X: @prashanthamine
Mumbai: What Thomas Babington Macaulay or is known as Lord Macaulay, had said about Indian education system 190 years ago in 1835, about its religions, culture, religious scriptures while forcefully arguing in favour of introducing English as the sole medium of learning, still rings loud and clear not just in Maharashtra, but across India.
But just who was Thomas Babington Macaulay?
Thomas Babington Macaulay (59) was known as the 1st Baron Macaulay, a member of the Privy Council (PC), a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and the Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). He was born on October 25, 1800 at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, and died on December 28, 1859 in London.
He was an English historian, poet, and Whig politician (British political faction of that time), who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 1846 and 1848. He came to India in 1834 and served on the Supreme Council from 1834 to 1838.
Macaulay played a key role in determining India’s education policy, in which he was guided by his conviction that Western European culture was superior to that of India and the Middle East. In his Minute on Education in India, he had urged the then Governor General of India, Lord William Bentinck to reform secondary education in India.
Macaulay wrote Minutes on Education in India which were written in the Years 1835, 1836 and 1837 while he was serving on the Supreme Council.
But much famously controversial of his Minute was written by him on February 2, 1835.
Here we are merely reproducing that famously controversial of his Minute for you readers to judge on the Language War that is being played over the National Education Policy 2020, or NEP 2020.
Please note the English, grammar and pronunciation of words is from that Victorian era in Great Britain 190 years ago.
Below is the exact reproduction of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Minute…
Minute by Mr. Macaulay (2 February, 1835) by Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Minute by Mr. Macaulay.
2nd February, 1835.
As it seems to be the opinion of some of the gentlemen who compose the Committee of Public Instruction, that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed by the British Parliament in 1813, and as, if that opinion be correct, a legislative act will be necessary to warrant a change, I have thought it right to refrain from taking any part in the preparation of the adverse statements which are now before us, and to reserve what I had to say on the subject till it should come before me as a member of the Council of India.
It does not appear to me that the Act of Parliament can, by any art of construction, be made to bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing about the particular languages or sciences which are to be studied. A sum is set apart ‘for the revival and promotion 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 inhabitants of the British territories.’
It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature, the Parliament can have meant only Arabic and Sanscrit literature, that they never would have given the honorable appellation of ‘a learned native’ to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the Metaphysics of Locke, and the Physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only such persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindoos all the uses of cusa-grass, and all the mysteries of absorption into the Deity.
This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. To take a parallel case; suppose that the Pacha of Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge to the nations of Europe, but now sunk far below them, were to appropriate a sum for the purpose of ‘reviving and promoting literature, and encouraging learned natives of Egypt‘ would anybody infer that he meant the youth of his pachalic to give years to the study of hieroglyphics, to search into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiris, and to ascertain with all possible accuracy the ritual with which cats and onions were anciently adored?
Would he be justly charged with inconsistency, if, instead of employing his young subjects in deciphering obelisks, he were to order them to be instructed in the English and French languages, and in all the sciences to which those languages are the chief keys.
The words on which the supporters of the old system rely do not bear them out, and other words follow which seem to be quite decisive on the other side. This lac of Rupees is set apart, not only for ‘reviving literature in India’ the phrase on which their whole interpretation is founded, but also for ‘the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories’—words which are alone sufficient to authorise all the changes for which I contend.
If the Council agree in my construction, no legislative Act will be necessary. If they differ from me, I will prepare a short Act rescinding that clause of the Charter of 1818, from which the difficulty arises.
The argument which I have been considering, affects only the form of proceeding. But the admirers of the Oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanscrit, would be down-right spoliation.
It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from public purse for the encouragement of literature differed in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility.
We found a sanatorium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanatorium there, if the result should not answer our expectation? We commence the erection of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless?
The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses.
If the Government has given to any person a formal assurance; nay, if the Government has excited in any person’s mind a reasonable expectation that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I would respect that person’s pecuniary interests—I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question.
But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me. quite unmeaning. There is not a single word in any public instructions, from which it can be inferred that the Indian Government ever intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered the destination of these funds as unalterably fixed.
But had it been otherwise, I should have denied the competence of our predecessors to bind us by any pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a Government had in the last century enacted in the most solemn manner that all its subjects should, to the end of time, be inoculated for the small-pox: would that Government be bound to persist in the practice after Jenner’s discovery?
These promises, of which nobody claims the performance, and from which nobody can grant a release; these vested rights, which vest in nobody; this property without proprietors; this robbery, which makes nobody poorer, may be comprehended by persons of higher faculties than mine.—I consider this plea merely as a set form of words, regularly used both in England and in India, in defence of every abuse for which no other plea can be set up.
I hold this lac of rupees to be quite at the disposal of the Governor-General in Council, for the purpose of promoting learning in India, in any way which may be thought most advisable. I hold his Lordship to be quite as free to direct that it shall no longer be employed in encouraging Arabic and Sanscrit, as he is to direct that the reward for killing tigers in Mysore shall be diminished, or that no more public money shall be expended on the chanting at the cathedral.
We now come to the gist of the matter. We have a fund to be employed as Government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it?
All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them.
It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.
What then shall that language be? One-half of the Committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be, which language is the best worth knowing?
I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.—But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues.
I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.
It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations.
But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.
How, then, stands the case? We, have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must, teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to re-capitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the west.
To be continued…
