Civilising The Native Educating the Nation
ANANYA VIII-B
Introduction
• The British in India wanted not only territorial conquest and control over
revenues but also felt that they had a cultural mission and had to “civilise the
natives”, change their customs and values.
How the British saw Education
The tradition of Orientalism
• In 1783, William Jones arrived in Calcutta who was a linguist.
→ He had studied Greek and Latin at Oxford, knew French and English, Arabic
and Persian.
→ At Calcutta, he started learning Sanskrit language, grammar and poetry.
→ Soon he was studying ancient Indian texts on law, philosophy, religion,
politics, morality, arithmetic, medicine and the other sciences.
• Englishmen like Henry Thomas Colebrooke and Nathaniel Halhed were also
busy discovering the ancient Indian heritage, mastering Indian languages and
translating Sanskrit and Persian works into English.
• Together with them, Jones set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and started a
journal called Asiatick Researches.
• Jones and Colebrooke went about discovering ancient texts, understanding
their meaning, translating them, and making their findings known to others.
→ They believed this project would help the British learn from Indian culture
and also help Indians rediscover their own heritage, and understand the lost
glories of their past.
→ In this process, the British would become the guardians of Indian culture as
well as its masters.
• Influenced by such ideas, many Company officials argued that the British
ought to promote Indian rather than Western learning.
• They felt that institutions should be set up to encourage the study of ancient
Indian texts and teach Sanskrit and Persian literature and poetry.
• In 1781, a madrasa was set up in Calcutta to promote the study of Arabic,
Persian and Islamic law.
• In 1791, the Hindu College was established in Benaras to encourage the study
of ancient Sanskrit texts that would be useful for the administration of the
country.
• Not all officials shared these views and many crticised the Orientalists.
“Grave errors of the East”
• From the early nineteenth century many British officials began to criticise the
Orientalist vision of learning.
• According to them, knowledge of the East was full of errors and unscientific
thought.
• James Mill was one of those who attacked the Orientalists and declared that
the aim of education ought to be to teach what was useful and practical.
→ So, Indians should be made familiar with the scientific and technical
advances that the West had made, rather than with the poetry and sacred
literature of the Orient.
• By the 1830s the attack on the Orientalists became sharper.
→ Thomas Babington Macaulay saw India as an uncivilised country that needed
to be civilised.
→ According to him, no branch of Eastern knowledge could be compared to
what England had produced. Macaulay gave importance to the need to teach
the English language.
• He felt that knowledge of English would allow Indians to read some of the
finest literature the world had produced.
→ It would make them aware of the developments in Western science and
philosophy.
→ Thus, it is a way of civilising people, changing their tastes, values and
culture.
• The English Education Act of 1835 was introduced.
→ The decision was to make English the medium of instruction for higher
education and to stop the promotion of Oriental institutions like the Calcutta
Madrasa and Benaras Sanskrit College.
Education for commerce
• In 1854, the Court of Directors of the East India Company in London sent an
educational despatch to the Governor-General in India come to be known as
Wood’s Despatch which emphasised once again the practical benefits of a
system of European learning, as opposed to Oriental knowledge.
• It said, European learning would enable Indians to recognise the advantages
that flow from the expansion of trade and commerce, and make them see the
importance of developing the resources of the country.
• Wood’s Despatch also argued that European learning would improve the
moral character of Indians and would make them truthful and honest.
• Following the 1854 Despatch, education departments of the government
were set up to extend control over all matters regarding education.
What Happened to the Local Schools?
The report of William Adam
In the 1830s, William Adam, a Scottish missionary, toured the districts of
Bengal and Bihar and asked by the Company to report on the progress of
education in vernacular schools.
• Adam found that there were over 1 lakh pathshalas in Bengal and Bihar
imparting education to over 20 lakh children.
→ These institutions were set up by wealthy people, or the local community.
• The system of education was flexible.
→ There were no fixed fee
→ There were no printed books
→ There were no separate school building
→ There were no benches or chairs
→ There were no blackboards
→ There were no system of separate classes
→ There were no roll-call registers
→ There were no annual examinations
→ There were no regular time-table.
→ For example, classes were not held during harvest time when rural children
often worked in the fields.(New routines, new rules)
• Up to the mid-nineteenth century, the Company was concerned primarily
with higher education.
• After 1854 the Company decided to improve the system of vernacular
education.
• Each guru was asked to submit periodic reports and take classes according to
a regular timetable.
• Teaching was now to be based on textbooks and learning was to be tested
through a system of annual examination.
• Students were asked to pay a regular fee, attend regular classes, sit on fixed
seats, and obey the new rules of discipline.
• Pathshalas which accepted the new rules were supported through
government grants.
• The new rules and routines affected the children from poor peasant families
negatively as new system demanded regular attendance, even during harvest
time.
• Inability to attend school came to be seen as indiscipline, as evidence of the
lack of desire to learn.
The Agenda for a National Education
• From the early nineteenth century, many thinkers from different parts of
India began to talk of the need for a wider spread of education.
• Some Indians felt that Western education would help modernise India
→ They urged the British to open more schools, colleges and universities, and
spend more money on education.
• There were other Indians who reacted against Western education. Mahatma
Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore were two such individuals.
“English education has enslaved us” (Mahatma Gandhi's view on Indian
Education)
• According to Mahatma Gandhi, the colonial education created a sense of
inferiority in the minds of Indians.
• It made them see Western civilisation as superior, and destroyed the pride
they had in their own culture.
• Mahatma Gandhi wanted an education that could help Indians recover their
sense of dignity and self-respect.
• As per Mahatma Gandhi, western education focused on reading and writing
rather than oral knowledge; it valued textbooks rather than lived experience
and practical knowledge.
• He argued that education ought to develop a person’s mind and soul.
• Literacy – or simply learning to read and write – by itself did not count as
education.
Tagore’s “abode of peace” (Rabindranath Tagore's view on Indian Education)
• Rabindranath Tagore started the Santiniketan in 1901.
• Tagore felt that childhood ought to be a time of self-learning, outside the
rigid and restricting discipline of the schooling system set up by the British.
• Teachers had to be imaginative, understand the child, and help the child
develop her curiosity.
• According to Tagore, the existing schools killed the natural desire of the child
to be creative, her sense of wonder.
• Tagore was of the view that creative learning could be encouraged only
within a natural environment.
→ So he set up santiniketan, 100 kilometres away from Calcutta in a natural
setting, where living in harmony with nature, children could cultivate their
natural creativity.
Difference in Gandhi and Tagore view about Indian Education
• Gandhiji was highly critical of Western civilisation and its worship of
machines and technology. Tagore wanted to combine elements of modern
Western civilisation with what he saw as the best within Indian tradition.
• Gandhiji considered work with their hands, learn a craft, and know how
different things operated as education while Tagore emphasised the need to
teach science and technology at Santiniketan, along with art, music and dance.