 EDUCATION.

Background

4.1 Reliable educational statistics for the pre-British period. are not available in respect of the state of education in those days. Generally speaking education was imparted through the medium of classical languages, e.g., Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic.

4.2 An educational survey was for the first time conducted by the East India Company in the early nineteenth century. The survey was confined to the territories under the control of the Company. Enqui- ries were conducted in the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay in 1822 and 1823-25 respectively, and in the Presidency of Bengal in 1835. These enquiries revealed that the traditional educational institutions seldom used the mother tongue as medium of instruction beyond the elementary stage. Persian, Sanskrit or Arabic continued to be the main media of instruction at these institutions.

4.3 William Adam, who had conducted the enquiry in the Presidency of Bengal, noted four types of schools then existing. These were : (i Bengali Elementary Schools; (ii) Persian Schools; (iii)Arabic Elementary Schools, and (iv) Persian-Bengali Schools. The Bengali and Persian-Bengali Schools did use, a modern Indian language,i.e,Bengali at the,elementary level. Adam,however,suggested the adoption of English as the medium of instruction in place of the classical languages.

4.4 The East India Company realised after 1765 that it was fast acquiring political power and felt that in order to consolidate its power it was a safe course to follow the policy of the earlier India, rulers and encourage classical learning in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic on traditional lines so as to leave the "Indian people to develop their traditional system of education according to their own genius."

4.5 The officials and the staff of the East India Company, who had to communicate with the local people were, however, handicapped owing to their ignorance of the local languages. The Company, therefore considered it necessary to train its civil servants in the, languages and customs of India. The Fort 'William college was established at Calcutta in the year 1800 with this object in view. The college was set up to teach the major Indian languages to the British civil and military officers.

4.6 Simultaneously, in pursuance of the policy, often referred to as the Orientalist policy of the company two important institutions were set up : (i) the Calcutta Madrasa and (ii) the Banaras Sanskrit College. Lord Minto recommended the establishment of additional madrasas and Sanskrit colleges 'at convenient places within the Company's territories".

4.7 This policy was affirmed by the British Parliament in 1813 when the Company's Charter came up for renewal before it. Thus section XLIII of the Charter as approved by the British Parliament provided that, "it shall be lawful for the Governor-General-in-Council to dirct 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 lakh of rupees in each year shall be set apart and applied to the revival and improvement of literature, encouragement of the learned natives of India and for the introduction and promotion of knowledge of sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories of India."

4.8 A General Committee of Public Instruction was accordingly appointed on July 17, 1823 by the Governor-General-in-Council and vested with powers to advise, and also to expend the annual grants for the promotion of education. Between 1823 and 1833, the committee recognised the Calcutta Madrasa and the Banaras Sanskrit College, established a Sanskrit College at Calcutta and two oriental colleges at Agra and Delhi, undertook the, printing and publication of Sanskrit, Arabic and Urdu books on an appreciable scale and employed scholars to translate English works into the languages of India.

4.9 The Delhi College, founded in 1825, played an important role in the development of Urdu. It was the first institution in the country to introduce Urdu as a medium of instruction at the higher stage of education.

4.10 The policy of promoting education through the media of classical and some other Indian languages was soon reversed consequent on the famous minute of Thomas Babington Macaulay recorded on February 23 1835 in which he rejected not only the Indian classical languages as media of instruction but also the "vernacular" languages, branding them as "poor and crude", Macaulay's minute was accepted by Lord William Bentinck, the then Governor-General. In the subsequent Resolution issued on March 7. 1835 the Company's future policy was enunciated as follows :

(a) The great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science.

(b) All funds appropriated for the purposes of education should be employed on English alone.

(d) No money should be spent on the printing of oriental works.

The Resolution amounted to the adoption of English as the medium of education to the exclusion of' the classical and modern Indian languages from that role.

4.11 When the Company's Charter was due for renewal again in 1853, the Court of Directors of the Company felt the need for a thorough and comprehensive review of the educational developments in India under the Company's administration. Accordingly, a select committee of the House of Lords conducted an enquiry, whose findings formed the basis of the Education Despatch of July 19, 1854, commonly known as Wood's Despatch. The full text of the Despatch will be found in the British Parliamentary Papers 1854 (XLVII) (393)2 on pages 1 to 18. The Despatch reiterated "emphatically that the objective of education remained the diffusion of .... European knowledge" But, unlike Macaulay who has condemned classical and local languages, it acknowledged the importance of classical languages by recording that acquaintance with the works contained in them was valuable for historical and legal purposes. While considering the importance of classical and modern Indian languages, the Despatch reiterated that these languages could, however, not be made the sole medium of education and that "English alone should serve the purpose for higher education." It was made incumbent upon those who desired to obtain liberal education to "acquire mastery of English language as a key to the literature of Europe." It was also felt necessary to "regard the knowledge of English...... essential to those natives of India who aspired to higher order of education ." The Despatch went on to say that "it is niether our aim nor our, desire to substitute English language for the vernacular dialects of the country. We have always been most sensible of the importance of the languages which alone are understood by the masses of population. It is indispensable, therefore, that in any general system of education the study of them should be assiduously attended and any acquaintance with improved European knowledge which is to be communicated to the great mass of the people .... can only be conveyed to them by one or the other of these vernacular languages"

4.12 The Despatch concluded by declaring that the objective of education was "to extend European knowledge throughout all classes of the people". It stressed "that this object must be effected by means of the English language in the higher branches of instruction and that of the Vernacular languages of India to the great mass of the people." It drew the special attention of' the Governor-General to the "education of the middle and lower classes both by the establishment of fitting schools for this purpose and by means of careful encouragement of the native schools which exist and have existed from time immemorial in every village."* One can not fail to notice in the new policy a shift in emphasis from an exclusively English education to the encouragement of education through the Anglo-Vernacular schools.

4.13 The uprising of 1857, however, made the then British rulers doubtful about the desirability of popular education. Lord Ellenborough felt that the new policy of educating the masses had led to the events of 1857, and he advocated resiling from that policy.**

4.14 Tile Education Despatch of 1854, issued during the rule of East India Company and subsequently ratified by the Secretary of State in 1859, envisaged that there would be secondary schools teaching through the Indian languages, in addition to the schools using English exclusively as the medium of instruction. But due to certain peculiar historical circumstances as well as the prevailing institutional set- up, that policy could not be implemented. The educational policy as implemented was not favourable to the cultivation of modern Indian languages, and the declared aim of the 1854 Despatch, that the difference between Anglo-Vernacular and vernacular schools be eliminated gradually, proved illusory.

4.15 The Despatch of 1854 resulted in the immediate establishment of three universities at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Following the general plan of the University of London, these universities were me- rely affiliating and examining bodies. Consequently, they completely dominated the Wallet and the secondary education and, while education in English received a great impetus in almost all institutions, education through Indian languages suffered total neglect. This situation prevailed in all the territories under the East India Company and created a small privileged class that learnt the English language, and other subjects through that medium. It left the poor and the under privileged masses of the people to their own resources,

4.16 The situation took a turn for the worse when the then Viceroy of India approved the following Resolution on June 30, 1868, which aimed at encouraging greater use of English. The Resolution as communicated to the Secretary of State for India in London read as under :

"Tire Governor-General-in-Council, having considered the expediency of encouraging 'natives' of 'India to resort more freely to English, for the purpose of perfecting their education, and of studying for the various learned professions, or for the civil and other services of this country, believes that this most important object would be facilitated by creating a certain number of scholarships to be held on condition of residence in Great Britain."

4.17 The universities controlled college and secondary education by organizing courses of studies prescribing syllabi and conducting final examinations for diploma and advanced degrees. The secondary schools always looked up to the universities for inspiration and guidance and their sole aim was to prepare the students for the universities. As lectures in the affiliated colleges of the universities were delivered in

* Parliamentary Papers 1854-XLVII (393)

** Parliamentary Papers 1866-LII (52)

English, it was but natural for the secondary schools, whose main purpose was to supply students to the colleges, to adopt English as the chief medium of instruction and to impart proficiency in that language. The report of the Hurter Commission of 1882 shows the enormous influence of higher education imparted through the medium of English on the lower stages of the Indian educational system.

4.18 The Hunter Commission pointed out the following drawbacks in the language policy pursued at the secondary and primary levels :

(i) The study of the English. language was begun before the pupil was properly grounded in his mother tongue.

(ii) English was taught as a subject before it was used as a medium of instruction. But the period of its study was too short to give the pupil that mastery over the language which was essential for its successful use as a medium of instruction.

(iii) in the secondary stage, English was invariably used as the language of instruction. This was due to the impact of the universities on the secondary education of the country.

(iv) The higher education that could be obtained through the 'vernacular' was limited to the middle school stage and the idea of high schools teaching through the mother tongue seemed to have been given up.

4.19 Modern Indian languages, including Urdu, were thus neglected and there emerged a new middle class indifferent to Indian languages and steeped in the values of the English language and its traditions.

4.20 The cumulative effect of all these steps was that the prestige of English education was greatly enhanced. A degree from Oxford or Cambridge University was looked upon as the pinnacle of education achievement. Graduates from English universities, who filled the academic ranks of Indian universities and colleges, were convinced of the futility of any attempt at imparting higher education throug the medium of Indian languages, The three factors,namely,(a)the dominance of the universities teaching through the medium of English, (b) the encouragement of English by the Government and, (c) the emergence of the new middle class favouring the English language, were together responsible for a steady neglect and decline of Indian languages in the educational system of the country. Moreover, as the secondary schools and colleges were located in towns, this new educated class remained urban in character while the vast majority of the people living in the rural areas became isolated from the mainstream of formal education.

4.21 The place assigned to Indian languages in the field of higher education in the country has been explained in the report of the Indian Universitites Commission of 1902, known as the Raleigh Commission after the name of Its Chairman, Sir Thomas Raleigh. According to his analysis :

(a) For the Matriculation Examination, one of the four compulsory subjects was a second language which was defined as (i) "an Oriental or European classical language" or (ii) "an Indian or continental European vernacular language". In the Punjab and Allahabad Universities (which could have given due place to urdu) set up in 1882 and 1887 respectively, the option of studying a regional language was not given, while in the Punjab University a candidate could take UP firth optional subject in addition to the four compulsory subjects from amongst a regional language, elementary science, or a second classical language.

(b) For the Intermediate Examination (first two years of' college) a second language, defined as "an eastern or western classical or modern European language" was compulsory. Madras University alone out of all the universities of India, accepted the option of an Indian language, though this did not have any effect irk so far as Urdu was concerned.

(c) No university except the Madras University, at that time thought of including the Indian languages as an alternative to the classical languages for the B.A. Examination.

4.22 Lord Curzon who bad a band in appointing the Raleigh commission wanted to pursue a comparatively enlightened and practical educational policy. He felt that while English might be taught to those who were qualified to learn it, such education should be based on a solid foundation of the indigenous languages, "for no people will ever use another tongue with advantage that cannot first use its own with case."

4.23 The Raleigh Commission came to a similar conclusion

"Speaking generally, we fear that the study of vernacular languages has received insufficient attention and that many graduates have a very inadequate knowledge of their mother-tongue. Unless, however, a good training in the vernacular is given in the schools, no effort of the University will avail."

4.24 Lord Curzon's language policy had a definate impact, as is evident from the Fifth Quinquennial Review, on the progress of education in India. The relevant excerpt reads as follows :

"There has been a certain increase in the honour paid to the vernacular languages of India; (i) The University of Madras made the vernacular language a compulsory subject of study for the intermediate examination and an optional subject for the Bachelor's examination.

* Lord Curzon in India-Selecton from his speeches as Viceroy and Governor-General of India 1898-1905, Macmillan Co., London.

(ii) The University of Calcutta made the vernacular language a compulsory subject of study both for the intermediate and Bachelor's examinations.

(iii) The University of Calcutta also allowed its candidates to take a Portion of the Entrance or Matriculation Examination in the vernacular instead of English if they wanted to do so." *

4.25 In 1913, there came a significant change in the attitude of the Government of India, who paid an official tribute to the Indian languages. The Resolution on the Educational Policy of the Government of India dated February 21, 1913,declared that "there is much experience to the effect that scholars who have been through a complete vernacular course are exceptionally efficient mentally."" This pronouncement encouraged the establishment of 'vernacular continuous schools' for advanced studies through the medium of Indian languages. One of its immediate consequences was that local languages came to be widely used as media of instruction at the middle school stage.

4.26 During World War I, the educational system in India was bitterly criticized by national leaders like Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Mahatma Gandhi, who accused the Government of neglecting the education of the masses in their mother tongue. Reacting to the pressure of public demand, the Government of India in 1917 appointed a Commission under the chairman ship of Machael Sadler to enquire into the problems of education in India in general.

4.27 The Sadler Commission devoted much attention to the question of language in Indian education. Broadly accepting the policy laid down in the Despatch of 1854, the Commission agreed that the policy should be, "to make English and the Indian vernacular languages coordinate factors in working out in India a harmonious combination of eastern and western civilization ". The Commission further declared : "We are emphatically of the opinion that there is something unsound in a system of education which leaves a youngman at the conclusion of his course, unable to speak or write his own mother-tongue, fluently and correctly, It is thus beyond controversy that a systematic effort must henceforth be made to promote the serious study of the vernaculars in secondary schools, intermediate colleges and in the university" I The Sadler Commission made recommendations regarding the medium of instruction at various levels of education. For the University stage, the Commission recommended the retention of English as the medium of instruction for every subject except the classical and local languages. For the secondary stage, it recommended the use of the Indian languages as media of instruction..