Civilising the "Native", Educating the Nation PDF

6 Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation In the earlier chapters, you have seen how British rule affected rajas and nawabs, peasants and tribals. In this chapter, we will try and unde...

6 Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation In the earlier chapters, you have seen how British rule affected rajas and nawabs, peasants and tribals. In this chapter, we will try and understand what implication it had for the lives of students. For, the British in India wanted not only territorial conquest and control over revenues. They also felt that they had a cultural mission: they had to “civilise the natives”, change their customs and values. What changes were to be introduced? How were Indians Linguist – Someone to be educated, “civilised”, and made into what the British who knows and believed were “good subjects”? The British could find no simple studies several answers to these questions. They continued to be debated for languages many decades. How the British saw Education Let us look at what the British thought and did, and how some of the ideas of education that we now take for granted evolved in the last two hundred years. In the process of this enquiry, we will also see how Indians reacted to British ideas, and how they developed their own views about how Indians were to be educated. The tradition of Orientalism In 1783, a person named William Jones arrived in Calcutta. He had an appointment as a junior judge at the Supreme Court that the Company had set up. In addition to being an expert in law, Jones was a linguist. He had studied Greek and Latin at Oxford, knew French and English, had picked up Arabic from a friend, and had also learnt Persian. At Calcutta, he began spending many hours a day with pandits who taught him the subtleties of Sanskrit language, grammar and Fig. 1 – William Jones learning Persian Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 65 8/31/2022 5:00:41 PM  poetry. Soon he was studying ancient Indian texts on law, philosophy, religion, politics, morality, arithmetic, medicine and the other sciences. Jones discovered that his interests were shared by many British officials living in Calcutta at the time. 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 came to represent a particular attitude towards India. They shared a deep respect for ancient cultures, both of India and the West. Indian civilisation, they felt, had attained its glory in the ancient past, but had subsequently declined. In order to understand India, it was necessary to discover the sacred Fig. 2 – Henry Thomas and legal texts that were produced in the ancient period. Colebrooke For only those texts could reveal the real ideas and laws He was a scholar of Sanskrit of the Hindus and Muslims, and only a new study of and ancient sacred writings of Hinduism. these texts could form the basis of future development in India. So Jones and Colebrooke went about discovering ancient texts, understanding their meaning, translating them, and making their findings known to others. This project, they believed, would not only help the British learn from Indian culture, but it would 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. The officials also thought that Hindus and Muslims ought to be taught what they were already familiar with, and what they valued and treasured, not subjects that were alien to them. Only then, they believed, could the British hope to win a place in the hearts of the “natives”; only then could the alien rulers expect to be respected by their subjects. With this object in view, a madrasa was set up in Calcutta in 1781 to promote the study of Arabic, Persian Madrasa – An Arabic and Islamic law; and the Hindu College was established word for a place of in Benaras in 1791 to encourage the study of ancient learning; any type of Sanskrit texts that would be useful for the administration school or college of the country. 66 OUR PASTS – III Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 66 4/21/2022 12:18:02 PM  Fig. 3 – Monument to Warren Hastings, by Richard Westmacott, 1830, now in Victoria Memorial in Calcutta This image represents how Orientalists thought of British power in India. You will notice that the majestic figure of Hastings, an enthusiastic supporter of the Orientalists, is placed between the standing figure of a pandit on one side and a seated munshi on the other side. Hastings and other Orientalists needed Indian scholars to teach them the “vernacular” languages, tell them about local customs and laws, and help them translate and interpret ancient texts. Hastings took the initiative to set up the Calcutta Madrasa, and believed that the ancient customs of the country and Oriental learning ought to be the basis of British rule in India. Not all officials shared these views. Many were very strong in their criticism of the Orientalists. Orientalists – Those with “Grave errors of the East” a scholarly knowledge of From the early nineteenth century, many British officials the language and culture began to criticise the Orientalist vision of learning. They of Asia said that knowledge of the East was full of errors and unscientific thought; Eastern literature was non-serious Munshi – A person who and light-hearted. So they argued that it was wrong can read, write and teach on the part of the British to spend so much effort in Persian encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanskrit language and literature. Vernacular – A term generally used to refer to James Mill was one of those who attacked the a local language or dialect Orientalists. The British effort, he declared, should not be as distinct from what to teach what the natives wanted, or what they respected, is seen as the standard in order to please them and “win a place in their heart”. language. In colonial The aim of education ought to be to teach what was useful countries like India, the and practical. So Indians should be made familiar with British used the term the scientific and technical advances that the West had to mark the difference made, rather than with the poetry and sacred literature between the local of the Orient. languages of everyday By the 1830s, the attack on the Orientalists became use and English – the sharper. One of the most outspoken and influential language of the imperial of such critics of the time was Thomas Babington masters. Macaulay. He saw India as an uncivilised country that needed to be civilised. No branch of Eastern knowledge, according to him could be compared to what England had produced. Who could deny, declared Macaulay, that CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 67 Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 67 4/21/2022 12:18:04 PM  “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”. He urged that the British government in India stop wasting public money in pr omoting Oriental learning, for it was of no practical use. With great energy and passion, Macaulay emphasised 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 pr oduced; it would make them aware of the Fig. 4 – Thomas Babington developments in Western science Macaulay in his study and philosophy. Teaching of English could thus be a way of civilising people, changing their tastes, values and culture. Source 1 Following Macaulay’s minute, the English Education Act of 1835 was introduced. The decision was to make Language of English the medium of instruction for higher education, the wise? and to stop the promotion of Oriental institutions like the Calcutta Madrasa and Benaras Sanskrit College. These Emphasising the need to institutions were seen as “temples of darkness that were teach English, Macaulay falling of themselves into decay”. English textbooks now declared: began to be produced for schools. All parties seem to be agreed on one Education for commerce point, that the dialects In 1854, the Court of Directors of the East India commonly spoken Company in London sent an educational despatch among the natives to the Governor-General in India. Issued by Charles... of India, contain Wood, the President of the Board of Control of the neither literary nor Company, it has come to be known as Wood’s Despatch. scientific information, Outlining the educational policy that was to be followed and are, moreover, in India, it emphasised once again the practical benefits so poor and rude of a system of European learning, as opposed to that, until they are Oriental knowledge. enriched from some other quarter, it will One of the practical uses the Despatch pointed to was not be easy to translate economic. European learning, it said, would enable Indians any valuable work into to recognise the advantages that flow from the expansion of them... trade and commerce, and make them see the importance From Thomas Babington Macaulay, of developing the resources of the country. Introducing Minute of 2 February 1835 on them to European ways of life, would change their tastes Indian Education and desires, and create a demand for British goods, for Indians would begin to appreciate and buy things that were produced in Europe. 68 OUR PASTS – III Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 68 4/22/2022 11:56:33 AM  Wood’s Despatch also argued that European Source 2 learning would improve the moral character of Indians. It would make them truthful and honest, An argument and thus supply the Company with civil servants who could be trusted and depended upon. The literature of for European the East was not only full of grave errors, it could also knowledge not instill in people a sense of duty and a commitment to work, nor could it develop the skills required Wood’s Despatch of 1854 for administration. marked the final triumph of Following the 1854 Despatch, several measures those who opposed Oriental were introduced by the British. Education departments learning. It stated. of the government were set up to extend control We must emphatically over all matters regarding education. Steps were declare that the taken to establish a system of university education. education which In 1857, while the sepoys rose in revolt in Meerut we desire to see and Delhi, universities were being established in extended in India is Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Attempts were also that which has for its made to bring about changes within the system of object the diffusion school education. of the improved arts, services, philosophy, and literature of  Activity Europe, in short, Imagine you are living in the 1850s. You hear of European knowledge. Wood’s Despatch. Write about your reactions. Fig. 5 – Bombay University in the nineteenth century CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 69 Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 69 4/21/2022 12:18:08 PM  The demand for moral education The argument for practical education was strongly criticised by the Christian missionaries in India in the nineteenth century. The missionaries felt that education should attempt to improve the moral character of the people, and morality could be improved only through Christian education. Until 1813, the East India Company was opposed to missionary activities in India. It feared that missionary activities would provoke reaction amongst the local population and make them suspicious of British presence in India. Unable to establish an institution within British-controlled territories, the missionaries set up a mission at Serampore in an area under the control of the Danish East India Company. A printing press was set up in 1800 and a college established in 1818. Over the nineteenth century, missionary schools were set up all over India. After 1857, however, the British government in India was reluctant to directly support Fig. 6 – William Carey missionary education. There was a feeling that any strong was a Scottish missionary attack on local customs, practices, beliefs and religious ideas who helped establish the Serampore Mission might enrage “native” opinion. Fig. 7 – Serampore College on the banks of the river Hooghly near Calcutta 70 OUR PASTS – III Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 70 4/21/2022 12:18:12 PM  What Happened to the Local Schools? Do you have any idea of how children were taught in pre- British times? Have you ever wondered whether they went to schools? And if there were schools, what happened to these under British rule? The report of William Adam In the 1830s, William Adam, a Scottish missionary, toured the districts of Bengal and Bihar. He had been asked by the Company to report on the Fig. 8 – A village pathshala progress of education in vernacular schools. The report Adam This is a painting by a Dutch produced is interesting. painter, Francois Solvyn, who came to India in the late Adam found that there were over 1 lakh pathshalas eighteenth century. He tried to in Bengal and Bihar. These were small institutions with depict the everyday life of people no more than 20 students each. But the total number of in his paintings. children being taught in these pathshalas was considerable – over 20 lakh. These institutions were set up by wealthy people, or the local community. At times they were started by a teacher (guru). The system of education was flexible. Few things that you associate with schools today were present in the pathshalas at the time. There were no fixed fee, no printed books, no separate school building, no benches or chairs, no blackboards, no system of separate classes, no roll-call registers, no annual examinations, and no regular time-table. In some places, classes were held under a banyan tree, in other places in the corner of a village shop or temple, or at the guru’s home. Fee depended on the income of parents: the rich had to pay more than the poor. Teaching was oral, and the guru decided what to teach, in accordance with the needs of the students. Students were not separated out into different classes: all of them sat together in one place. The guru interacted separately with groups of children with different levels of learning. Adam discovered that this flexible system was suited to local needs. For instance, classes were not held during harvest time when rural children often worked in the fields. The pathshala started once again when the crops had been cut and stored. This meant that even children of peasant families could study. CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 71 Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 71 4/21/2022 12:18:13 PM   Activity New routines, new rules Up to the mid-nineteenth century, the Company 1. Imagine you were born was concerned primarily with higher education. So in a poor family in the it allowed the local pathshalas to function without 1850s. How would you much interference. After 1854, the Company decided have responded to the to improve the system of vernacular education. It felt coming of the new that this could be done by introducing order within the system of government- system, imposing routines, establishing rules, ensuring regulated pathshalas ? regular inspections. 2. Did you know that How was this to be done? What measures did about 50 per cent of the Company undertake? It appointed a number of the children going to government pandits, each in charge of looking after primary school drop out four to five schools. The task of the pandit was to visit of school by the time the pathshalas and try and improve the standard of they are 13 or 14? Can teaching. Each guru was asked to submit periodic you think of the various reports and take classes according to a regular possible reasons for timetable. Teaching was now to be based on textbooks this fact? 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. Those who were unwilling to work within the new system received no Fig. 9 – Sri Aurobindo Ghose government support. Over time, gurus who wanted to In a speech delivered on retain their independence found it difficult to compete January 15, 1908 in Bombay, with the government aided and regulated pathshalas. Aurobindo Ghose stated that The new rules and routines had another consequence. the goal of national education In the earlier system, children from poor peasant was to awaken the spirit of nationality among the families had been able to go to pathshalas, since the students. This required a timetable was flexible. The discipline of the new system contemplation of the heroic demanded regular attendance, even during harvest deeds of our ancestors. The time when children of poor families had to work in the education should be imparted in the vernacular so as to fields. Inability to attend school came to be seen as reach the largest number of indiscipline, as evidence of the lack of desire to learn. people. Aurobindo Ghose emphasised that although the students should remain The Agenda for a National Education connected to their own British officials were not the only people thinking roots, they should also take the fullest advantage of about education in India. From the early nineteenth modern scientific discoveries century, many thinkers fr om dif fer ent parts of and Western experiments India began to talk of the need for a wider spread of in popular governments. education. Impressed with the developments in Europe, Moreover, the students should some Indians felt that Western education would help also learn some useful crafts so that they could be able to find modernise India. They urged the British to open more some moderately remunerative schools, colleges and universities, and spend more employment after leaving their money on education. You will read about some of schools. these efforts in Chapter 8. There were other Indians, 72 OUR PASTS – III Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 72 4/21/2022 12:18:14 PM  however, who reacted against Western education. Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore were two such individuals. Let us look at what they had to say. “English education has enslaved us” Mahatma Gandhi argued that 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. There was poison in this education, said Mahatma Gandhi, it was sinful, it enslaved Indians, it cast an evil spell on them. Charmed by the West, appreciating everything that came from the West, Indians educated in these institutions began admiring British rule. Mahatma Gandhi wanted an education that could help Indians recover their sense of dignity and self-respect. During the national movement, he urged students to leave educational institutions in order to show to the British that Indians were no longer willing to be enslaved. Mahatma Gandhi strongly felt that Indian languages ought to be the medium of teaching. Education in English crippled Indians, distanced them from their own social surroundings, and made them “strangers in their own lands”. Speaking a foreign tongue, despising local culture, the English educated did not know how to relate to Fig. 10 – Mahatma Gandhi along the masses. with Kasturba Gandhi sitting with Western education, Mahatma Gandhi said, focused Rabindranath Tagore and a group of girls at Santiniketan, 1940 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. People had to work with their hands, learn a craft, and know how different things operated. This would develop their mind and their capacity to understand. CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 73 Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 73 4/21/2022 12:18:16 PM  Source 3 “Literacy in itself is not education” Mahatma Gandhi wrote: By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man – body, mind and spirit. Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. It is only one of the means whereby man and woman can be educated. Literacy in itself is not education. I would therefore begin the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training … I hold that the highest development of the mind and the soul is possible under such a system of education. Only every handicraft has to be taught not merely mechanically as is done today but scientifically, i.e. the child should know the why and the wherefore of every process. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 72, p. 79 As nationalist sentiments spread, other thinkers also began thinking of a system of national education which would be radically different from that set up by the British. Tagore’s “abode of peace” Many of you may have heard of Santiniketan. Do you know why it was established and by whom? Fig. 11 – A class in progress in Santiniketan in the 1930s Rabindranath Tagore started the institution in 1901. Notice the surroundings – the As a child, Tagore hated going to school. He found it trees and the open spaces. suffocating and oppressive. The school appeared like a prison, for he could never do what he felt like doing. So while other children listened to the teacher, Tagore’s mind would wander away. The experience of his schooldays in Calcutta shaped Tagore’s ideas of education. On growing up, he wanted to set up a school wher e the child was happy, where she could be free and creative, where she was able to explore her own thoughts and desires. Tagore felt 74 OUR PASTS – III Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 74 4/22/2022 11:56:58 AM  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 chose to set up his school 100 kilometres away from Calcutta, in a rural setting. He saw it as an abode of peace (santiniketan), where living in harmony with nature, children could cultivate their natural creativity. In many senses, Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi thought about education in similar ways. There were, however, differences too. 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. He emphasised the need to teach science and technology at Santiniketan, along with art, music and dance. Many individuals and thinkers were thus thinking about the way a national educational system could be fashioned. Some wanted changes within the system set up by the British, and felt that the system could be extended so as to include wider sections of people. Others urged that alternative systems be created so that people were educated into a culture that was truly national. Who was to define what was truly national? The debate about what this “national education” ought to be continued till after independence. Fig. 12 – Children playing in a missionary school in Coimbatore, early twentieth century By the mid-nineteenth century, schools for girls were being set up by Christian missionaries and Indian reform organisations. CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 75 Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 75 4/21/2022 12:18:19 PM  Let’s imagine Let’s recall Imagine you were witness to a debate 1. Match the following: between Mahatma Gandhi and Macaulay William Jones promotion of English on English education. education Write a page on the Rabindranath respect for ancient cultures dialogue you heard. Tagore Thomas Macaulay gurus Mahatma Gandhi learning in a natural environment Pathshalas critical of English education 2. State whether true or false: (a) James Mill was a severe critic of the Orientalists. (b) The 1854 Despatch on education was in favour English being introduced as a medium of higher education in India. (c) Mahatma Gandhi thought that promotion of literacy was the most important aim of education. (d) Rabindranath Tagore felt that children ought to be subjected to strict discipline. Let’s discuss 3. Why did William Jones feel the need to study Indian history, philosophy and law? 4. Why did James Mill and Thomas Macaulay think that European education was essential in India? 5. Why did Mahatma Gandhi want to teach children handicrafts? 6. Why did Mahatma Gandhi think that English education had enslaved Indians? 76 OUR PASTS – III Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 76 4/21/2022 12:18:22 PM  Let’s do 7. Find out from your grandparents about what they studied in school. 8. Find out about the history of your school or any other school in the area you live. CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 77 Reprint 2024-25 Chap 6.indd 77 4/21/2022 12:18:22 PM