Civilising the "Native" - Educating the Nation PDF

8 Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation In the earlier chapters you have seen how British rule affected e d...

8 Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation In the earlier chapters you have seen how British rule affected e d h rajas and nawabs, peasants and tribals. In this chapter we T s will try and understand what implication it had for the i lives of students. For, the British in India wanted not only l territorial conquest and control over revenues. They also felt R that they had a cultural mission: they had to “civilise the b natives”, change their customs and values. E What changes were to be introduced? How were Indians u Linguist – Someone to be educated, “civilised”, and made into what the British C who knows and believed were “good subjects”? The British could find p studies several no simple answers to these questions. They continued to languages N re be debated for many decades. How the British saw Education © e Let us look at what the British thought and did, and how some of the ideas of education b 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 o to British ideas, and how they developed t their own views about how Indians were to be educated. t The tradition of Orientalism o In 1783, a person named William Jones n 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 95  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 d started a journal called Asiatick Researches. e Jones and Colebrooke came to represent a particular attitude towards India. They shared a deep respect for h ancient cultures, both of India and the West. Indian T s civilisation, they felt, had attained its glory in the ancient i past, but had subsequently declined. In order to l understand India it was necessary to discover the sacred R Fig. 2 – Henry Thomas and legal texts that were produced in the ancient period. b Colebrooke For only those texts could reveal the real ideas and laws E He was a scholar of Sanskrit of the Hindus and Muslims, and only a new study of these u and ancient sacred writings texts could form the basis of future development in India. C of Hinduism. So Jones and Colebrooke went about discovering p ancient texts, understanding their meaning, translating N re 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 © e 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. b Influenced by such ideas, many Company officials argued that the British ought to promote Indian rather o than Western learning. They felt that institutions should t be set up to encourage the study of ancient Indian texts and teach Sanskrit and Persian literature and poetry. t The officials also thought that Hindus and Muslims ought to be taught what they were already familiar with, o and what they valued and treasured, not subjects that were alien to them. Only then, they believed, could the n 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 Madrasa – An Arabic Calcutta in 1781 to promote the study of Arabic, Persian word for a place of and Islamic law; and the Hindu College was established learning; any type of in Benaras in 1791 to encourage the study of ancient school or college Sanskrit texts that would be useful for the administration of the country. 96 OUR PASTS – III  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 d Orientalists needed Indian scholars to teach them the “vernacular” languages, tell them e about local customs and laws, and help them translate and interpret ancient texts. h Hastings took the initiative to set up the Calcutta Madrasa, and believed that the T s ancient customs of the country and Oriental i learning ought to be the basis of British rule l in India. E R b Not all officials shared these views. Many were very Orientalists – Those u strong in their criticism of the Orientalists. C with a scholarly p “Grave errors of the East” knowledge of the language and culture N re From the early nineteenth century many British officials of Asia began to criticise the Orientalist vision of learning. They said that knowledge of the East was full of errors and Munshi – A person who © e unscientific thought; Eastern literature was non-serious can read, write and and light-hearted. So they argued that it was wrong on teach Persian the part of the British to spend so much effort in b encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanskrit language Vernacular – A term and literature. generally used to refer o James Mill was one of those who attacked the to a local language or t Orientalists. The British effort, he declared, should not dialect as distinct from be to teach what the natives wanted, or what they what is seen as the t respected, in order to please them and “win a place in standard language. In their heart”. The aim of education ought to be to teach colonial countries like o what was useful and practical. So Indians should be India, the British used made familiar with the scientific and technical advances the term to mark the n that the West had made, rather than with the poetry difference between the and sacred literature of the Orient. local languages of By the 1830s the attack on the Orientalists became everyday use and sharper. One of the most outspoken and influential of English – the language such critics of the time was Thomas Babington of the imperial 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 97  “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 promoting Oriental learning, for it was of no practical use. With great energy and passion, Macaulay emphasised d the need to teach the English e language. He felt that knowledge of English would allow Indians h to read some of the finest literature the world had produced; T i s it would make them aware of l the developments in Western R Fig. 4 – Thomas Babington Macaulay in his study science and philosophy. Teaching of English could thus b be a way of civilising people, changing their tastes, E values and culture. Source 1 u Following Macaulay’s minute, the English Education C Act of 1835 was introduced. The decision was to make Language of p English the medium of instruction for higher education, N re the wise? and to stop the promotion of Oriental institutions like the Calcutta Madrasa and Benaras Sanskrit College. Emphasising the need to These institutions were seen as “temples of darkness © e teach English, Macaulay that were falling of themselves into decay”. English declared: textbooks now began to be produced for schools. b All parties seem to Education for commerce be agreed on one In 1854, the Court of Directors of the East India point, that the dialects Company in London sent an educational despatch to o commonly spoken the Governor-General in India. Issued by Charles Wood, t among the natives … the President of the Board of Control of the Company, of India, contain it has come to be known as Wood’s Despatch. Outlining t neither literary nor scientific information, the educational policy that was to be followed in India, o and are, moreover, it emphasised once again the practical benefits of a so poor and rude system of European learning, as opposed to Oriental n that, until they are knowledge. enriched from some One of the practical uses the Despatch pointed to other quarter, it was economic. European learning, it said, would enable will not be easy to Indians to recognise the advantages that flow from the translate any valuable expansion of trade and commerce, and make them see work into them … the importance of developing the resources of the From Thomas Babington country. Introducing them to European ways of life, Macaulay, Minute of 2 February would change their tastes and desires, and create a 1835 on Indian Education demand for British goods, for Indians would begin to appreciate and buy things that were produced in Europe. 98 OUR PASTS – III  Source 2 Wood’s Despatch also argued that European learning would improve the moral character of Indians. It would An argument make them truthful and honest, and thus supply the Company with civil servants who could be trusted and for European depended upon. The literature of the East was not only knowledge full of grave errors, it could also not instill in people a sense of duty and a commitment to work, nor could it Wood’s Despatch of 1854 develop the skills required for administration. marked the final triumph Following the 1854 Despatch, several measures were of those who opposed introduced by the British. Education departments of Oriental learning. It d the government were set up to extend control over all stated: e matters regarding education. Steps were taken to We must emphatically establish a system of university education. In 1857, declare that the h while the sepoys rose in revolt in Meerut and Delhi, education which we universities were being established in Calcutta, Madras s desire to see extended T i and Bombay. Attempts were also made to bring about in India is that which l changes within the system of school education. has for its object R the diffusion of b the improved arts, h E Activity services, philosophy, u Imagine you are living in the 1850s. You hear of and literature of C Wood’s Despatch. Write about your reactions. Europe, in short, p European knowledge. N re Fig. 5 – Bombay University in the nineteenth century © e b t o o t n CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 99  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 d would provoke reaction amongst the local population and e make them suspicious of British presence in India. Unable to establish an institution within British-controlled territories, the h missionaries set up a mission at Serampore in an area under the control of the Danish East India Company. A printing press T s was set up in 1800 and a college established in 1818. l i Over the nineteenth century, missionary schools were R set up all over India. After 1857, however, the British b government in India was reluctant to directly support missionary E Fig. 6 – William Carey was education. There was a feeling that any strong attack on local u a Scottish missionary customs, practices, beliefs and religious ideas might enrage C who helped establish the “native” opinion. p Serampore Mission N re © e b t o o t n Fig. 7 – Serampore College on the banks of the river Hooghly near Calcutta 100 OUR PASTS – III 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 d under British rule? e The report of William Adam In the 1830s, William Adam, a h Scottish missionary, toured T s the districts of Bengal and i Bihar. He had been asked by the l Company to report on the progress of education in vernacular Fig. 8 – A village pathshala R schools. The report Adam produced is interesting. This is a painting by a b Dutch painter, Francois E Adam found that there were over 1 lakh pathshalas in Solvyn, who came to India Bengal and Bihar. These were small institutions with no in the late eighteenth u more than 20 students each. But the total number of century. He tried to depict C children being taught in these pathshalas was considerable the everyday life of people p in his paintings. – over 20 lakh. These institutions were set up by wealthy N re people, or the local community. At times they were started by a teacher (guru). The system of education was flexible. Few things that © e you associate with schools today were present in the pathshalas at the time. There were no fixed fee, no printed b 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 o time-table. In some places classes were held under a t banyan tree, in other places in the corner of a village shop or temple, or at the guru’s home. Fee depended on t the income of parents: the rich had to pay more than the poor. Teaching was oral, and the guru decided what to o teach, in accordance with the needs of the students. Students were not separated out into different classes: n 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 101 h Activity New routines, new rules 1. Imagine you were born Up to the mid-nineteenth century, the Company was in a poor family in the concerned primarily with higher education. So it allowed 1850s. How would you the local pathshalas to function without much have responded to the interference. After 1854 the Company decided to coming of the new improve the system of vernacular education. It felt that system of government- this could be done by introducing order within the regulated pathshalas ? system, imposing routines, establishing rules, ensuring 2. Did you know that regular inspections. about 50 per cent of d How was this to be done? What measures did the children going to the Company undertake? It appointed a number of e primary school drop government pandits, each in charge of looking after four out of school by the to five schools. The task of the pandit was to visit the h time they are 13 or pathshalas and try and improve the standard of teaching. 14? Can you think of T s Each guru was asked to submit periodic reports and i the various possible take classes according to a regular timetable. Teaching l reasons for this fact? R was now to be based on textbooks and learning was to be tested through a system of annual examination. b Students were asked to pay a regular fee, attend regular E classes, sit on fixed seats, and obey the new rules u of discipline. C p Pathshalas which accepted the new rules were supported through government grants. Those who were N re unwilling to work within the new system received no government support. Over time gurus who wanted to retain their independence found it difficult to compete © e with the government aided and regulated pathshalas. The new rules and routines had another consequence. b In the earlier system children from poor peasant families had been able to go to pathshalas, since the timetable was flexible. The discipline of the new system demanded o regular attendance, even during harvest time when t children of poor families had to work in the fields. Inability to attend school came to be seen as indiscipline, t as evidence of the lack of desire to learn. o The Agenda for a National Education n British officials were not the only people thinking about education in India. From the early nineteenth century many thinkers from different parts of India began to talk of the need for a wider spread of education. Impressed with the developments in Europe, 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. You will read about some of these efforts in 102 OUR PASTS – III Chapter 9. There were other Indians, 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 d poison in this education, said Mahatma Gandhi, it was e sinful, it enslaved Indians, it cast an evil spell on them. Charmed by the West, appreciating everything that h came from the West, Indians educated in these institutions began admiring British rule. Mahatma T s Gandhi wanted an education that could help Indians l i recover their sense of dignity and self-respect. During R the national movement he urged students to leave b educational institutions in order to show to the British E that Indians were no longer willing to be enslaved. u Mahatma Gandhi strongly felt that Indian languages C ought to be the medium of teaching. Education in p English crippled Indians, distanced them from their N re 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 © e to relate to the masses. Fig. 9 – Mahatma Gandhi along Western education, Mahatma Gandhi said, focused with Kasturba Gandhi sitting with on reading and writing rather than oral knowledge; b Rabindranath Tagore and a group it valued textbooks rather than lived experience and of girls at Santiniketan, 1940 practical knowledge. He o argued that education t ought to develop a person’s mind and soul. Literacy – t or simply learning to read and write – by itself did o not count as education. People had to work with n 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 103  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 d education by teaching it a useful handicraft and e enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training … I hold that the highest development h of the mind and the soul is possible under such a system of education. Only every handicraft has to T s be taught not merely mechanically as is done today i but scientifically, i.e. the child should know the R l why and the wherefore of every process. b The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 72, p. 79 C E u p As nationalist sentiments spread, other thinkers also began thinking of a system of national education N re which would be radically different from that set up by the British. © e Tagore’s “abode of peace” Many of you may have heard of Santiniketan. Do you know why it was established and by whom? b Fig. 10 – A class in progress in Rabindranath Tagore started the institution in 1901. Santiniketan in the 1930s As a child, Tagore hated going to school. He found o Notice the surroundings – the trees and the open spaces. it suffocating and oppressive. The school appeared t like a prison, for he could never do what he felt like doing. So while other children t listened to the teacher, Tagore’s mind would wander away. o The experience of his n schooldays in Calcutta shaped Tagore’s ideas of education. On growing up, he wanted to set up a school where the child was happy, where she could be free and creative, where she was able to explore her own thoughts and desires. Tagore felt 104 OUR PASTS – III 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), d where living in harmony with nature, children could cultivate e their natural creativity. In many senses Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi thought about h education in similar ways. There were, however, differences T s too. Gandhiji was highly critical of Western civilisation and i its worship of machines and technology. Tagore wanted to l combine elements of modern Western civilisation with what R he saw as the best within Indian tradition. He emphasised b the need to teach science and technology at Santiniketan, E along with art, music and dance. u Many individuals and thinkers were thus thinking about C the way a national educational system could be fashioned. p Some wanted changes within the system set up by the British, N re 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 © e 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. b o Fig. 11 – Children playing in a missionary school in t Coimbatore, early twentieth century t By the mid-nineteenth century, schools for girls o were being set up by Christian missionaries n and Indian reform organisations. CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 105  ELSEWHERE Education as a civilising mission Until the introduction of the Education Act in 1870, there was no widespread education for the population as a whole for most of the nineteenth century. Child labour being widely prevalent, poor children could not be sent to school for their earning was critical for the survival of the family. The number of schools was also limited to those run by the Church or set up by wealthy individuals. It was only after the coming into force of the Education Act that schools were opened by the government and compulsory schooling was introduced. d One of the most important educational thinkers of the period was Thomas Arnold, e who became the headmaster of the private school Rugby. Favouring a secondary school curriculum which had a detailed study of the Greek and Roman classics, written 2,000 h years earlier, he said: T s It has always seemed to me one of the great advantages of the course of study i generally pursued in our English schools that it draws our minds so continually l to dwell upon the past. Every day we are engaged in studying the languages, the R history, and the thoughts of men who lived nearly or more than two thousand b years ago… E Arnold felt that a study of the classics disciplined the mind. In fact, most educators of the u time believed that such a discipline was necessary because young people were naturally C savage and needed to be controlled. To become civilised adults, they needed to understand p society’s notions of right and wrong, proper and improper behaviour. Education, especially N re one which disciplined their minds, was meant to guide them on this path. Can you suggest how such ideas might have influenced thinking about education of the poor in England and of the “natives” in the colonies? © e b Let’s recall o Let’s imagine Imagine you were witness to a debate t t 1. Match the following: o between Mahatma Gandhi and Macaulay William Jones promotion of English n 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 106 OUR PASTS – III 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 of 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 (d) Rabindranath Tagore felt that children ought to e be subjected to strict discipline. Let’s discuss T s h R l i 3. Why did William Jones feel the need to study Indian b history, philosophy and law? E u 4. Why did James Mill and Thomas Macaulay think C that European education was essential in India? p 5. Why did Mahatma Gandhi want to teach children N re handicrafts? 6. Why did Mahatma Gandhi think that English © e education had enslaved Indians? Let’s do b t o 7. Find out from your grandparents about what they studied in school. t 8. Find out about the history of your school or any other o school in the area you live. n CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 107