Pranam
ADVERSE REMARKS OF THE BRITISH
Macaulay's Minute on Education, February 2, 1835:
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 affected 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 recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the
West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest
which Greece has bequeathed to us,-with models of every species of
eloquence,-with historical composition, which, considered merely as
narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as
vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been
equaled-with just and lively representations of human life and
human nature,-with the most profound speculations on
metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, trade,-with full and
correct information respecting every experimental science which
tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to
expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access
to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the
earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations.
It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that
language is of greater value than all the literature which three hundred
years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together.
Nor is this all.
In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class.
It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It
is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the
East. It is the language of two great European communities which are
rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in
Australia,-communities which are every year becoming more important
and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the
intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this
country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign
tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our
native subjects. The question now before us is simply whether, when it is
in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by
universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be
compared to our own, whether, when we can teach European science, we shall
teach systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from
those of Europe differ for the worse, and whether, when we can
patronize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the
public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an English
farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English
boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and
reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of
treacle and seas of butter.
Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within
the last hundred and twenty years, a nation which had previously been in a
state as *barbarous *as that in which our ancestors were before the
Crusades has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was
sunk, and has taken its place among civilized communities. I
speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated class
abounding with persons fit to serve the State in the highest functions, and
in nowise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles
of Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire which,
in the time of our grandfathers, was probably behind the Punjab,
may in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on
France and Britain in the career of improvement. And how was this
change effected? Not by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the
mind of the young Muscovite with the old women's stories which his rude
fathers had believed; not by filling his head with lying legends about St.
Nicholas; not by encouraging him to study the great question, whether the
world was or not created on the 13th of September; not by calling him "a
learned native" when he had mastered all these points of knowledge;
but by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest
mass of information had been laid up, and thus putting all that information
within his reach. The languages of western Europe civilised Russia. I
cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for the
Tartar. And what are the arguments against
that course which seems to be alike recommended by theory
and by experience? It is said that we ought to secure the
cooperation of the native public, and that we can do this only
by teaching Sanscrit and Arabic. I can by no means admit
that, when a nation of high intellectual attainments undertakes
to superintend the education of a nation comparatively ignorant,
the learners are absolutely to prescribe the course which is to
be taken by the teachers. It is not necessary however to say
anything on this subject. For it is proved by unanswerable
evidence, that we are not at present securing the co-operation of the
natives. It would be bad enough to consult their intellectual taste
at the expense of their intellectual health. But we are
consulting neither. We are withholding from them the learning
which is palatable to them. We are forcing on them the mock learning which
they nauseate. This is proved by the fact that we are forced to pay
our Arabic and Sanscrit students while those who learn English are
willing to pay us. All the declamations in the world about the
love and reverence of the natives for their sacred dialects will
never, in the mind of any impartial person, outweigh this undisputed
fact, that we cannot find in all our vast empire a single student who will
let us teach him those dialects, unless we will pay him.
VIpoint: Other evidence is not wanting, if other
evidence were required. A petition was presented last year to the
committee by several ex-students of the Sanscrit College. The petitioners
stated that they had studied in the college ten or twelve
years, that they had made themselves acquainted with Hindoo
literature and science, that they had received certificates of
proficiency. And what is the fruit of all this? "Notwithstanding
such testimonials," they say, "we have but little prospect of bettering our
condition without the kind assistance of your honourable committee,
the indifference with which we are generally looked upon by our
countrymen leaving no hope of encouragement and assistance from
them." They therefore beg that they may be recommended to the
Governor-General for places under the Government-not places of
high dignity or emolument, but such as may just enable them to exist. "We
want means," they say, "for a decent living, and for our progressive
improvement, which, however, we cannot obtain without the assistance
of the Government, by whom we have been educated and maintained from
childhood." They conclude by representing very pathetically that they are
sure that it was never the intention of the Government, after behaving so
liberally to them during their education, to abandon them to destitution
and neglect. { KR so who caused the fall}
The fact that the Hindoo law is to be learned chiefly from
Sanscrit books, and hematoma law from Arabic books, has been much
insisted on, but seems not to bear at all on the question. We are
commanded by Parliament to ascertain and digest the laws of India. The
assistance of a Law Commission has been given to us for that
purpose. As soon as the Code is promulgated the Shastras and the
Hadiya will be useless to ammonify or a Shudder Ameen. I hope and
trust that, before the boys who are now entering the Madrasa and the
Sanscrit College have completed their studies, this great work
will be finished. It would be manifestly absurd to educate the
rising generation with a view to a state of things which we mean to
alter before they reach manhood. But there is yet another argument
which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit and the
Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred
millions of people are written, and that they are on that
account entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of
the British Government in India to be not only tolerant but neutral on all
religious questions. But to encourage the study of a literature, admitted
to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature
inculcated the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a
course hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality, or even with
that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly
preserved. It is confined that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We
are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. We are
to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine, because we find
them in company with a false religion.
It is taken for granted by the advocates of
oriental learning that no native of this country can possibly attain
more than a mere smattering of English. They do not attempt to prove this.
But they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education which their
opponents recommend as a mere spelling-book education. They assume it is
undeniable that the question is between a profound knowledge of Hindoo and
Arabian literature and science on the one side, and superficial
knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other. This is not
merely an assumption, but an assumption contrary to all reason
and experience. We know that foreigners of all nations do learn our
language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse
knowledge which it contains sufficiently to relish even the more
delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers. {KR Do we have this kind of
pride today on our assets?}
KR IRS 171221
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