence of any
definite aim and object in the system of education adopted
in all. It appeared to me that a great scheme of public
instruction worked by an able staff and turning out
annually numerous schools of considerable merits and
attainments needed some means of acknowledgment of
the position they ought to occupy as men of culture and
education. I rapidly arrived at the conclusion that
nothing short of a university having the power to grant
degrees would accomplish this purpose.
"I aofcordingly placed myself at once in communica-
tion with my friend Professor Maiden of University
College in London. From the information which I placed
before him. Professor Maiden considered Bengal to be
perfectly ready for the establishment of Universities and
sent me a copy of the history of those institutions in
Europe written by himself. I then conferred with the
President Mr. Charles Hay Cameron on the subject, told
him what I had done, &c., &c. I was directed to prepare
the scheme, which I did accordingly," &c.
His scheme was that the University in Bengal
should be established on the model of that of London.
He said :
"After carefully studying the laws and constitution of
thv Universities of Oxford and Cambridge with those of
178 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
the recently established University of London, the latter
alone appears adapted to me to the wants of the native
community.'*
His proposed plan of the University of Calcutta
is given in full as Appendix O to the Second Report
of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on
the Government of Indian Territories, 1853.
Dr. Mouat's plan was submitted through the
Government of India to the authorities of the East
India Company by whom of course it was not
approved of. They were averse to the extension of
education among Indians and so they naturally put
their foot on Dr. Mouat's scheme. It was on the
eve of the renewal of the East India Company's
Charter that Mr. Cameron submitted a petition dated
30th November, 1852, to the House of Lords in which
he showed the causes which operated as hindrances
to the spread of education among Indians. He
wrote :
"That, as President of the Council of Education for
Bengal, your petitioner had opportunities of observing the
desire and the capacity of large numbers of the native
youth of India for the acquisition of European literature
and science, as well as the capacity of the most distin-
guished among them for fitting themselves to enter the
Civil and Medical convenanted services of the East India
Company, and to practise in the learned professions.
"That the said native youths are hindered from
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 179
making all the progress they are capable of in the acquisi-
tion of the said literature and science :
"1st. Because there is not in British India any Univer-
sity with power to grant degrees, as is done by Univer-
sities in Europe.
"2ndly. Because the European instructors of the
said native youths do not belong to any of the covenanted
services of the East India Company, and do not, there-
fore, whatever may be their learning and talents, occupy
a position in Societv which commands the respect of their
pupils.
"3rdly. Because no provision has been made for
the education of any of the said native youth in England
without prejudice to their caste or religious feelings.
"Your petitioner therefore prays,
"That one or more universities may be established
in British India.
"That a covenanted education service may be
created, analogous to the covenanted civil and medical
services.
"That one or more establishments may be created,
at which the native youth of India may receive, in
England, without prejudice to their caste or religious
feelings, such a secular education as may qualify them
for admission into the civil and medical services of the
East India Company."
Regarding this petition and his prayer for the
establishment of one or more Universities in British
India, Mr. Cameron was very searchingly examined
on the 7th July, 1853 by the Lords' Committee on
the Government of Indian territories.
180 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
"7316. Chairman.] In a petition which has been
presented to the House of Lords from you, in that portion
of it which relates to education, your first prayer is that
one or more Universities may be established in British
India ; will you be so good as to state to the Committee
somewhat more in detail what your suggestion will amount
to?
"My suggestion would amount to this, that there
should be in each of the great capital cities in India a
University ; that is to say, at Calcutta, at Madras, at
Bombay and at Agra ; those four cities being the centres
of four distinct languages ; Calcutta being the focus of the
Bengalee language ; Madras of the Tamil, Bombay of the
Mahrattee, and Agra of the Hindee. In those four
Universities would be taught, according to my notions, the
English language and all the literature that it contains ; and
science also in the same language ; and at the same time
the four languages that I have mentioned would also be
cultivated. Native students would be practised in trans-
lations from English into each of those languages, and
from each of those languages into English. Every encour-
agement which the Government can give would be given
to the production of original works in those Native
languages. That system already exists to a considerable
extent ; but there is no University ; there is no body
which has the power of granting degrees ; and that sort of
encouragement appears to be one which the Natives are
fully desirous of. They have arrived at a point at which
they are quite ripe for it, and they themselves are
extremly desirous of it : that is to say, those who have
already benefited by this system of English education are
extremely desirous of those distinctions, and are extremely
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 181
desirous of having that sort of recognition of their position
as subjects of the Queen of Great Britain.
"7317. Would you assimilate the degrees to the
degrees conferred at the London University?
"The plan that we suggested when I was President
of the Council of Education, * * * was founded upon the
plan of the London University ; we copied it mutatis
mutandis from that plan.
* * * #
"7322. Would that, in your opinion, improve the
general tone and character of the education given through-
out India?
"I should think very much so indeed.
* * * *
"7325. Earl of Ellenborough.] Would you give the
same titles as in England of Master of Arts and Bachelor
of Arts ; do not you think they would like "Bahadur" and
"Rajah" rather better?
"I think they would like to be admitted into the
European republic of letters better than to have those
native titles to which your Lordship alludes."
It is not necessary to make further extracts from
the Evidence of Mr. Cameron. The Parliamentary
Committees after all must have been convinced that
there was no harm in establishing one or more univer-
sities in India.
So the Directors of the East India Company were
after all persuaded to recommend the establishment of
Universities in India on the model of the University
182 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
of London. In their Educational Despatch of 1854,
they wrote :
"Some years ago, we declined to accede to a pro-
nosal made by the Council of Education and transmitted
to us, with the recommendation of your Government, for
the institution of an university in Calcutta. The rapid
spread of a liberal education among the Natives of India
since that time, the high attainments shown by the Native
Candidates for Government Scholarships, and by Native
students in private institutions, the success of the Medical
Colleges, and the requirements of an increasing European
and Anglo-Indian population, have led us to the conclu-
sion that the time has now arrived for the establishment
of universities in India, which may encourage a regular
and liberal course of education, by conferring academical
degrees as evidences of attainment in the different
branches of art and science, and by adding marks of
honour for those who may desire to compete for honorary
distinction.
"The Council of Education, in the proposal to which
we have alluded, took the London University as their
model ; and we agree with them, that the form, govern-
ment, and functions of that university * * * are the best
adapted to the wants of India, and may be followed with
advantage, although some variation will be necessary in
points of detail/*
* * * *
"We desire that you take into your consideration the
Institution of Universities at Calcutta and Bombay, upon
the general principles which we have now explained to
you, and report to us upon the best method of procedure,
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 183
with a view to their incorporation by Acts of the Legis-
lative Council of India.
* * * *
"We shall be ready to sanction the creation of an
university at Madras, or in any other part of India, where
a sufficient number of institutions exist from which pro-
perly qualified candidates for degrees could be supplied ;
it being in our opinion advisable that the great centres of
European Government and civilization in India should
possess universities similar in character to those which
will now be founded, as soon as the extension of a liberal
education shows that their establishment would be of
advantage to the Native communities."
But the Government of India were not in a hurry
to give effect to the recommendation of the Court
of Directors of the East India Company and establish
Universities. These were not established during the
Governor-Generalship of Lord Dalhousie, the Scotch
"Laird of Cockpen," but of his successor Lord
Canning. It was in the year 1857, the year of the
outbreak of the Indian Mutiny and the last year of
the existence of the East India Company, that the
Legislative Act was passed sanctioning the establish-
ment of the Universities at Calcutta, Bombay and
Madras.
CONVERSION AND EDUCATION OF INDIANS
THE SITUATION IN 1813.
In the Charter Act of 1 8 1 3, to promote the happi-
ness of the heathens of India, it was proposed that
"Such measures ought to be adopted as may tend to
the introduction among them of useful knowledge, and of
religious and moral improvement ; and in furtherance of
the above objects, sufficient facilities ought to be afforded
by law to persons desirous of going to and remaining in
India, for the purpose of accomplishing those benevolent
designs." * *
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to
point out the diplomatic language of the above clause
of the Charter Act. It is language befitting a Machia-
velli or a Talleyrand which does not so much
express as conceal the thoughts and objects which
the framers of the Act had in view. Who are the
persons referred to as ** desirous of going to and
remaining in India, for the purpose of accomplishing
those benevolent designs?" They were Christian
missionaries.
It should be remembered that in England,
"In former times education was, for the most part, of
the church, by the church, and for the church ; and it was
only as the advantage, or necessity, of extending it to the
laity, for the purpose of confirming and expanding the
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 185
influence and authority of the church, was realized, that
knowledge was more generally imparted."*
At the time of the East India Company's charter
of 1813, education in England was still under the
control of the Church. Hence, the framers of the
charter could not think of imparting education to
Indians without ecclesiastical agency. This explains
the diplomatic language of the Charter.
It would have been outraging the feelings of
Indians to have informed them of the Ecclesiastical
Department that they were going to be saddled with,
for the benefit of the Christian natives of England.
Hence the diplomatic language of the Charter Act.
Christian missionaries were not required in India
they were not for the benefit of the heathens of that
land. The witnesses examined before the Com-
mittees of the two Houses were mostly opposed to
the sending of them to India. Mr. Warren Hastings
was asked by the Lords' Committee :
"Would the introduction of a Church establishment
into the British territories in the East Indies, probably be
attended with any consequences which would be injurious
to the stability of the Government of India?"
In reply, he said :
"I have understood that a great fermentation has
arisen in the minds of the natives of India who are subject
to the authority of the British Government, and that not
* English National Education by H. Holman, London, 1898, p. 12.
186 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
partial, but extending to all our possessions, arising from
a belief, however propagated, that there was an intention
in this Government to encroach on the religious rights of
the people. From the information of persons who have
recently come from the different establishments of India,
Your Lordships will easily know whether such apprehen-
sions still subsisted when they left it, or whether the report
of them is groundless ; but if such apprehensions do exist,
everything that the irritable minds of the people can
connect with that will make an impression upon them,
which they will adopt as certain assurances of it. So far
only, considering the question as a political one, I may
venture to express my apprehension of the consequences
of such establishment at this particular season ; in no other
light am I permitted to view it."
In answering the question,
"Do you conceive that any attempts to introduce the
Christian religion among the natives would be attended
with dangerous political consequences?"
Sir John Malcolm told the Lords' Committee :
"With the most perfect conviction upon my mind,
that, speaking humanly, the Christian religion has been the
greatest blessing that could be bestowed on mankind, * * *
nothing but the strongest impression of the danger that
would attend, not merely the attempt, but an impression
among the inhabitants of India that such an attempt would
be made, could lead me to give a decided opinion that
it would be attended with the most dangerous conse-
quences ; and I think the risk of those dangers would be
encountered without the slightest prospect of accomplish-
ing the object ; my reasons for this opinion refer to the
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 187
present political situation of the British Government in
India. The missionaries sent to India by nations who
have not established any political power in that quarter,
have, I conceive, a much better chance of effecting their
object than those under other circumstances ; but even the
Portuguese, the Dutch, the Danes and the French (all of
whom endeavoured to establish the Christian religion),
were in a situation in India completely different from that
in which the British now are. In the present extended
state of our Empire, our security for preserving a power
of so extraordinary a nature as that We have established,
rests upon the general division of the great communities
under the Government, and their subdivision into various
castes and tribes ; while they continue divided in this
manner, no insurrection is likely to shake the stability of
our power. There are but few general motives that could
unite communities of men so divided, and many of whom
are of a weak and timid character ; but it is to be remem-
bered that there is one feeling common almost to them
all ; that is, an attachment to their religion and prejudices,
and this is so strong that I have myself seen it change,
in an instant, the lowest, the most timid and most servile
Indian into a ferocious barbarian. In a Government so
large as that of British India, there must be many who
desire its subversion, and who would be ready to employ
any means they could to effect that object ; such would,
I conceive, find those means in any attempt that was
made to convert the natives of India, upon a scale that
warranted them in a belief it had the encouragement of
the British Government. It would not signify to such
persons what was the conduct of the missionaries em-
ployed, or the tenets of that religion which they taught ;
188 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
their object would be misrepresentation ; and they would,
1 believe, not find it impossible to kindle a flame, which
might in its progress not only destroy the British Govern-
ment, but all who profess the faith it was designed to
propagate."
Sir John Malcolm was a past master of diplomacy
both oriental and occidental a term synonymous
with hypocrisy, lying and corruption. He was the
biographer of Clive, and knew fully well the principle
or principles which guide the British administration
of India. From the sentences put in italics in the
above, it is clear that he also was of opinion that
"Divide et impera should be the motto of the Indian
Administration." Regarding this point he was
more explicit in his evidence before the Select Com-
mittee of the House of Commons. He wanted to
keep Indians ignorant. He was asked :
"Do not you think that it would be good policy in
the British Government to increase the means of informa-
tion to the natives of India?"
In reply he said :
"I consider that in a state of so extraordinary a
nature as British India, the first consideration of the
Government must always be its own safety ; and that the
political question of governing that country must be
paramount to all other considerations : Under that view
of the case, I conceive every subordinate measure (and
such I conceive that referred to in the question) must be
regulated entirely by the superior consideration of political
security.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 189
"Might not an increase in the knowledge of useful
arts in the natives, conveyed by British subjects resident
in India, tend to strengthen the British Government in
India? I conceive that such knowledge might tend in a
considerable degree to increase their own comforts and
their enjoyment of life ; but I cannot see how it would
tend in any shape to strengthen the political security of
the English Government in India, which appears to me to
rest peculiarly upon their present condition.'
To explain his meaning more clearly, Sir John
Malcolm appeared again of his own accord before
the above Committee when he said :
"I wish to add, that I mean by stating that the poli-
tical security of the British Government in India appears
to rest peculiarly upon the present condition of the native
subjects, to refer to their actual division into castes, with
particular duties and occupations, and to that reverence
and respect which they entertain for Europeans, not only
on account of their knowledge of the superior branches
of science, but also of their better knowledge of many of
the mechanical and more useful arts in life ; and there-
fore, though I conceive that the communication of such
knowledge to the natives would add to their comforts,
and their enjoyments of life, and would increase their
strength as a community, I do not think that the communi-
cation of any knowledge, which tended gradually to do
away the subsisting distinctions among our natives
subjects or to diminish that respect which they entertain
for Europeans, could be said to add to the political
strength of the English Government. * * *
"Are not you of opinion, that to increase the com-
190 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
forts and enjoyments of life of the native population of
India, would tend to strengthen their attachment to the
British Government, and consequently to strengthen and
insure the stability of that Government in India? From
all I have ever been able to observe of nations, I do not
think we can calculate upon gratitude for benefits of the
nature described as an operating motive that would at all
balance against the danger of that strength which such a
community as that of our Indian subjects might derive
from the general diffusion of knowledge and the eventual
abolition of its castes, a consciousness of which would
naturally incline them to throw off the yoke of a foreign
power ; and such they always must consider the British
in India ; I wish to be understood as alluding in this
answer to a danger that is very remote, but yet, in my
opinion, worthy of attention.
"Are not the natives of India, in your opinion, sus-
ceptible of gratitude in the highest degree ; have you not
known instances of generosity and liberality on the part
of the natives of India which would have done honor to
any man in any age? I think the natives of India, in-
dividually considered, are susceptible of gratitude, and
I have known many instances of liberality and generosity
among them ; but I do not conceive that we can, as I
stated before, calculate upon such motives as likely to
influence the community, which we shall always find it
difficult to rule in proportion as it obtains union and
possesses the power of throwing off that subjection in
which it is now placed to the British Government."
Mr. Warren Hastings, and especially Sir John
Malcolm and others, opposed the introduction of
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 191
Christian missionaries in India and imparting of
knowledge to its inhabitants from considerations of
political expendiency. But it was on grounds of
political expediency, too, that these two measures
were advocated.
It was Mr. Charles Grant, described as the
Christian Director of the East India Company, who
was the first to press upon the British public the ex-
pediency of sending Christian missionaries to India
for the conversion of its heathen inhabitants, and
imparting them education. Charles Grant was in
the service of the East India Company in India and
was brought up in the school of Clive, Warren
Hastings and those Anglo- Indians of the Eighteenth
Century, who according to Burke were "birds of
prey and passage in India," and according to Herbert
Spencer, "were only a shade less cruel than their
prototypes of Peru and Mexico.*' Like others of
his class, he shook the pagoda tree in India, grew
rich by amassing a large fortune and then retired on
a very handsome pension to England. He took a
house at Clapham where he made the acquaintance
of Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Thornton. We read in
his biography that Mr. Grant always kept his eye
fixed on the chief object of his heart the evangelisa-
tion of India. Having this object in view, he prevail-
ed upon Mr. Wilberforce, when the Company's
Charter was about to be renewed in 1 793, to introduce
192 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
two clauses into the Act of Parliament confirming
the Charter. These clauses ran as follows :
"That it is the peculiar and bounden duty of the
Legislature, to promote, by all just and prudent means,
the interests and happiness of the inhabitants of the
British dominions in India ; and that for these ends, such
measures ought to be adopted, as may gradually tend to
their advancement in useful knowledge, and to their
religious and moral improvement.
"That sufficient means of religious worship and in-
struction be provided for all persons of the Protestant
communion in the service, or under the protection of the
East India Company in Asia, proper ministers being from
time to time sent out from Great Britain for those
purposes ;" &c., &c.
Although these two clauses were passed on the
first two readings of the Bill, they were rejected on
its third reading, because the great body of the East
India proprietors, who elected the Directors, were
opposed to these clauses for almost the same reasons
as those of Mr. Warren Hastings and Sir John
Malcolm mentioned above. The following is an
abstract of all the arguments, or objections urged
against them, as they are reported by Mr. Woodfall.
Objections stated generally :
"That sending missionaries into our Eastern territories,
is the most wild, extravagant, expensive, unjustifiable pro-
ject, that ever was suggested by the most visionary specu-
lator. That the principle is obnoxious, impolitic, un-
necessary, full of mischief, dangerous, useless, unlimited.'*
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 193
Specific arguments, First class :
"The plan would be dangerous and impolitic ; it
would affect the peace and ultimate security of our
possessions. It tends to endanger and injure our affairs
there most fatally, it would either produce disturbances,
or bring the Christian religion into contempt. Holding
one faith or religion, is the most strong common cause
with mankind, and the moment that took place in India
there would be an end of British supremacy.
"That the principle of proselyting was impolitic, and
was, or ought to be exploded, in so enlightened a period
as the eighteenth century.
"That it would be a most serious and fatal disaster,
if natives of character, even a hundred thousand of them,
were converted to Christianity.
"That the establishment of seminaries and colleges in
America, was one of the most efficient causes of the loss
of that country.
"That suffering young clergymen, (who are usually of
pleasureable habits), to overrun the interior of India,
would be dangerous, and prove ultimately destructive to
the Company's interest.*'
Second class :
"The scheme would be unsuccessful. It is extrava-
gant to hope for the conversion of the natives. They are
invincibly attached to their own castes ; their prejudices,
manners, and habits, are all against a change.
"It is vain to attempt to overcome prejudices fixed by
the practice of ages, far exceeding the time in which
Britons had any idea of religion at all. The attempt is, in
these views ,idle. absurd, and impracticable.
13
194 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
"Only the dregs of the people can be converted ;
they will pretend, conversion, and disgrace Christianity.
"The higher and more respectable natives, are people
of the purest morality, and strictest virtue.
"The services of religion are devoutly performed in
the Company's settlements and ships, either by clergymen
or laymen, and their ecclesiastical establishments are
sufficient."
Third class :
"The scheme Would be expensive. The expense
would be enormous, intolerable ; one, two, or three
hundred thousand Dounds."
Fourth class :
"The scheme would be unlimited, in respect of the
numbers and qualifications of the missionaries."
European Christians in general and natives of
England more especially are not remarkable for being
strict in the observance and practice of the tenets of
their religion or for their spread. They were not
like the Muhammadans or even the Roman Catholics
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the authors
of the Holy Inquisition desirous of making converts.
The natives of England understand the pleasures,
comforts and conveniences of this world. They as
a nation do not seem to care much for the Other
World and, therefore, do not trouble themselves for
saving the souls of other peoples. It was on these
grounds then that the clauses in the Charter Bill of
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 195
1 793, respecting sending missionaries to India and
educating its inhabitants, were not passed.
Mr. Grant was not greatly disappointed. He
tried to become a director of the East India Company
and was elected on May 30, 1794. He also entered
Parliament in 1802. Whether in the India House
or in Parliament he exerted the influence which he
wielded in inducing his countrymen to allow mis-
sionaries and schoolmasters to proceed to India in
order to convert and enlighten its heathen popula-
tion. He wrote a pamphlet entitled,
"Observations on the state of Society among the
Asiatic subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect
to Morals ; and on the means of improving it."
This was meant to refute the arguments of those
who were opposed to sending Christian missionaries
to India. In order to succeed in his endeavour, he
had to appeal to the two classes of his countrymen,
viz., those who professed or pretended to be philan-
thropists, and secondly, the men of the world, which
constituted by far the larger class of his countrymen,
with whom ". s.d. is their Trinity." To appeal
to the philanthropic instinct of his countrymen, he
did what the Christian missionaries are in the habit
of doing to this day, that is, vilifying, and painting
the natives of India in the blackest colour possible.
No unprejudiced man knowing anything of the
character of the Hindoos would or could say that the
196 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
chapters in the pamphlet regarding "view of the
Morals of the Hindoos" and "causes of the situation
and character of the Hindoos" are a fair, just or cor-
rect estimate of the character of the Hindoos. He
very wantonly attacked them and painted them in the
blackest colour possible, which was not fair. He
had to serve his purpose and it seems to us that he
did so on the principle of the end justifying the
means.
However, in appealing to the philanthropic
instinct of this countrymen, he was obliged to refer
to the dark side of the British administration of India.
He wrote :
"All the offices of trust, civil and military, and the
first lines of commerce, are in the hands of foreigners,
who after a temporary residence remove with their acquisi-
tions in constant succession. The government is foreign.
Of native rulers, even the rapacious exactions went again
into circulation, and the tribute formerly paid to Delhi,
passing chiefly by the medium of private commerce, when
a general communication throughout the Empire gave
Bengal great advantages, was little felt. But the tribute
paid to us extracts every year a large portion of che
produce of that country without the least return. * *
"These observations, and the review which precedes
them, are intended forcibly to impress upon the mind the
sense of those peculiar obligations under which we lie to
the people of our Asiatic territories, on account of benefits
we draw from them, the disadvantages they have suffered,
and must still in certain ways suffer from their connection
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 197
with us, and the relation in which they stand to us as our
subjects. * * * * In decreeing that our subjects
shall be delivered from oppression and injustice, in setting
an equitable limit to our own demands, and in establishing
rights of property * *, have we done all that the circum-
stances of the Hindoos reauire, all that is incumbent upon
us as rulers? * * * * We ought also to remember
how much the authority of a handful of strangers depends
on opinion. To reduce the sources of prejudice against
us, and to multiply impressions favourable to us, by
assimilating our subjects to our modes of thinking, and
by making them happy, and teaching them to understand
and value the principles of the people who confer happi-
ness upon them, may be some of the surest means of
preserving the footing we have acquired."
Even from the above extract it will be noticed
that it was not purely philanthropic or altruistic con-
siderations which prompted Mr. Charles Grant to
advocate the sending of Christian missionaries to
India and the imparting of instruction to its inhabit-
ants. His philanthropy or altruism was largely
tempered or rather alloyed with selfish motives.
This will be evident from the extracts from his
pamphlet which we give below.
The mask of philanthropy which Mr. Charles
Grant put on, when he advocated the evangelisation
and education of the heathens of India was not the
one calculated to inspire confidence in his co-religion-
ists and compatriots. Therefore, in order to convince
his countrymen that it would pay them if natives of
198 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
India were educated and also converted to Christian-
ity, he was obliged to remove the mask and appear
in his real character. Towards the end of the pamph-
let referred to above, he wrote, '* Wherever, we may
venture to say, our principles and language are intro-
duced, our commerce will follow."
Here, at last, the cat is out of the bag. This
convinced the Christian natives of England more
forcibly than all the arguments which had been
advanced from philanthropic considerations for the
education and conversion of heathens. Again he
wrote :
"By planting our language, our knowledge, our
opinions, and our religion, in our Asiatic territories, we
shall put a great work beyond the reach of contingencies ;
we shall probably have wedded the inhabitants of those
territories to this country."
That is quite true. The Christian nations and
countries of the West send missionaries of their faith
to non-Christian nations not so much for the spiritual
welfare of the latter, as the worldly good which these
missionaries bring to them.
That Indian patriot, Lala Lajpat Rai, who was
deported out of India without any trial and without
knowing the nature of the charges preferred against
him, and over whose deportation almost the whole
of the Christian Anglo- Indians whether clergymen
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 199
or lay men greatly rejoiced, wrote in one of his
letters from America, which he visited in 1905 :
"The other day there was held a conference of mis-
sionaries in which President Copen is said to have ad-
vocated the extension of the mission work for the benefit
of the American trade. I cull the following report from
the Boston Advertiser: 'Save the world to save America'
was the theme of the annual address of President Copen.
He said, in part we need to develop foreign missions to
save our nation commercially. * * * * It is only as we
develop missions that we shall have a market in the Orient
which will demand our manufactured articles in sufficient
quantities to match our increased facilities. The Christian
man is our customer. The heathen has, as a rule, few
wants. It is only when man is changed that there comes
this desire for the manifold articles that belonged to the
Christian man and the Christian home. The missionary is
everywhere and always the pioneer of trade/
Commenting on the above extract, Lala Lajpat
Rai very rightly observed :
"The Indian admirers and friends of Christian
missions ought to note this commercial ideal of the
American missionary. The missionary is not 'the pioneer
of trade' only but also the pioneer of the political supre-
macy of the Boston people in the East. I think that the
frank statement of leading Christians ought to open the
eyes of all who see no danger in the work of the Christian
Missions in the East.'*
If truth be told, it must be admitted that Christian
nations are not anxious to save the souls of the
200 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
heathens but wish to enrich themselves, and, there-
fore, send missionaries to non-Christian lands.
Mr. Charles Grant, although he called himself a
Christian, did not perhaps believe in the brotherhood
of man. He was in favour of converting and educat-
ing the heathens of India, but certainly he was not
in favour of giving them any political rights and privi-
leges. The chief argument against the diffusion
of useful knowledge amongst, and conversion to
Christianity of, the natives of India, was that they
would demand independence and throw off the yoke
of England. Mr. Charles Grant thought otherwise,
for he wrote :
"The great danger with which the objector alarms
us is, that the communication of the Gospel and of
European light, may probably be introductive of a popular
form of Government and the assertion of independence.
Upon what grounds is it inferred, that these effects must
follow in any case, especially in the most unlikely case of
the Hindoos? The establishment of Christianity in a
country, does not necessarily bring after it a free political
constitution. The early Christians made no attempts to
change forms of Government ; the spirit of the Gospel
does not encourage even any disposition which might lead
to such attempts. Christianity has been long the religion
of many parts of Europe and of various protestant states,
where the form of Government is not popular. It is its
peculiar excellence, and an argument of its intended
universality, that it may subsist under different forms of
Government, and in all render men happy, and even
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 201
societies flourishing ; It does not, in the pursuit
of these objects, erect a peculiar political system ; it views
politics through the safe medium of morals.'* * *
We do not wish to enter into the discussion
whether Christianity can or has the power of uplifting
any people. But this much is Evident that Mr.
Charles Grant did not believe in the Rights of Man
which Thomas Paine, a pronounced non-Christian,
did. How can a religion make a man happy and
prosperous, if he is not allowed to have some share
in the good things of this world? Our Christian
friends are very anxious to save our souls, but
at the same time wish to keep us slaves. The
words of the Italian patriot, Joseph Mazzini, should
be poured into the ears of these good Christians.
Mazzini wrote :
"Is it then by leaving man in the hands of his op-
pressors that you would elevate and emancipate his soul?
Is it by leaving erect the Idol of blind Force, in the service
of Imposture, that you think to raise in the human soul
an altar to the God of a free conscience?*'
Yes, Mr. Charles Grant wanted to keep the
natives of India perpetually under the leading strings
of his own countrymen. He wrote that,
"We can foresee no period in which we may not
govern our Asiatic subjects, more happily for them than
they can be governed by themselves or any other power ;
and doing this we should not expose them to needless
202 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
danger from without and from within, by giving the
military power into their hands."
Mr. Charles Grant was a Christian and believed
in the * 'Brotherhood of Man ! ' '
According to him, neither conversion to
Christianity nor imparting of instruction to the natives
was calculated to inspire them with any desire for
liberty. He wrote :
"Where then is the rational ground for apprehending
that such a race will ever become turbulent for English
liberty? A spirit of English liberty is not to be caught
from a written description of it, by distant and feeble
Asiatics especially. It was not originally conceived nor
conveyed by a theoretical scheme. It has grown in the
succession of ages from the active exertions of the human
powers ; and perhaps can be relished only by a people
thus prepared. Example is more likely to inspire a taste
for it than report ; but the nations of Europe have seen
that liberty and its great effects, without being led to
imitation of it ; for the French Revolution proceeds not
upon its principles ; it is an eruption of atheism and
anarchy.
"The English inhabiting our settlements in India,
have no share in the British Government. Some are em-
ployed as servants of the public, but no one possesses any
legislative right. Why then should we give to the natives,
even if they aspired to it, as it is unlikely that they will
thus aspire, what we properly refuse to our own people >
The British inhabitants would be extremely averse to such
a participation."
Such were the views of this model Christian
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 203
according to whom Indians should be looked upon
as foes and aliens in the land of their birth, and
as helots who ought not to possess any rights and
privileges.
We need not quote any further from the writings
of this man. It was he by whose endeavour were
introducted in the Charter Act of 1813 those clauses
permitting missionaries to proceed to India, establish-
ing the Ecclesiastical Department at the expense of
the natives of India, although it did not benefit them
in the least, and also made the authorities of the East
India Company set apart one lakh of rupees for the
instruction of the natives of India. Neither Charles
Grant nor the natives of England were prompted by
any motive of philanthropy or altruism to grant
these measures to India. It was sordid considerations
of worldly gain which led the people of England to
adopt the above measures under the cloak of philan-
thropy.
It was political expediency which was at the
bottom of the desire of the natives of England for the
conversion of the heathens of India. This is quite
clear from what Mr. Charles Grant wrote, extracts
from whose writings have already been given above.
We are borne out in our view of the case by the
writings of another Englishman who possessed the
reputation of being a very zealous Christian. The
name of this Englishman is Mr. William Edwards.
204 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
He served in India during the Indian Mutiny, after
which event, he rose to be a Judge of Her Majesty's
High Court of Agra. In 1856, he published his
"Reminiscences of a Bengal Civilian." In the last
chapter of his work, he says :
"We are, and ever must be, regarded as foreign in-
vaders and conquerors, and the more the people become
enlightened and civilised the more earnest will, in all prob-
ability, be their efforts to get rid of us. Our best safe-
guard is in the evangelization of the country ; for although
Christianity does not denationalize, its spread would be
gradual, and Christian settlements scattered about the
country would be as towers of strength for many years to
come, for they must be loyal so long as the mass of the
people remain either idolaters or Mahomedans."'
Considerations like the above must have in-
fluenced the English a nation of shopkeepers in
favour of the conversion of the natives of India. They
were told that the presence of the Christian mission-
aries in India would not contribute to the happiness
of its inhabitants. The missionaries are as a class
very aggressive, and wantonly outrage the religious
susceptibilities of others who do not subscribe to their
dogmas and tenents. This leads not very rarely to
bloodshed even. This is exactly what was anticipa-
ted in India by those who were opposed to the
Christian Missions. But perhaps the scheming and
* P. 336.
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 205
designing politicians of England thought that such a
state of affairs would keep India under the control of
England. The missionaries by exasperating the
heathens provoke breaches of the peace, but they are
not punished but the heathens. We see this tragedy
or comedy being enacted every day in non-Christian
countries. Lufcadio Hearn, Lecturer on English
Literature in the University of Tokyo, says :
"Force, the principal instrument of Christian propa-
gandism in the past, is still the force behind our mission.
Only we have, or affect to have, substituted money-power
or menace for the franker edge of the sword ; occasion-
ally fulfilling the menace for commercial reasons in proof
of our Christian professions. We force missionaries upon
China, for example, under treaty-clauses extorted by war,
and pledge ourselves to support them with gun-boats and
to exact enormous indemnities for the lives of such as get
themselves killed. So China pays blood-money at regular
intervals, and is learning more and more each year the
value of what we call Christianity."
In his despatch presented to Parliament in March
1 895, Sir Gerald Portal said :
"The race for converts, now being carried on by the
Romish and Protestant missionaries in Uganda, is synony-
mous with the race for political power. That the mission-
aries on both sides are the veritable political leaders of
their respective factions, there can be no doubt whatever.
The Romish Fathers would admit this to be the case ; on
the Protestant side, it would not be admitted, but the fact
unfortunately remains. The three great parties of Islam,
206 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Rome and Protestantism, though nominally only divided
by religious tenets, are in reality adverse and jealous
political camps, and the leadership of two of these camps
is practically in the hands of European missionaries."
Mr. George Nathaniel (afterwards Lord) Curzon
wrote in the National Review for 1893 :
"Without hostility to the missionaries, it is impossible
to ignore the fact that English missionaries are a source of
political unrest and frequently of international trouble,
subversive of the national institutions of a country in
which they reside."
But India is a land of toleration. Here the
Christian missionaries have not been so roughly
handled as they seem to have been in some other
non-Christian countries. So the schemes of the
designing politicians of England have been to some
extent frustrated in India at least.
The people of India, although they do not owe
allegiance to Christ, are saturated through and
through, with those principles which Christ preached.
They do not and never did stand in need of Christian
missionaries. On the contrary, it is the Christian
islanders, whether natives of England or Scotland,
who very sadly require the ministrations of their
clergymen. The amount of immorality which
prevails in those Christian countries is simply appall-
ing. Debauchery, drunkenness, in short every sort
of crime and vice, grows and thrives luxuriantly in
the soil of Christian England and Scotland. General
UNDER THE RULE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 207
Booth was not wrong in branding large portions of
the land of his birth and living as "Darkest
England.'* So when we find the natives of that
country, instead of trying to remove the darkness that
overspreads their own homes, sending missions to
other lands, we must naturally conclude that they
must have some other ulterior motives in view, and
r.ot merely the salvation of the souls of the dark
heathens .
Thus it was selfish and certainly not philan-
thropic considerations which prompted the people
of England to send Christian missions to India and
impart instruction to its natives.
Christian missionaries who are sent out to
heathen lands do not seem to care so much for the
welfare of the souls of the dark-skinned races as to
bring those lands under the subjugation of Christian
powers by stirring up troubles in those lands. Thus
in the Saturday Review of July 10, 1 880, in an article
under the title of "flogging missionaries," it is
said :
"The sovereign authority which missionaries are said
to claim over uncivilised tribes, the missionary right to try,
condemn, torture, flog, imprison, and starve, are very
serious matters. Almost all our recent 'little wars' have
sprung, more or less directly, from the enterprise of
missionaries. The Abyssinian affair was caused by
missionaries. Missionaries spread the reports about
208 HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN INDIA
Cetewayo's cruelty and contempt of the Sabbath day*
which at least hastened the perhaps inevitable encounter
with the Zulus. A missionary complicated the relations
of the late Government with the Porte, and missionaries
have interfered pretty freely with the domestic Royal
quarrels which keep Burmah in hot water. Mr. Stanley's
expedition, no doubt, was a journalistic, not a religious
one. He converted a casual King or two by the way,
but his real end was to increase the circulation of the
Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald. If he shot
negros in so noble a cause it would scarcely be fair to
credit missionaries with his victories over naked enemies/'
It is not necessary to quote more from the above
article to show the doings of Christian Missionaries
in heathen lands. But the state of affairs revealed
in the above extract is not calculated to credit Christian
Missions with the desire to advance the cause of the
uplift of humanity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
I. Parliamentary Papers.
(a) Minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee
on the affairs of the East India Company, Vol. I.
Public. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be
printed, 16th Aug. 1832.
(b) Ditto, Ditto, Vol. VI. Political. Ditto.
(c) Sixth Report from the Select Committee on Indian
territories, 1853.
(d) East India (Education) ordered by the House of Commons
to be printed, 11th August, 1859.
(1) Bengal & N.-W. P.
(2) Madras.
(3) Bombay.
II. Macaulay's Minute published in Macmillan's Magazine for 1864.
III. Kaja Ram Mohun Roy's letter to Lord Amherst in the English
works of Raja Ram Mohun Roy, published by the Panini
Office, Allahabad.
IV. Hunter's Education Commission of 1882. Report and Minutes
of Evidence.
V. Sadler's Calcutta University Commission of 1920. Report and
Minutes of Evidence in 13 Vols.
VI. Syed Mahmud's History of English Education in India,
1781-1893.
VII. Prof. Holman's English National Education.
VIII. The Calcutta Review (Old Series), The Modern Review, &c., &c.
ERRATA.
Page 55 line 11 for "In" read "It".
,, 178 line 3 (from bottom) for "Convenanted" read "Covenanted".
,, 189 line 5 (from bottom) for "natives" read "native".
,, 196 line 11 for "this" read "his".
204 line 3 for "1856" read "1866".
,, 204 line 24 for "tenents" read "tenets".
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